History of Tea: Britain’s stolen brew

26:54And also by this time, by the late 18th century, the trade with China was well established. So tea was coming out regularly from China. There was no war, you know, nothing stops it. And who's imposing the tariff? Britain. British government. Yeah. It's British government because it's huge money. You know, even in historical archives, even in Manchester and in Cambridge, the archives, you can see a lot of smuggling. Really? Yes. Danes, British, Dutch, they smuggle tea to Britain. How are they smuggling it? What are they doing? They smuggle it to Britain because knowing that, because the Danes know that tea wasn't selling as in Denmark.

27:37So they sold it to Britain. Even in Manchester in the... I wonder if the Danes get any tea. Are they Thai people or tea people? Are they coming over land? Yeah, because they have East India Company. The East India Company is quite big. Danish and Swedish are quite big. Okay. Oh, yeah. So presumably they're going by ship then. Yes. Okay, so they're tea drinkers. Tea drinkers. Probably tea drinkers. Tea smugglers. Tariffs is interesting, isn't it? Tariffs have just been around forever, haven't they? Well, yeah. I mean, tariffs are... They're back. They're back. They're back.

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29:08So it's an issue of national security, if you will, Hugh. Yes. I'm loving these, by the way. Thank you. I mean, you've got loads more to come. Puns a go-go. But the obvious problem is that what is Britain going to buy their tea with? Yeah. Because the Chinese government's getting more and more rich. Yeah. In fact, by the 18th century, I mean, you made the case when we spoke before, you said China was the richest country on the planet. Yeah, with silver. So what happens, it's the same case with Mongolia, right? The Mongols wanted tea. We want their horse. With the British, you want my tea? I don't want anything you have.

29:43Yeah. One of the missionaries, actually, Robert Hart said that Chinese people have the best food, rice, most healthy drink, tea, and the best clothing material, silk. They don't need anything from the British. So what happens by 1793? That's when Lord McCartney was sent to China to open the door for trade. Paul McCartney? That'd be lovely, wouldn't it? I don't think he's that old. No, Lord McCartney, yeah. So what happens is after more than a century of trade with Europe, remember Britain was not the only country there. Sure. And they were not just buying tea. They were buying porcelain, they were buying silk, and they were buying loads of things.

30:24So after more than a century of tea trade, of trade with Europe, China, because China only took silver or gold as payment. You want to buy tea, you pay gold. If you don't have gold, you pay silver. So can you imagine, it starts with Vasco de Gama, who sailed across in 1497, until 1793, all the Europeans coming, and Americans too, coming to China, buying stuff, and China only took silver as payment. So by the late 18th century, China had sucked in all the world's supply of silver. And China is not buying anything from Britain. Right. That's a problem. Yeah. That's a problem. What would you offer on behalf of the British industry, you know, manufacturing?

31:11Well, I was then offering milk. I mean, we do. We do. We have lots of it. It's really nice. I don't know quite. I mean, what do we have? I mean, you could, they certainly don't need any mineral stuff, do they? No. And the coal. I mean, our primary medieval economy was wool. We don't need wool. So, woolly jumpers, we've got some lovely knitwear. No. Yeah. So, actually, the one thing we can offer, unfortunately, Yang Wen, is opium. Yeah. Yeah. Which we've got from elsewhere. Exactly. Yes. We're not growing opium in Lancashire. Well, you know, only under certain very special conditions. Yeah. So, Yang, I mean, how does the opium trade, which then leads to an opium war, how does...

31:57Which is the tea war. Which is a tea war. Right, okay. Yeah. So the opium war is a tea war. Yeah, it's for tea. Britain's desire is a tea. Because we're forcing opium, because it's the only thing they'll trade. Yeah. So it was the Portuguese and the Dutch who saw that the Chinese were buying opium and they were paying with silver. But at that time, 1790s, you look at the Dutch Eastern Company archive, It's a few chests. I mean, few chests is nothing, right? So you could say the sin of Britain is you skyrocketed that export to China so that the Chinese would pay the opium with silver. So it's been grown in India and exported by the British East India Company to China.

32:41To China. To buy tea. They also bought from Turkey. Right. So there's Turkish opium and Indian opium. and the Indian opium is rated better because it's more potent when it's stronger. So large quantities of opium went into China in the early 19th century, 1810s, 1820s. By 1830s, you get people dying on the street, people going bankrupt because they're addicted. So there's their wives, their children, and local governments go bankrupt. Of course, the emperor had to do something, and therefore he declares war on opium. As opposed to Britain. Exactly. The war on drugs. Yeah. So it's Britain's desperation for silver in order to buy more tea from China that made them resort to grow opium in India and sell them to China.

