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The History of Tea Since 1500 – Enter the Europeans
Introduction
Tea has been a way of life in China and Japan for over 1000 years, and the history of tea until the 1500’s was their own. The early history of tea in Asia was one entirely without European influence. Tea creation myths were included throughout Chinese and Japanese legends, and tea and tea drinking had an impact on Taoism and Buddhism and were inseparable part of Chinese and Japanese culture.
Similarly, tea played a very important part in world history since the 1500’s. The Venetians first heard of tea from Arab traders in the early 1500’s. The rest of the sixteenth century history of tea was owned by the Portuguese. They were the first Europeans to sail to China and the first Europeans to trade with the Chinese directly, although not for tea. Tea was first brought to Europe in modest quantities by Dutch and English ships and Russian Caravans in the early to mid 1600’s. From about 1600 to about 1850, the history of tea, and the history of the world, was largely dominated by the British. The Boston Tea Party, which occurred in 1773, also played a major impact on American history, and therefore the history of the world to this day.
Tea in The 1500’s - Rumors of Tea and Nascent European-Chinese non-tea trade
Everything was quickly coming together for the Europe by 1500. The Hundred Years War ended in 1453, freeing up the French and the English for other pursuits. The Gutenberg press, first European printing press with movable type, was used for the first time in 1454. Columbus “discovered” the New World in 1492, opening up a whole new hemisphere to European influence.
Tea and tea drinking were still completely foreign to Europeans in 1500. The only access that Europeans had to Indian, Chinese, and Japanese cultures during this period were through physical items, which did not include tea, traded to them by Arabic traders. These items made the difficult journey across Asia by land to Venice, which dominated the Asian trade in Europe at this time. Persians, Arabs, and other Eurasians had been drinking tea from China for a long time by the 1500’s. It was a Persian merchant in Venice who made the Venetians aware of tea in the 1550’s. The Europeans had heard rumors of strange and fascinating cultures to the East from Marco Polo and Arabic traders for some time, but the lack of an easy way to get to India, China, and Japan kept European and Asian cultures physically separated, made trading difficult and traded goods very expensive, and kept tea and tea drinking out of European culture.
The Portuguese, the great navigators of the age and masters of the seas, changed all of this. In 1487-1488, Bartholomeu Dias, a Portuguese navigator, discovered the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. In 1497-1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India. Then, in 1557, the Portuguese received permission from the Chinese to set up a trading center on the island of Macao, located at the mouth of the Canton River, in Southwestern China. 1557 marked the beginning of direct Asian-European trade. Portuguese traders at Macao didn’t trade for tea at first. Instead, they shipped all the Chinese goods that Venice was already supplying Europe, but at a much lower price, and in greater quantities, reducing Venice to a minor trading power. Portuguese missionaries in China also wrote home about the virtues of tea and tea drinking at this time, further amplifying the buzz in the European merchant community about tea. Asian-European trade belonged to the Portuguese for the rest of the 1500’s, although tea was not yet sent back to Europe in any significant quantities.
Tea in the 1600’s – The Introduction of Tea into Europe
While the 1500’s saw the opening up of direct Asian-European trade by the Portuguese, it was the Dutch and English who brought tea to Western Europe from 1610 on.
The Dutch were already buying Asian goods from the Portuguese and reselling them to the rest of Northwestern Europe by 1600. The Dutch East Indian Company followed the lead of the Portuguese, navigated around Africa to Indonesia and set up a trading post in 1602. In 1610, the Dutch began shipping Chinese and Japanese teas to Europe from their Javanese trading posts.
The English formed the British East India Company in 1600 to take part in the Asian trading action. The John Company, as it was also known, was meant to act not only as a trading company but also as the long arm of the British government in the East. In 1601, The British East India Company established a trading post on the island of Java, but in 1623 they were driven off part of the island by the Dutch, and set up headquarters in Bombay, India. The English reached China in 1637. At first, the Portuguese and Chinese shipped tea to the remaining English trading post on Java. In 1689, tea was shipped directly from Southeastern China to England.
