Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire

by Roy Moxham

Tea came late to England—after its arrival in Portugal, Holland, and France—but quickly became a national obsession. Tea gardens and shops sprang up everywhere in seventeenth-century England. Demand soon spread to the colonies, where the heavy taxation on tea led to smuggling on a massive scale and, in the New World, cost England her American empire. Tea drove the British to war with China, to guarantee the supply of pekoe, and it prompted colonists to clear jungles in India, Ceylon, and Africa for huge tea plantations. In time, the cultivation of tea would subject more than one million laborers to wretched working conditions. Hundreds of thousands of them would die for the commodity that for four centuries propelled Britain's economy and epitomized the reach of its empire. With the same colorful detail and narrative skill that pushed The Great Hedge of India to international success, author Roy Moxham, once a tea planter himself, maps the impact of a monumental and imperial British enterprise. In this new volume, he offers a fully fascinating, and frequently shocking tale of England's tea trade—of the lands it claimed, the people it exploited, the profits it garnered, and the cups it filled.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Tea, Food, World History, Microhistory, Cooking

271 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2003

About the author

Roy Moxham (born 1939) is a British writer, the author of historical books highlighting little-known historical facts.
Moxham was born in Evesham, Worcestershire on 13 September 1939 and went to Prince Henry's Grammar School there. In 1961 he went to Nyasaland (now Malawi) to manage a tea plantation. In 1973 he returned to Britain and established a small gallery in Covent Garden to sell African art, travelling widely in Africa. In 1978 he went to Camberwell College of Art and Crafts, where he qualified as a book and archive conservator. Subsequently, he was a conservator at Canterbury Cathedral Archives and then became Senior Conservator at the Senate House Library of the University of London, from which he retired in 2005. He lives in London, travels widely in south and south-east Asia and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Moxham's first book was The Freelander, a novel based on the exploits of a group of idealists trying to establish a commune on Mount Kenya in the 1890s. His best-known book is The Great Hedge of India. This book is part-travelogue, part-historical treatise on the author's quest to find a 1500-mile long customs hedge built by the British in India to prevent smuggling of salt and sugar. His next book, Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire focuses on the effect of British tea addiction on British policies in Asia and Africa, and includes the author's own experience as a tea plantation manager in Africa. An updated edition " A Brief History of Tea" came out in 2009. In 2010 he published a memoir, "Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me" about his friendship with Phoolan Devi, the Indian bandit turned politician. In 2014 he published as an e-book a novel, "The East India Company Wife", based on the real life of Catherine Cooke, a thirteen-year-old English girl who went to India with her parents in 1709. In November 2016 The Theft of India: The European Conquests of India 1498 – 1765 was published.

Bibliography:

The Theft of India: The European conquests of India 1498 – 1765 (HarperCollins India, New Delhi: November 2016)
The East India Company Wife (e-book: 2014)
Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me (Rider, London: 2010)
A Brief History of Tea (Robinson: 2009)
Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire (Constable, London: 2003)
The Great Hedge of India (Constable, London: 2001)
The Freelander (Team, Nairobi: 1990)

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful book that combines a history of tea with the author's personal experience as assistant manager of a tea plantation in what is now Malawi. As a lifelong tea addict, I have read a number of books about tea, but I would have to say that Roy Moxham's Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire is by far the most comprehensive.

I had not realized that, in the nineteenth century, the importation of tea and its growth in China, India, Ceylon, and elsewhere could be so controversial. Picking the tea leaves (only the bud and the tiniest leaf) and the weeding between the plants required coolie labor which had to be brought in. (The locals had no wish to work as indentured slaves on a plantation—for whatever reason.)

The book contains an extensive bibliography and some useful maps.

Highly recommended, even if you prefer coffee. (Now there's a beverage I cannot abide.)

