What do you think?
Rate this book
Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World
Although tea had been known and consumed in China and Japan for centuries, it was only in the seventeenth century that Londoners first began drinking it. Over the next two hundred years, its stimulating properties seduced all of British society, as tea found its way into cottages and castles alike. One of the first truly global commodities and now the world’s most popular drink, tea has also, today, come to epitomize British culture and identity.
This impressively detailed book offers a rich cultural history of tea, from its ancient origins in China to its spread around the world. The authors recount tea’s arrival in London and follow its increasing salability and import via the East India Company throughout the eighteenth century, inaugurating the first regular exchange—both commercial and cultural—between China and Britain. They look at European scientists’ struggles to understand tea’s history and medicinal properties, and they recount the ways its delicate flavor and exotic preparation have enchanted poets and artists. Exploring everything from its everyday use in social settings to the political and economic controversies it has stirred—such as the Boston Tea Party and the First Opium War—they offer a multilayered look at what was ultimately an imperial industry, a collusion—and often clash—between the world’s greatest powers over control of a simple beverage that has become an enduring pastime.
This impressively detailed book offers a rich cultural history of tea, from its ancient origins in China to its spread around the world. The authors recount tea’s arrival in London and follow its increasing salability and import via the East India Company throughout the eighteenth century, inaugurating the first regular exchange—both commercial and cultural—between China and Britain. They look at European scientists’ struggles to understand tea’s history and medicinal properties, and they recount the ways its delicate flavor and exotic preparation have enchanted poets and artists. Exploring everything from its everyday use in social settings to the political and economic controversies it has stirred—such as the Boston Tea Party and the First Opium War—they offer a multilayered look at what was ultimately an imperial industry, a collusion—and often clash—between the world’s greatest powers over control of a simple beverage that has become an enduring pastime.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 15, 2015
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 23, 2020
In writing Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World, authors by Markman Ellis , Richard Coulton, and Matthew Mauger have written very little about the Asia the rest of the world, and focused on the history of tea in Great Briton. At that London is the major player with rare mention of other cities, mostly centers of smuggling. The text is mostly academic and occasionally interesting. For the true tea enthusiast, looking for odd facts, visual and poetic references one could do worse than take on this 270 page heavy book. Literally heavy as this edition is printed on some of the heaviest coated stock paper I have handled in years. It is also heavily illustrated. With over 35 pages of small font foot notes and bibliography it is deeply researched. The last chapter talks to tea in our time and raises some of the most important thoughts and issues in the book.
I suspect that many of us identify tea with England tea time and frequent reference in what seems like all of its literature. This book makes it clear that tea not achieve wide use among the upper classes until the 1700 and democratization of consumption did not follow until both prices and import duties fell. From early on there were the usual games being played over quality and the introduction of extenders. Here it is suggested that even the tea tossed into Boston Harbor was not the best quality as lessor quality was good enough for the colonies. Maybe why we in the US prefer coffee.
One of the companies that had its products used to flavor Boston Harbor still exists. I am a consumer of their contemporary product: Boston Harbor Tea by Davison Newman & Company Ltd. It is good enough for me. The authors are adamant that modern processes make it vary hard to find the highest quality tea.
Among the most interesting marketing issues faced by the introduction of tea to into the marketplace was the much older traditions of drinking ale, beer and hard liquor. Tea was considered as effeminate and therefore likely to produce a weaker population. Worse, from this point of view, tea was introduced into society by the titled ladies and their fashion minded followers. We all know how much They gossip. So even tea parties were disparaged. The greater reality was that tea, along with coffee and hot chocolate, plus sugar, provided beverages that people could gather around sociably without ending in drunkenness.
I suspect that many of us identify tea with England tea time and frequent reference in what seems like all of its literature. This book makes it clear that tea not achieve wide use among the upper classes until the 1700 and democratization of consumption did not follow until both prices and import duties fell. From early on there were the usual games being played over quality and the introduction of extenders. Here it is suggested that even the tea tossed into Boston Harbor was not the best quality as lessor quality was good enough for the colonies. Maybe why we in the US prefer coffee.