33:44Why can't... I mean, if they've got so much silver, Why do they need to sell anything? China. Yeah. No? Yeah. They don't. They just stop selling. Yeah. They are charity. So, you know, the emperor in his letter saying to Lord McCartney, Lord McCartney representing King George III and the East India Company, went to China in 1793 and said, please open your doors to free trade. And the emperor says, free trade? What free trade? They just want to buy more tea? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm very kind to you, you know. I allow my people to sell some tea to you. It's like a charity. Charity. Yeah. Yeah.

34:24Again. Sorry. That's fantastic. But what's interesting for me there is that if we sell them opium, they pay us in silver as opposed to tea. So where they sell us silver and then we use the silver immediately afterwards to buy the tea. Yeah. Later on, some people bought it. You give me tea, I give you opium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we get the first Opium War of 1839 to 1842. And then there's a treaty. Yeah. Treaty of 19, yeah. But we then have a second war in 1856 to 1861, which is a five-year war. So this is a huge crisis in Chinese history. And we talked about it in our Daoiger and Prisci episode.

35:06Yeah. Is it Britain alone declaring war or are these all the European and American powers? Yeah. The first Opium War is Britain alone. And after the first war, Opium War, 1839, 1842, Britain got Hong Kong and have a, you know, pied -à-terre there. And then... That's what it turned out to be, isn't it? Yeah, so you can have a base and you can go off trade. Guess what? You know, if Britain gets something there, the French is there, oh no, I get something. And the Russians and the Americans. So the problem with after the first open war is it didn't solve the problem of Britain's desire for tea independence.

35:46But is that why we then started sourcing it from India? Is that when we've... That's a bit later. So after the first open war in 1843, Robert Fortune was sent to China because Britain wanted to be independent on tea. And it's that independence, desire for independence, that, you know, led to Robert Fortune's exploration in China and also led to the Second Opium War. Is the Opium War why they were all the concession ports up the Chinese coast? Oh, yeah, the treaties, yeah. Yeah, all of them. So the European country got its own version of Hong Kong, essentially. Oh, yeah, everybody. Germany was calling for its own Macau and Hong Kong, French.

36:25So in the end, by the late 19th century, China was kind of, in Chinese words, sliced like a watermelon because every European country in America has to have a treaty, have a port somewhere where they can live alone and in their enclave have their own law. That's where it began. Right, yeah. So let's talk about Robert Fortune then. So he is a Scottish botanist. He's a collector for the Royal Horticultural Society in London and he's sent on an espionage mission to China. You have been in a James Bond film. I have, yeah, I get shot in the head. I was going to say, you're a scientist. I mean, I think I deserved it, to be honest.

37:03There you go. What would your James Bond title be if it was espionage based on tea? I think I would just be called Tea. Tea? I mean, it's all that, isn't it? Q, M, I'd just be Tea. Tea? Oh, nice. That would be your code name. Yeah. Agent Tea. Agent Tea. What does he do? Mr. Tea. Mr. Tea. That's a very different film. Yeah. Pity the fool. But espionage is the word here, Yang Wen. I mean, Hugh, do you know how he gets tea out of the country? given that he's sent in as a spy? Well, presumably by boat, does he? Somewhere. Which way does he go? And how does he get hold of it? Because these plants are carefully defended.

37:40They are carefully guarded. So how is Robert Fortune smuggling out? He's disguised it. Presumably he's got to cut it by night. Oh, okay. And then disguise it as something else, like rice or something. Put it into different, not put it into bricks. who knows it puts it into bales of rice that's a nice guess and then maybe not that far off he disguises himself it's a crucial thing right so Robert Fortune does some unfortunate disguising as a Chinese person right so he was commissioned by the London Royal Horticultural Society and he went to China you know in 1850s 1840s you're not supposed to go to China, you know, the treaty ports like Shanghai you can go, but only in the British, you know, settlement or international settlement.

38:37You're not to venture beyond because you get killed. And there's countless cases of missionaries being killed. So you have to disguise yourself. You know, in the Qing dynasty, men wore a queue. Yeah. And with the shaved forehead. So a long ponytail? Yeah, long ponytail. So what you can do is you can buy a fake one. Right. And draped over you and with a hat, you know, with a hat, as if you're wearing a hat. So you can, if you don't want to shave the forehead. So you wear a hat and then with the cue. So he disguised himself and he went to China in Southern China, West China, and he stole, stole, literally stealing a lot of tea shrubs.

