This was a Christmas read that I put off reading for the past three months because… I didn’t want to finish it (and hence couldn’t start it). It’s a silly reason, but I guess I really enjoy the anticipation of having an unread book on a topic I love in the house.

Empire of Tea focuses on the history of tea in the British Empire. The blurb of the book mentions that “it offers a rich cultural history of tea, from its ancient origins in China to its adoption around the world.” However, the history of tea in China only takes up five pages, and while there is a chapter on “tea in the politics of the empire”, the main focus is still on Britain. Given that the history of tea is so long and so rich, I’m glad the focus is narrow – it allows the book to go into quite a lot of depth. Reframing expectations of the book to only that of tea in Britain, rather than a global history of tea, will make for a much better read.

This book starts with European encounters with tea and charts its journey from exotic drink to the essence of Britishness, a journey that takes place from the mid-17th to 19th century. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of tea, such as the tea trade with China, the elevation of tea, the market for tea, smuggling and taxation, etc.

Although I’ve already read a few books on tea in the British empire, there’s still a lot I don’t know. New things that I learnt in this book included:

The existence of tea poems. I didn’t know about the translation of the Emperor Qian Long’s poem of tea was translated into English, much less the existence of tea ‘invention’ poems! These tea invention poems connected tea to the ancient Romans even though “the ancient Romans were as unaware of tea as they were of China.” This reminded me of how Lu Yu talks about tea and Shennong [1] in the Cha Jing to advance its merit by appealing to its supposed age. These tea poets may not have realised what they were doing by creating these tea poems, but it seems like history repeating itself in different parts of the world!

Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which is basically Urban Dictionary for the 18th century, defines scandal broth and catlap as “tea”[2]. I was under the impression that “spilling tea” was a very modern term but it seems like it’s got pretty old roots! Then again, I’m starting to get the impression that lots of things are a lot older than I suppose.

Anti-tea activists were normally anti-luxury activists, who thought that the poor people drinking tea was a waste because they could have bought more nourishing things with the money for tea. The clergyman David Davies rebukes them very thoroughly in this abstract from The Case of the Labourers in Husbandry:

“Still you exclaim, Tea is a luxury. If you mean fine hyson tea, sweetened with refined sugar and softened with cream, I readily admit it to be so. But this is not the tea of the poor. Spring water, just coloured with a few leaves of the lowest-priced tea, and sweetened with the brownest sugar, is the luxury for which you reproach them. To this they have recourse from mere necessity: and were they now to be deprived of this, they would immediately be reduced to bread and water. Tea-drinking is no the cause, but the consequence, of the distress of the poor.”

This goes to show that even though tea started out as a luxury good, its diffusion from the higher to the lower classes didn’t mean that the same good quality tea was drunk by everyone. Those who couldn’t afford it had to settle for poor tea and the book makes the case that tea’s widespread adoption was due to supply-side factors. Because “relative wages were basically stagnant”, and the price of tea fell to make it cheaper than say, beer, its adoption was “rather the effect of broader socio-economic re-organisation.”

I also learnt that contrary to the claims of Thomas Sullivan, other people also claimed to have invented the tea bag. For example, in 1903, “two women took out a patent for a fabric ‘small pocket with terminal flap … especially adapted for holding tea leaves’, suitable to make a single cup of tea in a cup.” I always thought that the Thomas Sullivan story was true because I saw it everywhere, but I guess I’ll have to look into that to find out!

The last point that I thought interesting isn’t really related to the history of tea. One line in the book mentions that “modern tea preparation has been reduced from an elaborating and comforting ritual to a quick and unceremonious encounter between a mug and a tea bag, assisted by hot water and milk.” Has it, though? There is comfort in coming round a table with friends and sharing a pot of tea, and there is also comfort in holding a hot mug of tea with both hands. I think both are different types of comfort, but one may not necessarily be superior to the other. For me, at least, the tea ceremony is beautiful and absolutely should be preserved, but I also enjoy having a quick cup of tea and a breather in the middle of a busy workday.

Overall, Empire of Tea is an interesting and in-depth examination of the history of tea in Britain. It is not, however, an all-encompassing book on tea and I think it would be more worthwhile to read it in conjunction with other books that focus on different aspects of the history of tea[3]. If you’re interested in reading more from the authors, they have a blog called Tea in Eighteenth Century Britain; it hasn’t been updated since 2017 but the archives are definitely worth a read.

References/Recommendations:

[1] Link to my review of Tea in China and the Goodreads page of the book. The first chapter talks about the early history of tea and makes the case that the link between tea and Shennong was first made by Lu Yu in an attempt to prove tea’s ancient roots.

[2] HTML version of Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. You can use control+f to search through the text and find the relevant definitions.

[3] My recommendations, based on books that I’ve read before:

• For books about tea in China: Tea in China by James Benn and The Rise of Tea Culture by Bret Hinsch are two good books that complement each other.
• For a history of tea in America and Britain: A Social History of Tea by Jane Pettigrew and Bruce Richardson
• For a broader look at tea in the British Empire (including how Britain switched from Chinese to Indian teas), I’d recommend A Thirst for Empire by Erika Rappaport – this is also the book that made me question the oft-heard story about the history of afternoon tea!

There are also other books on individual teas, but these four are the ones I’d recommend reading in conjunction with Empire of Tea (for now, until I find more books and add them to the list!)