A Brief History of Tea
We British drink gallons of tea every day (165 million cups a day in fact). Tea has, and continues to, fuel our workers. It revives and relaxes us whenever we need it and it bridges the gap when words are difficult to find.
It is an integral part of life but most of us probably never stop to think about the events which lead to a plant from China becoming Britain’s favourite drink. It’s an ancient beverage that has constantly evolved. It’s such an intriguing and complex substance that it will hopefully continue to surprise and develop for a long time yet.

Tea has gone from Chinese legend, to being treasured and kept under lock and key by European Princesses and the upper classes, to being ground up and sold in paper tea bags for next to nothing. It’s time for the next chapter. It’s time to free the leaf from the bag and give it the status and respect it deserves once more.

The origins of tea


Although we have been enjoying tea in Britain for over 350 years, its story starts long before then. The actual discovery of tea is lost in legend but, according to Chinese storytellers, a Chinese Emperor (Shen Nung) was sitting under a tree one day around 2737BC when a few stray leaves drifted into the pot of water his servant was boiling. Being an avid herbalist, the Emperor tasted the resulting concoction and discovered a beverage that was exhilarating and refreshing. The leaves were tea leaves from a camellia-like tree.

Japanese Buddhist monks believe tea was discovered slightly differently. Apparently, a Japanese Buddhist monk who had been studying in China (Prince Bodhidharma), began a nine year meditation in AD 520 but, unsurprisingly, fell asleep after months of staring at a wall. He was so angry with himself when he awoke that he promptly cut off his eyelids. According to legend, his eyelids fell to the ground and resulted in the first tea bush. That bush allegedly provided him with a brew that kept him awake during the remaining years of his meditation.

At that time, no one in Europe had even heard of tea.

How was tea brought to England?


The first mentions of tea as a drink among Europeans (mostly Portuguese) appear in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The Dutch were actually the first Europeans to ship back tea as a commercial import (1606). Britain, as always, was wary of fashionable continental trends and the first dated reference to tea in Britain didn’t appear until 1658.

Catherine of Braganza and the East India Company


It took a woman (naturally!), however, to really launch tea into British society and we have never looked back. A Portuguese Princess (Catherine of Braganza) arrived in Britain to marry King Charles II in 1662. She took her tea addiction with her. The Princess brewed her precious herb for all her friends at court and so this new beverage quickly became a fashionable luxury.

Never one to miss an opportunity, the East India Company (who had a monopoly at that time on importing goods from outside Europe) began to import tea into Britain in 1664 and so started Britain’s love affair with tea.

Smuggling and adulteration


Due to heavy taxation, tea was very expensive and could only be bought by the wealthy upper classes (hence it was often kept in cherised, locked tea caddies). Consequently, numerous ploys were devised to avoid the tax: mainly smuggling and adulteration of the tea. There was so much demand from British tea drinkers who couldn’t otherwise afford tea that, at one time, more tea was actually being smuggled illegally into Britain than imported legally. Unfortunately for the working classes, it was more often than not adulterated with things like sheeps dung to make it look more like ‘proper tea’.

Eventually the Government realised that the revenue from the high taxes was not worth the problems associated with smuggling and in 1784 it slashed the tax.

End of a monopoly


Meanwhile, the East India Company’s monolopy on trade with China eventually ended in 1834. With its monopoly gone, the company finally had an incentive to try growing tea in India. It started in Assam and by 1839 there was enough quality tea for the first tea auction in Britain. Tea production continued to expand when the British Government took over direct control of India from the East India Company.

The Clipper Races


The end of the East India Company’s monopoly had another consequence: it meant the beginning of the great tea clipper races. With the market suddenly opening up, enterprising sailors realised that whoever could get their cargo of tea to the docks in London first would get the best price for their tea (it being fresher and there being no competitors). The two decades of the sailing tea clippers, although short, have gone down in history for their glamorous excitement. The opening of the Suez Canal put an end to these races but the romance lives on.

The Boston Tea Party


During the eighteenth century, tea drinking was as popular in Britain as it was in Britain’s American colonies, but its popularity in America imploded due to an ill-advised political move. The British government levied a special tax on teas bound for the colonies. That was the last straw for the colonies, who decided to boycott tea.

Nevertheless, in autumn 1773 the East India Company set 4 ships sailing for Boston laden with tea. True to their word, when the ships reached America the townspeople refused to pay the duty. However, the Governor refused to let the ships leave port without paying the duty on the tea. The resulting deadlock was only broken when, in the dead of night, a group of mean boarded the ships, split open the tea chests and threw all the tea into the sea. It took 3 hours. It was a non-violent action: there are even reports of protestors sweeping the decks clean afterwards.

The Tea Party sparked other protests, which set the stage for the American Revolution. Thankfully the Americans have forgiven us and are once again drinking tea.

The invention of tea bags


Unsurprisingly, it is the Americans we have to thank for inventing the tea bag - they do love labour saving devices. This invention actually came about by mistake in 1908 when a tea merchant called Thomas Sullivan started sending tea samples to customers in small silken bags. Some customers put the entire bag into the pot, rather than emptying the contents as Mr Sullivan had intended. The tea bag was born.

Tea bags caught on massively in America but the British, with our famous reserve, clung to traditional methods. We Brits were put off by horror stories of those across the pond serving cups of luke-warm water with a tea bag perched on the side waiting to be dunked. We knew enough to know that was never going to provide a decent cuppa. We managed to cling on to our strainers and infusers until after the Second World War when all sorts of gadgets were promoted to save time on menial household chores. The convenience of tea bags eventually won out over quality and they have remained popular ever since.

The next chapter


The time has come to re-introduce quality leaf tea to Britain. The leaf deserves to be freed from the bag. It was, after all, never meant to be there in the first place. Stand up for quality, choice and adventure. Choose eteaket - make tea sexy again.