To get a handle on tea history – the weird, twisting, randomly violent story of tea… We’re going to look at 10 things you probably didn’t know about tea’s strange timeline (but probably should). Is there a lot? Sure! But everything is in bite-sized chunks (so you’ll be able to get to the end without wanting to invade a foreign country and set up a tea plantation of your own).
TEA IS OLD: 4000 BC – 500 CE
4000 BC – According to archaeologists, tea cultivation begins on Tianluo Mountain in East China
2737 BC – FIRST PERSON MAKES A CUP OF TEA IN CHINA
According to legend, in 2737 BC, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water. Some leaves from the tree blew into the water as it simmered over the fire, and the Emperor (who liked to try new things), gave the accident a sip. The tree was a Camellia sinensis, and the resulting drink was what we now call tea.
520 CE – TEA IS “DISCOVERED” IN INDIA
Over in India, there is another story. According to the Indian tradition, Prince Bodhi-Dharma, an Indian saint who founded the Zen school of Buddhism, left his home country to spread Buddhism in China around 520 AD. To prove his Zen principles, he vowed to meditate for nine years without sleep. However, he was only able to make it to EIGHT years before falling asleep. When he woke up, he was so upset, he cut off his eyelids and threw them to the ground. Legend has it that a tea plant sprung up on the spot to sanctify his sacrifice.
1191 CE – MATCHA TEA IS “INVENTED” IN JAPAN
According to popular legend, Matcha green tea was introduced to Japan in 1191 by the Zen monk Myōan Eisai. Supposedly, he planted tea he had brought back from China in the garden of the Buddhist temple in Kyoto. Supposedly, he was the first person to grind the green tea leaves after harvesting them, and supposedly, he was the founder of the tea ceremony chanoyu.
Any truth to any of these stories? Probably not.
But tea drinking certainly became established in China many, many centuries before it was heard of anywhere else. Containers for tea have been found in tombs dating from the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) and under the Tang dynasty (618-906 AD), tea became firmly established as the national drink of China.
FUN FACT – TEA WAS USED AS MONEY FOR A LONG, LOOOONG TIME
Before the Ming Dynasty came to power in 1368 CE in China, tea leaves were compressed into bricks and used as a form of currency. The practice spread to Tibet, Mongolia, and even parts of Russia. It was eventually superseded by standardized currency in the form of coins.
TEA IS A COMMODITY: 500 CE – 1700 CE
You’ve heard of Marco Polo and the Silk Road, right? He was an Italian kid who went along with his daddy to Mongolian China and his stories of the adventure form the basis of what we know about trade between Europe and Asia during the 14th and 15th centuries. The Silk Road (a collection of overland routes between Europe and China) came to an end in 1453 CE, but rich Europeans still wanted Asian stuff. During the “Age of Discovery” which followed, explorers found new water routes to bring the cool things Asian countries were ready to export back home – specifically proceilan, silk, spices, and of course, tea.
For a long time, there was no “tea trade” along these water routes. The Chinese government had a SEVERE restriction on trading tea with anyone and sentenced tea smugglers to death (in all kinds of creative and horrible ways). Worse, tea wasn’t especially popular back home! It was very expensive, tasted bitter, and few but the extraordinarily rich had even heard of it.
Here’s how a pricey, unpopular drink became the most commonly drank and taxed food on the planet:
The Beginnings of the Tea Trade
1555: Tea was first introduced to Europe’s elites by Italian traveler Giovanni Battista Ramusio, who published Voyages and Travels, containing the first reference to the uber-rare luxury: tea.
Fun fact: you can purchase the original “Voyages and Travels” on auction at Christie’s for $35 – 50,0000. Save your pennies!
1560: The Catholic church was very interested in spreading the faith to China, and the missionaries they sent brought back interest in and desire for – tea. The first Portuguese ships reached China in 1516, and in 1560 Portuguese missionary Gaspar da Cruz published the first widely-distributed European account of Chinese tea. People who could read (which was NOT everyone), were even more curious about this exotic beverage.
1557: the Portuguese attempted to create several ports where they could establish trading colonies… but the Chinese weren’t having it. Wars were fought. Eventually, the Portugues rented the port city of Macau from the Chinese as a base of trading in 1557. From Macau, they traded with the Chinese for porcelain, silk, and spices.
1600: The English East India Company (EIC) is chartered by Queen Elizabeth with a monopoly on all trade with the “East Isles.” In time, the East India Company would become the most powerful corporation in history. It would also completely control the tea trade for nearly two centuries.
1602: Dutch East India Company, or the VOC for short (Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie) is established. The VOC quickly takes over the Asian market from the Portuguese, and sets up a series of outposts and colonies to make voyages to the Far East. At the time, the voyage from Europe to Asia took nine months – storms, pirates, disease, and accidents were ever-present dangers.
1610: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) brings the first shipment of tea from China to the Netherlands. While the VOC was the first… they didn’t see how profitable tea would become and focused on importing coffee and spices. They were quickly left behind in the war to control tea.
1657: Thomas Garraway introduced tea to his London coffee house and placed the following ad in Mercurius Politicus on September 30, 1658: “That Excellent, and by all Physicians approved, China drink, called by the Chinese, Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, …sold at the Sultaness-head, ye Cophee-house in Sweetings-Rents, by the Royal Exchange, London“.
1662: Tea becomes popular within British culture when Charles II wife, Catherine of Braganza, a Portuguese royal and self-confessed tea addict, brings a shipping container of loose tea leaves to the royal palace as a part of her dowry. Her habits soon make drinking tea part of royal court life. Interestingly, many people now associate tea with being an English beverage, despite the fact that the popularity of the drink was due to an immigrant Portuguese princess with a spoiled palate.
1669: The English East India Company brings its first shipment of tea to Britain – 143 pounds from Bantam, Java. The company’s tea trade soon surpasses all its competitors, both Dutch and Portuguese. In time, every coffee shop in the UK is EXCLUSIVELY serving EIC tea.
Fun facts from this period of teastory
Random fun fact #1: no one knows for sure how Orange Pekoe got its name. There isn’t any orange in it and “pekoe” is the special name for how tea is harvested. So what’s up? Some experts think it was a simple case of poor pronunciation: the Chinese word for the teeny-weeny white “hairs” that are on the youngest tea leaves is “peh-ho”.
Random fun fact #2 Here’s the lore on how Orange Pekoe got its name: about 350 years ago, the Dutch East India Company set aside the best black teas they’d imported from India, saving it for the royal family, the “House of Orange.” Later on, the local Dutch people nicknamed the fanciest, most expensive tea they could afford as ‘orange’ pekoe for its association with the royals. “Hey, I’m drinking the same tea as the King!” Maybe. Or maybe it was something else entirely.
Random fun fact #3: Willem-Alexander Ferdinand is the current king of the Netherlands in an unbroken lineage of the house of Orange that has lasted over 400 years. “Willem” is the name given (in some variation) to every heir to the throne- even the girls.
TEA IS VIOLENT: 1700 – 1850 CE
17th and 18th Centuries: Tea Smuggling, Adulteration, and the Mafia
1711: The UK needed to finance a war and the East India Company wanted to protect their profits. These two things led to an incredible 120% rise in the price of tea. In 1750, another war and the need for more money in the royal bank led to still more taxes. As a result, tea smuggling begins and spreads.
1747 : The Hawkhurst Smuggling Gang emerged during a time when smuggling was rife along the southern coast of England. The rugged and isolated terrain of the Hawkhurst region in Kent provided the perfect cover for their illegal activities. Formed of local farmers, tradesmen, and villagers, the gang quickly gained a reputation for their resourcefulness and ability to outsmart the authorities. They also brutally tortured and killed multiple people while protecting their tea smuggling empire. They were the mafia, plain and simple.
1750: Either the EIC or unscrupulous Chinese tea producers (no one knows for sure which) starts adding dangerous chemicals so their green tea would have a desirable pale blue “tint” in the delicate porcelain cups English tea drinkers preferred. The most common additives were Prussian Blue, sulphate of lime, or gypsum – all mildly toxic. This would have gone unnoticed if not for the sneaky spywork of Robert Fortune.
1773: The Boston Tea Party – an act of protest in which a group of 60 American colonists threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to agitate against both a tax on tea (which had been an example of taxation without representation) and the monopoly of the East India Company.
17th and 18th Centuries: Half of all tea drank in the UK is smuggled – with some estimates as high as 65%. Smuggled tea often came from Holland. This tea was then transported to England by ship and sold at 2 shillings a pound, a third of what “legal” tea was selling for.
The smugglers, who often were local fishermen, snuck the tea from offshore ships to smaller vessels which brought it to land in oilskin bags. On land, the tea was repacked in sacks to minimize the taste from the oilskin and taken by horse to various hiding places. Parish churches often were used to stash the ill-gotten goods.
1783: The Tea Tax ends – William Pitt the Younger (who was only 24 at the time) becomes Prime Minister of the UK. The following year, he passes the Commutation Act of 1784. This reduced the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%. What happened next? The smuggling of tea ceased to be profitable and the smuggling trade vanished virtually overnight. The number of people who could now buy and enjoy tea skyrocketed!
