Harmony of  Body, Mind & Spirit to Achieve Perfect Health

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    The History of Tea

Throughout the world, tea is second only to water in being the beverage of choice. It has many uses, such as to bring on sleep, restore good health, calm in times of stress, and simply add to the enjoyment of a solitary afternoon by the fire or a good old chinwag with friends. It can be taken hot or iced, plain or with lemon, milk or sugar, and drunk from a hefty mug or a dainty cup inherited from your granny. I was born and raised in England, and I have seen that tea was - and still is - the remedy for everything from bombing during the Blitz, to an argument with your spouse. The words “afternoon tea” conjure up pictures of elegant ladies sipping Earl Grey on the lawn at a garden party, and eating wafer thin cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, or of old fashioned tea shoppes offering sweet scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream.  My own favorite memories include visits to my Gran, where we’d pick herbs from her garden, brew them in her old “Brown Betty” teapot, and munch on crumpets toasted over the fire. Of course, the best part of the whole event was the draining of the dregs onto the saucer and the exciting reading of the leaves.

Strictly speaking, the word tea refers to the leaves or flower buds of the shrub Camellia sinensis and are known as pure teas; however infusions can be made from steeping any leaves, berries, flowers, root, bark or seeds in boiling water. The Chinese first brought to light the pleasures of tea drinking around 4,000 years ago, and called it “the gift of heaven”. It was first referred to in the writings of the emperor Shen Nung in about 2737BC, and legend has it that he insisted that his drinking water always be boiled, as he had noticed that those people who did so appeared healthier than those who did not. One day as the water was boiling, some leaves from an overhead branch blew into the pot; he was attracted by the fragrance, drank it and voila! The venerable cuppa was born. In 800 A.D. Lu Yu wrote the first definitive book on tea, the Ch'a Ching.

The first tea seeds were brought to Japan by the returning Buddhist priest Yeisei, who had seen the value of tea in China in enhancing religious mediation. As a result, he is known as the "Father of Tea" in Japan. Because of this early association, tea in Japan has always been associated with Zen Buddhism. Tea received almost instant imperial sponsorship and spread rapidly from the royal court and monasteries to the other sections of Japanese society. Tea was elevated to an art form resulting in the creation of the Japanese Tea Ceremony ("Cha-no-yu" or "the hot water for tea").

Dutch traders formed the Dutch East India Company, and began to trade directly with the Orient. It was taken in France in 1636 and Russia in 1638. As the popularity of tea drinking grew in England in the mid 1600s, that of beer and wine declined, minimizing tax revenue; to balance out this loss Charles II introduced the first English tea taxes in 1660. Thus the black market in tea took hold and flourished.

The social critic Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, the Marquise de Seven makes the first mention in 1680 of adding milk to tea. During the same period, Dutch inns provided the first restaurant service of tea. Tavern owners would furnish guests with a portable tea set complete with a heating unit. The independent Dutchman would then prepare tea for himself and his friends outside in the tavern's garden.

Great Britain was the last of the three great sea-faring nations to break into the Chinese and East Indian trade routes. This was due in part to the unsteady ascension to the throne of the Stuarts and the Cromwellian Civil War. The first samples of tea reached England between 1652 and 1654. Tea quickly proved popular enough to replace ale as the national drink of England. As in Holland, it was the nobility that provided the necessary stamp of approval and so insured its acceptance. King Charles II had married, while in exile, the Portuguese Infanta Catherine de Braganza (1662). Charles himself had grown up in the Dutch capital. As a result, both he and his Portuguese bride were confirmed tea drinkers. When the monarchy was re-established, the two rulers brought this foreign tea tradition to England with them. As early as 1600 Elizabeth I had founded the John company for the purpose of promoting Asian trade. When Catherine de Braganza married Charles she brought as part of her dowry the territories of Tangier and Bombay. Suddenly, the John Company had a base of operations.

By 1750, the tea craze grew into “tea gardens”; beautifully landscaped areas where the most fashionable people of the time would gather to discuss the topics of the day and to pose in all of their finery. In the mid 1800s, Anna Duchess of Bedford made popular the idea of afternoon tea in the home, when she became hungry between lunch and the evening meal which wasn’t due to be served until at least 9 pm. She asked that a few sandwiches, cake and a pot of tea be brought to her to stave off her hunger and the habit was born when she asked friends to join her on subsequent occasions.

After the advent of the East India Trading Company when England began doing business directly with the East, the first commercial tea plantations in India were started. In the 1930s another fad hit – tea dances. These were held in hotels and local halls, and attracted hundreds of people during weekend afternoons, where they would gather to eat, drink and dance to the sounds of the big bands.  During World War II, the government made sure that all factory workers were provided with tea in spite of the rations, in order to maintain morale – a ritual that was unmovable by the hand of God or man!

Tea drinking was slow to catch on in the Americas, after William Penn brought it to the Quaker colony in 1682. Then as cities such as New York grew, tea gardens as fashionable as those in England became popular; in the ten years before the Revolution, 7,800,000 gallons of tea were drunk by 1.5 million people. Alas though, the issue of taxes reared its ugly head, resulting in the famous Boston “Tea Party”, causing the rapid decline in tea as a beverage of choice.

With the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in 1900, the overland caravans were abandoned. Although the Revolution intervened in the flow of the Russian society, tea remained a staple throughout. Tea (along with vodka) is the national drink of the Russians today.
 

Herbal teas other than Camellia sinensis have been brewed for thousands of years; more often they were drunk not just for pleasure but for healing purposes. Plato referred to them in 410BC, Aristotle in 480BC and his student Theophrastus wrote “On the History of Plants”, advising of the uses of herbs. The Roman Pliny the Elder in 77AD in his work “Natural History”, referred in detail to the process of growing herbs for both culinary and medicinal uses. In England herb teas were widely used, and many of those who came to America brought seeds with them; chamomile, balm, elderflower and mints were the most widely grown. After the Boston fiasco, many folk banned the use of imported tea, and so it was only natural that domestically grown herbs took precedence; these were patriotically know as “liberty teas”. Nowadays, the increasing interest in alternative medicines and organic foods has helped revive the art of drinking tea, especially herbal which does not contain caffeine.

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