You're Dead to Me - History of Tea: Britain’s stolen brew

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Yangwen Zheng and comedian Hugh Dennis to learn about the global history of tea, and how it became Britain’s national drink. Despite its popularity in the UK, much of our tea is grown in India and Kenya, while the tea plant itself is native to China. The story of how it made its way into Britain’s kitchens – and the nation’s hearts – is surprisingly bloody, encompassing war, colonialism, and even botanical theft. This episode charts the global history of tea from its Chinese origins, taking in the Mongol invasions, the contested role of a Portuguese princess in bringing the drink to Britain, the devastation wrought by the Opium Wars, and the theft of tea plants from China to India. Along the way, it also looks at how it moved from the tables of the rich in Britain to become the fuel of the workers, and the moment tea became a matter of national security. If you’re a fan of Chinese history, skulduggery and industrial espionage, and how European colonialism shaped the modern world, you’ll love our episode on the History of Tea. If you want more Chinese history with Professor Yangwen Zheng, listen to our episode on Dowager Empress Cixi. And for more on the history of commodities, check out our episodes on chocolate, coffee and spices. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith and Naomi Weaver Written by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids,

and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we are bustling back to the 19th century

and raising the temperature to boiling point as we learn all about the history of Britain's favourite hot bevy tea. And joining our time-traveling tea party are two very special guests. In History Corner, she's Professor of Chinese History at Manchester University

where she specialises in Ming and Qing era trade and economic history. She's the author of a number of books, including the recent Railway Imperialism in China, a political biography. And of course you'll remember her from our lovely, funny episode on the Dowager Empress Sushi. It's Professor Yang Wen Chung. Welcome back, Yang Wen. Thank you. And in Comedy Corner, he's an award-winning comedian, presenter, actor, impressionist, and writer.

What a CV. You'll have heard him all over Radio 4 on programs like The Now Show and all over the TV on TV shows like Mock the Week, not going out, have a news for you, Taskmaster, Fleabag, and the brilliant sitcom outnumbered. He's also the presenter of the Great British Dig, History in your Back Garden. It's Hugh Dennis, welcome Hugh.

Thank you very much. Lovely to be here. What a CV. You've done all sorts. I have done all sorts, and there seems to be absolutely no sort of common theme in any of it. Well, funny. Well, funny, hopefully.

Yeah. Are you sort of a big fan of history as a general, rule. Do you like history books? Do you like history program? You've presented history programs? Yeah. And I'm a man of a certain age who's become fascinated by history. You walk into bookshops and immediately.

What happens to everyone? And it's sort of I think it genuinely does happen to everyone. And I was thinking yesterday that my dad who also loved history you know, sort of men of a certain age get fascinated by their own family tree so he started researching the family tree

and he did an amazing bit of work on the family tree. and he got us back to about 1635. Wow. He got Dennises back to 1635. And he presented this charts to me and my brother of all the Dennises have ever existed that anyone can find. And we both looked at, that is amazing. It was a vast thing.

And then I looked at my own date of birth, and he'd got it wrong. It was only a year. But it seems significant. And what about tea? Are you a tea drinker? You asked for coffee on the way in this morning. Well, it's the time of day thing for me. So I have coffee for...

I have two cups of coffee a day, and the rest of the day I'm drinking tea. Okay. And it's slightly too early for tea, for me. Is it too early for tea, Yang Wang? No, I don't drink coffee, so I only drink tea. Okay. So coffee is tea for me in the morning.

No alternatives to tea? Water. No, water juice. Yeah. Okay, all right. But no coffee? No. Never.

So, what do you know? But that brings us on to the first segment of the podcast. It's called The So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are a lovely listener or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject, and you definitely know what tea is. Everyone knows what tea is. After all, in the UK, it's estimated that 76 million cups of tea are drunk every single day,

and that's just me and my wife. So tea is consumed all over the world in a variety of ways. You'll surely have heard of green tea, black tea, matcha, u-long, and now, of course, bubble. I don't know what it is, but I've heard about it. And in terms of its history, maybe you're imagining Regency ladies sipping tea from their delicate bone china in their drawing rooms, perhaps the elaborate tea ceremonies of Imperial China and Japan, perhaps you went with pop culture memories of the Madhatter Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland, or the famous southern sweet tea drunk in steel magnolias, which Dolly Parton, of course, called the Housewine of the South. And also, you can drink tea in space, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard famously ordered, tea, Earl Grey, hot. So, when was tea first drunk? How did it make its way to Britain? And is the nation's favourite drink really made from dust? Let's find out. Right, Professor Yang Wen will start with the basics.

Tea is from a plant. Indeed. What plant? It's called chamelea senesis and it's a shrub, basically. Okay. Perennial and it grows in probably 1,000. to 7,000 above sea level. So that's a white range.

Feet or mesas? Feet, yeah. So, and some of the flowers, some of the shrubs have yellow flowers. Some don't. Depends on the species because there's variations in between. And if you go to Southern China,

it's all over the place. Really? Yes, it's all over the place. There are different species within the tea family. So it's not, it's not growing in lowlands, it needs height? It depends. It depends.

Because the higher you get, then you get, you know, in the mountains, you get mist. So that mist moisture makes a difference to the tea. Then if you grow on a low land, you get a lot of sunshine. Of course, the soil makes a difference as to the potency of the plant. So it depends. Mostly it's on sloping mountains if you... go and visit China. And is it like vines?

Does it need south-facing slopes? Yeah, because you face the sun, and then you get the sunshine. And the moisture in the mountains, the mist and rainwater also nourishes it. So that's why you have green tea and yellow tea and white tea and black tea. Black tea is red tea, basically. It gets a lot of sunshine.

Black tea is red tea? Yeah, yeah. Why don't they call it red tea? I don't know. Yeah. You've said black, white, yellow. Yellow. And there's also Uolong.

Uolong and Purore. What's Purohr? Pura is more famous in Yunnan, in southern China, close to Burma and Vietnam. Uolong is more in southeast China, like Fujian, across from Taiwan. Taiwan has a lot of Wulong too. Okay. Yeah, so it's regional variation. So there's six types.

of this plant, the six types of tea? Yeah, you could say that. Okay. Yeah, green, black, you call black, we call red. And then yellow, white. Yellow is very rare. White is also rare. Okay.

Yeah, and then the regional variations. But there are more variations than that. And that doesn't include the royalty. And what about all the ones, the versions that we have, sort of like, I'm desperately trying to think, an Earl Grey or something. Where does that fit into those? I think your Earl Grey comes from Africa.

I love your Earl Grey. And it's pirated from China to India and then from India to Africa. The tea we drink in Britain are cut into pieces. That is not the way to drink tea. You should see the leaves. Plus the what rubber fortune stole from China. It's not the best tea. We'll get to that.

We'll get to all of that. Okay, so it's quite confusing. But only when you drink the whole thing, you get the whole ritual, you get the body, the whole thing, not chopped. No, yeah. Tea bags, yeah, it's too bad. Banting. And the processing also breaks down into there's leaf. Yes.

Then there's broken leaf. Yes. And then there's two more. Yes, there's fannings, there's dust. Yeah. So the left-up. Overs. Okay.

Sorry to say that. So, leaf, broken leaf, fannings and dust. We probably wouldn't drink that much tea if it was called dust. Well, there are various, you know, fairly popular forms of dust, I think. Sure. Sure. But coffee is dust. How do you strain the dust?

I mean, how do you stop it? Because dust must presumably have, you know, you must get bits in your mouth. Yeah, you can sift it. You can sift it. But in China, we don't drink dust. We drink leaves. We're doing it wrong, Hugh. You don't...

Yeah, but I didn't mention dust, I don't know. Yeah. But who drinks dust then? We do. You do. This is what we do. We drink the dusty fannings. Yeah.

Okay. Which sounds like a kind of country in Western singer, doesn't it? Yeah, you put it in a bag that, yeah. Okay, so we're drinking the dust, we're drinking the fanings. Yangwen, can we start with some history? When did, you know, people in China first experiment with dunking these leaves into hot because that's the process of creating teas. You take a plant and you boil it.

Yeah. There's a myth. Yellow emperor, he's sitting there boiling water under the tree and then the leaves, drops, and then here's the tea. But I think in reality, in history, I think the origins has something to do as Chinese herbal medicine because Chinese people believes every herb, every plant, every grass, everything, every vegetable,

has medicinal effects and tea was known for keeping you awake and for making your mind clear and it was said to cure a lot of problems like stomach, egg, you know, kidney stone, whatever. So I think the real origin has something to do with history, medicine, rather than the emperor sitting there, the tree leaves. We have an equivalent one, don't we?

