History of Tea: Britain’s stolen brew

Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Yangwen Zheng and comedian Hugh Dennis to learn about the global history of tea, and how it became Britain’s national drink. Despite its popularity in the UK, much of our tea is grown in India and Kenya, while the tea plant itself is native to China. The story of how it made its way into Britain’s kitchens – and the nation’s hearts – is surprisingly bloody, encompassing war, colonialism, and even botanical theft. This episode charts the global history of tea from its Chinese origins, taking in the Mongol invasions, the contested role of a Portuguese princess in bringing the drink to Britain, the devastation wrought by the Opium Wars, and the theft of tea plants from China to India. Along the way, it also looks at how it moved from the tables of the rich in Britain to become the fuel of the workers, and the moment tea became a matter of national security. If you’re a fan of Chinese history, skulduggery and industrial espionage, and how European colonialism shaped the modern world, you’ll love our episode on the History of Tea. If you want more Chinese history with Professor Yangwen Zheng, listen to our episode on Dowager Empress Cixi. And for more on the history of commodities, check out our episodes on chocolate, coffee and spices. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith and Naomi Weaver Written by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:37Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are bustling back to the 19th century and raising the temperature to boiling point, as we learn all about the history of Britain's favourite hot bevy, tea. And joining our time-travelling tea party are two very special guests. In history corner, she's Professor of Chinese History at Manchester University, where she specialises in Ming and Qing-era trade and economic history. She's the author of a number of books, including the recent Railway Imperialism in China, a political biography. And of course, you'll remember her from our lovely, funny episode on the Dowager Empress Su Shi. It's Professor Yang Wenjun. Welcome back, Yangwen.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:20Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, he's an award-winning comedian, presenter, actor, impressionist and writer. What a CV. You'll have heard him all over Radio 4, on programmes like The Now Show, and all over the TV, on TV shows like Mock the Week, Not Going Out, Have I Got News For You, Taskmaster, Fleabag and the brilliant sitcom Outnumbered. He's also the presenter of The Great British Dig, History in Your Back Garden. It's Hugh Denis. Welcome, Hugh.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Thank you very much. Lovely to be here.

• 2:46Greg Jenner?

  What a CV. You've done all sorts.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  I have done all sorts, and there seems to be absolutely no sort of common theme in any of it.

• 2:54Greg Jenner?

  Well, funny.

• 2:55Speaker 05

  Well, funny, I suppose.

• 2:56Greg Jenner?

  Funny, hopefully. Are you sort of a big fan of history as a general rule? Do you like history books? Do you like history programmes? You've presented history programmes?

• 3:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I'm a man of a certain age who's become fascinated by history.

• 3:10Greg Jenner?

  You walk into bookshops and immediately...

• 3:12Speaker 05

  Well, it happens to everyone. And it's sort of, I think it genuinely does happen to everyone. And I was thinking yesterday that my dad, who also loved history, you know, sort of men of a certain age get fascinated by their own family tree, don't they? So he started researching the family tree, and he did an amazing bit of work on the family tree. And he got us back to about 1635. He got Denis's back to 1635. And he presented this charts to me and my brother of all the Denises who've ever existed that anyone can find. And we both looked and thought, that is amazing. It was a vast thing. And then I looked at my own date of birth, and he'd got it wrong.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  Because it's only a year. But it seems significant.

• 3:55Greg Jenner?

  And what about tea? Are you a tea drinker? You asked for coffee on the way in this morning.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Well, it's a time-of-day thing for me. So I have coffee for, I have two cups of coffee a day, and the rest of the day I'm drinking tea.

• 4:06Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  And it's slightly too early for tea, for me.

• 4:09Greg Jenner?

  Is it too early for tea, Yangwen?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  No, I don't drink coffee, so I only drink tea.

• 4:14Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  So coffee is tea for me in the morning.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  No alternatives to tea? Water?

• 4:18Speaker 04

  No, water, juice, yeah.

• 4:20Greg Jenner?

  Okay, all right. But no coffee?

• 4:22Speaker 04

  No.

• 4:24Speaker 05

  Never.

• 4:26Greg Jenner?

  So, what do you know?

• 4:31Greg Jenner?

  But that brings us on to the first segment of the podcast. It's called the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject. And you definitely know what tea is. Everyone knows what tea is. After all, in the UK, it's estimated that 76 million cups of tea are drunk every single day. And that's just me and my wife. So tea is consumed all over the world in a variety of ways. You'll surely have heard of green tea, black tea, matcha, oolong, and now, of course, bubble. I don't know what it is, but I've heard about it. And in terms of its history, maybe you're imagining Regency ladies sipping tea from their delicate bone china in their drawing rooms. Perhaps the elaborate tea ceremonies of Imperial China in Japan.

• 5:13Greg Jenner?

  Perhaps you went with pop culture memories of the Mad Hatter Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, or the famous southern sweet tea drunk in steel magnolias, which Dolly Parton, of course, called the house wine of the south. And also, you can drink tea in space, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard famously ordered, "tea, Earl Grey, hot." So, when was tea first drunk? How did it make its way to Britain? And is the nation's favourite drink really made from dust? Let's find out. Right, Professor Yangwen, we'll start with the basics. Tea is from a plant.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Indeed.

• 5:48Greg Jenner?

  What plant?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  It's called Camellia sinensis, and it's a shrub, basically.

• 5:56Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Perennial, and it grows in probably 1,000 to 7,000 above sea level. So that's a wide range.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Feats or maces?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Feet, yeah. So, and some of the flowers, some of the shrubs have yellow flowers, some don't, depends on the species, because there's variations in between. And if you go to southern China, it's all over the place.

• 6:25Greg Jenner?

  Really?

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Yes, it's all over the place. There are different species within the tea family.

• 6:31Greg Jenner?

  So it's not growing in lowlands? It needs height?

• 6:33Speaker 04

  It depends. It depends, because the higher you get, then you get, you know, in the mountains, you get mist. So that mist moisture makes a difference to the tea. Then if you grow on the lowland, you get a lot of sunshine. Of course, the soil makes a difference as to the potency of the plant. So it depends. Mostly, it's on sloping mountains if you go and visit China.

• 7:02Speaker 05

  And is it like vines? Does it need south-facing slopes?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you face the sun, and then you can, you get the sunshine. And the moisture in the mountains, the mist and rainwater also nourishes it. So that's why you have green tea, and yellow tea, and white tea, and black tea. Black tea is red tea, basically. It gets a lot of sunshine.

• 7:31Greg Jenner?

  Black tea is red tea?

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Why do they call it red tea?

• 7:36Speaker 04

  I don't know. Yeah.

• 7:38Greg Jenner?

  You've said black, white, yellow. And there's also oolong?

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Oolong and puru. Yeah.

• 7:45Greg Jenner?

  What's puru?

• 7:46Speaker 04

  Puru is more famous in Yunnan, in southern China, close to Burma and Vietnam. Oolong is more in southeast China, like Fujian, across from Taiwan. Taiwan has a lot of oolong, too.

• 7:57Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's regional variation.

• 8:00Greg Jenner?

  So there are six types of this plant, six types of tea?

• 8:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, you could say that.