One of the companies that had its products used to flavor Boston Harbor still exists. I am a consumer of their contemporary product: Boston Harbor Tea by Davison Newman & Company Ltd. It is good enough for me. The authors are adamant that modern processes make it vary hard to find the highest quality tea.
Among the most interesting marketing issues faced by the introduction of tea to into the marketplace was the much older traditions of drinking ale, beer and hard liquor. Tea was considered as effeminate and therefore likely to produce a weaker population. Worse, from this point of view, tea was introduced into society by the titled ladies and their fashion minded followers. We all know how much They gossip. So even tea parties were disparaged. The greater reality was that tea, along with coffee and hot chocolate, plus sugar, provided beverages that people could gather around sociably without ending in drunkenness.
Read
February 19, 2025Tea
June 24, 2020
Interesting subject and an informative book, but it is primarily a British history of tea, not a global history. From the title, as well as the authors' own introduction remarking on the importance de-centering the West, I was expecting a global history of tea. This disappointing repackaging of British history as global history led to my poor review; as British history, the book is quite good, although a little dry.
July 4, 2019
Camellia sinensis is the scientific name of a shrub the modern world is intimately associated with – tea. The ubiquitous drink has permeated polite company so well that modern society, particularly in Britain and its former colonies, can think of no other drink to pour to a friend or guest. Our conversation around the tea table is often so pleasant as to engender a modern maxim that gossip is the best sweetener of tea. The story of tea begins well in the ancient past in China, but it was introduced to the entire world with British colonial expansion. The East India Company’s trading campaigns to Asia brought in its ships’ holds copious amounts of tea as well as spices and textiles. Tea was an object of luxury at first, but soon the common people took a fancy to it. Tea became a defining symbol of British identity in a period when it all came from China and Japan. Zealous taxonomists and botanists of the Enlightenment could successfully transplant this elixir of life into India, which readily became available for colonization by the middle of the eighteenth century. It was in 1839 that the first ‘Empire Tea’ came from Assam. Thereafter, the Chinese trade dwindled and the capital of tea trade was shifted to London. This book tells the story of the introduction of tea in England, how it went on to make England a ‘tea-drinking nation’, the story of English conquest of the tea trade and the confused present of the tea industry in the modern world. Markman Ellis is the Professor of Eighteenth century Studies, Richard Coulton is a lecturer of English and Matthew Mauger is a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London.
For all its universal acceptance, the most surprising fact is that tea has no nutritional value at all. The so called energy its drinkers get is the handiwork of caffeine, the powerful alkaloid in coffee as well, which constitutes nearly three per cent by weight of the tea leaves. Even though tea has been consumed in China from very ancient times, Europeans came to know about it only by the sixteenth century. It is intriguing to note that the earliest reference to tea as a processed foodstuff with a marketable value and as an everyday drink is itself more than 2000 years old. Tea became popular in Britain in mid-seventeenth century along with coffee from Arabia and chocolate from Mexico. These three modern staple drinks shared surprising similarities. They were served hot, had a bitter flavour that was ameliorated with sugar, were made with rare and expensive botanical ingredients and had intriguing psychoactive properties. These three newcomers presented a stiff competition to Britain’s traditional alcoholic drinks such as beer and wine. The new drinks were stimulants, but their consumption did not lead to inebriation or other forms of rowdiness as did alcohol. So, although the psychoactive effect of tea and coffee on drinkers was conspicuous, the forms of behaviour associated with them were broadly congruent with the programmes of moral reform and regulation promoted by Protestant sects in the period.
Tea was a costly fad of the rich for a long time after its introduction. Gradually, the peasants and workers also took to it when cheap tea began to find a place in the market. Proponents and detractors of tea argued with each other. This book presents a very good narrative of the debating points used by both sides. The urge to understand tea in eighteenth century Britain was an intermingling of intellectual and cultural currents. Tea became a habit and the tea table turned into a place of gossip and slander. Numerous poems and treatises appeared in print in praise of tea. A sprinkling of the best among them is listed in the book. Information on the growth of tea plants and processing of the plucked leaves was borrowed from China. Botanists in Britain could inspect twigs, flowers and seeds, accidentally found in crates of leaves. It was at first believed that bohea and green tea – two most popular varieties of it – were believed to have come from separate species. It was conclusively proved after two centuries of research that the both are indeed one in terms of species variability. Some critics could not assimilate the fact that the lower classes also drank tea like their masters. They came out with a novel argument that it turns robust masculinity into enfeebled femininity while exposing feminine delicacy to masculine immoderation.
