Tea is and has for long been so ubiquitous a part of daily life, in the UK particularly, that its true significance remains almost invisible. Yet, as this article shows, it has nonetheless been of unprecedented importance in the historical, social and economic development of Britain, from the eighteenth century onwards, and not only as a major plantation-grown commodity of colonial trade. Indeed, its knock-on health benefits, as a counter to alcoholic alternatives and insanitary water supplies, were of primary importance to the growth and maintenance of the early industrial working class — and hence to the very development of Britain's early industrial and colonial supremacy.
In India tea is called chái, indicating that it arrived via the overland trade routes before the British got there. Although tea bushes of sorts grew naturally in Assam, this species did `not produce a palatable brew, [so that] present-day Indian tea culture is wholly the work of the British'. See J. H. Weisburger and J. Comer, `Tea', in K. F. Kiple, K. Ornelas and others (eds), Cambridge World History of Food (Cambridge and New York, CUP, 2000), vol. 1, p. 713. Indeed, `No Indian of the time [pre-British] drank tea', S. Winchester, The River at the Centre of the World: a journey up the Yangtze and back in Chinese time (London, 1998), p. 178. However, in the second half of the nineteenth century (1865) the British transplanted Chinese tea bushes - the result of centuries of selective cultivation - into plantations in India and started a tea-exporting industry. See also Roy Moxham, Tea, Addiction, Exploitation and Empire (London, Constable and Robinson, 2003), pp. 98, 110.
2.
The word caddy comes from kati, a Hokkien weight unit equivalent to just over a pound.
3.
Moxham, op. cit., p. 46.
4.
Nonetheless, in 2008 an estimated 165 million cups of tea were drunk every day in Britain, according to the UK Tea Council, as reported in The Times (16 February 2008).
5.
In fact he came to love tea so much that he `acquired a gallon teapot from Josiah Wedgwood' (Moxham, op. cit., p. 34). Wedgwood was one of the new entrepreneur-industrialists who came into prominence largely thanks to tea. In this instance, he had just started to copy, improvise and manufacture porcelain in the wake of the tea-drinking craze.
6.
Moxham, op. cit, p. 34.
7.
Frequently cited in compilations of quotes on tea; see also F. H. Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies and its Makers (New York, 1917, repr. Kessinger Publications, 2005), p. 331.
8.
See M. Montanari, The Culture of Food (Oxford, Blackwell , 1994), p. 127.
9.
Weisburger and Comer, op. cit., p. 717.
10.
A sentiment with which The Times leader concurred: `Exactly' (`Tea Bagged', The Times, 1 May 2005).
11.
In such a state of affairs, disagreements and disputes must have been quite common - perhaps I may speculate that this was the context in which the expression `storm in a teacup' arose.
12.
Ironically, it took 188 years for the US to compensate Britain for the loss of the tea chests. In 1961, the US handed over the final payment, a cheque for $1.96.
13.
H. Hobhouse, Seeds of Change: six plants that transformed mankind ( London, Papermac, 1999), p. 118.
14.
Quoted in Colin Spencer, British Food: an extraordinary thousand years of history (London, Grub Street , 2002), p. 227-8.
15.
J. Pettigrew , A Social History of Tea ( London, 2001), p. 55.
16.
F.T. Cheng, Musings of a Chinese Gourmet (London, Hutchinson, 1962), p. 148.
17.
The principle was the same as the Roman hypocaust, but a great deal more efficient in that the heat does not come from a dedicated source, but from that used to cook food in a kitchen which was placed on lower floor level. I am grateful to my Korean friend Park Young-ja for drawing my attention to the effective and practical ondol and agungi heating system.
18.
Cited in B. A. Henisch, Fast and Feast: food in medieval society (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 203. Living spaces were so cold that scribes of all descriptions used repeatedly to bring their hands as close to the flickering candle as possible. Many an accident, from burned fingers to house fires, is known to have happened as a result.
19.
Frieda Hughes , `Chilling memories', The Times (10 March 2008).