• 8:05Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, green, black, you call black, we call red, and then yellow, white. Yellow is very rare. White is also rare.

• 8:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then the regional variations. But there are more variations than that. And that doesn't include the royal tea.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  And what about all the ones, the versions that we have? Sort of like, I'm desperately trying to think, like an Earl Grey or something. Where does that fit in to these?

• 8:34Speaker 04

  I think your Earl Grey comes from Africa.

• 8:37Greg Jenner?

  I love your Earl Grey.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  And it's pirated from China to India, and then from India to Africa. The tea we drink in Britain are cut into pieces. That is not the way to drink tea. You should see the leaves. And...

• 8:57Speaker 04

  Plus the what Robert Fortune stole from China. It's not the best tea.

• 9:02Greg Jenner?

  We'll get to that. We'll get to all of that. Okay, so it's quite confusing.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Only when you drink the whole thing, you get the whole ritual, you get the body, the whole thing, not chopped. No, yeah, the tea bags, it's, yeah, it's too bad.

• 9:18Greg Jenner?

  And the processing also breaks down into, there's leaf.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:22Greg Jenner?

  Then there's broken leaf.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:25Greg Jenner?

  And then there's two more.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Yes, there's fannings, there's dust. Yeah. So the leftovers.

• 9:31Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Sorry to say that.

• 9:32Greg Jenner?

  So leaf, broken leaf, fannings and dust. We probably wouldn't drink that much tea if it was called dust.

• 9:40Speaker 05

  Well, there are various, you know, fairly popular forms of dust, I think.

• 9:45Greg Jenner?

  Sure. But.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  But coffee is dust.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  How would you strain the dust? I mean, how do you stop it? Because dust must presumably have, you know, it must get, you must get bits in your mouth.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can sift it, you can sift it. But, but in China, we don't drink dust, we drink leaves.

• 10:02Greg Jenner?

  We're doing it wrong, Hugh.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  You don't, you.

• 10:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I didn't mention dust, I don't. But who drinks dust then?

• 10:09Greg Jenner?

  We do.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  You do, yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 05

  This is what we do.

• 10:11Greg Jenner?

  We drink the dusty fannings.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:13Greg Jenner?

  Uh, which sounds like a kind of country and western singer, doesn't it?

• 10:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, you put it in a bag that, yeah.

• 10:20Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so we're, we're drinking the dust, we're drinking the fannings. Yangwen, can we start with some history? When did, you know, people in China first experiment with dunking these leaves into hot water? Because that's the process of, of creating tea is you take a plant and you, you boil it.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a myth, a yellow emperor, he's sitting there boiling water under the tree and then the leaves drops and then here's the tea. But I think in reality, in history, I think it's the origins has something to do with Chinese herbal medicine. Because Chinese people believes every herb, every plant, every grass, everything, every vegetable has medicinal effects and tea was known for keeping you awake and for making your mind clear and it was said to cure a lot of problems like stomach ache, you know, kidney stone, whatever. So I think the real origin has something to do with history,

• 11:19Speaker 04

  medicine, rather than the emperor sitting there, the tree leaves.

• 11:22Speaker 05

  We have an equivalent one, don't we? We have Isaac Newton sitting and being hit on the head by an apple.

• 11:27Greg Jenner?

  That's true.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  But he didn't invent cider at that point.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  And discover gravity.

• 11:33Speaker 04

  Well, that's probably more important, I don't know.

• 11:35Greg Jenner?

  I mean, the Yellow Emperor, that's, we're talking four and a half thousand years ago, way back in the Bronze Age. The story goes that wind just blew some tea leaves into his hot water. And he was like, hmm, this is tasty. Would you keep drinking if wind randomly blew a shrub into your mug?

• 11:50Speaker 05

  No, I don't, I quite, I do genuinely quite often think about how many people died finding the edible bits of plants.

• 11:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  Because thousands of people must have died going, why don't you, these potatoes look nice, why don't you have the leaves?

• 12:05Speaker 05

  I'll have the body of it.

• 12:06Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  And then, you know, there must have been an element of trial and error, but I don't think I would, uh, no, I think I'd go and get a strainer of some sort and make a new cup.

• 12:15Greg Jenner?

  Yes, I agree. If something blew into my mug, I wouldn't go, ah, maybe this is delicious.

• 12:21Greg Jenner?

  There is another myth about how tea was made, or rather how tea made its way from China to Japan. I mean, Yangwen, it's, it's quite a dramatic myth.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:30Greg Jenner?

  We have a Buddhist monk trying to, to meditate.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  Right, keep himself awake, so he keeps drinking tea. Buddhism went to Japan from China, so the, yeah, during the Tang Dynasty. So most of the Buddhist monks will have to come to China to be, to be trained. And so that's where he learned to drink tea and to keep himself awake, keep praying all the time. He would cut his eyelids.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  So that's the myth.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  He would cut his eyelids.

• 12:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he sliced them off.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:59Greg Jenner?

  And the myth goes that after seven years of trying to be sleepless and devotion, he cut off his eyelids so he wouldn't fall asleep.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:05Greg Jenner?

  He threw them to the ground and that is where a tea plant miraculously grew.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a myth.

• 13:10Speaker 05

  So he's got head seeds in his eyelids.

• 13:13Greg Jenner?

  Slicing off your eyelids, it's, it's an eye-opening history, but there we go. So Yangwen, you've, you've said, you know, you've said that tea was regularly consumed during the Western Han Dynasty.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  Dynasty, yeah.

• 13:24Greg Jenner?

  So Han Dynasty, where, where is that in history? Is that sort of the first emperor? You know, are we talking?

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, right after, so it's 2000 years ago, 2200 years ago. I think the real history probably existed before then. It's because after the first emperor, we have records, we have history keeping records so that then you know. We also know that they taxed, government taxed tea. So that's why we know, say, at least it definitely began to, to, you know, to be very popular during the Qing Han Dynasty. Yeah.

• 13:56Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so that's our earliest historical record, but we think it's older.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:59Greg Jenner?

  And how are people consuming it? Are they putting it in a mug and drinking it or are they chewing the leaves?

• 14:03Speaker 04

  You know, it's boiled in a big, big pan, just everybody use bowl and, you know, normally you use a bowl and you drink the whole bowl.

• 14:10Greg Jenner?

  But you can chew the leaves, can't you?

• 14:12Speaker 04

  You can, you can. So, yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's, but never, you, you never chop them into slices, no, yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  And you would be absolutely horrified. Chinese would be absolutely horrified that we put milk in.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Oh, don't even mention that.

• 14:27Greg Jenner?

  You've done it now, Hugh.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, because the milk and sugar makes something else, it's no longer tea. No, I don't, I still don't understand that. I came to this country in 1996. It's like, what are you doing?

• 14:44Greg Jenner?

  I'm so sorry. So people could boil the tea and let the leaves unfurl.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:49Greg Jenner?

  They could chew it. Would they add anything else? Would they flavor the tea? Could you put in other herbs?

• 14:54Speaker 04

  Yes, you can. You can put scallion.

• 14:57Greg Jenner?

  Scallion, okay.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  You can put ginger.

• 15:00Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  You can put orange juice or anything because it's like today, you know.

