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History of Tea and Spread Around The World
As you already know, tea is the most loved drink in the world after water. Some nations like China, Japan, Morocco, Turkey etc are drinking more tea than water. So, it’s really interesting to focus on the history and evolution of this wonderful beverage.
How Tea was Discovered and Spread Around China
China is the birthplace of tea. According to legend, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung discovered tea back in 2737 BC by an accident. But is this really true? After nearly a decade of analysis in Tianluo mountain, in the city of Yuyao in East China, archaeologists found that people had been brewing tea in China for around 6,000 years. So, Chinese have been consuming tea even before Shen Nung’s era. Even though written records trace the green tea cultivation as far back as 206-220 A.D., when its main usage was for medicinal purposes. “The Classic of Tea” written by Lu Yu around 800 A.D., became the first written work to explain green tea drinking culture and art. Anyway, tea became firmly established as a popular beverage in China during the Tang dynasty (618-906 AD)
Emperor Shen Nong
Tang Dynasty
Introduction of Tea to Japan
Tea became a drink of the royal classes when Emperor Saga encouraged the growth of tea plants in Japan in early ninth century. Somewhere around 1190 A.D., tea was first brought to Japan by Japanese Buddhist monks who had migrated to China to study. Tea became an important part of Japanese monastery life; monks utilized tea to assist stay alert during meditation. By the early 14th century, tea became popular throughout Japanese community.
Emperor Saga
The noble Japanese tea ceremony, called “Chanoyu”, came in to action in the late 15th century under the influence of the philosophies of Zen Buddhism. The ceremony places great importance on respecting the act of preparing and sipping tea.
Tea became more popular in Japan around late 1730’s when master tea processors discovered that steaming tea leaves to halt oxidation resulted a greener and more flavorsome tea that more closely resembled the fresh, flavorful sensory characters of Matcha tea powder.
China Introduced Tea to Tibet
Image: Camels used to transport tea to Tibet via the ancient tea and horse road to Tibet
The Chinese introduced tea to their neighboring Tibet in the 9th century. Tibet’s rough climate and rocky terrain made tea cultivation an impossible operation, so tea had to be brought from China via yak caravan. The hard, long journey into Tibet by yak took almost a year and was threatened not only by the dramatic terrain, but also by tea-seeking thieves. To meet the high demand from Tibet, nearly 200-300 tea-laden yaks arrived the country every day.
Tea became very popular in Tibet and nearby regions where tea was used as a form of currency.
Tea’s Arrival to Europe
Portuguese stayed in the East was the first European community which started sipping tea in the latter half of the sixteenth century. But Dutch were the first to import tea in to Europe. The first consignment of tea was shipped from China to Netherlands in 1606. From there onwards, tea became popular in Western Europe.
Portuguese princes Catherine who was married to to British prince Charles II is a tea addict, and it was her love of the drink that established tea as a fashionable beverage first at court in England, and then among the wealthy classes as a whole. As a result of growing demand, the first lot of tea was imported to Britain in 1664 from China. Many rich English and Dutch families in 18th century had paintings made of the family sipping tea.
Portugeese princess Catherine
The "Afternoon Tea" Tradition
Image: An afternoon tea event in ancient Britain
Afternoon tea is credited to the lady Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford. At one late afternoon in 1840, she complained of the long gap between her breakfast and late evening meal. So, she requested her maid to get her a pot of tea and light refreshments. Later on, Lady Anna started to invite her friends to join for afternoon tea. This trend spread very quickly across United Kingdom.
Russia’s Tea History
Image: Merchants drink tea together from a samovar, Nijni-Novgorod, Russia, 1905
In 1618, the Chinese gifted a box of tea to Tsar Alexis of Russia. He was curious about the new beverage and tea gained popularity in Russia with no time. A camel caravan trade route initiated to transport tea into the nation. It took almost 18 months to travel by camel. In order to meet the growing demand, almost 6,000 camels – each camel carrying 250-300 kilos of tea – entered Russia every year. Later on, the camel caravan was replaced by the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1903, that reduced the transportation time from 18 months to just over a week.
The Discovery of Black Tea
As all other teas, China is known as the birthplace of black tea as well. Until the 17th century, the only teas which were sipped were white, green and oolong. It is believed that black tea was made when the Chinese tea masters started oxidizing leaves in order to extend the storage time of tea. Thereafter, black tea was the main type of tea manufactured for export purposes.
Tea History in North America
Dutch are the once who introduced tea to USA in the late 1640s. Same European customs and traditions spread around the US as well. Teahouses and expensive silver and porcelain teaware were popular in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
The American Revolution
Image: Boston Tea Party
By the second half of the eighteenth century, tea became the largest and most precious commodity exported by Britain. The British government imposed a “tea tax” to capitalize off tea’s popularity in USA. The tax rate gradually reached up to 119%.
Being against with the new tax, the American ports refuse to allow to bring in any dutiable goods ashore. This resulted in the famous Boston Tea Party, the British government’s closure of Boston harbor.
At the St. Louis World Trade Fair held in 1904, Some of tea producers organized a tea pavilion and offered hot tea to all attendees. The hot summer temperatures prompted the person supervising the deserted booth to pour tea into glasses filled with ice cubes.
The invention of tea bag was also occurred in USA by accident In 1908. Thomas Sullivan who is a New York tea trader sent samples of his tea samples in sealed silk bags to cafes and restaurants around the city. But he didn’t intend his buyers to put those directly in the hot water that way, but some customers tried it and requested for more.
Image: Evolution of Tea Bags
Tea Planting in British Colonies
By the end of the 18th century, tea consumption in UK had become phenomenal. In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale tea production in Assam, India. Tea is a native plant in Assam. Tea has been using in North India for medicinal purposes, but Brits are the ones who popularized commercial tea cultivation for consumption and trading purposes. Following the Opium War occurred between Brits and Chinese in 1839-1860, the Brits started growing more tea in Sri Lanka and India in order to meet the growing demand.
Commercial tea cultivation in Sri Lanka was started by the Scottish planter Mr. James Taylor in 1867. There after in 1903, GWL Caine introduced tea to Kenya. Tea was first introduced to South American nation, Argentina in the 1920s with seeds from Russia and Paraguay. By now, tea is grown in all the continents in the world.
Today, tea is refreshing the mankind by offering many health and functional benefits.