The Sordid History of Tea Drinking in Great Britain

According to an article by James Norwood Pratt, the eighteenth and nineteenth century saw a rise in the popularity of tea in Europe, especially in Great Britain, where millions of pounds of tea per year were being purchased from China by 1750. The problem for British interests was that most of this tea had to be purchased with silver or gold bullion (the goods the British had to offer in exchange were by and large not needed in China).

The solution to this dilemma lay in opium. Through the East India company, the British had access to India's enormous opium crop. This drug was in the 1600s unknown to China, but then the Dutch introduced "one of the most evil cultural exchanges in history" -- the combination of opium and the Native American tobacco pipe. The Chinese were already growing tobacco by this time but it was not long before they were demanding opium as well, the drug being a highly addictive substance with euphoric properties.

The British sold the opium drug yearly at auction in Calcutta, India. There it was purchased by British and Persian companies that traded Indian goods with China by arrangement with the British East India company. There, according to Pratt, British responsibility ended. The only caveat that the British had was that the opium be paid for in silver. Thus at one stroke the British had hit on an elegant if amoral solution. Soon they were paying for Chinese tea with silver that had in turn come from Chinese looking for the "quick fix" that opium represented.

In response to this problem the Chinese emperor issued an edict in 1800 that forbade the importing of opium under any circumstances, and introduced harsh penalties to those who disobeyed. This law was largely ineffective: all that happened was that the Chinese government was defrauded of any tax revenue that might have accrued to them. The trading of opium became an underground industry that took place in secret on an island in the middle of Canton Bay off the coast of China.

The situation eventually led to the Opium War in 1840 between China and Great Britain and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, which according to Pratt "was dictated at the point of a few thousand British bayonets." China was forced to accept "free trade" and eventually the outright legalization of opium by 1857.

All this hardly ever reached the ears of British teetotalers, who were as a rule completely ignorant of the fact that their tea was being purchased at the cost of Chinese well being. By 1844, the British were importing 53 million pounds of tea annually -- well over twice as much as they had at the beginning of the century.