Birth Of Tea In
China
Tea is often
thought of as being a quintessentially British drink, and we have been
drinking it for over 350 years. But in fact the history of tea goes much
further back.
The story of tea begins in China. According to legend, in 2737 BC, the
Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant
boiled drinking water, when some leaves from the tree blew into the
water. Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist, decided to try the infusion that
his servant had accidentally created. The tree was a Camellia sinensis,
and the resulting drink was what we now call tea.
Tea was first introduced to Japan, by Japanese Buddhist monks
It is impossible to know whether there is any truth in this story. But
tea drinking certainly became established in China many centuries before
it had even been heard of in the west.
Containers for tea have been found in tombs dating from the Han
dynasty(206 BC - 220 AD) but it was under the Tang dynasty (618-906 AD),
that tea became firmly established as the national drink of China. It
became such a favourite that during the late eighth century a writer
called Lu Yu wrote the first book entirely about tea, the Ch'a Ching, or
Tea Classic. It was shortly after this that tea was first introduced to
Japan, by Japanese Buddhist monks who had travelled to China to study.
Tea drinking has become a vital part of Japanese culture, as seen in the
development of the Tea Ceremony, which may be rooted in the rituals described
in the Ch'a
Ching.
Growth Of Tea
In Europe
So at this stage in the history of tea, Europe was rather lagging
behind. In the latter half of the sixteenth century there are the first
brief mentions of tea as a drink among Europeans. These are mostly from
Portuguese who were living in the East as traders and missionaries. But
although some of these individuals may have brought back samples of tea
to their native country, it was not the Portuguese who were the first to
ship back tea as a commercial import. This was done by the Dutch, who in
the last years of the sixteenth century began to encroach on Portuguese
trading routes in the East. By the turn of the century they had
established a trading post on the island of Java, and it was via Java
that in 1606 the first consignment of tea was shipped from China to
Holland. Tea soon became a fashionable drink among the Dutch, and from
there spread to other countries in continental western Europe, but
because of its high price it remained a drink for the wealthy.
Roots Of Tea
In Britain
Britain, always a little suspicious of continental
trends, had yet to become the nation of tea drinkers that it is today.
Since 1600, the British East
India Company had a monopoly on
importing goods from outside Europe, and it is likely that sailors on
these ships brought tea home as gifts. But the first dated reference to
tea in this country is from an advert in a London newspaper, Mercurius
Politicus, from September 1658.
It announced that 'China Drink, called by the Chinese, Tcha, by other
Nations Tay alias Tee' was on sale at a coffee house in Sweeting's Rents
in the City. The first coffee house had been established in London in
1652, and the terms of this advert suggest that tea was still somewhat
unfamiliar to most readers, so it is fair to assume that the drink was
still something of a curiosity.
It was the marriage of Charles II to Catherine
of Braganza that would prove to be a
turning point in the history of tea in Britain. She was a Portuguese
princess, and a tea addict, and it was her love of the drink that
established tea as a fashionable beverage first at court, and then among
the wealthy classes as a whole. Capitalising on this, the East India
Company began to import tea into Britain, its first order being placed
in 1664 - for 100lbs of China tea to be shipped from Java.
Tea Smuggling
& Taxation
The British took to tea with an enthusiasm that
continues to the present day. It became a popular drink in coffee
houses, which were as much locations for the transaction of business as
they were for relaxation or pleasure. They were though the preserve of
middle- and upper-class men; women drank tea in their own homes, and as
yet tea was still too expensive to be widespread among the working
classes. In part, its high price was due to a punitive system of
taxation. The first tax on tea in the leaf, introduced in 1689, was so
high at 25p in the pound that it almost stopped sales. It was reduced to
5p in the pound in 1692, and from then until as recently as 1964, when
tea duties were finally abolished, politicians were forever tinkering
with the exact rate and method of the taxation
of tea.
One unforeseen consequence of the taxation of tea
was the growth of methods to avoid taxation - smuggling
and adulteration. One
method was adding sheep's
dung to make it look more like tea.
By the eighteenth century many Britons wanted to drink tea but could
not afford the high prices, and their enthusiasm for the drink was
matched by the enthusiasm of criminal gangs to smuggle it in. Their
methods could be brutal, but they were supported by the millions of
British tea drinkers who would not have otherwise been able to afford
their favorite beverage.
What began as a small time illegal trade, selling a few pounds of tea to
personal contacts, developed by the late eighteenth century into an
astonishing organized crime network, perhaps importing as much as 7
million lbs annually, compared to a legal import of 5 million lbs! Worse
for the drinkers was that taxation also encouraged the adulteration of
tea, particularly of smuggled tea which was not quality controlled
through customs and excise. Leaves from other plants, or leaves which
had already been brewed and then dried, were added to tea leaves.
Sometimes the resulting color was not convincing enough, so anything
from sheep's dung to poisonous copper carbonate was added to make it
look more like tea.
By 1784, the government realized that enough was enough, and that heavy
taxation was creating more problems than it was worth. The new Prime
Minister, William Pitt the Younger, slashed the tax from 119 per cent to
12.5 per cent. Suddenly legal tea was affordable, and smuggling stopped
virtually overnight.
Early Talks
Of Tea & Health
As well as the great debate in the eighteenth
century about the taxation of tea, there was an equally furious argument
about whether tea drinking was good or bad for the health. Leaps forward
in medical and scientific research mean that we now know that drinking
four cups of tea a day may help maintain your health, but such
information was not available to tea drinkers 250 years ago. Wealthy
philanthropists in particular worried that excessive tea drinking among
the working classes would lead to weakness and melancholy. Typically,
they were not concerned with the continuing popularity of tea among the
wealthy classes, for whom 'strength to labor' was of rather less
importance! The debate rumbled on into the nineteenth century, but was
really put to an end in the middle of that century, when a new
generation of wealthy philanthropists realized the value of tea drinking
to the temperance movement. In their enthusiasm to have the working
classes go teetotal, tea was regularly offered at temperance meetings as
a substitute
for alcohol.
Tea Trading &
Consumption
Another great impetus to tea drinking resulted
from the end of the East
India Company's monopoly on trade with
China, in 1834. Before that date, China was the country of origin of the
vast majority of the tea imported to Britain, but the end of the its
monopoly stimulated the East India Company to consider growing tea in
China. India had always been the centre of the Company's operations,
where it also played a leading role in the government. This led to the
increased cultivation of tea in India, beginning in Assam. There were a
few false starts, including the destruction by cattle of one of the
earliest tea nurseries, but by 1839 there was sufficient cultivation of
tea of 'marketable quality' for the first auction of Assam tea in
Britain. In 1858 the British government took over direct control of
India from the East India Company, but the new administration was
equally keen to promote the tea industry and cultivation increased and
spread to regions beyond Assam. It was a great success, production was
expanded, and by 1888 British tea imports from India were for the first
time greater than those from China.
The end of the East India Company's monopoly on
trade with China also had another result, which was more dramatic though
less important in the long term: it ushered in the era of the tea
clippers. While the Company had had the
monopoly on trade, there was no rush
to bring the tea from China to Britain, but after 1834 the tea trade
became a virtual free for all. Individual merchants and sea captains
with their own ships raced to bring home the tea and make the most
money, using fast new clippers which had sleek lines, tall masts and
huge sails. In particular there was competition between British and
American merchants, leading to the famous clipper races of the 1860s.
The race began in China where the clippers would leave the Canton River,
race down the China Sea, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of
Good Hope, up the Atlantic, past the Azores and into the English
Channel. The clippers would then be towed up the River Thames by tugs
and the race would be won by the first ship to hurl ashore its cargo at
the docks. But these races soon came to an end with the opening of the
Suez canal, which made the trade routes to China viable for steamships
for the first time.
In 1851, when virtually all tea in Britain had
come from China, annual consumption per head was less than 2lbs. Bt
1901, fuelled by cheaper imports from India and Sri Lanka (then called
Ceylon), another British colony, this had rocketed to over 6lbs per
head. Tea had become firmly established as part of the British way of
life. This was officially recognized during the First World War, when
the government took over the importation of tea to Britain in order to
ensure that this essential morale-boosting beverage continued to be
available at an affordable price. The government took control again
during the Second World War, and tea was rationed from 1940 until 1952.
1952 also saw the re-establishment of the London
Tea Auction, a regular auction that had
been taking place since 1706. The auction was at the centre of the
world's tea industry, but improved worldwide communications and the
growth of auctions in tea producing nations meant that it gradually
declined in importance during the latter half of the twentieth century.
The final London Tea Auction was held on 29 June 1998.
Modern Day
Tea Drinking
But as the tea auction declined, an essential
element of modern tea-drinking took off -the
tea bag. Tea bags were invented in
America in the early twentieth century, but sales only really took off
in Britain in the 1970s. Nowadays it would be hard for many tea-drinkers
to imagine life without them. Such is the British enthusiasm for tea
that even after the dismantling of the Empire, British companies
continue to play a leading role in the world's tea trade and British
brands dominate the world market. With recent scientific research
indicating that tea drinking may have direct health benefits, it is
assured that for centuries to come there will be a place at the centre
of British life for a nice cup of tea.