• 15:06Speaker 05

  That's all vibe, but milk, no.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, no, no.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  Scallion, what is scallion, by the way?

• 15:11Speaker 04

  Scallion, it's the Chinese onion.

• 15:13Speaker 05

  Oh, an onion.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's very smelly.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  You can put onion in your tea, but milk is a no-no.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's scallion and it cures cold too, you know, cold, when you have a cold. You put ginger, scallion and tea boil them really hot. You drink it and you sweat out and that's it.

• 15:31Greg Jenner?

  There was also a thing called tea bricks.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:34Greg Jenner?

  I mean, in my head, I'm imagining just a brick of tea, like literally just a brick of tea. What was a tea brick?

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, because, um, large quantities of tea were sent to Mongolia and Russia and they need to stay good. So they pack them into bricks. Sometimes it's a round, it's like a cake, sometimes it's bricks. Yeah, it's still doing so today.

• 15:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  The bricks going to Russia and Mongolia, Central Asia is still the same.

• 16:03Greg Jenner?

  That's great.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  And they'd be completely dry, so they wouldn't.

• 16:06Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:08Greg Jenner?

  If you accidentally put water on it, it just explodes in the truck.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  And then they go on the camels, the Silk Road.

• 16:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Silk Road is really tea road.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Doesn't sound as good though, does it?

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. But then you, you, yeah.

• 16:21Greg Jenner?

  So you've mentioned Mongolia there, so you've mentioned that. So obviously the Mongols, nomadic tribes, they become tea drinkers.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:28Greg Jenner?

  And that produces conflicts.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 16:30Greg Jenner?

  There are sort of wars fought over tea or tea is involved in these wars. Can you tell us about these?

• 16:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, you could say tea defined China's relationship with Mongolia and Central Asia in pre-modern times. Because what they needed is they, because they're, they're, they're not sedentary. They, they travel and they set up their goods and they don't have the luxuries of, of a sedentary life. So they need tea, they need iron pots, things, they need silk. So all these things can only be gotten from China. So you need to have a good relationship with China in order to get those things and then go further to Russia, to Central Asia, to the Arabs. But the problem, so it defined China's relations with her neighbors to the north.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  Because if, if relations break down, then, then there's no tea. And then the Mongols, you know, resort plundering and making, you know, incursions into, in Chinese interior to, to get tea, to get silk into it. So it's been a problem for China. And that's why, you know, China has the Great War. China built the Great War to keep them out.

• 17:44Greg Jenner?

  Because they wanted tea.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  They wanted tea.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, they wanted.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  And so Mongolia is too far north presumably, is it, for to grow tea?

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, because it's Gobi Desert, there's no water, there's, you know, well, there's water, OASs at places.

• 17:56Greg Jenner?

  But there's no mist, there's no lovely mountain mist.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  No, no, yeah, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  So it's too hot, Mongolia.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  It's too hot, the tea leaves will die, yeah. So it's a problem, yeah. And, and define China's relations. So it's interesting, will later on define China's relations with West.

• 18:10Greg Jenner?

  And, and do you know what they were swapping tea for? The Mongols?

• 18:15Speaker 05

  No.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  What grows in Mongolia? What would you have?

• 18:19Speaker 04

  Exactly, what's Mongolia famous for? That China doesn't have.

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Well, I don't know. I tell you what's not rare earth metals. Let me tell you that.

• 18:26Greg Jenner?

  No, it's not that. They're not, it's not microchips.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  No, I don't know.

• 18:29Greg Jenner?

  Think sugar.

• 18:31Speaker 05

  Horses.

• 18:31Greg Jenner?

  Horses.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Do they? It's got horses for tea.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  Yes, there is a trade. Yeah. It's Potter's system. We give you this amount of tea. You give me this amount of horses. And it was the same with Tibet. So with all the neighbors to the west, to, to, so it exists to the north and to the southwest. It's because the Tibetans and the Mongols and the Central Asians, they needed tea. And but they have horses we don't have.

• 18:58Speaker 05

  Why don't you have horses? Why no horses in China? Or not enough horses?

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, because it's agricultural. Rice growing, wheat growing civilization. It's not the steppes, you know, Mongols. So there's a.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Not hordes of people fighting on horses.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  We're settled.

• 19:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  So.

• 19:17Greg Jenner?

  So there's a famous crisis, the Tsumu crisis?

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:20Greg Jenner?

  Of fourteen forty nine. This is a huge military conflict.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:24Greg Jenner?

  And tea is the cause or it's one of the causes?

• 19:26Speaker 04

  It's one of the causes.

• 19:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  So at times, the Mongols come to harass China and break into the Great War and harass people and take rice and take grains and take tea, whatever. And the Chinese emperor decided, okay, I'm going to close the door. You know, the Great War. So it's the Great War is really hard to mount with the horses. So that you close the door.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  The Grand National.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. So, so the Mongols couldn't get their tea. I mean, they're frustrated too, you know? So there was a big war with the emperor, leading Chinese, probably fifty thousand soldiers. And they were trapped by the Mongols. And, you know, fifty thousand people plus the emperor, the emperor were, were, was captured as well. And then since then on, they, they, they cut off relations and then they resumed as well because it's, it's not a long term solution to fight.

• 20:22Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  So you have to have a system in place. And that system is open the door. The Mongols and the Russians can come in, buy tea and then you can buy their horses.

• 20:34Greg Jenner?

  There we go.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  It's interesting to fight over something which is so good for you as well, isn't it?

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Well, look what the British will do in the end.

• 20:41Greg Jenner?

  Well, yes, we'll get to the Brits.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:44Greg Jenner?

  But also, I mean, key, I mean, tea gives you that slight caffeine hit. So when you're deprived it, you're like, I want the tea. Where's my tea?

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Where's my tea? Yeah.

• 20:51Greg Jenner?

  Where's my brick of tea?

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:53Greg Jenner?

  Hugh, do you know when tea arrives in Europe?

• 20:57Speaker 05

  Not long after. When were we talking about fourteen? We were talking about the fifteenth century.

• 21:01Greg Jenner?

  We were, yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  Sixteen hundred, maybe?

• 21:05Greg Jenner?

  That's pretty good. That's a decent guess. Yeah. I mean, Yangwen, what's our earliest source? And who are the European countries receiving tea first of all?

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. According to research, we think that it's the Portuguese who first, you know, procured tea from Asia because they were the first one to settle in Macau in fifteen thirty five and then the Spanish in fifteen seventy one in, in the Philippines. So we think it's Catherine de Braganza, wife of Charles the second, who probably bought, brought tea from Portugal to Britain. The other source is the Dutch East India Company as well. And they were in Indonesia. So I think it's probably, most likely Portugal and the Dutch.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  Because the Dutch were the big company that supplies Britain was tea until the Eastern, the British East India Company came to take the lead.

• 22:03Greg Jenner?

  And the interesting thing about tea is it sort of, I mean, there are lots and lots of names for it that are very, very similar, but there are two types of name.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:09Greg Jenner?

  There's primarily cha or.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Cha.

• 22:11Greg Jenner?

  And then there's tea.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, tea.

• 22:13Greg Jenner?