Consumption of tea was elevated to a sophisticated ritual in China and Japan with elaborate crockery and spoons attending to it. When tea and coffee were introduced in England, they were the first hot drinks in use. The porcelain used by the Chinese to handle tea came to be associated with British practices as well. At the inception of these drinks, there was no domestically manufactured pottery that could stand the thermal shock of hot beverages. With the liberal use of porcelain, two Chinese products became locked in a commercial embrace.
Many Indian intellectuals are justifiably worried at the prospect of multinational companies sourcing valuable plants and animals from India and then copying the genetic material for commercial use. Most of them are ignorant of the immense gain the country has made when tea itself was transplanted in India, though not in the literal sense. Wild tea trees were found in Assam around the beginning of the nineteenth century. This prospect attracted a horde of planters and labourers to Assam, aided by considerable tax breaks to any enterprise that transformed the hilly wildernesses into agricultural land. The first chest of Assam tea was auctioned in London in 1839. In a fit of condescension, the intellectuals of the period saw in this attempt an effort to civilize the Indian natives by offering them an opportunity to participate in polite British practices of tea drinking. The post-world war era saw British companies falling by the wayside and getting amalgamated into foreign entities. It is a strange coincidence that two of the most famous tea houses (Typhoo and Tetley) are now owned by Indian tea companies.
The book also presents a case in tea’s history that casts dirt on its spotless career of satisfying humans. For a brief period, the East India Company had used opium to finance its trade on tea with China. The company was concerned with the one-way trade it plied with China, who was not enamoured by European produce in return for tea. This required silver to be paid in hard cash. The frantic efforts to find some product which would find acceptance in China finally identified opium which was traded under cover by the company’s agents. They repaid tea with the silver they got in response to the sale of opium. Nearly two-thirds of the annual cost of civil administration in the 1830s was met from tea taxes.
Though the book is composed by three authors, the content is pleasantly readable. A lot of illustrations and diagrams are included in the main text. The careful effort to include paintings and etchings which illumine the growth of the tea habit in Britain is commendable. Seldom do we find real art-aficionados among researchers. A comprehensive index and a perfect bibliography leave out nothing as far as tea is concerned. The description is purely historical and social. The scientific and business aspects of tea – such as the mechanism with which tea’s ingredients influence our neural systems and some of the anecdotes related to marketing and trading tea – are completely ignored.
For all its universal acceptance, the most surprising fact is that tea has no nutritional value at all. The so called energy its drinkers get is the handiwork of caffeine, the powerful alkaloid in coffee as well, which constitutes nearly three per cent by weight of the tea leaves. Even though tea has been consumed in China from very ancient times, Europeans came to know about it only by the sixteenth century. It is intriguing to note that the earliest reference to tea as a processed foodstuff with a marketable value and as an everyday drink is itself more than 2000 years old. Tea became popular in Britain in mid-seventeenth century along with coffee from Arabia and chocolate from Mexico. These three modern staple drinks shared surprising similarities. They were served hot, had a bitter flavour that was ameliorated with sugar, were made with rare and expensive botanical ingredients and had intriguing psychoactive properties. These three newcomers presented a stiff competition to Britain’s traditional alcoholic drinks such as beer and wine. The new drinks were stimulants, but their consumption did not lead to inebriation or other forms of rowdiness as did alcohol. So, although the psychoactive effect of tea and coffee on drinkers was conspicuous, the forms of behaviour associated with them were broadly congruent with the programmes of moral reform and regulation promoted by Protestant sects in the period.