39:25I read his memoirs and he's very funny because he looks around, anybody looking at me? But there's nobody because he's in the mountains. Who's going to look at you? So he's just taking plants. He's taking individual plants from which you can breed. Yeah. No, he had the rickshaw carriers, called Caliton. And he was telling them, I'm looking for tea shrubs. And God knows this. Oh, yeah, those are the shrubs. God knows what. What? He got killed. So he smuggles out China's tea, which had been carefully guarded. He brings it back to British control. It's then planted in India. Yeah. And he then becomes, I mean, he's called Fortune.

40:04Does he make a fortune? Is he, you know, is he fortune by name? He doesn't. He died a poor man. No, yeah, yeah. It's too bad. Oh, that's a shame. It's a shame. All that hard stealing. I know. So the tea plants were brought to India, to Assam. The funny thing is the tea that he stole from China were largely green tea because they're from southeastern China. And when they harvested the tea in Assam, it became black tea. And the only answer would be that because it was constantly under exposure to the sun and the soil is much richer than the mountainous region. and it's very thin, the soil upon the rocks.

40:51So that's how Britain has its black teeth. I know he didn't get paid, but I'm assuming they would have given him lifetime membership of the RHS, wouldn't they? He died not a rich man. Whenever he wants tea. He should get free tea in the gift shop, shouldn't he? Pop into the cafe and take the family. Yeah, he enriched so many people. He died not rich. So he died without a fortune. No, no, no. Despite being Robert Fortune. No, no. Of course, for our listeners outside the UK, the RHS is the Royal Horticultural Society. So the Assam tea that we now think of as black tea is actually Chinese green tea, but it's just the soil type and the atmospheric conditions.

41:27And of course, it was diversified in India as well and then moved to Africa. So it's completely changed the species. So by the 1880s, Hugh, if we were to measure the exports of tea now grown in India, let's say 1885, you can measure it either in tonnes or I'll allow the other standard unit, which of course is large African elephants. So which of those two would you like to use? Is this the annual export? Annual export in weight. Tons or elephants, please? I think I'd go for tons because I don't actually know how much an elephant weighs, to be honest. And it depends whether the elephant's eaten or not.

42:00True, true. Well, who knows? 80 ,000 tons. That's very, very generous. It's 35 ,000 tons of tea. 35 ,000 tons. Or, importantly, 7 ,000 large African elephants. Oh, okay. So from that, we can deduce that an elephant is, what, five tons? Yeah. So pretty heavy. You've got a huge amount of tea coming back into Britain and we start to get tea companies founded, but Lipton's Tea. Yeah. You know, Lipton is a Scot again, isn't he? Yeah. And he's a sort of very famous entrepreneur. Yeah. But Chinese tea is still the good stuff or is Indian tea as good and as popular? I don't think people tell the difference in Indian tea or green tea or black tea or red tea or whatever.

42:41But in the 18th century, Tea with breakfast, having tea, having tea time, was becoming part of British cultural institution. That's what you're famous for. Yeah, and I also assume that by 1880, because there's been this sort of massive rise in the industrial north, the middle pass, things like that. Does that account for a lot of the grace in tea drink? Hugely so. Why would that be? Tea breaks. Tea breaks? Absolutely right. I mean, there is an economic historian who made the case that the Industrial Revolution is powered by tea because of the caffeine and the sugar in the tea. Yeah, Sidney Mintz wrote a book, it's called Sweetness and Power.

43:20So tea with sugar boosted the energy of working class people at 10.30am or 3.30am, so they work longer. They're more energetic. So higher productivity. Yeah, yeah. When did tea breaks not exist before the Industrial Revolution, presumably? Did they all? I mean, tea breaks come kind of later. They come in the 20th century, really. The tea break is more of a sort of, you know, you do have tea in the 19th century, but the tea break as a sort of legal thing that, you know, is one of the things. You've got to have one. You've got to have one. It's more 20th century. So Britain is transformed by tea.

43:54And then the Industrial Revolution makes Britain a global superpower. Yeah, it enriched Britain. Yeah. And so by 1923, 53 % of the world's tea supply is consumed in Britain alone. Yeah. Half the world's tea is drunk by. It's amazing, isn't it? You've got an amazing statistic. But I always wonder, why do you like tea so much? I don't know. We just do. It's just it's really important to our culture. You know, any crisis, sit down, have a cup of tea. Is there also not an element of coffee by that point being regarded as quite a bad thing? Don't the coffee houses become sort of rather unpleasant and sort of addictive?

