Story of Tea Part One

Sailing through the Andaman Sea. Since today is a sea day I will tell the story of the Chinese, the Brits, tea and opium. As Britain imported tea it rapidly became the beverage of choice even displacing beer. In addition, it improved the health of Britain because they had to boil water to make it. Water in those days was often contaminated and probably tasted pretty bad. However as demand rose Britain began having trouble paying for it and China would not share the plants or the processing information. In fact Britain was paying with silver and it was depleting the treasury. Then Britain discovered they could ship opium from India to China. As Indians became addicted to opium demand went up and soon the trade imbalance disappeared. The Indian government tried to oust the British to stop the opium imports. The Brits prevailed in three wars so not only did the Chinese fail to stop the import of opium but they had to allow the Brits access over multiple new ports and cede Hong Kong to Britain.

But this is not the end of the story of tea. More in my next posting.Read more