Tea was a costly fad of the rich for a long time after its introduction. Gradually, the peasants and workers also took to it when cheap tea began to find a place in the market. Proponents and detractors of tea argued with each other. This book presents a very good narrative of the debating points used by both sides. The urge to understand tea in eighteenth century Britain was an intermingling of intellectual and cultural currents. Tea became a habit and the tea table turned into a place of gossip and slander. Numerous poems and treatises appeared in print in praise of tea. A sprinkling of the best among them is listed in the book. Information on the growth of tea plants and processing of the plucked leaves was borrowed from China. Botanists in Britain could inspect twigs, flowers and seeds, accidentally found in crates of leaves. It was at first believed that bohea and green tea – two most popular varieties of it – were believed to have come from separate species. It was conclusively proved after two centuries of research that the both are indeed one in terms of species variability. Some critics could not assimilate the fact that the lower classes also drank tea like their masters. They came out with a novel argument that it turns robust masculinity into enfeebled femininity while exposing feminine delicacy to masculine immoderation.
Consumption of tea was elevated to a sophisticated ritual in China and Japan with elaborate crockery and spoons attending to it. When tea and coffee were introduced in England, they were the first hot drinks in use. The porcelain used by the Chinese to handle tea came to be associated with British practices as well. At the inception of these drinks, there was no domestically manufactured pottery that could stand the thermal shock of hot beverages. With the liberal use of porcelain, two Chinese products became locked in a commercial embrace.
Many Indian intellectuals are justifiably worried at the prospect of multinational companies sourcing valuable plants and animals from India and then copying the genetic material for commercial use. Most of them are ignorant of the immense gain the country has made when tea itself was transplanted in India, though not in the literal sense. Wild tea trees were found in Assam around the beginning of the nineteenth century. This prospect attracted a horde of planters and labourers to Assam, aided by considerable tax breaks to any enterprise that transformed the hilly wildernesses into agricultural land. The first chest of Assam tea was auctioned in London in 1839. In a fit of condescension, the intellectuals of the period saw in this attempt an effort to civilize the Indian natives by offering them an opportunity to participate in polite British practices of tea drinking. The post-world war era saw British companies falling by the wayside and getting amalgamated into foreign entities. It is a strange coincidence that two of the most famous tea houses (Typhoo and Tetley) are now owned by Indian tea companies.
The book also presents a case in tea’s history that casts dirt on its spotless career of satisfying humans. For a brief period, the East India Company had used opium to finance its trade on tea with China. The company was concerned with the one-way trade it plied with China, who was not enamoured by European produce in return for tea. This required silver to be paid in hard cash. The frantic efforts to find some product which would find acceptance in China finally identified opium which was traded under cover by the company’s agents. They repaid tea with the silver they got in response to the sale of opium. Nearly two-thirds of the annual cost of civil administration in the 1830s was met from tea taxes.
Though the book is composed by three authors, the content is pleasantly readable. A lot of illustrations and diagrams are included in the main text. The careful effort to include paintings and etchings which illumine the growth of the tea habit in Britain is commendable. Seldom do we find real art-aficionados among researchers. A comprehensive index and a perfect bibliography leave out nothing as far as tea is concerned. The description is purely historical and social. The scientific and business aspects of tea – such as the mechanism with which tea’s ingredients influence our neural systems and some of the anecdotes related to marketing and trading tea – are completely ignored.
June 5, 2020
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 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”. 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:
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.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
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 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”. 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.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
March 30, 2021
I was expecting a history of tea. This was mostly a history of tea drinking in England. If that is what you are looking for, this may be the book for you, although it is written by academics and feels like something for a class. Jut not my cup of tea (pun intended!). Still, a beautiful-looking book.
March 20, 2020
Fascinating subject but a little dense for me. Started off strong but most of the focus was on Britain during the 18th/19th centuries. I was expecting something more global and chronologically balanced. Still not a bad book. Very handsome in appearance with lots of illustrations.
April 26, 2018
While a fabulous topic, this was just too dry to be worth the payoff.
August 2, 2022
Interesting at times, but very dry.
October 18, 2016
I found this book to be quite fascinating. There was a lot of information and some I didn't know. I enjoyed the cartoon of William Pitt and Charles Fox. I also didn't know about the 'rub down'.
February 4, 2016
History of tea in Britain from 17th to 20th centuries. Lots of good illustrations, some in a color section. Discussions of how tea was introduced, the switch from China to India tea, how society changed, etc.
Read
January 22, 2016641.3372 E475 2015
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews