TEA AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE
Sit back with a brew and learn how tea became an integral part of the British Empire
When did tea become a mass commodity in Britain?
This is actually not an easy question because we don’t have very accurate statistics until the mid-19th century. This was especially true because so much tea was smuggled in the 18th century. One estimate, for example, suggests that in the 1740s about 20,000 smugglers along the Sussex coast ‘imported’ 3,000,000lb of tea every year. By the 1770s, the government suppressed the trade because it was so large, well-financed and heavily armed. It’s likely that fewer Britons had access to cheap tea then until the 1830s when the East India Company’s monopoly gave way to a free trade in tea. So really changes in the trade led to a drop in prices and a growth of consumption.
The British were drinking tea imported from China from the mid18th to the late-19th century. Why did the British want to cultivate their own source of tea?
This is a story about trade imbalances and diplomatic tensions. The British began contemplating producing their own tea within British India as early as the 1770s, but the East India Company made so much money from the trade with China that they actually discouraged developing such an industry. At the same time, the Chinese guarded knowledge of tea production very carefully and made it illegal to export tea seeds or plants. They also had no interest in buying British-made products in exchange for tea, accepting only silver. The British offset this drain on silver with Indian opium, creating instability in China. As China tried to cut off the opium, the two countries went to war, and Britons feared they would soon cut tea supplies as well. This would make a great many Britons angry with their government, but it would have also limited government income, since the tax on tea was high enough to support the entire cost of the navy. In other words, the British Empire needed tea and tea drinkers and they feared this need would make them utterly dependent on China.
Was tea a significant factor in the British annexation of Assam in northeast India?
Yes, tea and colonialism were intimately connected in Assam. The British had had little contact with this region in the 18th century, though they imagined it could provide access to China (and hence tea). But they only determined to annex the region once soldiers discovered
‘wild’ tea growing in Upper-assam.
This occurred as they were fighting the Burmese Empire in the mid-1820s. After the end of the war, the British claimed sovereignty over the region but they did not fully incorporate it into the Raj until after indigenous elites helped them find tea tracts, clear the jungles, and acquire land and labour. The British traded guns and opium for this knowledge and help, but then once the industry took off they imprisoned and executed their former allies, and established systems of landholding and labour laws that furthered the conquest of the region and its people.
“The tax on tea was enough to support the entire cost of the navy”
How was tea advertised to British consumers? Was the advertising different for Chinese and Indian teas?
Initially, British-grown teas from India were rarely advertised but they entered tea blends that included Chinese tea. Chinese teas were considered better products and when consumers tasted Indian teas they thought they tasted too strong, too weedy and literally uncultivated. So importers and retailers blended the teas with those from China and consumers acquired a taste for the new teas. This blending upset British planters, however, who thought consumers would never learn to like their products. British planters established associations and launched massive advertising campaigns in Britain and around the world to sell
Indian tea (and Ceylon teas after the 1890s) as empire-grown. Their campaign essentially made consumers by cultivating anti-chinese racism. Ads, articles and exhibition displays explained that Chinese teas were adulterated with dangerous chemicals and generally dirty.
Consumers were told that the Chinese dried and rolled tea with their hands and feet and thus their teacups included sweat, fingernails and other ‘unpleasant’ additives. British teas, by contrast, were marketed as clean, machine-made, packaged and carefully imported under the watchful eyes of British importers.
Why did the decline of tea coincide with the decline in the British Empire?
British consumption rates began to decline in the mid-1950s and 1960s, right when tea-producing nations were gaining their independence. Remarkably, the first data on consumer decline came in 1957 during the Suez Crisis, which symbolised and initiated the end of British power in the Middle East and the rise of American influence.
With independence in India, Ceylon and British East Africa, British planters sold up and retired. More importantly, the large tea companies diversified and began to sell other more ‘modern’ beverages such as coffee and sodas.
They also began to market tea bags and other more convenient methods of brewing tea, which frankly did not taste as good, either. Finally, young people in Britain, who were protesting against imperialism, rejected many British traditions in favour of American culture, ironically opening the door to a new kind of imperialism.