  How did those two names evolve and grow? Because it's interesting that one product has two names depending on where you are in the world.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's a very interesting question because if you look at Mongolian and Russian, Turkish, Arabic words, Persian words, they're all cha, che, cha. But if you look at the English words, it's tea. So you could say by overland, it's cha, tea, right? And by overseas, the maritime route, it's tea.

• 22:43Greg Jenner?

  Oh, it's lovely, isn't it? I've actually, I've written a little nursery rhyme to help you remember, Hugh. So if it travels by car, it is cha. If it goes by the sea, it is tea. If you're waving bye bye to a shipment of chai, the landships are camels, you see.

• 22:54Speaker 05

  That's beautiful.

• 22:55Greg Jenner?

  Thank you.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  That's beautiful. That's brilliant.

• 22:58Greg Jenner?

  So Catherine de Braganza is a Portuguese royal who marries, you know, King of England and then Scotland Charles the second. That's how we maybe get into Britain. That's in the six, mid sixteen hundreds, sixteen sixties. And we then get mentioned in Samuel Pepys's diary.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:12Greg Jenner?

  So we start to see it percolate into ordinary life. Pepys is quite a rich man. He's not that ordinary, but it's no longer just the royals drinking it.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I read his diary. He said, oh, I'm just going to put everything down and have aside and have some tea.

• 23:26Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  So he must be having really tea. Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  But had, when did coffee arrive?

• 23:31Greg Jenner?

  Similar time.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:33Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, we did an episode on the history of coffee, if listeners want to check that out, but it's a similar sort of mid sixteen hundreds.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  And that's when the coffee houses start emerging.

• 23:40Greg Jenner?

  Exactly right, yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  So, so coffee at that point seems to be more popular.

• 23:46Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 23:46Greg Jenner?

  I think that's fair, isn't it? Because the coffee house is more of a social gathering place.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:50Greg Jenner?

  Tea drinking is a bit more high status.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And more private?

• 23:53Greg Jenner?

  More private.

• 23:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, you drink it at home with friends and family, have been breakfast. Yeah, I would say so.

• 24:01Greg Jenner?

  And by the mid eighteenth century, tea had become the primary drink of breakfast for the middle classes.

• 24:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:06Greg Jenner?

  Do you know what it replaced?

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Um, well, it wouldn't have been, well, boiled water. Beer.

• 24:13Greg Jenner?

  It is, yeah. Ale, a light ale. You know, obviously people weren't getting completely drunk for breakfast, but they were drinking a light ale. But by the mid seventeen hundreds, a lot of people are drinking tea, which means that it's accessible. It's not cheap, but it's available. And so when did we get direct trade between China and Britain? You know, we've obviously got these, these European merchants delivering tea via their ports. But when does Britain, when do France or these Western powers, when do they start to actually open negotiations with China itself?

• 24:41Speaker 04

  So the, what we call the China trade began probably, I'd say fifteen thirties, fifteen eighties, seventies, eighties. Then by sixteen hundreds, we got the Dutch East India Company went there and went to Indonesia and opened a factory, a trading house. And then the British followed and the French and the Flemish and the Swedish, everybody came and they, in the beginning, because they couldn't go to China, you see, that's the problem, the source. It's always the source. And these East India Companies settled in the coast of Southeast Asia, like Malaya, you know, Philippines and Indonesia.

• 25:21Speaker 04

  And what they did is they relied on Chinese merchants from China to bring tea to them in the fifteen hundreds, sixteen hundreds. By the seventeen hundreds, they began to go to China, to Canton, you know, the port for Hong Kong. They buy directly from Chinese merchants. So that's when the, when the trade.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  And why was that? Was that to guarantee the supply? So you weren't having to compete with anyone else?

• 25:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, because then you're, you're closer to the source and it's, it's not necessarily cheaper, but it's cheaper. And also you, you, it's coming from the country where tea should be coming from. So they're dealing with government merchants. From seventeen fifty seven, that was the rule, that you can only go, you go to China. And so there were a bunch of foreigners setting up their factories. We call it thirteen factories, thirteen companies, like the British East India Company, all those companies there. And then they were just buying a lot of tea from China.

• 26:21Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  When does the cutty Sark come into it?

• 26:23Greg Jenner?

  That's a bit later, isn't it?

• 26:24Speaker 05

  It is later, yeah.

• 26:25Greg Jenner?

  I think that's nineteen century.

• 26:26Speaker 05

  Is that nineteenth century?

• 26:27Greg Jenner?

  I think so. It's a sort of very far ship for getting that tea back home.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:30Greg Jenner?

  So seventeen fifty seven, the British East India Company is importing twelve million pounds of tea per year.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  It's a lot of tea.

• 26:36Speaker 05

  Weight.

• 26:37Greg Jenner?

  I think it weighs, isn't it? I think it's, you know, we're talking in terms of a tonnage, although we're using pounds.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  It's hard to imagine, yeah, yeah.

• 26:43Greg Jenner?

  And so there's even issues of legality, if you will. There's an act passed in seventeen eighty four called the Commutation Act. It is related to tea. What problem was it trying to solve, Hugh?

• 26:53Speaker 05

  Passing off.

• 26:55Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So you, so you think sort of dodgy black market or?

• 26:58Speaker 05

  Someone chopping up dandelions. Drying them, sticking them in a block.

• 27:02Greg Jenner?

  It's, it's more to do with taxation. Because tax had been applied at a hundred and nineteen percent. And this was, this was leading to tea smuggling. So you're right about kind of criminality.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:13Greg Jenner?

  And they drop it to twelve and a half percent. Which is much more reasonable.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:18Greg Jenner?

  So we, suddenly the tax rate goes from more than a hundred percent down to twelve percent. And that means that it's more affordable to import?

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Yes. And also by this time, by the late eighteenth century, the trade with China was well established. So tea was coming out regularly from China. There was no war, no, you know, nothing stops it.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  And who's imposing the tariff?

• 27:40Speaker 04

  Britain.

• 27:41Greg Jenner?

  British government, yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's British government because it's huge money. You know, even in historical archives, in even in Manchester and in Cambridge, the archives, you can see a lot of smuggling.

• 27:52Greg Jenner?

  Really?

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Yes, Danes, British, Dutch, they smuggle tea to Britain.

• 27:56Greg Jenner?

  How are they smuggling it? What are they doing? Are they, they, they pretending?

• 27:59Speaker 04

  They smuggle it to Britain because knowing that, because the, the Danes know that tea wasn't selling as, as in Denmark. So they sold to Britain, even in Manchester, in the Chinese.

• 28:12Speaker 05

  And where are the Danes getting the tea? Are they chai people or tea people? Are they coming overland?

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, because they have East India Company, Danish, East India Company is quite big. Danish and Swedish are quite big.

• 28:23Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:24Greg Jenner?

  So presumably they're going by ship then?

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 28:26Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So they're tea, tea drinkers.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  Tea drinkers.

• 28:29Greg Jenner?

  Or tea smugglers.

• 28:30Speaker 05

  Tariffs is interesting, isn't it? Tariffs have just been around forever, haven't they?

• 28:33Greg Jenner?

  Well, yeah. I mean, tariffs have, you know.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  They're back.

• 28:36Greg Jenner?

