Tea: The Drink That Built an Empire—and Helped Break One

China had the tea. Britain had the appetite. John Hancock had a business to protect.

British TV - No disaster can happen before a cuppa

Watch almost any British television series, and tea appears whenever you enter someone’s home or office. Tea, apparently, is not only a beverage but also a medication for both mental and physical issues.

Oh, turns out someone has died? Put the kettle on. Yes, at some point, gin or whisky will be involved, but there is always tea. Were you shot at? Tea. Your spouse has left you? Tea. Need to discuss a murder? Tea.

I have been watching Slow Horses, one of the great detective series about MI5. From this, I have learned that British intelligence can tolerate treason, Russian assassins, and Gary Oldman’s personal hygiene, as long as there is tea.

It does not matter the hour, morning, afternoon, or evening. And I am always shocked that nobody ever looks at the clock and says, “Perhaps this caffeine will interfere with my sleep.” No. Kettle on. Could be 2 am, and you just showed up to tell them bad news, are hiding from a shooter, or you broke up with your significant other - tea it is.

It is not like Americans, who offer coffee to everyone, but close. Tea is offered regardless of time, circumstances, or whether you even like the person. I am convinced that if you do not offer tea to a Brit, you will be breaking a royal command.

Civilizations and Tea

In this series about foods that built civilizations, we have covered foods from wheat to salmon, allowing civilizations to settle and develop.

Tea is different. Nobody survived a winter because they had enough tea. But tea, like coffee, helped build civilizations, providing a gathering spot. But the love of tea allowed for two wars, espionage, and ritual.

The Chinese Had Tea First

The legend is that the Chinese Emperor Shen Nong discovered tea when some leaves blew into his hot water almost 5,000 years ago.

By the eighth century, during the Tang dynasty, Lu Yu had written The Classic of Tea, an entire book about cultivating, preparing, and drinking tea.

Black and Green Tea

I’ve always thought green tea tasted like pond water. And despite the many health benefits of green tea, it never appealed to me. Black tea is my preference, and it amazes me that black and green tea come from the same plant, Camellia sinensis.

Green tea leaves are heated quickly by steaming or pan-firing right after harvesting to stop oxidation. This keeps the leaves green. Black tea leaves are withered, rolled, and left to fully oxidize in the air, which turns them dark brown or black. Same plant. Different processing.

Then the British Discovered Tea

When tea first arrived in Britain in the 17th century, it was a luxury item, as all new imports are. Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II, helped make tea fashionable at the royal court.

Expensive and exotic, the sort of imported luxury you drank because other people couldn’t afford it.

The tea moved from court to wealthy households and eventually into ordinary homes. Taxes on tea were high, which had the predictable effect of creating a thriving smuggling business.

By the eighteenth century, Britain was buying enormous amounts of tea from China. This left a large trade imbalance. China was not importing many British goods, so the Brits had to pay in silver. Silver went east. Tea went west. This was an excellent arrangement if you were China. The British were less enthusiastic. Then they discovered that China would import opium.

Things Get Ugly

The East India Company discovered an appetite for opium. Despite China's wanting to stop the drug, opium provided a tidy profit for the East India Company. Drug wars have had a similar problem. Opium also solved the trade deficit.

When China responded by restricting opium, and when you limit the profit of a Brit, you have war. The so-called opium wars began in 1839.

Britain did not go to war because somebody was late delivering Earl Grey. There was more to the wars than a tea trade deficit. But tea was at the center of the trade imbalance. History is almost never as simple as the sentence we remember from school.

While the Brits were successful in the opium wars, war is costly, even when you win. Ongoing war takes a bite out of profit.

So a fine idea developed. Instead of buying all this tea from China, they might grow it somewhere they already control. Like India.

India Already Had Tea

This is one of those parts of history that becomes more interesting when you stop telling it entirely from the British perspective.

Tea was already growing in Assam. Indigenous people, including the Singhpho, grew the tea, but it was not to the British taste. Brits preferred the taste of the Chinese varietals. The Chinese had a different method to cultivate and process tea. But they were not forthcoming in offering their knowledge or plants to the Brits. War can make people a bit selfish.

So the East India Company decided to steal the plants and knowledge

And for that, the East India Company hired Scotsman, Robert Fortune.

The Original Tea Thief

Between 1843 and 1861, the East India Company sent Robert Fortune on multiple trips to China. His mission was to obtain tea plants, seeds, and knowledge, and bring them to India. Then develop an Indian tea industry, solving the trade imbalance.

Fortune traveled into areas closed to foreigners, sometimes wearing Chinese clothing and adopting a Chinese appearance. Since he did not speak Chinese, his companions would tell people that he came from across the Great Wall.

He visited tea-growing districts, collected plants and seeds, and learned how the Chinese processed tea. He also helped settle the European misconception that green tea and black tea came from entirely different species.

Over those years, he brought 20,000 plants out of China. After trial and error, Fortune discovered tea grew best in the province of Darjeeling. Located in West Bengal, this high-altitude region became the perfect home for the tea Fortune smuggled out of China. The steep terrain and cool mists were the perfect environment. Much like Paso Robles is a perfect environment for some wines. Fortune birthed the famous, highly prized “Darjeeling tea” industry.

While a native wild tea variety (Camellia sinensis var. assamica) had been discovered in Assam, India, Fortune brought expert Chinese tea masters and workers to the Assam plantations. These workers taught the locals how to properly ferment, roll, and dry the leaves. The Assam district now made tea to the liking of the Brits.

My Tea

One of my two current teas is a Darjeeling second flush from JING. Second flush is picked later than the delicate first flush and produces a fuller tea with the flavor that tea people describe as muscatel. I'm not going to hold the cup under my nose and tell you that I'm getting notes of Himalayan stone fruit, leather, and a summer rain falling on the eastern slope of a mountain. When I was in London, I tried various teas. One morning, this one appeared during breakfast at the Langram. It has become a favorite.

Somehow, I also imported a small stockpile of the tea in that brief period, when Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Donald Trump seemed to have no tariffs between them. I think it lasted about twenty minutes.

Tregothnan

The place is called Tregothnan, an estate in Cornwall where the local microclimate is just warm and humid enough for Camellia sinensis. They planted their first tea bushes in 1999 and began selling English-grown tea in 2005.

Naturally, I purchased some.

But the irony is that now tea can be grown in the UK. While the estate in Cornwall produces about 10 to 15 tons per year. Consider London drinks about 13,000 tons per year.

Still, going to war with China over tea. Hiring a spy to bring it to India, and all that effort, and they could have grown tea in their backyard.

Boston Tea Party

You remember the story from grade school, the cry of “Taxation without representation.” Brave colonists standing up against the British Empire.

On December 16, 1773, men, disguised as Native Americans, dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

That isn’t the whole story. Because the Tea Act threatened the people selling tea in America. One of the men was a wealthy Boston merchant, John Hancock.

We remember the liberty. We don’t talk nearly as much about the profit margins. And that is where the tea gets really interesting.