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provided a solid overview of tea cultivation, imperialism and economics; the organization of these topics by setting (China, India) and chronology (18 century, Victoria era) kept the broad overview well-organized. Within chapters, however, the chronology and discussion felt muddled -- particularly in the last few chapters of the book. Compounding this feeling were the author's introductory and concluding chapters, which focused upon his own experience in the tea industry. Although interesting, these chapters made the book feel like two different narratives -- one personal and one historical -- which never seem to come together cohesively. Overall, however, I enjoyed the book for its thorough detail and examination of how tea profoundly affected the balance of power within and among nations.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love tea. More than coffee these days. I have to have my morning cup! So I was interested in reading about the history of tea. I thought it would be a fun and interesting "story". I was really shocked and amazed while reading this book. There is a lot to this story that is amazing in this interesting and well researched book. And in many ways, it is a shocking statement about what a colony really is. I had never really thought about what it means to be a colony. But through both of Roy Moxham's books, one about the salt tax in India and this one about tea in India and elsewhere, I have learned the horrible truth about what a colony really is. If you only take one thing away from his books, it is to learn what it means to be a colony. An absolutely astonishing and shocking statement. And yet we have the British to thank for the world wide love of tea. It is easily available and widely loved. But at great suffering for the people of India in the past, something that is not well known.

I had always thought that tea, black tea, was a product of India. I was amazed to learn that while there may have been a few tea trees in the jungles of Assam a long time ago, it was the British who wanted to get tea away from the Chinese, who started growing it in India, starting from the early 1800s. Before the British, there was no tea drinking in India!! Also, I had assumed that durning the long trips to England, the green Chinese tea on board the British ships had continued to ferment and that created the black tea that we know today. But that seems to be incorrect. It seems to be true that the Chinese also created black teas as well as their oolong teas and green teas. China is the origin of tea drinking. All other countries, including Japan and India, got the tea trees (tea is a tree!!) from China! The British just continued the tradition. They had imported the green teas as well as the black. The black teas were just more popular in England.

This book is about the history of tea in relation to British tea drinking and tea culture in Britain as well the the British efforts to first import tea from China, then to grow it in India and Ceylon (and later elsewhere). But more than anything, it is the growing of tea in India, how the British went about it, that is fascinating and shocking at the same time. You will learn the true meaning of what it means to be a colony. And what avarice really is. If you want to understand the true meaning of avarice read Roy Moxham's book about the salt tax in India as well: The Great Hedge of India. These two books have opened my eyes to what a colony is and how horrible it is to be a colony. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of tea and the history of India.

[Roopesh Kohad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has lot of details about how it was grown, experimented with and flourished in different parts of the world including China. However, the names, the places and geography is so detailed and having not been to those places doesn't evoke any visuals. The part about Darjeeling and surrounding was fascinating to read having visited them but even Assam couldn't relate. The Tea Planter's life which is described is fascinating. Didn't finish the entire book but not looking forward to.

[Patsey]

Lots of interesting info. The colonists just take take take.

[Lashawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in one day on vacation. Interesting to read the exploitive history of tea and what lengths Britain went to get their cup of tea fix. (Getting China hooked on opium so they can keep trade open? Not cool.) Moxham's language was pretty colonistic, though he strongly disapproves the abuses Britain did to workers in India and Cylon. His word choices sometimes rubbed me the wrong way (gangs of Africans, for instance). His opening and ending chapters were a head scratcher, as well. He starts off the book with him applying for a plantation manager job in Malawi. He then goes into the history of tea, bookending with him arriving in Malawi and his daily routine there. I think it was meant to bring in a personal element into the book, however, it ends without conclusion (he ends it at a weird place, with no follow up on how the election went, or how long he stays as a manager). Perhaps he planned to write a sequel...in any case, the history was enough for me. I wasn't really interested in his personal life.

[Dox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sucked me in initially because it started with the author's own experiences about working on a tea estate in Africa.

Then, he takes a nosedive into the historical context of how the tea empire started, grew, and basically took advantage of the local populations. There's a lot of awful, terrible behavior to account for. This part, which was the bulk of the book, was also the most dry and seemed vaguely repetitious. It contains a good deal of useful information, and a well constructed general time line of how things happened, but it's not an easy slog through some of the parts that were more clinically described.

The last part gets back to what the author was doing and how he fared, and it was more interesting, given the background the reader was now aware of, but I'm not entirely sure it was worth it to get through the dustier-written bulk of the background just for better grip I'd had on the last ten pages.

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 3 out of 5]

If this were a selection of tea rather than a book about it, it would not be a blend: rather, it would be a box of different grades and tastes, some in well-contained sachets and some loose leaf and spilling all over one another. If I had not previously read books about India, China, the East India Company, and the opium trade (and listened to a podcast about the Boston Tea Party), it would have been hard to make sense of it all.

If you pick up the book, use the subtitle as your road map. Leaving out the personal reminiscences, which are piquant but not particularly valuable, the early chapters are about addiction. Moxham makes the case that "all the tea in China" was one of the main reasons the British wanted to get Chinese people addicted to opium: so the British would have something the Chinese actually wanted to buy from the less advanced British civilization!

He also shows how the British and, after them, the North Americans became addicted to tea, at least psychologically. The tea trade in the 18th century led to the equivalent of gangs and drug warfare, because tea was so highly profitable. For the same reason, throwing tea into Boston Harbor was a highly effective protest. By the 20th century, the UK had to ration tea during World Wars I and II because it was considered an essential good for wartime morale. That is one powerful substance.

The middle chapters show how the cultivation of tea was inseparable from the exploitation of Asian workers. At first, the British thought they had to bring tea from China to India, and to bring Chinese tea growers over, too, for their supposedly expert knowledge. It was a revolution when they realized that native tea trees in Assam, and especially Darjeeling, could flourish better than the imports. But like the growing of opium poppies and the manufacture of the smokeable version, the growing and fermenting of tea led to outright slavery, indenture, debt peonage, rape and sexual exploitation, overwork, malnutrition of workers, and trickery to get them to move to places where they knew no one and where the master was a law unto himself.

In Ceylon (now called by the indigenous name, Sri Lanka) the tea season was the obverse of the rice season on the mainland, and Tamil workers were sent from one to the other the way that Mexican "wetbacks" used to be sent from Mexico to the U.S. Southwest for the harvest (and then expelled)

Inherent in the whole story but increasingly at the forefront in the later chapters is the role that tea played in empire. I learned that British colonial rulers backed plantation owners for the profit they returned to the government even though they regarded the tea growers as low-class and uncouth. (Apparently indigo growers before them had established that reputation.) At first, the armies that protected the tea growers were those of the East India Company (another parallel with the opium trade). Later, the industry was under the control of the British empire itself.

Along with the horrors described in the book are anecdotes about how tea replaced coffee, how tea gardens and teashops at railway stations made it a common, national drink in Britain, and how Twinings made its name and survived as a specialty teamaker while Lipton overexpanded and went bust in its own country while remaining the most common Ceylon tea drunk in the rest of the world (as of twenty years ago, at least). There are also economic statistics, and battle stories, and gossip about rich colonialists and planters. I see that some readers even would have liked the author's personal experience growing tea in Africa to have been the whole book!

As for me, it contributes to my growing understanding of how British imperialism affected Asia and set different countries (and populations within countries) against each other long after the sun did set on the British Empire.

[Vic Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A painful history of one aspect of the British Empire. Whether in China, India, or Africa, the story follows a seemingly set pattern of abuse, exploitation, and an official policy enforcing racism by British businesses and governments against the locals. It's no surprise that violence often accompanied British, as well as other European powers, wherever they showed up.
Moxham delves into the economics as well as the social impacts of the tea trade. According to "Tea," between 1800 and 1810 Britain shipped nearly 700 tons of silver to China to buy tea. The Chinese would only accept silver as payment for tea as they believed all the other goods the British offered to trade were inferior. Then the British got into the illicit drug trade. At the literal point of a gun the British forced the Chinese government to legalize the import and consumption of opium. In the next decade 1811 to 1820, China shipped over 1,500 tons of silver to Britain (via India where the British grew the poppies and manufactured the opium).
How Europeans dealt with the locals is also a central theme. One can just about guess how gruesome this part of the tale is. While the treatment of the labor force improved over time, it started from such an ugly and dehumanizing state that, even with a century of more of improvements, it was still far below what the average Brit (or European or N. American) would find acceptable.
Overall,"Tea Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire" is a as much about the inherent violence of colonization as it is about tea. But it is about tea as a product, a crop, and a social custom too. That aspect can be entertaining and fun to learn about.
Moxham has also done an excellent job crafting a tale about the history of tea over the past 400 years.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in tea, British history, economics, or just enjoys a bit of micro-history.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

First few pages were fascinating. Then it got really boring. Tea is a hobby and I was intrigued by the subtitle of 'Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire'. I had hoped this book would address the less "romantic" aspects of tea (tea parties held by people in nice clothes, etc.) and more about the darker side of tea, its place in history, how it's harvested, etc.
 
Initially we start off with Moxham's own history of picking up and working on a tea estate in Africa and that definitely perked my interest. Then he leaps into the history of tea and its role in the Opium Wars and the like. The information is interesting, but boy is the author really dry. Like other readers I also side-eyed some of his language (he talks about growing up with the idea of empire and he himself left the UK to make his adventure abroad in a British Protectorate which is now Malawi) although he is critical at points.
 
I couldn't help but feel it would have better if he had stuck to his own personal autobiography rather than aiming for a formal history of tea and woven the history in discussing what it was like to run an actual tea estate. He does return to this at the end but by then it is too late and it isn't worth the history.
 
Would really like to read a history of tea from the viewpoint of Indian or Chinese people, though. 
 
I bought this and had it for awhile but it wasn't worth it. Skip it or at least make the effort to see if a library has it instead.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my belief, tea is the more superior drink than coffee, for tea fueled full-fledged imperialism. In this book, The author brings us to the history of tea, its cultivation, distribution and consumption. From a commodity that was needed to be smuggled into British Isles, the need for satiating the ever growing demand for tea led Great Britain to break open the infamously isolationist market of Chinese Qing Empire and dotted its colonial possession with tea plantation. Tea became British's national drink, and an important part of English culture.

Throughout the book, The author takes us on a brief walk through the appaling (yet utterly profitable) conditions of tea plantations within British's colonial possession, namely India, in Bengal and Assam, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Kenya, and Nyasaland (now Malawi), with special story of how the author worked as a manager of a tea plantation in Nyasaland, and also on how tea was consumed throughout the time, from the adulterated, early years, to the rise of tea bags.

Overall, as I love tea, by extension I also enjoyed reading this book. While I got rather bored while reading about Indian plantations, The author's Nyasaland working experiences, managing tea plantations while Hastings Banda independence movement brewing in the background piqued my interest in this book.

[Max Graef · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire is about how the power of an empire can take something as simple as leaf water and turn it into a massive industry that runs off of conquering others and bloodshed. Britain’s obsession with Tea is what made it what it is today. They weren’t even the first to have discovered Tea. Britain’s power is what was able to make Tea such a common commodity today. It wasn’t always this way. Tea was once only for the very wealthy. My favorite parts of the book are the old accounts and descriptions of tea. I love the way that they wrote and spoke during these times. A quote taken from Discourse of Voyages, written in 1595 by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, states,” They use a certaine drink, which is a pot with hote water, which they drinke as hote as ever they may endure, whether it be winter or summer.”
I decided to read this book because I wanted to learn about something that I knew nothing about. I would encourage anyone who wants to learn something new to read this book. It amazed and surprised me to learn of the vast history of something as simple as tea. One thing that I didn’t quite enjoy were Moxham’s personal accounts of working in Nyasaland but I guess it establishes some form of credibility and connection to the topic.

[Library of the Field Museum · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book on economic botany, exploring the seedy underbelly of tea. Part memoir, part entertaining expository, Moxham weaves an intriguing history of war, smuggling, agriculture, and enterprise all fueled by a love of tea. Definitely told from the British point of view, sometimes lacking sensitivity towards slavery and local worker which is a touch cringe-worthy at times addressing topics of local customs and abusive conditions with a dry detachment typical of many historical non-fiction. -Melissa Anderson, Collections Coordinator

[Ani Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good enough, albeit summarised account of tea and how England variously influenced the world to get their cuppa. A lot of dry statistics presented beautifully. The personal accounts in the beginning and at the end are supposed, probably, to provide a different angle, but that resulted in the book ending rather abruptly.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

Malawi
One of the largest tea-producing countries in Africa.
Lots of violence, especially against indigenous Malawi people with albinism, who are murdered for traditional Malawi “medicine" and witchcraft.