  They're back, they're back.

• 29:36Speaker 05

  Whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign, you know, there's every night you play a show and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are an expert here.

• 29:56Speaker 06

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:05Speaker 01

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• 30:37Greg Jenner?

  So it's an issue of national security, if you will, Hugh.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  Yes. I'm loving these, by the way.

• 30:41Greg Jenner?

  Thank you. I mean, we've got loads more to come. Puns are go-go. But the obvious problem is that what is Britain gonna buy their tea with?

• 30:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:50Greg Jenner?

  Because the Chinese government's getting more and more rich.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:53Greg Jenner?

  In fact, by the 18th century, I mean, you made the case when we spoke before, you said China was the richest country on the planet.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, with silver. So what happens? It's the same case with Mongolia, right? The Mongols wanted tea. We want their horse.

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  With the British, you want my tea? I don't want anything you have. Yeah, one of the missionaries, actually, Robert Hart said that Chinese people have the best food, rice, most healthy drink, tea, and the best closing material, silk. They don't need anything from the British. So what happens by the 1793? That's when Lord McCartney was sent to China to open the door for trade.

• 31:33Greg Jenner?

  Paul McCartney?

• 31:34Speaker 04

  Paul, not Paul McCartney.

• 31:36Speaker 05

  I don't think he's that old, but.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Lord McCartney, yeah. So what happens is after more than a century of trade with Europe, remember, Britain was not the only country there.

• 31:48Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  And they were not just buying tea. They were buying porcelain, they were buying silk, and they were buying loads of things. So after more than a century of tea trade, of trade with, with, with Europe, China, because China only took silver or gold as payment. You want buy tea, you pay gold. If you don't have gold, you pay silver. So can you imagine? It starts with Vasco de Gama, who sailed across in 1497. Until 1793, all the Europeans coming, and Americans too, coming to China, buying stuff, and China only took silver as payment. So by the late 18th century, China had sucked in all the world's supply of silver. And China is not buying anything from Britain.

• 32:33Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  That's a problem.

• 32:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  That's a problem.

• 32:36Greg Jenner?

  What would you offer, you know, on behalf of the British industry, you know, manufacturing?

• 32:40Speaker 05

  Well, there's no point offering milk.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 32:44Speaker 05

  We have lots of it. It's really nice. I don't know quite. I mean, what do we have? I mean, you could, they certainly don't need any mineral stuff, do they?

• 32:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 32:54Speaker 05

  They need coal.

• 32:55Greg Jenner?

  I mean, our primary medieval economy was wool.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  We don't need wool.

• 32:59Greg Jenner?

  Woolly jumpers. We've got some lovely knitwear.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  No. No.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:03Greg Jenner?

  So actually, the one thing we can offer, unfortunately, Yangwen, is opium.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Which we've got from elsewhere.

• 33:12Greg Jenner?

  Yes, yes. We're not growing opium in Lancashire, but.

• 33:15Speaker 05

  Well, you know, only under certain very special conditions.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:21Greg Jenner?

  So Yangwen, how does the opium trade, which then leads to an opium war?

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Which is the tea war, which is a tea war.

• 33:28Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:29Greg Jenner?

  So the opium war is a tea war?

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's for tea. Britain's desire for tea.

• 33:32Greg Jenner?

  Because we're forcing opium? Because it's the only thing they'll trade?

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it was the Portuguese and the Dutch who saw that the Chinese were buying opium and they were paying with silver. But at that time, 1790s, you, you look at the Dutch East India Company archive, it's a few chests. I mean, few chests, it's nothing, right? So you could say the sin of Britain is you skyrocketed that export to China so that the Chinese would pay the opium with silver.

• 34:05Greg Jenner?

  So it's been grown in India?

• 34:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:07Greg Jenner?

  And exported by the British East India Company to China?

• 34:10Speaker 04

  To China.

• 34:10Greg Jenner?

  To buy tea?

• 34:11Speaker 04

  They also bought from Turkey.

• 34:13Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  So there's Turkish opium and Indian opium. And the Indian opium is, is rated better because it's more potent.

• 34:22Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  When you, it's stronger. So large quantities of opium went into China in the early 19th century, 1810s, 1820s. By 1830s, you get people dying on the street, people going bankrupt because they're addicted. So their wives, their children, and local governments go bankrupt. Of course, the emperor had to do something. And therefore, he declares war on opium. So.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  As opposed to Britain.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 34:56Greg Jenner?

  The war on drugs.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. So it's Britain's desperation for silver in order to buy more tea from China that make them resort to grow opium in India and sell them to China.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  Why can't, I mean, if they've got so much silver, why do they need to sell anything?

• 35:18Speaker 04

  China.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  No, yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  They don't, they just stop selling.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. They're a charity. So you, you know, the emperor in his letter saying to Lord McCartney, Lord McCartney representing King George III and the East India Company went to China in 1793 and said, please open your doors to, to free trade. And the emperor says, free trade? What free trade? They just want to buy more tea? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very kind to you, you know? I allow my people to sell some tea to you. It's like a charity.

• 35:51Greg Jenner?

  Charity?

• 35:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:52Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 05

  Again.

• 35:54Greg Jenner?

  Sorry.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  That's fantastic. But what's interesting for me there is that if we sell them opium, they pay us in silver as opposed to tea. So where they sell us silver and then we use the silver immediately afterwards to buy the tea.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Later on, some people bought it. You give me tea, I give you opium. Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:13Greg Jenner?

  And so we get the first opium war of 1839 to 42. And then they, there's a sort of, there's a, there's a treaty.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. Treaty of Nanking, yeah.

• 36:22Greg Jenner?

  But we then have a second war in the 1856 to 61, which is a five-year war.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:29Greg Jenner?

  So this is a, this is a huge crisis in Chinese history. And we talked about it in our Dowager Empress Shi episode.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:35Greg Jenner?

  Is it Britain alone declaring war? Or are these all the European and American powers?

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, the first opium war is Britain alone.

• 36:42Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  And after the first war, opium war, 1839, 1842, Britain got Hong Kong and have a, you know, pied-à-terre there. And then.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  It's what it turned out to be, isn't it?

• 36:54Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you can have a base and you can go off the trade. Guess what? You know, if Britain gets something there, the French is there, oh no, I get something. And the Russians and the Americans. So the problem with after the first opium war is it didn't solve the problem of Britain's desire for tea independence.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  But is that why we then started sourcing it from India? Is that when?

• 37:18Speaker 04

  That's a bit later.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  That's slightly later.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  So after the first opium war in 1843, Robert Fortune was sent to China because Britain wanted to be independent on tea. And it's that independence, desire for independence that, you know, led to Robert Fortune's exploration in China and also led to the second opium war.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  Is the opium war why there were all the concession ports up the Chinese coast?

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, the treaties, yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, all of them. So every European country got a, got its own version of Hong Kong, essentially.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, everybody. Germany was calling for its own Macau and Hong Kong, French. So in the end, by the late 19th century, China was kind of, in Chinese words, you're sliced like a watermelon because every European country, America, has to have a treaty, have a port somewhere where they can live alone and in their enclave, have their own law. That's where it began.

• 38:11Greg Jenner?