1875: Sale of Foods and Drugs Act – Effectively ends the practice of adding all kinds of weird things to tea to hide the fact that it was not, in fact tea. You could make imitation green tea with used tea leaves stiffened with a solution of gum, colored with green vitriol (iron sulfate) or black lead. Willow, licorice, log wood and sloe leaves might also be added to further extend the mixture. These things were toxic and could produce a variety of symptoms including constipation.
Imitation black tea often contained the same ingredients along with a mixture of bran, sheep dung or ‘chamber lye’ (the contents of a chamber pot). Dried and ground these were said to strongly resemble fashionable tea in appearance (if not in flavor).
TEA SPARKS WAR IN CHINA: 1839 – 1949
1839 – 1841 TEA, OPIUM, THE FIRST and SECOND CHINA WARS
By the start of the 19th century, the tea trade had become EXTREMELY lucrative for British merchants. However, the Chinese had stopped taking British products in return; they would only sell for silver. Bringing heavy silver all the way to China was both expensive and difficult. The tea trade with China was rapidly becoming nearly impossible for the EIC to trade. To fix this, the East India Company and other British merchants began to trade for Indian opium, then bring that opium into China for sale to residents – illegally.
Within a short while, British sales of opium was paying for ALL tea imported to the UK, creating millions of Chinese addicts across the country, and making the EIC incredibly rich.
The Chinese government wanted to stop the huge numbers of drugs coming into their country, so they confiscated 20,000 chests of opium and then tried to take the largest British Opium Factory (located in Canton, China) by force. This led to a very brief war. After several skirmishes, fighting between the two forces began in November 1839. Just two EIC ships – the HMS ‘Volage’ and HMS ‘Hyacinth’ – defeated 29 Chinese vessels.
Following this defeat, the admiral of the Chinese fleet, Kuan Ti, asked for a truce. Ten of his 13 war-junks had been captured and his flagship had been destroyed. Meanwhile, the EIC had lost NO ships and had suffered only 38 casualties. After a few more battles, in which a small handful of powerful war ships pounded various port cities, the war ended on 17 August 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking. The terms of the treaty allowed the EIC to ‘carry on their mercantile transactions with whatever persons they please’. The Chinese were forced to relax their control on foreign trade, including the trade in opium. In addition, Hong Kong was given over to Great Britain, and the treaty ports of Canton (Guangzhou), Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Shanghai and Ningpo (Ningbo) were opened to all traders.
TEA SPARKS WAR IN INDIA: 1823 – 1947
East India Company and Tea Production in India
“At its peak, the English East India Company was by far the largest corporation of its kind in history. It was also larger than several nations. It was essentially the de facto emperor of large portions of India, which was one of the most productive economies in the world at that point. At its height, it dominated global trade between Europe, South Asia and the Far East, fought numerous wars using its own army and navy, and conquered and colonised modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma.”
Emily Erikson, a sociology professor at Yale University and author of Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company
1823: Robert Bruce, a British adventurer , meets Assamese nobleman Maniram Dutta Barbhandari Baruah, who took him to the local Singpho tribe. The Singpho tribe were indigenous to the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra valley and the foothills of the Himalayas and were the first in the region to use a wild tea like plant to make a beverage. Maniram would go on to be the first native Indian to begin the practice of private tea cultivation in Assam
1833: the East India Company’s monopoly of the Chinese trade comes to an end due to high prices and the success of Chinese free trade with America and Australia.
The British government becomes determined to initiate tea-planting in India to offset the damage and, in February 1834, governor general Lord Bentinck set up the Tea Committee. The Committee sent out a circular asking where tea could be grown and Assam was identified as an ideal location based on Robert Bruce’s research.
1836: Robert Bruce’s younger brother Charles takes up the quest of developing a sustainable tea outside of China. He knew that if the tea was good, a planting industry could be developed in Assam, India to rival that of China, making him a fortune while drastically boosting Britain’s economy. He sets up a tea plantation in Sidiya, Assam and begins the first production of Indian tea. He sends the first shipment back to the UK and the Tea Committee finds it excellent.
January 10, 1839: Indian Tea goes on sale in Britain for the first time – 350 pounds in eight chests of Assam tea grown on Bruce’s tea plantation.
1848: the British East India Company sent Robert Fortune on a trip to China’s interior, an area forbidden to foreigners. Fortune’s mission was to steal the secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. The Scotsman donned a disguise and headed into the Wu Si Shan hills in a bold act of corporate espionage. He faked his way into various tea manufacturing facilities, took careful notes, and brought back what he had learned to London.