As for the book itself… I didn’t know it was possible to make Tea Smuggling boring, but here we are.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite interesting and informative history of the British relationship with tea. The first and last chapters comprise autobiographical anecdotes from the author's experience of working in a tea plantation in Nyasaland around 1960.

[Poyraz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This in my opinion is an easy-read bed side book. The history of tea as well as the economy built around it is definitely interesting. The parts about exploitation of the local population was very disturbing (but real!) though.

[Brooke Lyndaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides an excellent overview of the subject without sacrificing details. I found interesting quotations throughout the book that were worth underlining for future reference.

[Lara Samulenok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like how the author sandwiched the history of tea between his own personal experiences.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

a slice of history between UK and Asia, between capitalism game and habit-forming

[N.R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging, lightweight history of tea from the British perspective. The autobiographical sections were the most interesting, and these could have been more fleshed out.

[Ricki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and informative story of tea - the growth, trade and the social history of planters and labour. It covers China, India, Ceylon and touches upon East Africa. Fascinating side facts - did you know that Jardine-Matheson bank - Jardine made his original profits on opium traded to the Chinese and joined up with Matheson who was also in the opium business...
Also - to quote - 'The Americans were also in the opium business. As Indian opium was monopolized by the British they had to find supplies in Turkey. Between 1818 and 1833 the Americans brought opium worth nearly $5million into China. This was less than a twentieth of the more than $100 million brought in over the same period by the British. The principal American firm was Russell and Company. Its ships flew the American flag, and one of its opium captains became head of the firm. He was succeeded by Warren Delano II, grandfather of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.'
When one reads of the clearing of land to form tea plantations, one is reminded of our attempts to preserve and protect the rain-forests in modern times....interesting and thought-provoking all around.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Tea is utterly improper for food, hitherto useless in physick, and therefore to be arranged among the poysonous vegetables. Were it entirely wholesome as balm or mint, it were yet mischief enough to have our whole populace used to sip warm water in a mincing effeminate manner once or twice a day...In this manner the bold and brave become dastardly, the strong become weak, the women become barren; or if they breed, their blood is made so poor that they have not the strength to suckle, and if they do, the child dies of the gripes. The poor people's children which are bred with it, as they really are in the cities and towns, are only fit for footmen and chambermaids...I leave anyone to judge what soldiers we are like to have. The Spaniards very likely had felt the force of English beer within this last twenty years, if the use of it had not been exchanged for warm water bewitch'd with Indian poyson."

[Julian Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my favourite drink so it made sense to know a little more about it and in Tea, Roy Moxham has created a special brew.

Part history, part observational commentary, full on enjoyment, he puts history into perspective through the rise of the humble cuppa.

Well written, eminently readable and a gold mine of interesting facts, this fascinating account of the impact a few leaves have had on society is a rare treat.

Put the kettle on and settle down for an eye-opening insight into our lives.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tea served as a vehicle for British imperialism in it worst form. The plantation system virtually enslaved large population of workers for the sake of a cheap drink in England. I would have like more of the book devoted to tea's natural history and more time spent on the dynamics of tea in the twentieth century rather than on nineteenth century colonialism. The final chapter describes the author year spent as a manager on a tea plantation in Africa.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not only entertaining, but more informative than the other brief histories out there. The author traces the history of tea largely through economics and politics, but uses enough examples and anecdotes to keep it interesting. I was surprised that there wasn't more about tea growing in Africa, as the author was a tea estate manager in Malawi at one time, but I would recommend this book.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written and concise introduction to tea. For the somewhat more enlightened reader, it may seem to gloss over the finer details, however, it is undeniably a very good staring point. Well researched and very aware of the absurd, often frightfully terrible history this pant has had, Moxham deserves mad props for this book.

[Krystal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this introduction to the history of tea and how closely its growth was linked to colonialism and wars in both India and China. I did also enjoy the bookend chapters of the author's experience as a tea grower in Africa in the 1960s - it gave a unique perspective into the world he'd spent a book describing.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting exploration of the history of tea cultivation and its impact on the various regions of the world. It starts and ends as a memoir of the author as a young man working in a tea plantation in Africa.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book!!