  Right, yeah. So let's talk about Robert Fortune then. So he is a Scottish botanist. He's a collector for the Royal Horticultural Society in London. And he's sent on an espionage mission to China. You have been in a James Bond film.

• 38:26Speaker 05

  I have, yeah, I get shot in the head.

• 38:27Greg Jenner?

  I was gonna say, you, you're a scientist too.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  I mean, I think I deserved it, to be honest. There you go.

• 38:32Greg Jenner?

  What would your James Bond title be if it was espionage based on tea?

• 38:37Speaker 05

  I think I would just be called Tea. I mean, it's all letters, isn't it? Q, M, I'd just be Tea.

• 38:43Greg Jenner?

  Tea, oh nice. That would be your code name.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:46Greg Jenner?

  Agent Tea.

• 38:47Speaker 05

  Agent Tea.

• 38:48Greg Jenner?

  What does he do?

• 38:48Speaker 05

  Mr. Tea.

• 38:49Greg Jenner?

  Mr. Tea. That's a very different film.

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:52Greg Jenner?

  Pity the fool. But espionage is the word here, Yangwen. I mean, Hugh, do you know how he gets tea out of the country? Given that he's sent in as a spy?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  Well, presumably by boat, does he? Somewhere. Which way does he go?

• 39:06Greg Jenner?

  And how does he get hold of it? Because these plants are carefully defended. They are carefully guarded. So how is Robert Fortune smuggling out?

• 39:14Speaker 05

  He's disguised it. Well, presumably he's got to cut it by night.

• 39:18Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  And then disguise it as something else, like rice or something. Put it into different, not put it into bricks.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  Who knows?

• 39:32Speaker 05

  He puts it into bales of rice.

• 39:34Greg Jenner?

  That's a nice guess. And then maybe not that far off, he disguises himself is the crucial thing, right?

• 39:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:40Greg Jenner?

  So Robert Fortune does some unfortunate disguising as a Chinese person, right?

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. So he was commissioned by the London Royal Horticultural Society and he went to China. You know, in 1850s, 1840s, you're not supposed to go to China, you know, the treaty ports like Shanghai you can go, but only in the British, you know, settlement or international settlement. You're not to venture beyond because you get killed. And there's countless cases of missionaries being killed.

• 40:13Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 40:13Speaker 04

  And so you have to disguise yourself. You know, in the Qing Dynasty, men wore a q.

• 40:20Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  And with the shaved forehead, but with.

• 40:23Greg Jenner?

  So like a long ponytail?

• 40:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, long ponytail. So what you can do is you can buy a fake one.

• 40:28Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Over, and draped over you and with a hat, you know, with a hat, as if you're wearing a hat. So you can, if you don't want to shave the forehead. So you wear a hat and then with the q. So he disguised himself and he went to China in southern China, in west China, and he stole.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  Stole, literally stealing a lot of tea shrubs. And I read his memoirs and he's very funny because he looks around, anybody looking at me? But there's nobody because it's in the mountains, who's going to look at you?

• 41:04Speaker 05

  So he's just taking plants, he's taking individual plants to which you can, from which you can breed?

• 41:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, he had the rickshaw carriers, who carried them. And he was telling them, I'm looking for tea shrubs and God knows, they say, oh yeah, those are the shrubs. God knows what, what, what. Killed.

• 41:22Greg Jenner?

  So he smuggles out China's tea, which had been carefully guarded. He brings it back to British control. It's then planted in India.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:30Greg Jenner?

  And he then become, I mean, he's called Fortune. Does he make a fortune? Is he, you know, is he Fortune by name?

• 41:36Speaker 04

  He died a poor man, no.

• 41:37Greg Jenner?

  Does he?

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's too bad.

• 41:39Greg Jenner?

  Oh, that's a shame.

• 41:40Speaker 04

  It's a shame.

• 41:41Greg Jenner?

  All that hard stealing.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  I know. So the, the, the tea plants were brought to India, to Assam. The funny thing is, the tea that he stole from China are, were largely green tea because they're from south eastern China. And when they harvested the tea in Assam, it became black tea. And the only answer would be that because it was constantly under exposure to the sun and the soil is much richer than the mountainous, you know, the mountainous region, it's very thin, the, the soil upon the rocks. So that's how you, Britain has its black tea.

• 42:22Speaker 05

  Do you think, I know he didn't get paid, but I'm assuming they will have given him lifetime membership of the RHS, wouldn't they? Give him years ago too.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  He died not a, not a rich man.

• 42:32Greg Jenner?

  Exactly. He should get free tea in the gift shop, shouldn't he? Pop into the cafe.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, he enriched so many people, he died not rich.

• 42:40Greg Jenner?

  So he died without a fortune.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 42:42Greg Jenner?

  Despite being Robert Fortune.

• 42:43Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 42:44Greg Jenner?

  Of course, for our listeners outside the UK, the RHS is the Royal Horticultural Society. So the Assam tea that we now think of as black tea is actually Chinese green tea. But it just, the, the soil type and the atmospheric conditions.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  And of course, it was diversified in India as well and then moved to Africa. So it's completely changed, this issue, yeah.

• 43:03Greg Jenner?

  So by the 1880s, Hugh, if we were to measure the exports of, of tea now grown in India, let's say 1885, you can measure it either in tonnes or I'll allow the other standard unit, of which of course is large African elephants. So which of those two would you like to use?

• 43:17Speaker 05

  Is this annual, is this the annual export?

• 43:19Greg Jenner?

  Annual, annual export in weight, tonnes or elephants, please?

• 43:22Speaker 05

  I'll go for that. I think I'd go tonnes because I don't actually know how much an elephant weighs, to be honest. And it depends whether the elephant's eaten or not.

• 43:29Greg Jenner?

  True, true.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  Well, who knows, 80,000 tonnes.

• 43:33Greg Jenner?

  That's very, very generous. It's 35,000 tonnes of tea. Or importantly, 7,000 large African elephants.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 43:40Greg Jenner?

  So from that we can deduce that an elephant is what, five tonnes?

• 43:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:44Greg Jenner?

  So pretty heavy. You've got a huge amount of tea coming back into Britain and we start to get, tea companies founded, but Lipton's Tea.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:53Greg Jenner?

  You know, Lipton is a Scot again, isn't he? And he's a sort of very famous entrepreneur.

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:58Greg Jenner?

  But Chinese tea is still the good stuff or is Indian tea as good and as popular?

• 44:02Speaker 04

  I don't think people tell the difference, Indian tea or, it's green tea or black tea or red tea, whatever. But in, in the 18th century, tea was breakfast, having tea, having tea time was becoming part of British cultural institution. That's what you're famous for.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I also assume that by 1880, because there's been this sort of massive rise in the industrial north and the mill towns and things like that. Does that account for a lot of the grace in tea drink?

• 44:34Greg Jenner?

  It hugely so. Why would that be?

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Tea breaks.

• 44:37Greg Jenner?

  Tea breaks?

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:39Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely right.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:41Greg Jenner?

  I mean, there is, there is an economic historian who made the case that the Industrial Revolution is powered by tea.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:44Greg Jenner?

