The first section provides background on the intertwining of tea and empire, on the development of the tea industry in Sri Lanka, and on two particular individuals who were pivotal in this process. The second section contains instructional classroom activities that can be associated with particular themes. The third section has additional websites for supplemental information.
Background
Tea and Empire
Tea plants and the custom of drinking tea originally came from China. Its specific origins are unknown, although several legends arose. One states that it was discovered when a mythical emperor was drinking boiling water, and a leaf (from a tea plant) fell into his cup and he was rejuvenated by this brew. Another story concerns the Buddha, who fell asleep while meditating. Frustrated with himself, he pulled out his eyelashes and scattered them. Tea bushes grew wherever they landed so his disciples could drink a liquid made from their leaves and stay awake while praying.
When Europeans first became acquainted with the beverage, it became an object of trade along the Silk Road, a series of trading routes that transported goods, people and ideas by land from China, across Central Asia, to Europe. Until sea-going trade developed, this was the major pattern of trade in this part of the world.
The Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company were the two main conduits for sea trade with Asia at the end of the 18th century. Both “companies” were strongly aligned with their respective governments and maintained monopolies, squeezing out other channels, although private and illegal trade could not be stopped. In the growing Americas, the Boston Tea Party in 1773 represented one aspect of revolt against the taxes on tea that were so important to the British government. In 1833 the British East India Company’s monopoly on trade was abolished, providing opportunities that introduced broader involvement in trade, including sailing ships from Salem, Massachusetts and other eastern American ports.
A railway station sign in England
Growing affluence in Europe fostered desires for luxury goods from China, including silk, porcelain and tea. By 1834, Great Britain (not including its colonies) was importing 40 million pounds of tea annually from China, but there were many trade disputes between the two countries, which led to the British mounting what became known as the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860), which China lost. This disrupted the previous trade system and allowed tea from China to enter Europe in much larger quantities.
Commercial tea production took off in the second half of the nineteenth century, just as international shipping became more viable. The Suez Canal, which connected the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, opened in 1869, at about the same time as the transition from sailing ships to long-distance commercial steamships occurred. These factors contributed to the ability to ship tea reasonably quickly over long distances, providing shortcuts, particularly between Europe and South Asia (India and Ceylon).
Wild tea plants were discovered by the British in Assam, in northeastern India, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although local people had been drinking a beverage made from these leaves for a long time, the British and other foreigners, as well as local elites, began to develop large plantations, rather than relying solely on small landholders to produce this crop. At just about the time as the British East India Company lost its trade monopoly, tea plantations in Assam began to produce tea in quantity, a process supported by the colonial government. Tea plantations were also developed in other parts of the world that could successfully grow the crop, including some islands that are now part of Indonesia and the island of Ceylon. Throughout the 1880s the amount of tea imported to Britain from China declined, while that from India and Ceylon increased.
According to Erika Rappaport, in her book A Thirst for Empire, drinking tea took on moral overtones in Britain. As industrial production increased, workers spending long hours in dismal settings needed an escape. Alcohol brought with it many social and familial problems. Tea breaks, and tea drinking, soon became acceptable in factory settings, and the temperance movement quickly embraced it. For the upper classes, afternoon tea, high tea and tea parties not only encouraged the drinking of tea, but also additional consumerism in the form of special clothing, foods, home and garden décor, etc.
The habit of drinking tea took off around the world, spurred not only by demand, but through spending on advertising and agents by tea planters and distributors. J. Lyons & Co. in London sold one million packets of tea per day in its tea shops and restaurants in London in 1927.The English and Scottish Wholesale Cooperative Society, which directly imported commodities for sale (cutting out the “middleman”) sold about 127 million pounds of tea annually in the 1930s. The Society purchased tea estates in both India and Ceylon to ensure a supply for their market. Tea was big business!
History of Tea in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s location, off the southern tip of India, made it a convenient (and sometimes necessary) stop on long sea voyages between Europe and Asia. With a varied climate and an abundance of natural resources, it was a particularly desirable location when European countries began looking for colonies for their empires. The Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, followed by the Dutch in the 17th century. Both were only able to gain a footing in the coastal areas; the interior of the island remained independent. In the late 18th century the British took possession of part of the island from the Dutch, and Ceylon, as the island was then known, became a crown colony of the British Empire. The highland region of Kandy was conquered in 1815, giving the British control of the entire island.
Coffee plants had been brought to the island by Arab seafaring traders, but no attempt was made to cultivate the plant for commercial purposes until the island was occupied by the Dutch. They had tried to grow coffee in the lowlands in 1740 but were unsuccessful. The British also were not able to grow coffee in this part of the island, but when they were finally able to control the central highlands, growing coffee in its richer soil began in earnest. Coffee plantations, or estates, were established about 1824; although initially not always successful, persistent efforts were eventually rewarded.
