

A History of the World in Six Glasses Chapter 10 Summary

In Chapter 10, Standage returns to the connections between the tea and the Industrial Revolution, which began with textile manufacturing. Richard Arkwright’s mechanized spinning frame enabled the expansion of the British textile industry to the point where, by the end of the eighteenth century, British textiles were being exported to India. The workers in these new factories embraced tea, and breaks were created in the working day to allow them to enjoy this stimulating drink.

Tea’s antibacterial properties also reduced the risk of water borne diseases and allowed workers to live in close proximity to each other safely. These medicinal properties were also transferred to children through their mother’s breast milk, reducing infant mortality rates and ensuring a large workforce. The popularity of tea also created a new industry: as demand for teacups rose: crockery began to be produced in Britain and imports of Chinese porcelain stopped in 1791. One of the most popular makers of British crockery was Wedgwood, whose innovations saw the mass production of his wares.

Wedgwood’s popularity was helped by his pioneering marketing techniques, too, as he used the endorsement of the Queen to promote his products. According to Standage, the “marketing of tea and tea paraphernalia laid the first foundations of consumerism” (202). Thanks to the influence of the British East India Company, tea also played a role in the political life of the British Empire. For example, when the company asked the government to intervene in its American colonies, where tea was being smuggled from the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes, the government passed the Tea Act of 1773.

This gave the company the right to import tea directly to America from China, so that no tax would be imposed on the tea, while also giving the company a monopoly on importing tea to America. However, the American colonists resented this situation and began to boycott British goods as a matter of principle. This led to the Boston Tea Party, during which three shiploads of British tea was dumped into the Boston harbor, in what was to prove a “decisive step towards Britain’s loss of its American colonies” (206).

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, concern about the British East India Company’s political influence was growing and their monopoly on trade with all of Asia had been removed by 1834. However, the company’s significant place in the empire was guaranteed by its involvement in the opium trade, which had been made illegal in China in 1729. With the collusion of the British government, the company used opium produced in India in place of silver—which was difficult to get hold of—to buy tea. An elaborate scheme was devised so that the company would not be associated with the opium trade, which might jeopardize its access to Chinese tea.

However, in 1838, the emperor decided to put a stop to the opium trade once and for all and, as a result, the British were expelled from China, causing outrage in London. War was declared on China in 1839 and, to the surprise of the Chinese, superior European weapons secured the British a relatively quick victory. In 1842, the British seized Hong Kong and forced the Chinese to sign a peace treaty that opened the country up to free trade. After this, China suffered further military defeats and “became an arena in which Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, and Japan played out their imperialist rivalries” (212).

Even before the deterioration of its relations with China, there had been concern about Britain’s reliance on China for the supply of tea and efforts had been made to find an alternative source of tea. In 1834, the head of the British East India Company and Governor of India, Lord William Cavendish Bentick, agreed to try and grow tea in India. After a number of setbacks, it was discovered that tea was indigenous to the Assam region, although cultivating tea on an industrial scale proved more difficult than expected.

However, by 1838, the first shipment of Assam tea was sent to London and the cultivation of tea was subcontracted by the British East India Company to eager entrepreneurs. The Assam Company, which was set up to oversee tea production in India, was badly mismanaged and had difficulty finding a sufficient number of workers. Thanks to some personnel changes, the tide turned and by 1851 the company was making a profit and its products were shown at the Great Exhibition in London.

By the 1870s, the processing of tea leaves had been automated, which reduced costs and made it impossible for China, where tea production was not industrialized, to compete. After the Indian Mutiny in 1857, the British government took direct control of affairs in India and the British East India Company was dissolved. India remains the world’s largest producer and consumer of tea, and former British colonies, such as Ireland and New Zealand also rank among the highest consumers of tea, further evidence of the relationship between tea and the British Empire.


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