The – good and bad – business of tea
When did tea become a drink for everyone, an essential like today? Well, though families like the Lansdownes would enjoy the highest quality tea with friends, family and acquaintances during visiting hours or after dinner, tea of different grades – and thus more affordable – was imported to Britain throughout the eighteenth century. This meant the middle and lower classes could also enjoy it, especially after 1784’s Tea and Windows Act drastically reduced the amount of tax on tea, meaning it could be enjoyed more than once a day by everyone.
Tea would become big business, with most of the tea imported to Britain by the end of the eighteenth century being smuggled in. Many of us know about
the colonial cut-throat ambition of the East India Companies, but the hunger for tea and the economic boom it gave to Britain would also contribute to the exploitation on sugar plantations in the West Indies, and result in the nineteenth-century Opium Wars with China as well as tea plantation indenture in India.
Why tea is so interesting to historians
You might think of a humble cup of tea, or even this beautiful Regency silver tea set, as something quite domestic and mundane. However, tea is so bound up with economic and political history, as well as having played an important role of shaping society and culture during the Georgian period. Objects like this are so interesting because they unlock so much about the history of the world during this period.
