#of tea

pls pls ramble abt any niche interest you have

HELLO THANK YOU

*invokes inner history nerd* so. listen here colonizer and listen good. i will subject you to my random knowledge cuz due to youtube, undiagnosed neurodivergency and most importantly- bad jokes. i have a vari-tea of niche interests but the first thing that came to my mind was my knowledge of the history of how Indians became one of The Top Consumers of Tea.

how did this wonder-drug make its way into our masala covered hearts? what led to the fact that everyday at 4pm the word at the tip of most indians' tongues is "chai"?this is my thesis as a pro desi tea obsessed freak.

This story, like most in our history, starts with the arrival of the British. i would like to insert this picture i found in a video that i laughed at for a solid five minutes:

anyway

technically tea was invented in china, and for a very long time it was exclusively grown there. it was a very high class commodi-tea. it was considered so precious that in 1662 when king charles the second married the Portuguese princess catherine of braganza: her dowry was a chest of tea and THE ENTIRE ISLAND OF MUMBAI (then, bombay) for an annual lease of 10 pounds. let me make that clearer. THE PLACE WHERE A 1BHK HOUSE IS SO EXPENSIVE MOST PPL CANT AFFORD WAS EQUIVALENT TO THIS:

needless to say the brits was so freaking addicted man. they wanted this. so bad.

By the 18th centuary there was a war between the english and the dutch and the brit resources were down the toilet so they couldnt afford to spend all that silver on the trade of tea leaves with china. and china was uninterested in anything the white boys were offering.

UNTIL they discovered something china wanted.

✨Drugs✨

the white boys wanted that tea. and they would do anything. so they started growing opium in india (by that time they had colonized us bruh. they came into our backyard and were like "bro we're such good friends pretty please let me use ur backyard" "ok what do you want to do w it?" "i wanna grow drugs bro" "....ok" "you'll work for me no bro?" "why would i do that" "bro its ur backyard bro" "what-" *england pulls out slavery* "SHUT UP AND DO IT") (dont come at me lmao this is a very rough simplification of what happened)(imma get blocked for this?)

anyway, brits grew opium and smuggled it to china in return for TEA. FOR TEA. 40.

now after the charter act of 1833 (idk what that is exactly but basically brits lost its trade monopoly with china and so now china said we should see other people and it was an open relationship and britian got very pissed but they signed the act anyway i think)

to deal with this they established the Tea Committee (this isnt the first government board specifically for tea. there were plen-tea of others like the Tea Board Of India) which dealt w the extraction of techniques, tea seads and resources from the chinese. this was highly unsuccessful and china was not impressed. this is an example of british desperation they'll do anything at this point. (took everything in me to not insert pictures of how they treated indian farmers. it was *inhales, lets go of anger for my ancestors treatment* bad)

but in the end this qoute i found (undoubtedly by a white man) "fortune favours the white men" came tru and they got their way.

oh you thought i was done? haha babygurl i am not

in 1843 robert fortune, who was a scottish horticulturist, went on a solo trip to china to study (read as: steal) tea plantations. no actually apparently he did study cuz he published a book(i forgot the name).(yes. HIS NAME WAS ROB. FORTUNE. talk about being born for a job)

lemme insert a quick meme here:

(they actually hired him on the spot and gave the amazed man 500 pounds per annum and sent him off to china)

he was to perform what we call The Great British Tea Heist the brits had found their vigilan-tea

my guy was committed to his role and shaved his head and pretended to be a monk and after 3 months wrote a letter to his company saying "bro i got the goodssss"

lmao no this it what the letter said- "l have much pleasure in informing you," he wrote, "that I have procured a large supply of seeds and young plants which l trust will get safely to India."

NOW they finally had the greens and started planting it in india. over the years indian tea topped the market in britian as the best tea. mostly cuz the white boyz HYPED it up. they even started doing diss tracks for chinese tea. this is something read right out of an advertisment- "indian teas are more wholesome, purer, cheaper and better than chinese teas in every single way". white boyz started saying stuff like they got out of a toxic realtionship with china and a healthy one with india (but they were the toxic ones)

now brits tried to globalize indian tea to get the moneyyy~ from indians.

their first experiment with (another) government body for tea- Indian Tea Association began on the indian railways. these railways were the ancestor of the IRC-tea-C. basically they started making tea on the railway platforms. this started the trend of tea being the signature experience on every indian train journey, from the first class to economy, everyone was having it (cuz trains were introduced and quickly became popular in use). train tea was said to be better than the quality of tea in 5 star hotels. and this converted us from a nation of tea-totalers to teach addcits.

now i just have one thing to say in the end. HOW did the quality decline so badly my desi brothers and sisters? nowadays the tea on trains is basically water but brown. milk is a lie.

anyway. on the end we got it right. we took tea from the chinese and brits and we added milk and we added sugar and we got:

✨chai✨

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