“Besides the collection of tea plants and seeds from the best localities for transmission to India, it will be your duty to avail yourself of every opportunity of acquiring information as to the cultivation of the tea plant and the manufacture of tea as practised by the Chinese and on all other points with which it may be desirable that those entrusted with the superintendence of the tea nurseries in India should be made acquainted.”
Despite the risks involved, Fortune managed to smuggle out approximately 13,000 tea plant samples and 10,000 seeds through Hong Kong and Calcutta. This allowed British planters to establish their own tea industry in eastern India and eventually led to the flourishing of the Victorian tea industry.
1841: British Superintendent of Darjeeling Archibald Campbell planted stolen Chinese seeds and started the first Darjeeling Tea Plantation. He was later imprisoned by the Indians for trespassing. The UK government sent forces to rescue him – all of which led to a war. As part of the treaty that was signed in 1865, the British annexed Darjeeling from the Kingdom of Sikkim, giving them free reign to expand their tea empire. Campbell’s tea plantation featured the
AFTERMATH OF THE INDIA TEA TRADE
In the 24 years between Campbell planting the first bushes and the British annexing Darjeeling, Campbell had worked to attract immigrant labor from nearby Nepal to help cultivate the slopes and grow opportunities for trade. His plan worked, and Darjeeling teas began to take off.
Soon the British brought the tea estate model to Darjeeling, a business model adapted from the lower elevations of Assam, India. They planted large swaths of the mountains with seedlings from a single species—Camellia sinensis (the plant from which all tea is made)—bringing all the problems of monoculture with it: from rapid depletion of soil nutrients to crop vulnerability to the destruction of entire habitats for tea planting to aggressive disease.
Tea production is VERY labor intensive and for the British, at least, slavery was outlawed – so the British model depended on the indentured servant system – where workers would sign away nearly all their rights in exchange for being taken care of. In this system, all housing, food, education, medical care, and a very modest wage was provided by the British “in exchange” for the Nepali immigrants’ labor, working the Darjeeling tea gardens. The Nepali communities soon became dependent on the estate owners for nearly all their basic necessities, creating a cycle of dependence that plagues many of these families generations today.
The British left India on August 15, 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence from the British Empire because the English could no longer afford to administer the country. The British Raj covered almost all of present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 created two new independent dominions, India and Pakistan. The partition was the result of British imperialism and religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims. The partition forced millions of people to leave their homes, which was the largest forced migration in history. The violence that followed was brutal, with people committing murder, looting, and setting buildings on fire. The partition led to conflict between India and Pakistan, particularly over Kashmir. Tensions remain, and many families have never been able to return to their ancestral homes
As it stands today, India remains one of the world’s top producers of high quality tea, churning out millions of tons of exceptional tea, almost exclusively black and from tea gardens built on the estate model. Today, the social and environmental limitations of the estate model are beginning to become more acute, with strikes regularly shutting down production, and the monocultured mountainsides of the estates requiring synthetic fertilizers.
TEA SPARKS WAR IN SRI LANKA: 1815 – 1948
19th century: British Establish Tea Plantations in Sri Lanka
The British played a significant role in the development of Sri Lanka’s tea industry, from introducing tea plants to the island to establishing the first commercial tea plantation:
1815: The British took over Sri Lanka in 1798 after Napoleon overran the Netherlands, forcing the Dutch to pull out of some of their overseas possessions. The British renamed the island “British Ceylon.” They took full control of the island in 1815 after it brought down the kingdom based in Kandy. The British established a plantation economy and maintained a colony in Sri Lanka until 1948. Their rule was intense and harsh and the atrocities they committed far beyond the question of tea we are concerned with. You can read more here (if you dare).
1824: the British brought tea seeds from China to plant in the Royal Botanical Garden in Peradeniya, but the Chinese tea plants did not do well in the soil. The East India Company later brought tea plants from Assam, which took better to the soil and became the primary tea plant on Sri Lankan estates.
1867: Scottish planter James Taylor established the first commercial tea plantation in Sri Lanka on the 19-acre Loolecondera Estate in Kandy. Taylor built a tea factory on the estate and in 1872, the first sale of Loolecondera tea was made.
1869: the coffee industry in Sri Lanka was wiped out by the spread of coffee rust, a leaf disease. The coffee plantations were converted to tea crops over a period of 20 years.
1880 – 1900: Tea production in Sri Lanka grows rapidly, with 100,000 acres planted by 1880 and 384,000 acres by 1900. The tea industry became a mainstay of the island’s economy in the 20th century.
Ceylon tea became world-famous for its quality and flavor. The Lion Logo can only be used on consumer packs of Ceylon tea that meet the quality standards set by the Sri Lanka Tea Board. In their post-colonization era, Sri Lanka has become one of the world’s leaders in quality tea production.