44:33Coffee goes up and down. Yeah. It has highs and lows. Coffee house has a connotation of sexuality. Yes, a little bit. And then revolution, conspiracy, that kind of thing? Yeah, it can do. Can we say that? Not this cup of coffee, let me tell you. Are you feeling rebellious? Not really. No. So tea doesn't have that. Even though in Asia, in Hong Kong, you would still have tea house, which in the back of a tea house there might be a brothel or something. Yeah. Yeah, but obviously in Britain, the kind of morality of tea drinking, the sobriety, it's sober, it's domestic. it's private and it's classy right in the Victorian era there was this sort of amazing movement towards improvement wasn't there?

45:18it was all about improvement you know the first mention of tea is always from English doctors I read so many things about English prescribed tea it's like what? for all sorts of complaints that would honestly make the NHS work I mean, it really would. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? If it was tea prescribed for everything. Prescriptions, yeah, exactly. Take two tea bags of tea twice a day. But you're also, you know, in Victorian parks, for example, you know all the sort of the big parks in London? Yeah, yeah. Victoria Park in Hackney or indeed Victoria Park in Manchester. They were all about improvement and, you know, everything you did in like drinking of tea.

46:00Yeah. You know, it was all about that stuff, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. The gardens and green space at that time, I think, you know, yeah. We were just very, very worried about what was happening in society and tea was a sort of a solution to it, possibly. But the fascinating thing is that it sounds so calming and so tranquil and yet tea had caused these two enormous wars that destabilised China and changed the course of the world. And we need to get to the 20th century and this is where we get tea planted again in a new British colony, Yeah. Which you might, I mean, we have mentioned it. Do you know where?

46:36Well, presumably, well, in the 19th century. The 20th. In the 20th century. Early 20th, very early. Well, lots in India, presumably, but it's been there, I assumed it would have been there forever. After India, where did it go to next? Salon. That's a good guess. Sri Lanka. And one more, East Africa? Kenya. Kenya, very good. Yeah, absolutely. So, 1903, Kenya becomes a kind of plantation of tea. Yeah. And again, that's where Britain gets most of its tea today. Yeah. So that's a certain... Who's it? Yeah. Yeah. So India and Kenya, not so much from China. If you go to Fortnum Mason... Always. I mean, why wouldn't you?

47:13And they have the Chinese tea, but the problem is they drop it very systematically by machine. You can tell. And I... Yeah. So I don't know why people... I love your judgment, young men. You're so like, why are people doing this? Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. But the 20th century, tea is being grown in Africa, having been grown in India, having been stolen from China. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is amazing stuff, isn't it? Yeah. You put it where you can. They've got countless wars with Mongols and two wars with Britain. Absolutely. What I love is when I was a kid, the Asterix books, my favourite books as a kid, the joke is that the Britons would stop for a cup of tea in the middle of battle.

47:53And obviously that's not true, but there is something to it, that the Britons, we need our tea. I didn't know most of our tea came from East Africa so there you have it Hugh the not entirely ethical story of how tea became Britain's national drink are you still a fan of tea or are you morally compromised now? No I'm perfectly happy with all that but I don't know I'm sort of interested in why we're fascinated by the tips of tea, that's our marketing thing isn't it? Is that an important thing that you only have the tip of the tea? No, because it depends, because the tip of the shrub. Well, PG tips.

48:32Yeah. Is tips, isn't it? When you go and pick the teeth, the ones at the top, it's the tendest. Oh, okay. The ones at the bottom is older, so it's hard to... Okay. But, of course, there are people who like, you know, the older leaves. And most people, you know, take for the younger ones at the top. Okay. When it's budding out. Well, yeah. It's fascinating. The history of tea is the history of horticultural history, imperial history, economic history, domestic, class. It's all there. The nuance window!

49:10So it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Hugh and I put our feet up and pop on the kettle to have a little brew for two minutes while Professor Yang Wen takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about the history of tea. So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. You have two minutes on the clock. Take it away, Professor Chong. On the one hand, tea has been extensified, diversified, because you can see bubble tea, fruit tea, right, fruit drinks. And in China, people actually drink tea with roasted peanuts, roasted sesame, roasted soybean, ginger and all those. So it's kind of a diversification.

49:52On the other hand, I think, as you said earlier, there's a decline in tea drinking. I think there will be a regeneration, a renewal. You know why? Because of the environmental movement, our care for the environment. We should eat natural, drink natural. So tea is a natural thing. A plant, like a vegetable, you drink it and it's good for your health, it's good for the environment. I don't think I've ever drunk a vegetable. Yeah, but it's similar. You drink natural stuff, not processed. The tea has been modernized in the tea bags and everything. So I think it's lost. So the price of progress, if you will, that you have progressed, you don't have to go tea leaves anymore.