Picking coffee on Sir Thomas Lipton’s estate at Dambutenne, late 19th century
In the mid-1840s coffee prices dropped, causing some plantation bankruptcies, but the greater blow to the crop began in 1869. Coffee leaf rust, a parasitical fungus, started to attack the coffee plants in that year, eventually spreading to affect most of the coffee plants on the island, which then covered more than 175,000 acres. Because forests that could have blocked the airborne travel of the fungus had been cut down, the fungus spread throughout the plantations. At about the same time, James Taylor, the Scottish coffee planter, produced his first tea crop, paving the way for the start of large-scale tea plantations. More suited to the variations of climate and elevation in Ceylon than coffee, tea crops soon thrived, replacing coffee virtually everywhere on the island. Exports of Ceylon tea to Britain rose from 282 pounds in 1875 to 4,353,895 pounds by 1885. By the 1890s almost all coffee plantations had been replanted with tea. By 1900, 380,000 acres were planted with tea, requiring a large, year-roundworkforce to pluck just the newest leaves.
During the twentieth century the fortunes of the tea industry in Sri Lanka fluctuated due to government policies, weather, and the world situation. The government’s Land Reform Law of 1972, amended in 1975, was designed to reduce foreign ownership of plantations (tea and other crops) and to reduce the size of large plantations. These policies had the effect of increasing plantation lands under cooperative organization and public ownership, rather than private owners. The reforms were unfortunately accompanied by a decline in production attributed to a range of factors, including tough weather conditions and complexities of the transition to new management structures. Since that time additional policies have been promulgated to respond to some of the earlier difficulties.
In recent years about 60% of the acreage devoted to tea is cultivated by “small holders” (land holdings less than 10 acres) rather than large plantations. Another 35% of tea holdings are owned by Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs), and the remainder are overseen by the government. The RPCs are private companies with long-term leases from the government to run the plantations. While small holders represent 60% of the tea acreage, they produce 72% of all the tea. The small holdings are mostly in new or growing areas located at lower elevations, while the RPCs maintain the historic highlands plantations.
Tea Pioneers and Planters
Tea planters, their associations and their distribution channels were instrumental in increasing the popularity of tea in Britain, fostering the growth of the market for tea. As planters moved into Ceylon and other tea-producing regions, greatly affecting the local environments, so, too, did they move into the mass marketing of tea, influencing attitudes,habits and consumption.
Sir Thomas Lipton (1850-1931) is perhaps the best-known of the planters, famous for his tea, still on so many grocery shelves around the world. While in many ways he is not at all typical (his tea brand still accounts for 14% of tea sold worldwide), his life and time spent in Ceylon does illustrate some of the characteristics of the country’s tea industry.
A bungalow on Sir Thomas Lipton’s estate at Dambutenne, 1903
Born in Glasgow, Scotland to Irish parents, Lipton left home at age 14 to travel to the US, where he worked on cotton plantations in the American South. Then he worked in a grocery store in New York, learning about merchandising and marketing. In 1869 he moved back to Glasgow to take over his family’s grocery business. He was so successful, achieved partially through his policy of eliminating the “middleman” to keep prices down, that he was able to open additional shops. He followed this policy with respect to tea as well, purchasing tea plantations in Ceylon to be able to control the entire process from field to store, manifested in his advertising slogan, “Direct from the tea garden to the tea pot.” Eventually his tea company went public, and is now owned by Unilever, a huge multinational conglomerate that owns about 400 brands.
James Taylor
Perhaps the most important early tea pioneer was James Taylor (1835-1892). In 1851, as a boy of 16, Taylor left his home in Scotland and traveled 122 days by ship to reach Ceylon. There he worked on a coffee plantation and then grew cinchona (a plant used for making quinine), an alternative crop to the failing coffee. When it was realized that cinchona could not be profitable for long, Taylor first tried to make tea from leaves harvested from bushes he discovered along a road. By his own admission, these early efforts were a failure. Then he obtained seeds for tea plants.After several attempts, he was successful, producing enough to form Ceylon’s first tea crop. His other tea-related experiments led to additional changes in the production of tea, including plucking only the newest growth,and designing specialized machinery. Thus, Taylor was an innovator who contributed greatly to the early development of the tea industry in Ceylon.
Curricular Themes and Student Activities
The activities in this module include those addressing the personal qualities important for success as a tea planter, the plantation system, the use of advertising to expand the demand for tea, determining optimal conditions for growing tea, comparisons with Chinese tea, and reading charts to draw conclusions regarding comparative historical and contemporary data. Also see the labor page of this module for comparisons of plantation labor in South Asia and the Caribbean.