  Because of the caffeine and the sugar in the tea.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, Sidney Mintz wrote a book, it's called Sweetness and Power. So tea with sugar boosted the energy of working class people at 10:30 AM or 3:30 so they work longer.

• 44:57Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  They're more energetic.

• 44:59Greg Jenner?

  So higher productivity.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, so it's not like.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  And when did, did tea breaks not exist before the Industrial Revolution presumably? Did they all?

• 45:07Greg Jenner?

  I mean, tea breaks come kind of later, they come in 20th century really. The tea break is more of a sort of, you know, you do have tea in the 19th century, but the tea break as a sort of legal thing that, you know, is one.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  You've got to have one.

• 45:18Greg Jenner?

  You've got to have one, it's more 20th century. So Britain is transformed by tea.

• 45:22Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:23Greg Jenner?

  And then the Industrial Revolution makes Britain a global superpower.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, it enriched Britain.

• 45:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:29Greg Jenner?

  And so by 1923, 53% of the world's tea supply is consumed in Britain alone.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:36Greg Jenner?

  Half the world's tea is drunk by.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  It's amazing, isn't it? An amazing statistic.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  But why, I always wonder, why do you like tea so much?

• 45:43Greg Jenner?

  I don't know, we just do. It's just, it's really important to our culture, you know, it's, any crisis, sit down, have a cup of tea.

• 45:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 05

  Is there also not an element of coffee by that point, being regarded as got a bad thing? The coffee houses become sort of rather unpleasant and sort of.

• 46:01Greg Jenner?

  Coffee goes up and down, yeah. It has, it has highs and lows.

• 46:05Speaker 04

  Coffee house has a connotation of sexuality.

• 46:09Greg Jenner?

  Yes, a little bit.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And then revolution, conspiracy, that kind of thing?

• 46:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it can do.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Can you say that?

• 46:15Speaker 05

  Not this cup of coffee, let me tell you.

• 46:17Greg Jenner?

  Are you feeling rebellious?

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Not really.

• 46:19Greg Jenner?

  No.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  So tea doesn't have that, even though in, in Asia, in Hong Kong, you would still have tea house and.

• 46:25Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  Which, which in the back of tea houses, there might be a brothel or something, yeah.

• 46:29Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, but obviously in Britain, the kind of morality of, of tea drinking, the sobriety, it's sober, it's domestic, it's.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  Private and classy.

• 46:38Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  It's classy.

• 46:40Speaker 05

  There was, wasn't there, in the Victorian era, there was this sort of amazing movement towards improvement, wasn't there?

• 46:47Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  It was all about improvement and health.

• 46:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  You know, the first mention of tea is always from English doctors.

• 46:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  I read so many things about English prescribed tea. It's like, what?

• 46:58Greg Jenner?

  Really?

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:00Greg Jenner?

  There are all sorts of complaints?

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, okay.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Patients come.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  That would honestly make the NHS work. I mean, it really would.

• 47:06Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's the thing, isn't it?

• 47:07Speaker 05

  If it was tea prescribed for everything.

• 47:08Greg Jenner?

  Prescriptions, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Take, take two tea bags of tea, twice a day.

• 47:13Speaker 05

  But you're also, you know, in Victorian parks, for example, you know, all the sort of the big parks in London?

• 47:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  Victoria Park in Hackney or in Victoria Park in Manchester. They were all about improvement and, you know, everything you did in like drinking of tea.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  You know, it was all about that stuff, wasn't it?

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, the gardens and green space and at that time, I think Britain, you know, yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 05

  We were just very, very worried about what was happening in society and tea was a, a sort of a solution to it possibly.

• 47:47Greg Jenner?

  But the fascinating thing is that it sounds so calming and so tranquil and yet tea had caused these two enormous wars that destabilized China.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:55Greg Jenner?

  And changed the course of the world.

• 47:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:57Greg Jenner?

  And we need to get to the 20th century and this is where we get tea planted again in a new British colony.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:03Greg Jenner?

  Which you might, I mean, we have mentioned it, do you know where?

• 48:04Speaker 05

  Well, presumably, well, in the 19th century.

• 48:07Greg Jenner?

  The 20th.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  In the 20th century.

• 48:09Greg Jenner?

  Early 20th, very early.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  Well, lots in India presumably, but it's been, I assumed it had been there forever.

• 48:13Greg Jenner?

  After India, where did it go to next?

• 48:15Speaker 05

  Salon, Sri Lanka.

• 48:18Greg Jenner?

  That's a good guess. And one more, East Africa?

• 48:20Speaker 05

  Kenya.

• 48:21Greg Jenner?

  Kenya, very good, yeah, absolutely. So 1903, Kenya becomes a kind of plantation of tea.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:27Greg Jenner?

  And again, that's where Britain gets most of its tea today.

• 48:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:31Greg Jenner?

  So that's a.

• 48:32Speaker 05

  Is it?

• 48:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  India and Kenya, not so much from China. If you go to Fortnum and Mason.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Always, I mean, but why wouldn't you?

• 48:41Speaker 04

  And they have the Chinese tea, but the problem is they drop it very systematically by machine, you can tell. And I, yeah, so I don't know why people.

• 48:52Greg Jenner?

  I love your judgment, young man, you're so like, why are people doing this?

• 48:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:58Greg Jenner?

  It's amazing. But so, but the 20th century tea has been grown in Africa, having been grown in India, having been stolen from China.

• 49:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Well, this is amazing stuff, isn't it? You put it where you can.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  It got countless wars with Mongols and two wars with Britain.

• 49:15Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely. What I love is when I was a kid, the Asterix books, my favorite books as a kid, the joke is that the Britons would stop for a cup of tea in the middle of battle. And obviously that's not true, but there is something to it, that the Britons, we need our tea.

• 49:26Speaker 05

  Yeah. I didn't know all tea came, most of our tea came from East Africa.

• 49:30Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, yeah. So there you have it, Hugh, the not entirely ethical story of how tea became Britain's national drink. It's, are you still a fan of tea or are you, are you already compromised now?

• 49:41Speaker 05

  No, I'm, I'm perfectly happy with all that. But I don't know, I'm sort of interested in why we're fascinated by the tips of tea. That's our marketing thing, isn't it? Is that an important thing, that you only have the tip of the tea?

• 49:55Speaker 04

  No, because it, it depends, because the tip of the shrub.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  Well, PG Tips.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 05

  Is tips, isn't it?

• 50:03Speaker 04

  When you pick, when you go and pick the tea, the, the ones at the top, it's the tenderest.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  The, the ones at the bottom is, is older, so it's hard to, to.

• 50:12Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  But of course, there are people who like, you know, the older leaves and some, most people, you know, take for the younger ones at the top.

• 50:22Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  When it's budding out.

• 50:24Greg Jenner?

  Well, it's fascinating, the history of tea is the history of, you know, horticultural history, imperial history, economic history, domestic class, it's all, it's all there.

• 50:39Greg Jenner?

  So it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Hugh and I put our feet up and pop on the kettle to have a little brew for two minutes while Professor Yang Wen takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about the history of tea. So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. You have two minutes on the clock. Take it away, Professor Chung.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  On the one hand, tea has been extensively diversified because you can see bubble tea, fruit tea, right, fruit drinks. And in China, people actually drink tea with roasted peanuts, roasted sesame, roasted soybean, ginger and all those. So it's kind of a diversification. On the other hand, I think, as you said earlier, there's decline in tea drinking. I think there will be a regeneration or renewal. You know why? Because of the environmental movement, that our care for the environment, we should eat natural, drink natural. So tea is a natural thing, a plant, like a vegetable.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  You drink it and it's good for your health, it's good for the environment.

• 51:45Speaker 05

  I don't think I've ever drunk a vegetable.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's similar. You drink natural stuff, not processed and not, you know. Tea has been modernized in the tea bags and everything. So I think it's lost. So the price of progress, if you will, that you have progressed, you don't have to go tea leaves anymore. But then in that process, you lost the essence, you lost the ritual and you lost probably the nutrition of the tea. So I hope there might be a renewal of sticking to the nature.

• 52:22Greg Jenner?

  Amazing.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:23Greg Jenner?

  Thank you so much.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:24Greg Jenner?

  What do we think to that? Sticking to nature, renewal of the tea? Can we go back to the slow tea?

• 52:29Speaker 05

  Well, I don't think I've ever been at the slow tea. I mean, it's one of the things about tea is that it's quite quick, isn't it?

• 52:36Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  But I do absolutely understand the importance of ritual and I just think we take it in a slightly different way. It's a sort of, it's a kind of, the making of the tea isn't the ritual, the drinking of the tea is the ritual with other people for us, isn't it?

• 52:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:52Greg Jenner?

  I agree.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, in China, the waiting is important, whereas perhaps in the UK, it's more about pop on the kettle and have that chat that you wouldn't normally have.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:04Greg Jenner?

  So what do you know now?

• 53:09Greg Jenner?

  It's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Hugh to see how much he has learned. Hugh, I suspect you're a confident quizzer. I get the feeling that you're very good in a quiz.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, depends what it's about, of course, doesn't it?

• 53:22Greg Jenner?

  It's about tea.

• 53:23Speaker 05

  It's the thing about a quiz. Tea, maybe not.

• 53:25Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, sorry, I won't be asking you questions about, you know, which 1968 movie won an Academy Award. This is tea only. These are all things we've talked about.

• 53:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:32Greg Jenner?

  So 10 questions, here we go. Question one, which of the six types of tea is the rarest type of tea in terms of colour?

• 53:42Speaker 05

  In terms of colour, I don't remember that being mentioned, but I'm going to go for yellow.

• 53:48Greg Jenner?

  Oh, it is yellow. Well done.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 53:49Greg Jenner?

  Very good. Question two, what grade of tea is used most in the UK?

• 53:55Speaker 05

  The worst grade, the dust.

• 53:58Greg Jenner?

  It is the dust.

• 53:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:59Greg Jenner?

  That's right, absolutely. We love our dusty fanings. Question three, according to a Japanese origin myth, what horrifying act by a Buddhist monk led to the miraculous growth of a tea plant?

• 54:09Speaker 05

  It was, he removed his own eyelids.

• 54:12Greg Jenner?

  He did.

• 54:13Speaker 05

  Which isn't a very good marketing story for tea, if I might say.

• 54:16Greg Jenner?

  No, he threw them on the ground and thereby a plant grew to grow tea. But that's a weird thing to do. Question four, what did China trade tea with, with the Mongols?

• 54:26Speaker 05

  Well, they traded for horses.

• 54:28Greg Jenner?

  They did.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  Didn't they?

• 54:29Greg Jenner?

  The standard currency unit, of course. Question five, which Portuguese princess is sometimes wrongly credited with bringing tea to Europe or even Britain?

• 54:39Speaker 05

  That would be Catherine de Braganza.

• 54:40Greg Jenner?

  Very good, yes, Queen of Charles the Second. Question six, what problematic product did Britain trade for Chinese tea after running out of silver?

• 54:49Speaker 05

  Well, that unfortunately, and I can only apologize, was opium.

• 54:55Greg Jenner?

  It was. Question seven, who was hired by the East India Company to steal plants, or tea plants indeed, from China?

• 55:04Speaker 05

  I can't remember his first name, but his second, his surname was Fortune, Mr. Fortune.

• 55:09Greg Jenner?

  It was, yes, Robert Fortune.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  He didn't get paid or get a membership of the RHS. He's done literally nothing for doing that.

• 55:16Greg Jenner?

  Question eight, how did Fortune pull off his heist?

• 55:19Speaker 05

  He disguised himself. He wore a, you know, it's kind of a plait at the back and a hat and that was enough, apparently. And he went up high into the hills and he stole shrubs.

• 55:31Greg Jenner?

  He did 20,000 shrubs and several Chinese workers and off.

• 55:35Speaker 05

  He stole the workers. He took them.

• 55:36Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:38Greg Jenner?

  Follow me.

• 55:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, follow me. Show us how you do this.

• 55:41Greg Jenner?

  Question nine, by 1885, how many tonnes of tea was India exporting? You can answer in African elephants or in tonnage.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  Well, it was 35,000 tonnes. And it was 7,000.

• 55:57Greg Jenner?

  That's very impressive. I'm giving you two points there, bonus points. This for a perfect 11 out of 10. Which country was tea introduced to in 1903 and is now Britain's primary tea provider?

• 56:08Speaker 05

  That would be Kenya.

• 56:10Greg Jenner?

  11 out of 10. Never in doubt. Well done. Fantastic.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  Beautiful.

• 56:15Greg Jenner?

  So the history of tea is sort of the history of everything, really. It's all rather exciting, but unfortunately also quite tragic at times. So apologies on behalf of Britain. But thank you so much, Hugh. Thank you so much, Professor Yang Wen. And if you want more from Yang Wen, of course, we have our very funny episode on Dowager Empress Su Shi. She was quite an extraordinary woman. If you crave more facts about our fave food and drinks, we've got episodes on the history of ice cream, chocolate, coffee, spices and of course, the first celebrity chef, Alexei Soye, who's one of my faves. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I'd just like to thank our fantastic guests.

• 56:58Greg Jenner?

  In history corner, we had the brilliant Professor Yang Wen Chung from the University of Manchester. Thank you, Yang Wen.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 57:04Greg Jenner?

  Pleasure. And in comedy corner, we had the hilarious Hugh Dennis. Thank you, Hugh.

• 57:08Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 57:09Greg Jenner?

  And you lovely listener, join me next time as we leap into the kettle and steep ourselves in another unfamiliar time period. But for now, I'm off tea shopping with Yang Wen. Hopefully she can show me the least dusty options. Bye.

• 57:36Greg Jenner?

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• 57:51Speaker 02

  Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. Our vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, our bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages. And we're going there. Domestic cats, evil or genius? Pig out on Evil Animals in the Evil Genius podcast feed, first on BBC Sounds.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Molly Graham, host of Work Life, a podcast from TED. The most important lessons about work usually aren't the ones anyone teaches you. They come from experience, from uncertainty, from figuring things out as you go. On this show, my expert guests and I explore how careers really unfold through change, through doubt, through the decisions that shape who we become over time. Because those moments aren't the exception, they are the work. Listen to Work Life wherever you get your podcasts.