The British Love Affair with Tea

Zach Ashworth
March 22, 2013
Dr. Pavletich
English 1302

The British Love Affair With Tea

It has been said that the British people ruled an empire so vast that “the sun never set on the British flag.” The British Empire ruled land on every continent and until the late 20th century was the worlds leading superpower. This rise in power and dominance of the world was fueled and directed by the British Empires need to supply its people with a cheap source of tea.
During the late 18th century, the people of Britain were exposed to a new beverage, tea. This beverage soon became the fashionable drink of the wealthy and elite. The wealthy devoted an entire new set of rituals and rules all pertaining to the drinking of tea. During this time period only the elite could afford tea because it would cost “the average laborer nine months pay (Kemp)” for a single pound of tealeaves. This cost was due to the high cost of transport from India, the place of teas origin. In order for the British to get tea, it first had to be bought by the Dutch from China where it was under heavy tariffs, and then sold by the Dutch to English merchants, who in turn sold it to the British Public (Standage 232). This convoluted and complex system added enormous price onto any tea brought into the country. This high price kept tea out of the hands of the common man and led to an ever growing demand for lower tea prices. To satisfy the demand for lower price the British royalty created by royal charter, the British East India Company. Its sole task was to streamline the trade of tea to the British Empire and create a direct route of trade between India and Britain for tea. It was awarded a complete monopoly on trade in the East Indies as part of the charter. By 1800 the East India Company had established trading forts in India and was beginning to ship back tea to Britain (UK Tea). The elite classes in Britain however did not want to relinquish their hold on tea and used their power to impose high tariffs on all tea imported into the country that combined with the monopoly given to the East India Company resulted in continued high prices that kept tea out of the hands of much of the British population for many years to come (UK Tea). These high prices however played a large role in the expansion of the British Empire. By collecting such high tariffs on tea imports, the British government began to build large coffers and was able to turn these profits around into the expansion of its colonies in the New World. The East India Company quickly morphed from a purely trading entity to a military force that conquered and ruled much of India for the British Government during the late 18th century. The traders for the East India Company were allowed to use military force to meet their goals and through the money raised via their monopoly on trade with Britain, built up a large private army (UK Tea). By 1800’s they ruled much of the southern half of India (UK Tea). They took over land from the local leaders through military force and then turned to making the most money from the conquered land as possible. Most farmable land was transformed into tea planation’s that supplied growing tea exports to Britain and also the expanding list of British colonies in the New World. In 1834 the East India Company became the de-facto rulers of India by royal charter (UK Tea). This charter granted control of the conquered territories to the board of directors of the East India Company (UK Tea). This expansion of power was pushed still by the expanding need for tea. In England, as tea imports rose, the government faced an outcry to lower tariffs on tea and allow more unrestricted access to tea by lower class populations. Prime minister Young slashed the tea tariff to almost nothing in 1830 and opened the flood gates on the tea market in Britain as the price of tea plummeted. Now tea was affordable by the masses and the tonnage being brought into Britain tripled by 1850 (Guerty). Although the need for tea helped push the rise in British power, the effects of tea also led to other expansions of British power. Most tea in Britain was drank with sugar, another material that was imported to Britain. Just as tea push the expansion of the Empire into the East Indies, the need for cheap sugar pushed Britain into the New World. By 1790 the average British citizen consumed over twenty pounds of sugar a year (Guerty). This rise in consumption led to an increased reliance on the Caribbean and New World colonies of the British Empire to fill the deficit. These New World colonies relied almost exclusively on slave labor to produce sugar on the huge sugar plantations that covered much of the land. These slaves were brought over from Africa in increasing numbers to satisfy an ever growing need for sugar, to satisfy the ever growing need for tea. As the British population needed more sugar, the British Empire grew to include newer and larger colonies in the New World. This further expansion of the British Empire was once again pushed by the desire for cheap tea, the average man could afford tealeaves and thanks to the British colonies in the New World producing cheap sugar, he could also afford sugar to mix in his tea. While its true that the British gained a large empire, some would argue that this spread and wealth was driven by greed and glory and cheap tea was just a by product of empirical expansion. These scholars point to the fact that Britain also expanded into areas that had no use in tea production or any of its by products. I would like to say however that the vast majority of the British Empire was used for tea production of its by products like sugar. India was conquered for tea, the Colonies for wood, the Caribbean for sugar, and Africa for slave labor. These lands and area all were related to the production of tea and its by products. The British Empire was decades in the making at its height of power it truly was a global superpower and reined as such until World War II. The British Empire also was home to people that demanded tea. This public demand was the driving factor that led to the growth of the British Empire, through the conquest of India, the mass cultivation of sugar, and the capture of African tribes to supply the Caribbean with slaves. All these factors are directly related to tea and it was tea that led to the rise of the British Empire.

Works Cited

Guerty, P.M., and Kevin Switaj. "Tea, Porcelain, and Sugar in the British Atlantic World." OAH Magazine of History. 18.3 (2004): 56-59. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uhd.edu/stable/25163685?seq=2&Search=yes&searchText=Britain&searchText=history&searchText=tea&list=hide&searchUri=/action/doBasicSearch?Query=Britain&Search=Search&gw=jtx&prq=%28history+of+tea%29+AND+%28history+of+tea%29&hp=100&acc=on&aori=a&so=rel&wc=on&fc=off&swp=on&prevSearch=&item=9&ttl=20243&returnArticleService=showFullText&resultsServiceName=null>.
“History of Tea.” Tea.co.uk. United Kingdom Tea Council. Web. Feb. 23 2013. <http://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea>

Kemp, Charlotte. “Revealed: The brutal history of the great British cuppa” The Daily Mail. Oct 8 2012. The Daily Mail. Web. Feb. 23 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1318545/Revealed-The-brutal-history-great-British-cuppa.html#ixzz2LspbSDX1>
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2006. 232-236. Print.

Cited: Guerty, P.M., and Kevin Switaj. "Tea, Porcelain, and Sugar in the British Atlantic World." OAH Magazine of History. 18.3 (2004): 56-59. Web. 24 Mar. 2013. &lt;http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uhd.edu/stable/25163685?seq=2&amp;Search=yes&amp;searchText=Britain&amp;searchText=history&amp;searchText=tea&amp;list=hide&amp;searchUri=/action/doBasicSearch?Query=Britain&amp;Search=Search&amp;gw=jtx&amp;prq=%28history+of+tea%29+AND+%28history+of+tea%29&amp;hp=100&amp;acc=on&amp;aori=a&amp;so=rel&amp;wc=on&amp;fc=off&amp;swp=on&amp;prevSearch=&amp;item=9&amp;ttl=20243&amp;returnArticleService=showFullText&amp;resultsServiceName=null&gt;. “History of Tea.” Tea.co.uk. United Kingdom Tea Council. Web. Feb. 23 2013. &lt;http://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea&gt; Kemp, Charlotte. “Revealed: The brutal history of the great British cuppa” The Daily Mail. Oct 8 2012. The Daily Mail. Web. Feb. 23 2013. &lt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1318545/Revealed-The-brutal-history-great-British-cuppa.html#ixzz2LspbSDX1&gt; Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2006. 232-236. Print.