The great tea robbery: how England stole tea from China.
On 16 December 1773, as an act of protest against the British colonisers, a band of young North Americans boarded some English ships moored in Boston harbour and dumped their entire load overboard. Forty-two crates of tea, valued at approximately three million euros today. Besides the financial damage suffered, the action was considered “high treason”. Tea was a serious matter for the British. They would later start a war for their beloved drink and make a whole nation opium addicted.
All crazy for tea
Tea was first mentioned in Europe in a travel report. A Dominican friar described a unique ‘red and very therapeutic water’ made from a plant grown exclusively in China. Only many years later, tea reached England. For the British, it was love at first sip. Tcha, as the Chinese called it, or China Drink, as the British renamed it, was attributed all kinds of beneficial properties. According to the doctors, tea invigorated the body, was excellent against gallstones, asthma, colds, eye problems and helped keep the mind active when needed. Whatever its benefits, the Chinese protected their tea plantations as a secret and foreigners were forbidden to visit the production areas. The tea leaf trade was a very lucrative business for them.
In the mid-1600s, an ounce of tea cost about 100 euros today in London markets. Over the next two centuries, the price fell, and consumers expanded enormously. In the Victorian era, England imported over two million kilos of tea a year from China. There was not a single subject of the Queen’s who did not drink a cup of tea. This was a severe concern for the British. Chinese merchants would only accept payment in gold and silver, which were becoming scarce in England. So the London parliament was forced to find a creative solution.
Mission: opium
In the past, the Chinese had had some problems with opium. When the Emperor banned tobacco, the population replaced it with the drug, imported from neighbouring countries. To stop this worrying habit, the government made opium illegal and banned its importation. However, demand had not dropped. All that was missing was a good supplier. If paying with gold and silver became a problem, the British had tons of opium on their Bengal plantations. In just a few decades, the illegal opium trade from India to China grew from 60 to 1500 tonnes a year. To afford a cup of tea, Britain turned the Chinese into opium-addicted people, with disastrous social and economic consequences.
The situation was untenable. The Chinese government began to intercept and destroy almost all illegal shipments. For a whole year, the tradition of five o’clock tea was at risk, as were the lives of the British smugglers arrested in the ports of Shanghai and Guangzhou. To defend their commercial interests and fellow citizens, the British triggered the first of two conflicts known as the Opium Wars. The Royal Navy inflicted a heavy defeat on China. The Emperor was forced to pay Queen Victoria compensation for destroyed cargoes, surrender sovereignty over Hong Kong Island, and grant the British five ports where their citizens could trade any substance without limit.
The tea hunter
Nevertheless, the supply of tea remained a problem. The only real solution to meet the ever-increasing demand was to become independent. In some parts of India, there was an ideal climate to start growing crops. But the war had led the Chinese to guard the secret of tea even more jealously. If a foreigner showed even the slightest desire to approach the production areas, he risked arrest or death. But what if a Chinese had stolen the secret of tea?
Robert Fortune, one of Britain’s most renowned plant hunters, disagreed. Who could guarantee that the plants stolen by a stranger came from the best production areas? And without detailed information about climate, soil and cultivation techniques, there was the risk that the illicitly imported leaves would only be useful for making a cup of tea. Parliament agreed so much that it ordered Fortune to go and uncover the secrets of tea himself.
A bizarre Chinese man
Fortune went to China on an official botanical mission. He obtained a permit to study plants in areas where Westerners were allowed access. He imported to Europe the fan palm, the kumquat, and several azaleas. During his stay, he was deeply fascinated by Chinese traditions, life and culture. As he moved outside the big cities, he realized that it was difficult to go unnoticed. People would follow him or gather around him and stare in curiosity. But he had the impression that it was more the person’s clothing that attracted attention. So why not try adopting a disguise to blend in with the locals?
To reach the tea regions, Fortune used a simple yet ingenious expedient. He shaved off his hair, leaving only a long ponytail. He grew a Mongolian moustache. He wore traditional clothes, a cone-shaped hat, and pretended to be a Chinese merchant. Taking advantage of the substantial linguistic differences between the different provinces of the empire, he pretended to come from a remote region and speak a dialect that no one could understand. However, to be on the safe side, he travelled with a hunting rifle and two revolvers.
Assam, Darjeeling, World.
Robert Fortune managed to smuggle more than 20,000 tea plants into India in just a few years. After collecting several specimens of the same variety, he shipped them to different ports from different routes. If the Chinese or pirates intercepted one of the shipments, at least one of the others would reach its destination. Fortune smuggled to India even a Chinese farmer, an expert in tea cultivation.
England broke free of the Chinese monopoly by exploiting Indian labour to the hilt and forcing labourers to work in precarious health and hygiene conditions. By the end of the 19th century, tea production in Assam and Darjeeling had surpassed imports. Today, tea is also produced in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Japan and Kenya. Thanks to two wars, tons of opium, thousands of Indians fed on chicken and malaria, a brilliant botanist named Robert Fortune and an anonymous Chinese farmer.
To know more:
- Moxham, Roy. Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire. Constable, 2003.
- Alan Macfarlane e Iris MacFarlane. The Empire of Tea. Abrams, 2009.
- Robert Fortune. A Journey to the Tea Countries of China : Including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills; with a Short Notice of the East India Company’s Tea Plantations in the Himalaya Mountains. London : John Murray, 1852.
- Robert Fortune. Three Years’ Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China: Including a Visit to the Tea, Silk, and Cotton Countries; with an Account of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese, New Plants, Etc. J. Murray, 1847.