50:40But then in that process, you lost the essence, you lost the ritual, and you lost probably the nutrition of the tea. So I hope there might be a renewal of sticking to the nature. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. What do we think to that? Sticking to nature, renewal of the tea. Can we go back to the slow tea? Well, I don't think I've ever been at the slow tea. I mean, it's one of the things about tea is that it's quite quick, isn't it? But I do absolutely understand the importance of ritual. And I just think we take it in a slightly different way. It's a sort of, it's a kind of, the making of the tea isn't the ritual.

51:17The drinking of the tea is the ritual with other people for us, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. In China, the waiting is important. Whereas perhaps in the UK, it's more about pop on the kettle and have that chat that you wouldn't normally have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you know now?

51:40It's time now for the So What Do You Know Now. This is our quickfire quiz for Hugh to see how much he has learned. Hugh, I suspect you're a confident quizzer. I get the feeling that you're very good in a quiz. Well, yeah, depends on what it's about, of course, isn't it? It's about tea. That's the thing about a quiz. You know, tea, maybe not. Yeah, sorry, I won't be asking you questions about, you know, which 1968 movie won an Academy Award. This is tea only. These are all things we've talked about. Yeah. So, ten questions. Here we go. Question one. Which of the six types of tea is the rarest type of tea in terms of colour?

52:13In terms of colour, I don't remember that being mentioned, but I'm going to go for yellow. Oh, it is yellow. Well done. There you go. Very good. Question two. What grade of tea is used most in the UK? The worst grade. The dust. It is the dust. That's right. Absolutely. We love our dusty fannings. Question three. According to a Japanese origin myth, what horrifying act by a Buddhist monk led to the miraculous growth of a tea plant? He removed his own eyelids. He did. Which isn't a very good marketing story for tea, if I might say. No, he threw them on the ground and thereby a plant grew to grow tea.

52:52But that's a weird thing to do. Question four. What did China trade tea with with the Mongols? Well, they traded for horses. They did. Didn't they? The standard currency unit, of course. Yeah. Question five. Which Portuguese princess is sometimes wrongly credited with bringing tea to Europe or even Britain? That would be Catherine de Braganza. Very good, yes. Queen of Charles II. Question six. What problematic product did Britain trade for Chinese tea after running out of silver? Well, that unfortunately, and I can only apologise, was opium. It was. Question seven. Who was hired by the East India Company to steal plants, or tea plants indeed, from China?

53:35I can't remember his first name, but his second, his surname was Fortune, Mr Fortune. It was, yes, Robert Fortune. He didn't get paid or get a membership of the RHS. He's got literally nothing for doing that. Question eight, how did Fortune pull off his heist? He disguised himself. He wore a, you know, kind of a plait at the back and a hat. And that was enough, apparently. and he went up high into the hills and he stole shrubs. He did 20 ,000 shrubs and several Chinese workers and enough. He stole the workers. He took them. Yeah, he did. Follow me. Yeah, follow me. Show us how you do this. Question nine.

54:13By 1885, how many tonnes of tea was India exporting? You can answer in African elephants or in tonnage. Well, it was 35 ,000 tonnes and it was 7 ,000. That's very impressive. I'm giving you two points there, bonus points. This for a perfect 11 out of 10, which country was tea introduced to in 1903 and is now Britain's primary tea provider? That would be Kenya. 11 out of 10. Never in doubt. Well done. Fantastic. Beautiful. So the history of tea is sort of the history of everything, really. It's all rather exciting. But unfortunately, also quite tragic at times. So apologies on behalf of Britain.

54:53But thank you so much, Hugh. Thank you so much, Professor Yang Wen. And if you want more from Yang Wen, of course, We have our very funny episode on Dowager Empress Sushi. She was quite an extraordinary woman. If you crave more facts about our fave food and drinks, we've got episodes on the history of ice cream, chocolate, coffee, spices, and of course, the first celebrity chef, Alexei Soyer, who's one of my faves. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

55:27Well, I'd just like to thank our fantastic guests in History Corner. We had the brilliant Professor Yang Wen-chung from the University of Manchester. Thank you, Yang Wen. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. And in Comedy Corner, we had the hilarious Hugh Dennis. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you. And you lovely listener, join me next time as we leap into the kettle and steep ourselves in another unfamiliar time period. But for now, I'm off tea shopping with Yang Wen. Hopefully, she can show me the least dusty options. Bye!

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56:45First on BBC Sounds. In a world where swords were sharp... And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor Janaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts.