A Bit of Tea History
Tea is the dried leaf of the plant, Camellia sinensis, an evergreen perennial shrub that grows in a number of subtropic and highland tropic regions of the world. Only the young leaves and buds are picked and then processed in a variety of ways. There are a number of myths about the orgins of tea. One of the most popular is that in about 2737 B.C. the Chinese emperor, Shen Nung was boiling some water to drink, as was apparently his custom, and a tea leaf from a bush nearby fell into his pot. The emperor found the resulting beverage to be both flavorful and stimulating and made it a regular ritual. Who knows? In any event, by the 200 A.D. tea was widely consumed in China. It was first taxed in 780 A.D. and the first text devoted to the subject of tea was written in that same year.
Tea began to be traded in about the 5th century, initially along the Mongolian border. In the 6th century it traveled to Japan with Chinese Buddhist monks where it grew nicely and it quickly became not only the national beverage but an integral part of Zen Buddhist ritual. The first European to experience tea is reported to be a Portuguese missionary. The Portuguese trade route brought tea to Lisbon. From there it traveled to France, Holland and the Baltic countries on Dutch ships. Tea was quite popular in France (until it was replaced by chocolate and coffee) and it is the French who are credited with first adding milk to their tea. It spread from Holland and France to the rest of Europe. The Dutch also traded tea with their settlement in the New World, New Amsterdam (renamed New York by the British), and in fact, when the British arrived it was a well-established habit. The settlers of New Amsterdam drank more tea than all of England!
The John Company was granted exclusive trade rights in the east and later merged with the East India Company. It became the largest trade monopoly in history and was incredibly powerful. The Company brought its first shipment of 140 pounds of tea to England in 1669. Initially, the tea was quite expensive ($100/pound) and enjoyed only by the aristocracy and the most wealthy. Its popularity in England was assured when Charles II became king. Both the monarch and his Portuguese queen were avid tea drinkers and tea eventually replaced ale as the national beverage. Soon after its introduction in England the government began to tax the imported beverage and as imports increased, of course so did tax revenues. The tax, greater than the cost of the tea itself, encouraged smuggling and, in fact, the British drank more contraband than they did taxed tea. The Boston Tea Party, an event familiar to every American was in response to tea taxation. By 1800 the British were importing 24 million pounds of tea annually. Back to the East India Company… Trade with the East was ever so lucrative but the British had little to export. In order to offset their trade deficit they introduced Turkish opium to the Chinese people. Opium use in China up to that point had been primarily medicinal. With 450 million people the potential for profits from an addictive substance were huge and the British pursued it to the point of war. A chest of opium held about 135 pounds of extract. In 1821 the British imported 5,000 chests, by 1837 it had grown to 35,000. The Chinese attempts to eliminate the opium trade resulted in trade restrictions, which, of course, the British were unwilling to accept. They responded by waging the “Opium Wars†and the Chinese, without western technology and military expertise lost badly. As part of the resulting treaty, the British gained Hong Kong. Fascinating but also appalling.
Tea was also found growing in Assam, a region of northeast India and as the situation in China became more unstable the British began to focus on Indian tea as an import source. The first Assam tea was imported to England in 1837. Nearby Ceylon, after its coffee crop was decimated by disease was also found to have quite suitable growing conditions.
Tea has continued to be an important trade commodity. Today, India is the largest producer of tea, China the second, and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) is the third. India and Ceylon produce almost entirely black tea, while China and Japan grow more green. Ireland is currently the largest per capita consumer of tea and most everyone drinks more than Americans.
