All the Tea in China

[Randy W]

in the SCMP - the video is on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/scmp/videos/10155290450819820/

 

The great tea robbery: how the British stole China’s secrets and seeds – and broke its monopoly on the brew

 

China dominated the tea trade until the East India Company broke its monopoly, having sent Scottish botanist Robert Fortune on a covert mission to steal its plants and tea-processing technique 170 years ago

 

BY STUART HEAVER

27 MAY 2017

 

 

Quote

The Chinese have been drinking tea for more than 2,000 years – the poem A Contract with A Servant, by Wang Bao, penned during the Western Han dynasty (206BC-9AD), is popularly regarded as the earliest written account – so it comes as something of a shock to learn that tea is being imported into China from Britain.

 

. . .

 

It’s an odd twist of fate if you consider that, until 170 years ago, the only serious producer and exporter of tea was China and its virtual monopoly was sabotaged – by Britain.

 

In 1847, a little known Scottish botanist called Robert Fortune published a book about his three years of exploration and plant hunting in the tea-growing provinces of China and it set in motion an audacious plan.

 

The East India Company believed that if the finest seedlings could be obtained, together with the secrets of production, from the hinterland of China, it could grow precious tea in the British colony of India and control a trade that dominated 19th-century economics.

 

. . .

 

“Tea changed the role of China on the world stage,” explains Rose. “The tea trade gave birth to the colonial territory of Hong Kong – tea drove economic expansion of the British empire in the Far East and Britain’s economy became dependent on tea.”

 

As most in Hong Kong are aware, it was to balance its trading account and pay for the tea that the East India Company first began importing opium to China (via third-party merchants). It was this commercial symbiosis of tea and opium that led to Fortune’s trip on the company’s behalf and with the full support of the British establishment. Quite simply, the East India Company dreaded the prospect of China cultivating its own opium before it could grow its own tea in India. If that had happened, the East India Company would have gone bankrupt almost overnight.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2022 by Randy W (see edit history)

[MikeandRong]

And 170 years later countries are still stealing secrets from each other.

[danb]

Wasn't there several wars in the 1800's between China and Britain about the use and sale of opium in China? Shameful. Danb

[Randy W]

Wasn't there several wars in the 1800's between China and Britain about the use and sale of opium in China? Shameful. Danb

 

Quite simply, the East India Company dreaded the prospect of China cultivating its own opium before it could grow its own tea in India. If that had happened, the East India Company would have gone bankrupt almost overnight.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

The First Opium War, during 1839–1842, was concluded by the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842. The treaty ceded the Hong Kong island to the United Kingdom in perpetuity, and it established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo, Fuchow, and Amoy.

 

Edited May 29, 2017 by Randy W (see edit history)