Lipton and Ceylon
Closely examine the 1938 advertisement for Lipton tea located HERE. What do you think is its purpose? What does each section contribute to the overall effect? How are the identities of Ceylon and Lipton tea intertwined in this ad? How does it make use of the “exotic” qualities of Ceylon? How is Ceylon and European society contrasted? Note: The impression that Lipton was one of the first to begin growing tea in Ceylon, as the ad implies, is incorrect. Lipton did not purchase his first tea plantation in Ceylon until 1890; at that time tea accounted for more than 75% of Ceylon’s highland exports.
Early Planters
The Pioneers 1825-1900: The Early British Tea and Coffee Planters and Their Way of Life
A heavily-illustrated full-text book that explores tea growing and tea planters in China, India and Ceylon. (Ceylon begins in Chapter 4, page 101, and includes a fascinating account of lifestyles of early tea planters.)
Read pages 148-160 of this publication (pages 146-159 of the original text). What do you think were the personal characteristics that made a good tea planter?
Plantations and empire
A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea 1867-1967
A full-text book by D.M. Forrest describing the history of tea in Sri Lanka, commissioned by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board.
Read pages 30-33 of this publication (pages 26-29 of the original text) from Chapter 2: The Plantation System is Born. How were plantations defined in the past? How is this different from our modern understanding of the term? What reasons are provided that made Asia attractive for colonial expansion? Why was Ceylon so valuable to the Europeans? Why were exports so difficult in the early years? In what ways did British policies fail?
Chinese tea vs. Ceylon tea
Ceylon in 1893
A book by John Ferguson that describes Ceylon, including its tea industry.
Appended to John Ferguson’s book is an editorial he wrote comparing Chinese tea with tea from Ceylon. Read The tea industry: Ceylon and Indian v. China teas from the planter’s point of view, pages 293-295 of the PDF version of this publication (pages 266-268 of the original text). What arguments does he make? Given his position in Ceylon as publisher of the Tropical Agriculturalist, a monthly publication read around the world, and author of many books on Ceylon, as well as an editor of The Colombo/Ceylon Observer, a daily newspaper, would you have expected any different? Do his remarks on British tea (i.e., tea from India or Ceylon) remind you of any recent political issues? In what ways does he disparage China and Chinese tea?
Coffee vs. tea
Ceylon in 1893
A book by John Ferguson, a publisher in Ceylon, written in 1893.
Read pages 104-110 of the PDF version of this publication (pages 77-83 of the original text) and make a list of the reasons why tea was a better crop for planters in Ceylon, regardless of the coffee blight.
Sri Lankan agricultural products
Ministry of Plantation Industries – Progress Report 2014
A government report with statistical information about tea as well asother crops.
Examine the tables and information on pages 14-29 of this publication (pages 13-29 of the original report). What conclusions can you draw about the health of the tea industry in Sri Lanka during this period? Between 2013 and 2014, was the production of tea and the price realized at auction for tea increasing or decreasing? Examining the chart on page 19, which tea-producing entities seem to be doing better than the others? Tea grown at which elevations generate the better prices? How much of the market is instant tea? Is concern for the conditions of tea workers or the environment mentioned in any of these statistics? (Note: CTC = crush, tear, curl, a method of producing tea.) Compare this historical information regarding tea prices to more recent data, found at http://teasrilanka.org/tea-prices. Have things changed?
Additional Information
The 150-year-old Story of Sri Lankan Tea-making
A succinct overview of tea picking and processing in Sri Lanka, accompanied by recent photos.
http://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-43629707
Song of Ceylon
A famous 1934 Ceylonese film that was commissioned for the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board. It contains a short segment (27:00-29:00) on the tea industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlxvC-eb-g
For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History
Introductory audio file of a book by Sarah Rose.
https://www.overdrive.com/media/798663/for-all-the-tea-in-china
Mahatma Gandhi and his Anti-Tea Campaign
A general twentieth century history of tea consumption in India, with emphasis on the role of marketing.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17905975
Object Lessons and Colonial Histories: Inventing the Jubilee of Indian Tea
An article by Erika Rappaport about “commodity chains” and commercial production of tea and empire.
How Lipton Built an Empire by Selling ‘Farm to Table’ Tea
A summary of the story of the famed tea seller.
Life Story of Sir Thomas Lipton
An overview of his life with photos, including early years, tea, philanthropy, yachting, advertising, business.
http://www.mitchelllibrary.org/lipton/index.php?a=eb00
Cousins in Ceylon
An account of the Worms brothers, among the first to bring tea to Ceylon.
https://www.rothschildarchive.org/materials/ar2004ceylon.pdf
The Ceylon Tea-Maker’s Handbook
A very practical guide by George Thornton Pett published in 1899 on how to process tea, including the tasks and machinery.
https://archive.org/stream/ceylonteamakersh00pettrich#page/n83/mode/2up