We have Isaac Newton sitting in being hit on the head by an apple. That's true. But you didn't invent cider at that point. You discover gravity. Well, that's probably more important, I don't know. I mean, the Yellow Emperor, we're talking four and a half thousand years ago. Way back in the Bronze Age, the story goes that Wind just blew some tea leaves into his hot water. And he was like, hmm, this is tasty.

Would you keep drinking if Wind randomly blew a shrub into your mug? No, I do genuinely quite often think about how many people died finding the edible bits of plants. Yeah. Because thousands of people must have died. going, why don't you, these potatoes look nice, why don't you have the leaves? I'll have the body of it. Yeah.

And then, you know, there must have been an element of trial and error, but I don't think I would, no, I think I'd go and get a strainer of some sort and make a new cup. Yes, I agree. If something blew into my mug, it wouldn't go, maybe this is delicious. There is another myth about how tea was made,

or rather how tea made its way, from China to Japan. I mean, Yang, I mean, it's quite a dramatic myth. Yeah. We have a Buddhist monk trying to meditate. Right, keep himself awake, so he keeps drinking tea. Buddhism went to Japan from China. Oh, okay. Yeah, during the town dynasty.

So most of the Buddhist monks will have to come to China and to be trained. And so that's where he learned to drink tea. And to keep himself awake, keep praying all the time, he would cut his eyelids. So that's the myth. He would cut his eyelids. Yeah, he sliced them off. Yeah. And the myth goes that after seven years of trying to be sleepless in devotion,

he cut off his eyelids so he wouldn't fall asleep. He threw them to the ground, and that is where a tea plant miraculously grew. Yeah, that's a myth. So I've got seeds in his eyelids. Slicing off your eyelids, it's an eye-opening history, but there we go. So, Yangham, you've said that tea was regularly consumed during the Western, so Han Dynasty. So Han Dynasty, where is that in history?

Is that sort of the first emperor? You know, are we talking... Yeah, right after. So it's 2,000 years ago, 2,200 years ago. I think the real history probably existed before then. It's because after the First Emperor, we have records. We have history keeping records so that then you know. We also know that they taxed government taxed tea.

So that's why we know, say, at least it definitely began to, you know, to be very popular during the Qing Han dynasty. Yeah. Okay. So that's our earliest historical... record but we think it's older. And how are people consuming it? Are they putting it in a mug and drinking it or are they chewing the leaves? You know, it's boiled in a big, big pan. Just everybody use a bowl and, you know, normally you use a bowl and you drink the whole bowl. But you can chew the leaves, can't you? You can. So, yeah, it's, yeah, it's, but never, you never chop them into slices,

no, yeah. And you would be absolutely horrified. Chinese would be absolutely horrified that we put milk in. Oh, don't even mention that. You've done it now, Hugh. Yeah, because the milk and sugar makes something else. It's no longer tea. No, I still don't understand that. I came to this country in 1996. It's like, what is he doing?

I'm so sorry. So people could boil the tea and let the leaves unfurl. They could chew it. Would they add anything else? Would they flavor the tea? Could you put in other herbs? Yes, you can. You can put scallion.

Scallion, okay. Yeah, you can put ginger. Right. You can put orange juice or anything. Because it's like today, you know. That's all vibe, but milk? Yeah. No.

No. No. Scalian. What is scallion, by the way? Scalian. It's the Chinese onion. Oh, an onion. Yeah, yeah.

It's very smell. You can put onion in your tea, but milk is a no-no. Yeah, it's scalyon. And it cures cold too, you know. Cold, when you have a cold. Okay. ginger, scullion and tea boil them really hot. You drink it and you sweat out and that's it.

There was also a thing called tea bricks. Yes. I mean, in my head I'm imagining just a brick of tea, like literally just a brick of tea. What was a tea brick? Yeah, because large quantities of tea were sent to Mongolia and Russia, and they need to stay good. So they pack them into bricks. Sometimes it's around. It's like a cake.

Sometimes it's bricks. It's still doing so today. Yeah. The bricks going to Russia and Mongolia, Central Asia is still the same. That's great. And they'd be completely dry, so they wouldn't. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If you accidentally put water on it, it just explodes in the truck. And then they go on the camels, the Silk Road. Yeah. The Silk Road is really T-road. It doesn't sound as good, though, does it? Yeah. But then you, yeah. So you've mentioned Mongolia there.

So you've mentioned it. the Mongols nomadic tribes, they become tea drinkers. And that produces conflicts. There are sort of wars fought over tea or tea is involved in these wars. Can you tell us about these? Yeah. You know, you could say tea defined China's relationship with Mongolia and Central Asia in pre-modern times because what they needed is they,

because they're not sedentary. They travel and they set up their goods and they don't have the... luxuries of a sedentary life. So they need tea, they need iron pots, things, they need silk. So all these things can only be gotten from China. So you need to have a good relationship with China in order to get those things and then go further to Russia, to Central Asia, to the Arabs. But the problem, so it defined China's relations with her neighbors to the north.

Because if relations break down, then there's no tea. And then the Mongols, you know, resort plundering and making incursions into, in Chinese interior to get tea, to get soaked into it. So it's being a problem for China. And that's why, you know, China has the Great War. China built the Great War to keep them out. Because they wanted tea. They wanted tea. Yeah, they wanted tea.

And so Mongolia is too far north, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because it's Gobi Desert. There's no water. Well, there's water OAS at places. But there's no mist. There's no lovely mountain mist.

No, no, yeah. So it's too hot, Mongolia. It's too hard. The tea leaves will die, yeah. So it's a problem, yeah. And define China's relations. So it's interesting. Well, later on, define China's relations with West.

And do you know what they were swapping tea for, the Mongols? No. What grows in Mongolia? What would you have? Exactly. What's Mongolia are famous for that the China doesn't have? Well, I don't know. I tell you it was not rare earth metals. Let me tell you that. No, it's not that. They're not, it's not my own chips. Think sugar. Horses? Horses, do they? It's what horses for tea.

Yes, there is a trade. Yeah. It's butter system. We give you this amount of tea. You give me this amount of horses. And it was the same with Tibet. So with all the neighbors to the west, so it exists to the north and to the southwest. is because the Tibetans and the Mongols and the Central Asians, they needed tea, but they have horses we don't have. Why don't you have horses? Why are no horses in China? Or not enough horses? Yeah, because it's agricultural, rice growing, wheat growing civilization. It's not the steppies, you know, Mongols.

So there's a... Not hordes of people, fighting on horses. No, no, we're settled. Yeah, yeah. So there's a famous crisis, the Tumu crisis? of 1449, this is a huge military conflict. And tea is the cause, or it's one of the causes? It's one of the causes.

Yeah. So at times, the Mongols come to harass China and break into the Great War and harass people and take rice and take grains and take tea, whatever. And the Chinese Emperor decided, okay, I'm going to close the door, you know, the Great Wall. So the Great War is really hard to mount with the horses. So that you close to the door.

It's about the Grand National. Yeah. Yeah. So the Mongols couldn't get their tea. I mean, they're frustrated too, you know. So there was a big war with the emperor leading Chinese, probably 50,000 soldiers. And they were trapped by the Mongols and, you know, 50,000 people plus the emperor, the emperor was captured as well. And then since then on, they cut off relations and then they resumed as well. because it's not a long-term solution to fight. Right.

So you have to have a system in place, and that system is open the door. The Mongols and the Russians can come and buy tea, and then you can buy their horses. Yeah. It's interesting to fight over something which is so good for you as well, isn't it? Well, look at what the British world do in the end.

Well, yes, we'll get to the Brits. Yeah, yeah. But also, I mean, tea gives you that slight caffeine hit. So when you're deprived it, you're like, I want the tea, where's my tea? Where's my tea, yeah. Where's my brick of tea? Yeah. Hugh, do you know when tea arrives in Europe?

Not long after, I thought. When were we talking about 14? We were talking about the 15th century. We were, yeah. 1,600 maybe? That's pretty good. That's a decent guess, yeah. Yang Wen, what's our earliest source?

And who are the European countries receiving tea, first of all? Yeah. According to research, we think that it's the... The Portuguese who first procured tea from Asia, because they were the first one to settle in Macau in 1535, and then the Spanish in 1571 in the Philippines. So we think it's Catherine, the Braganza, wife of Charles II, who probably bought a brought tea from Portugal to Britain. The other source is the Dutch East India Company as well. and they were in Indonesia.

So I think it's probably, most likely, Portugal and the Dutch, because the Dutch were the big company that supplies Britain was tea until the British Indian India Company came to take the lead. And the interesting thing about tea is sort of, I mean, there are lots and lots of names for it that are very, very similar, but there are two types of name. Yeah. There's primarily char, and then there's tea.

Yeah, te. How did those two names evolve, and grow, because it's interesting that one product has two names depending where you are in the world. Yeah. It's a very interesting question because if you look at Mongolian and the Russian, Turkish, Arabic words, Persian words, they're all cha, cha, cha. But if you look at the English words, it's tea. So you could say by overland, it's jar tea, right? And by overseas, the maritime route, it's tea.

That's lovely, isn't it? I've actually, I've written a little nursery rhyme to help you remember. Thank you. So if it travels by car, it is char. If it goes by the sea, it is tea. If you're waving by to a shipment of chai, the landships are camels, you see. That's beautiful. Thank you. That's brilliant. So Catherine de Brigenza is a Portuguese royal who marries the king of England and Scotland, Charles II. That's how we maybe get it into Britain. That's in the mid-1600, 1660s.

And we then get mentioned in Samuel Pepys's diary. Yes. So we start to see it percolate into ordinary life. Peeps is quite a rich man. He's not that ordinary, but it's no longer just the royals drinking it. Yeah. I read his diary.

He said, oh, I'm just going to put everything done and have aside and have some tea. Yeah. So he must be having really tea, yeah. But when did coffee arrive? Similar time. Yeah.

We did an episode on the history of coffee if listeners want to check that out, but it's a similar sort of mid-1600. And that's when the coffee houses started. Yeah, exactly right, yeah. So coffee at that point seems to be more, popular. I think that's fair, isn't it?

Because the coffee house is more of a social gathering place. Yeah. Tea drinking's a bit more high status. And more private? More private? Yeah, you drink it at home, with friends and family have been breakfast. Yeah, I would say so. And by the mid-18th century, tea had become the primary drink of breakfast for the middle classes.

Do you know what it replaced? Well, it wouldn't have been, well, boiled water. Beer. It is. Yeah. Ale, a light ale. Obviously, people weren't getting completely drunk for breakfast, but they were drinking a light ale, but by the mid-1700s.

A lot of people are drinking tea, which means that it's accessible. It's not cheap, but it's available. And so when do we get direct trade between China and Britain? You know, we've obviously got these European merchants delivering tea via their ports, but when does Britain, when to France or these Western powers, when do they start to actually open negotiations with China itself? So what we call the China trade, began probably, I'd say, 1530s, 1580s, 70s, 80s.

Then by 1600s, we got the Dutch East India Company went there and went to Indonesia and opened a factory trading house. And then the British followed and the French and the Flemish and the Swedish. Everybody came. And in the beginning, because they couldn't go to China, you see that's the problem, the source. It's always the source. And these East India companies settled in the coast of Southeast Asia, like Malaya, you know, Philippines and Indonesia.

And what they did is they relied on Chinese merchants from China to bring tea to them in the 1500s, 1600s. By the 1700s, they began to go to China to Canton, you know, the port for Hong Kong. They buy directly from Chinese merchants. So that's when the trade... And why was that to guarantee the supply? So you weren't having to compete with anyone else? Yeah, because then you're closer to the source. And it's not necessarily cheaper, but it's cheaper.

And also, it's coming from the country where she should be coming from. So they're dealing with government merchants. From 1757, that was the rule that you can only go to China. And so there were a bunch of foreign... setting up their factories, we call it 13 factories, 13 companies like the British Instillian Company or all those companies there, and then they were just buying a lot of tea from China.

Yeah. When does the Cutty Sark come into it? That's a bit luther, isn't it? It is later, yeah. It's 19th century. I think so. It's a very fast ship for getting that tea back home. So 1757, the British East India Company is importing 12 million pounds of tea per year.

It's a lot of weight. I think it weighs, isn't it? I think it's, you know, we're talking in terms of a ton of. a tonnage, although we're using count. It's hard to imagine, yeah. And so there's even issues of legality, if you will. There's an act passed in 1784 called the Commutation Act. It is related to tea.

What problem was it trying to solve you? Passing off. Okay, so you think sort of dodgy black market or... Someone chopping up dandelions. Drying them, sticking in a block. It's more to do with taxation. Because tax had been applied at 119%. And this was...

this was leading to tea smuggling. So you're right about kind of criminality. Yeah. And they drop it to 12.5%. Which is much more reasonable. Yeah. So suddenly the tax rate goes from more than 100% down to 12%.

And that means that it's more affordable to import. Yes. And also by this time, by the late 18th century, the trade with China was well established. So tea was coming out regularly from China. There was no war, you know, nothing stops it. And who's imposing the tariff? Britain.

British government, yeah. It's British government because it's huge money. You know, even in historical archives, even in Manchester and in Cambridge, the archives, you can see a lot of smuggling. Really? Yes, Danes, British, Dutch, they smuggled tea to Britain. How are they smuggling it? What are they doing?

They're pretending. They smuggled it to Britain because knowing that, because the Danes know that tea wasn't selling as in Denmark. So they sold to Britain. Even in Manchester in the Chinese. And one of the Danes getting the tea, are they chai people or tea people? Yeah. Are they coming over land?

Yeah, because they have Eastern Company. Danish, Eastern Company is quite big. Danish and Swedish are quite big. Okay. Oh, yeah. So presumably they're going by ship then? Yes. Okay, so they're tea drinkers.

Tea drinkers. Yeah. Probably tea smugglers. Tariffs is interesting, isn't it? Tariffs have just been around forever, haven't they? Well, yeah. I mean, tariffs have, you know. They're back.

They're back. Yeah. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme.

Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. So it's an issue of national security. if you will hear. Yes. I'm loving these, by the way. Thank you. I mean, you've got loads more, you're welcome. Pons are go-go.

But the obvious problem is that what is Britain going to buy their tea with? Yeah. Because the Chinese government's getting more and more rich. Yeah. In fact, by the 18th century, I mean, you made the case when we spoke before. You said China was the richest country on the planet. Yeah, with silver. So what happens, it's the same case with Mongolia.

Right? The Mongols wanted tea. We want their horse. Yeah, yeah. With the British, you want, My tea, I don't want anything you have. No. Yeah, one of the missionaries, actually Robert Hart said that Chinese people have the best food, rice, most healthy drink tea and the best clothing material.

So, they don't need anything from the British. So what happens by the 1793, that's when Lord McCartney was sent to China to open the door for trade. Paul McCartney. Paul, no, not Paul. That'd be lovely, wouldn't it? I don't think he's that old. No. So what happens is after more than a century of trade with Europe, remember Britain was not the only country there.

Sure. And they were not just buying tea. They were buying porcelain. They were buying silk and they were buying loads of things. So after more than a century of tea trade, of trade with Europe, because China only took silver or gold as payment. You want to buy tea, you pay gold. If you don't have gold, you pay silver. So can you imagine it starts with Vasco de Gamma, who sailed across in 1497, until 1793, all the Europeans coming, and Americans do, coming to China, buying stuff and China only took silver as payment.

So by the late 18th century, China had sucked in all the world's supply of silver. And China is not buying anything from Britain. Right. That's a problem. Yeah. That's a problem. What would you offer, you know, on behalf of the British industry, you know, manufacturing? Well, I was no point offering milk.

I mean, we do. We do, and we have lots of it. It's really nice. I don't know quite. I mean, what do we have? I mean, you could, they certainly don't need any mineral stuff to them. No, no. I mean, our primary medieval economy was wool.

We don't need wool. We don't need wool. We've got some lovely knitware, no. No. Yeah. So actually, the one thing we can offer, unfortunately, Yang Wen, is opium. Yep. Yep.

Which we've got from elsewhere. Yes. Yes. We're not growing opium in Lancashire. Well, you know, only under certain very special conditions. So, Yangon, how does the opian trade, which then leads to an opium war? Which is the tea war. Which is a tea war. Right, okay. Yeah. So the opium war is a tea war. Yeah, it's for tea. Britain's desires a tea. Because we're forcing opium, because it's the only thing they'll trade.

Yeah. So it was the Portuguese. Dutch who saw that the Chinese were buying opium and they were paying with silver. But at that time, 1790s, you look at the Dutchist in your company archive. It's a few chests. I mean, few chests is nothing, right? So you could say the sin of Britain is you skyrocketed that export to China so that the Chinese would pay the opium with silver. So it's been grown in India and exported by the British East India Company to China.

To buy tea. They also bought from Turkey. Right. So there's Turkish opium and Indian opium. And the Indian opium is rated better because it's more potent when it's stronger. So large quantities of opium went into China in the early 19th century. 1810s, 1820s, by 1830s, by 1830s, you have, get people dying on the street, people going bankrupt because they're addicted.

So there's their wives, their children, and local governments go bankrupt. Of course, the emperor had to do something. And therefore, he declares war on opium. So the... As opposed to Britain. Exactly. The war on drugs. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's Britain's desperation for silver in order to buy more tea from China. that make them resort to grow opium in India and sell them to China. Why can't, I mean, if they've got so much silver, why do they need to sell anything? China. Yeah.

No, yeah. They don't. They just stop selling. Yeah. They're a charity. So, you know, the emperor in his letter saying to Lord McCartney, Lord McCartney is representing King George III and the East India Company,

went to China in 1793 and said, please open your doors to free trade. And the emperor says, free trade? What, free trade? They just want to buy more tea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very kind to you, you know. I allow my people to sell some tea to you. It's like a charity.

Charity. Yeah. Yeah. Again. Sorry. That's fantastic. But what's interesting for me there is that if we sell them opium, they pay us in silver as opposed to tea.

So where they sell us silver, and then we use the silver immediately after. afterwards to buy the tea. Yeah, later on, some people bought it. You give me tea, I give you opium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so we get the first opium war of 1839 to 42. And then there's a sort of, there's a treaty. Yeah. Treaty of Nanking, yeah. But we then have a second war in the 1856 to 61, which is a five-year war. So this is a huge crisis in Chinese history. And we talked about it in our Dowager and Pissishi episode. Yeah.

Is it Britain alone declaring war, or are these all the European and American powers? Yeah, the first European war is Britain alone. Right. And after the first war, Opium War, 1839, 1842, Britain got Hong Kong and have a, you know, Pierre d'Ater there. And then... It's what it turned out to be, isn't? Yeah, so you can have a base and you can go off trade. Guess what?

You know, if Britain gets something there, the French is there, oh, no, I get something. And the Russians and the Americans... So the problem with after the first European war is it didn't solve the problem of Britain's desire for tea independence. But is that why we then started sourcing it from India? Is that when... That's a bit later. That's a bit later.

So after the first European war in 1843, Robert Fortune was sent to China because Britain wanted to be independent on tea. And it's that independence, desire for independence, that led to Robert Fortune's exploration in China and also led to the Second Opium War. Is the Opium War why they were all the concession ports up the Chinese coast? Oh yeah, the treaties, yeah. Yeah, all of them.

So the European country got its own version of Hong Kong, essentially. Oh, yeah, everybody. Germany was calling for its own Macau and Hong Kong, French. So in the end, by the late 19th century, China was kind of, in Chinese words, you are sliced like a watermelon because every European countries, America has to have a treaty, have a port somewhere where they can live alone

and in their enclave, have their own law. That's where it began. Right, yeah. So let's talk about Robert Fortune then. So he is a Scottish botanist. He's a collector for the Royal Horticultural Society in London and he's sent on an espionage mission to China. You have been in a James Bond film.

I have, yeah, I get a shot in the head. I was going to say, you're a scientist. I mean, I don't think I deserved it. to be honest, but there you go. What would your James Bond title be, if it was espionage based on tea? I think I would just be called T. Tea? I mean, it's all that, isn't it?

Yeah. I'd just be T. T. Oh, nice. That would be your code name. Yeah. Agent Tee. What does he do? Mr. T. Mr. T. That's a very different film. Yeah. Pity the fool.

But espionage is the word here, Yang Wain. I mean, Hugh, do you know how he gets tea out of the country, given that he's sent in as a spy? Well, presumably by boat, does he? Somewhere. Which way does he go? And how does he get hold of it? Because these plants are carefully defended.

They are carefully guarded. So how is Robert Fortune smuggling out? He's disguised it. Presumably he's got to cut it by night. Oh, okay. And then disguise it as something else, like rice or something. Put it into different, not put it into bricks.

Who knows? It puts it into bales of rice. That's a nice guess. And then maybe not that far off. He disguises himself. It's the crucial thing, right? Yes. So Robert Fortune does some unfortunate disguising as a Chinese person, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So he was commissioned by the London Royal Horicultural Society, and he went to China. You're not in 1850s, 1840s, you're not supposed to go to China. you know, the treaty ports, like Shanghai, you can go, but only in the British settlement or international settlement, you're not to venture beyond because you get killed.

And there's countless cases of missionaries being killed. Right. And so you have to disguise yourself. You know, in the Qing Dynasty, men wore a cue. Yeah. And with the shaved forehead. So a long ponytail? Yeah, long ponytail.

So what you can do is you can buy a fake one. Well, right. Over and draped over you and with a hat, you know, with a hat, as if you're wearing a hat. So you can, if you don't want to shave the forehead. So you wear a hat and then with the queue. So he disguised himself and he went to China in southern China, west China. And he stole, stole, literally stealing a lot of tea shrubs. And I read his memoirs and he's very funny because.

He looks around, anybody looking at me? But there's nobody, because it's in the mountains. Who's going to look at you? So he's just taking plant. He's taking individual plants from which you can breed. No, he had the rexswart carriers, who carried him. And he was telling them, I'm looking for tea shrubs.

