Tea and Power Part 1 : From China to the World

12 MINUTE READ

Belonging Across Cultures is fascinated by the connections between nations, peoples and ideas. You may be sipping a cup of tea while settling down to read this story. As you can imagine, this evergreen shrub, Camellia sinensis, used to grow in the wild. Until the Chinese discovered what it could offer us humans. From there, the turbulent and violent history of the humble cuppa emerges. And did you know that in Europe, tea was once as exclusive as champagne? But that it also led to a myriad of new innovations, social rituals and jobs? Author Across Cultures, Yang-May Ooi, takes you into the story of tea. [This article was first published on MetroWild and has been slightly edited here]

Tea and Power Part 1: From China to the World

Tea has been a drink in China since time immemorial. Legend has it that almost 5,000 years ago in 2737 BC, leaves blew into a pot of boiling water that a servant was heating up for a Chinese emperor. The emperor drank the infusion and discovered the energising and tasty combination of hot water and leaves that we now call tea.

Fast forward to the 1600s CE and we find the British East India Company expanding what would become the British Empire ever eastwards from India. The spice trade was a global business in that era. The British and Dutch in particular raced back and forth from South East Asia in sailing ships bringing back nutmeg, pepper, cardomom, ginger and more for the insatiable tastebuds of Europeans. The Spanish and Italians tried to beat the dominance of these two powers in the East by heading West to find a faster route to Asia. And colonized the North and South American indigenous people to gain for themselves other natural resources, such as tobacco, chocolate, peppers – and gold.

However, Western ambitions were halted at China’s door. China was willing to sell them porcelain, silk and tea, among other commodities, but not so eager to buy what the West was trying to peddle.

As Expensive as Champagne

Tea was huge in the West, especially in Britain. At first, it was incredibly expensive – as is often the case when something is new to consumers and very difficult to get hold of. The wealthy and influential were mad for it and so, too, eventually, the common folk – just think of any trend today that usually begins with movie stars, sports icons and influencers. 

The expense was partly due to the cost of getting the tea back to Europe from China. Back in those days, sailing ships were the only way to transport any goods across the world and sails were dependent on wind and currents. So there were certain times of the year when it was great for sailing eastwards and other times for coming back westwards – especially as they had to round the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa (the Panama canal shortcut would only be constructed in the the 20th century). They competed to bring tea back as fast as possible – and this led to the evolution of ship design, especially the clippers (hence, Clipper Tea) that were sleek and aero- and wind-dynamic as well as having a certain capacity for their valuable cargo. 

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Legal and Financial Innovation

These ventures had to be financed – the notion emerged in this era of investors who would put money up front for the enterprise. What would they put the money in? Not just a single person or a loose collective of persons. They wanted more certainty and accountability for their money. So companies were invented, a single legal entity that was controlled by the investors who owned shares in that company. The most significant company of that period was the British East India Company.

There were huge risks as you would expect from putting your money towards funding ships sailing off across the world which may or may not manage to bring back safely perishable goods like tea to be sold at a profit – but if they did succeed, the return on investment would be enormous. So it was worth the risk. 

But could you minimise the risk of shipwreck, spoiled goods and other disasters in some way? How do we minimise the risk of our car being wrecked in an accident? Insurance, of course. That’s easy for us to say now because insurance is a concept that is part of our modern world. Back then the whole structure of the insurance industry had to be invented and put in place. 

Boom Time

All these constructs that we take for granted in the modern world – companies, investors, share issues, insurance – emerged out of London in the UK and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. And as the trade grew, it needed not only more ships to be built, sailors to crew them and stevedores at the docks but also lawyers, bankers, insurance brokers, their mid- and junior-level staff, newsmongers, other support services, pubs, restaurants, markets, shops, housing and anything else you can think of that we need and want for a good life. London grew in wealth and power. It was boom time!

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Tea for Opium

Back to China… The Western powers – and Britain especially – were not happy that the growth of their wealth and trade was halted at China’s door. There was an imbalance in trade with the British having to spend money to buy the likes of porcelain and tea but not able to make any money by selling their goods to China. One commodity in particular that the British wanted to peddle was opium. Its addictive quality of course made it lucrative and created endless demand. And China offered a vast market – if only, it would open its trade doors. 

What do you do when you’ve been used to getting your own way all across the world and you find a door barred to you? You try sneaking in round the back. And if you still can’t get through, you kick down the door. 

The British smuggled opium into China. Shamefully, Britain and other colluding Western nations, were a drug-smuggling cartel that was more dangerous and violent than anything we’ve seen in the modern day.

When China tried to stop the smuggling, the British sent warships and bombarded the Chinese port of Dinghai. The Opium Wars began. 

The Chinese were defeated and China was opened up to Western traders. 