In the last half of the 1600’s, tea culture spread across Western Europe, the American colonies, and Russia. The Dutch upper class began drinking tea in very expensive, lavish tea parties. It was the Dutch who brought tea to the American colonies around 1650 through their colony of New Amsterdam, now New York City. In the 1670’s, tea houses popped up in New Amsterdam, and the people in the rest of New England began drinking the beverage. By 1689, tea caravans were bringing large quantities of tea to Russia as well. The English aristocracy also began drinking tea.
Tea in the 1700’s – Tea drinking enters mainstream European Culture, and the Boston Tea Party.
In the 1700’s, tea was consumed by the masses in Russia, tea time became popular with middle class families in England, and the American colonists drank tea. In Russia, the semi-malnourished working class drank diluted tea all day. In England, “high tea” and “low tea” were developed. “High tea” was the middle class dinner of normal foods served with tea. “Low tea” was practiced by wealthy Britons at about 6 PM as a snack before a very late dinner. It is the foods and traditions of “low tea” that can be seen in the many tea rooms in America today.
The American colonists were fond of their tea, but were not fond of the high tea prices caused by the British East India Company’s tea monopoly. The American colonists were further upset by the taxes that the British government imposed on all tea and other goods by the Stamp Act of 1765. After the passing and repealing of various taxes on goods consumed by the colonists, in 1770 only the tax on tea remained. Under pressure from the powerful British East India Company, the British government passed the Tea Act, which gave special privileges to the Company, giving it additional competitive advantages over the colonial merchants. American colonists retaliated on December 16, 1773 by dumping British tea into Boston Harbor in the catalytic event known as the Boston Tea Party. This escalated the tensions between the British government and the American colonists to a fevered pitch which quickly developed into the Revolutionary War. The success of the American Revolution helped embolden the French to begin the French Revolution, which lead to a domino effect of revolutions across Europe.
Tea from 1800 On – After the British East Indian Company’s tea monopoly
By the end of the 1700’s, the strict monopoly on tea held by the British East Indian Company was being challenged in England and the American colonies. In England, a campaign was launched by many independent tea dealers to expose the wrongs of the Company. Additionally, Britons wanted cheaper and better tea, and the British Parliament began attacking the tea monopoly in response to the wishes of the people. Parliament officially ended the Company’s monopoly on tea in 1813, ended the Company’s monopoly on all Chinese trade in 1834, and took away the Company’s official power in India in 1858. Around the same time, the Dutch in Indonesia were also making it easier for independent tea entrepreneurs to open tea plantations.
The decline of the British East India Company in the mid-1800’s and the British government’s concern about China being the only source of tea for England lead to a major push to turn India into a major tea producer. Experimental Indian tea cultivation projects lead to the formation of few large startup tea companies that began growing tea in India on a large scale. The success of these initial tea companies paved the way for many British families who opened up many smaller tea plantations in India. In the late 1800’s, British tea plantations spread across Ceylon in response to the failure of the Ceylonese coffee crop due to disease. Independent Dutch farmers started successful tea plantations in Indonesia as well.
After tea plantations were successfully operated by Europeans in India, Ceylon, and Indonesia, tea plantations popped up around the world. Many African, South American, and Eurasian countries now grow large quantities of tea. Kenya and Turkey, for instance, both currently produce even more tea than Japan.
The history of tea is truly a fascinating one. Tea creation myths and early tea production of the ancient Chinese and Japanese, and the development of tea cultivation and tea culture by these cultures brought tea into the modern age. The early Portuguese, Dutch, and English navigators opened up trade with the Chinese and the Indonesians, and brought tea to Europe and the American colonies. Tea became extremely popular in the American colonies, which eventually helped contribute the Tea Act, the Boston Tea Party, and the American Revolutionary War. When one considers the fact that the American Revolution acted as a catalyst for all the revolutions in Europe in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the impact that tea has had on even modern history seems quite significant. From tea creation myths to the present global economic and political scenario, tea has played a major part in human history.
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