Americans are often insular about their history, in particular, the War for Independence. The rest of the world seems to have been "out there" and far removed from the events here. Perhaps it's the American version of national "exceptionalism" that makes it seem like the US was created in a sterile laboratory environment, uncorrupted by lesser countries.
The fact is that despite enormous distances, Britain's North American colonies were involved in complex networks of trade that reached to the Caribbean Islands, Europe, and notoriously, the coast of West Africa. These trade networks reached beyond that: all the way to Asia for a variety of commodities. Among those commodities was tea.
Smuggling in the 18th century was a major enterprise. The success of their efforts can be measured by the career of one John Hancock whose wealth owed a great deal to illegal trading activity, dodging import duties all along the way.
The British East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600, and by the eve of the War for American Independence had become a large and powerful entity on the Indian sub-continent and Asia. Although a large operation, the EIC was facing financial problems — partly from being undersold by smugglers' prices, and partly from questionable monetary practices.
The result in 1768 was a crippling drought in the Bengal region. In an appalling sequence, the drought brought crop failure and crop failure brought famine with all its horrors including epidemics. By mid 1770, when the drought loosened its stranglehold, ten million people had died in Bengal. The EIC's tax was raised during the height of the famine, adding further misery to the disaster.
The cumulative losses caused by being undersold, a nightmarish situation in India, and its own greed had the EIC reeling. A "Select Committee" was formed in the House of Commons, headed by one Major General John Burgoyne. The committee's hearings provided no solution.
In hopes of shoring up a very dangerous economic situation, Parliament passed the Regulating Act of June 1773, loaning the EIC a substantial amount of money. About a month earlier, Parliament passed the Tea Act, designed to ensure that EIC tea would undersell the established smugglers. The Tea Act would help a corporate entity "too big to fail" while asserting Parliament's authority with a pittance of a tax.
Unfortunately for the hopes of Parliament, the more radical leaders recognized the move as a threat to the "Rights of an Englishman" — and perhaps more importantly, a threat to their rights as profit-seeking smugglers. Their response was enshrined in American history as the Boston Tea Party. British reaction would eventually lead to a shooting war.
The Maratha leader Hyder Ali was a formidable foe of Britain in India, and his enmity was known in North America. John Adams wrote to the Continental Congress in June 1780: "…the English are threatened with more considerable [losses] in India, where the natives of the country begin to be weary of the vexation of foreigners…"
Ironically, 18th-century Americans with painfully slow communication recognized the world-wide aspects of their War for Independence, while their present-day globally-linked descendants do not. But we're working on correcting that.