20.
F. Piponnier , P. Mane and C. Beamish, Dress in the Middle Ages ( New Haven, Yale, 1997), p. 339.
21.
This goes some way to explain the French historian Fernand Braudel's remark that tea only became really popular in countries that did not produce wine. Not only is wine produced in warmer climes, but people who regularly drank wine, because of the above outlined effect, rarely felt cold.
22.
As far as I know only C. Anne Wilson comes close to saying it: `Tea was not solely their sole liquid to wash down their dry meals; it was also the only warm and comforting element in their diet.' See C. A. Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain: from the Stone Age to recent times (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976), p. 371.
23.
To this day, in an effort to minimise the unacceptably high cold-induced mortality rate, at every approach of winter, health authorities in many western European countries warn the elderly citizens to drink hot drinks as often as possible.
24.
Jean Leclant , `Coffee and cafés in Paris, 1644-1693', in R. Forster and O. Ranum (eds), Food and Drink in History ( Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 76.
25.
V. Mark, `Physiological and clinical effects of tea', in K. C. Willson and M. N. Clifford (eds), Tea: cultivation and consumption (London , Chapman and Hall, 1992), p. 711.
26.
Study headed by Professor Lester Mitscher, Distinguished Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Kansas, and co-author with Victoria Dolby of The Green Tea Book: China's fountain of youth (New York, Avery, 1998).
27.
See `Angiogenesis inhibited by drinking tea', Nature (1 April 1999).
28.
See Simon Crompton`Anti-cancer tea?' The Times (1 August 2000) and Nigel Hawkes, `Green tea may cut cancers', The Times (9 April 2002).
29.
Cited, e.g, in <http://www.newhopeblog.com/archives/2006/11/anticancer_comp.php>. At the same time the researchers caution pregnant women to avoid drinking large amounts of green tea - warning that high levels of EGCG could increase the risk of birth defects such as spina bifida.
30.
F.J. Simoons, Food in China: a cultural and historical enquiry (Boca Raton, FL, CRC Press, 1991), p. 511 n. 47.
31.
See Weisburger and Comer, op. cit., p. 719.
32.
D.J. Maron and others, `Cholesterol-lowering effect of a theaflavin-enriched green tea extract: a randomized controlled trial', < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12824094>.
33.
See `The effects of tea on psychophysiological stress responsivity and post-stress recovery: a randomised double-blind trial', Psychopharmacology, <http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-006-0573-2>.
34.
See Moxham, op. cit., p. 31. The Arabs and the Middle Eastern peoples were the earliest heavy users of sugar when drinking tea. Partly to cool it, they, and subsequently South Asians, developed the practice of pouring hot tea from a kettle held as high as possible into cups held at arm's length. They introduced this practice to Southeast Asia where, among Muslim Malays, it is called teh tarik, `pulled tea'.
35.
Quoted in Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 28.
36.
Ibid., p. 26. Could this perhaps be the origin of the expression, `to drink somebody under the table'?
37.
A London apothecary in 1667 told Pepys' wife that tea was `good for her cold and defluxions' (runny nose and eyes). Cited in Pettigrew, op. cit., p. 32 and Moxham, op. cit., p. 22.
38.
Alan Macfarlane , The Savage War of Peace ( Blackwell, 1997).
39.
It is often erroneously assumed that the addition of milk to tea was started in Europe. In fact it was a habit copied, via Chinese northerners, from the mainland Asian steppe semi-nomads who, between 1271-1368, and 1644 and 1911, came to rule China as the Mongolian Yuan and the Manchu Qing dynasties respectively. Being pastoralists, their staples had been milk and butter, as well as meat. Hence it was their tradition to serve milk in black tea, a way of drinking tea that caught on in the West via China. (See Weisburger and Comer, op. cit, pp. 714, 716.) This was why, during the East India Company days, there had always been milk pots among Chinese porcelain wares. The combination of tea and milk became firmly established in Europe from the nineteenth century.