Opium and Me

Opium remained a destructive force in Chinese society in the mid- to late 1800s. It devastated my great-grandmother’s family – her father, my great-great-grandfather, a well-to-do and respectable doctor became an opium addict and lost everything. My great-grandmother, who had bound feet, was forced to marry into a family that treated her appallingly – and eventually ran away on her tiny feet, ending up in Malaya where she met the man who would become her husband and my great-grandfather. I tell this story in my theatre show and related family memoir, Bound Feet Blues.

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According to Resplendent Ceylon:

“The Tea for Opium trade alliance between China and Britain-represented by the [East India] Company – was a tragedy for the Chinese, due to the damage caused to Chinese society by opium addiction. For Britain it was an indispensable source of earnings as, during much of the Victorian era, 10% of the British government’s collections is said to have come from the taxes on the import and sale of tea.” 

~ Tea and Opium: Liquid Jade and the Fruit of the Poppy https://bit.ly/4aLL689

The Spy Who Loved Tea

When you are heavily reliant on one source for the thing you want, you are in a weak negotiating position – unless you have the one primal power left to you, violence. But war is expensive and time-consuming. So what’s the smart thing to do? Find another source. Or better still, create and control your own source. 

This is what the British did. 

As with any valuable manufacturing process or recipe for a tasty product, the Chinese kept the tea plant and the tea-making process out of reach of outsiders. But in 1848, during the Opium War era, Robert Fortune, an operative of the British East India Company, was sent on a secret mission to steal the secrets of tea from China.

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He gained access to a Chinese tea manufacturer by guile and saw how the raw leaves were processed. The British were also able to get hold of the Chinese tea plant and take it back to the territories they controlled in India. Later another related tea plant was also discovered in Assam, Inda, that expanded the British control of tea.

Tea Today

China continues to grow and export tea. Other nations in Asia such as Japan and South Korea also produce tea. Tea growing and manufacturing eventually spread from India across the British Empire. 

There is Boh Tea in Malaysia – and you can visit the plantations and processing plant in Cameron Highlands. Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka (previously Ceylon) is well known. Less well-known is Kenyan tea which was first grown there in the early 1900s by white settlers. The image of the lonely British tea planter and his even more lonely wife is an enduring one from the novels of W. Somerset Maugham. The wealth from tea during the colonial period went to the British, with very little trickling down into the local people. Now, following independence, the tea business in these regions are largely owned and run by local people, creating employment for locals and exporting to a global market increasingly on fair trade terms. 

This seems a natural point for a tea break. I’m off to make a cuppa. 

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The Eco-System of Tea

Meanwhile, as you sip your cup of tea, think about how that simple brew led to the evolution of engineering and ship design in the clippers that raced across the world. Think of the wars that were fought to gain control of tea, with its related shameful pushing of opium into China. And how that opium led to mass migration out of China to places like Malaya and also to California during the Gold Rush. And how it contributed to the wealth and power of cities like London and to literature like the stories of Maugham.

Tea has played its part in shaping history at a global level and also at the level of individuals and families. It has also made its mark on the places we now call home, whether it is London or the hilly landscapes across Asia and Africa where the tea plant is grown. Tea contributes still today to many businesses and to employment all over the world, as well as to our social life and well-being.

You might think of all this as the eco-system of tea as we enjoy it today. Everything is connected. 

In that cup of tea is our history. And our present inter-relationship with each other across the world. And also our future – which is increasingly precarious in the context of climate change. A tea farmer in Kenya, Richard Koskei, is quoted in Country Living, saying:

”…climate change is posing a real threat. We cannot predict seasons anymore, temperatures are rising, rainfall is more erratic, more often accompanied by unusual hailstones and longer droughts which was not the case in the past. If this continues then it will make growing tea much harder and life for us extremely difficult.”

~ The UK could face a tea shortage due to climate change, new report warns https://bit.ly/3UQu56K

It’s a simple cup of tea. But it’s also not. 

If we love this simple pleasure, we need to also be mindful of how we can ensure that it remains an integral part of our lives –  through doing our bit in supporting the human and environmental eco-systems in which it thrives. 

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Coming up in the next few day, Tea and Power Part 2. I will be looking at tea culture in the UK and how the migration of this one flavourful drink created new industries and new ways of living that are still with us today.

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Sources:

History of Tea in China – https://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea 

Clipper Tea – https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/whats-on/blogs/the-1872-tea-race 

The Invention of Corporations – https://newint.org/features/2002/07/05/history 

Tea and Opium – https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/first-china-war-1839-1842 

Stealing Tea from China – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea-heist-9866709/ 

http://www.cafesrichard.com/a-brief-history-of-tea-in-india-111.html 

Kenyan Tea – https://www.teaboard.or.ke/kenya-tea/history-of-kenyan-tea 

Photos:

credits as indicated below each image

Teacups and battleships – AI

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