And God knows, they said, oh, yeah, those are the shrubs. God knows what's, what's killed. So he smuggles out China's tea, which has been carefully guarded. He brings it back to British control. It's then planted in India. Yeah. And he then becomes, I mean, he's called fortune.

Does he make a fortune? Is he rob a fortune by name? He doesn't die a poor man, no. Does he? Yeah, yeah, it's too bad. Oh, that's a shame. It's a shame. All that hard stealing.

I know. So the tea plants were brought to India, to Assam. The funny thing is, the tea that he stole from China were largely green tea because they're from south-eastern China. And when they harvested the tea in Assam, it became black tea. And the only answer would be that because it was constantly under exposure to the sun, and the soil is much richer than the mountainous region. It's very thin the soil upon the rocks.

So that's how Britain has its black tea. I know you didn't get paid, but I'm assuming they will have given him lifetime membership of the RHS, wouldn't we? He died not a rich man He should get free tea in the gift shop, shouldn't he? Yeah, he'll pop into the cafe. Yeah, he enriched so many people. He died not rich. So he died without a fortune despite being Robert Fortune.

Of course, for our listeners outside the UK, the RHS is the Royal Horticultural Society. So the Assam tea that we now think of as black tea is actually Chinese green tea. But it's just the soil type and the atmospheric conditions. And of course it was diversified. specified in India as well, and I moved to Africa, so it's completely changed. Yeah. Yeah. So by the 1880s, Hugh, if we were to measure the exports of tea now grown in India, let's say 1885, you can measure it either in tons or I'll allow the other standard unit,

which of course is large African elephants. So which of those two would you like to use? Is this annual? Is this the annual export? Annual export in weight, tons or elephants, please? I go for that. I think I get tons because I don't actually know how much an elephant weighs, to be honest. and it depends whether the elephant's eaten or not. True, true. Well, who knows, 80,000 tonnes. That's very generous. It's 35,000 tonnes of tea.

Or, importantly, 7,000 large African elephants. Oh, okay. So from that we can deduce that an elephant is, what, 5 tonnes? Yeah. So pretty heavy. We've got a huge amount of tea coming back into Britain, and we start to get tea companies founded, but Lippton's tea.

Yeah. You know, Lipson is a Scott again, isn't he? Yeah. and he's a sort of very famous entrepreneur. But Chinese tea is still the good stuff, or is Indian tea as good and as popular? I don't think people tell the difference in Indian tea. It's green tea or black tea or red tea, whatever.

But in the 18th century, tea with breakfast, having tea, having tea time, was becoming part of British cultural institution. That's what you're famous for. Yeah, and I also assume that by 18, 18, because there's been this sort of massive rise in the industrial north. Yeah, the mill town, things like that. Does that account for a lot of the grazing tea drink?

Yeah. Yeah. Hugely said. Why would that be? Tea breaks. Tea breaks. Yeah. Absolutely right. Yeah.

I mean, there is an economic historian who made the case that the Industrial Revolution is powered by tea. Yeah. Because of the caffeine and the sugar in the tea. Yeah. Sydney Mintz wrote a book. It's called sweetness and power. So tea with sugar boosted energy of working class people at 10, 30 a.m. or 3.30, so they work longer.

Yeah. They're more energetic. So higher productivity. Yeah, yeah. So it's not... Did tea breaks not exist before the Industrial Revolution presumably? Did they all...

I mean, tea breaks come kind of later. They come in 20th century, really. The tea break is more of a sort of... You know, you do have tea in the 19th century, but the tea break as a sort of legal thing that, you know, is one of... You've got to have one. You've got to have one.

It's more 20th century. So Britain is transformed by tea. Mm-hmm. And then the Industrial Revolution makes Britain a global superpower. Yeah, it enriched Britain. Yeah. And so by 1923,

53% of the world's tea supply is consumed in Britain alone. Yeah. Half the world's tea is drunk by... It's amazing, isn't it? Amazing statistic. But I always wonder, why do you like tea so much? I don't know, we just do.

It's really important to our culture. You know, any crisis, sit down and have a cup of tea. Yeah. Is there also not an element of coffee by that point being regarded as got a bad thing. The coffee houses become sort of rather unpleasant and sort of... Coffee goes up and down.

Yeah, it has highs and lows. Coffee house has a connotation of sexuality. Yes, a little bit. And then revolution, conspiracy, that kind of thing. Yeah, it can do. Can you say that? Not this cup of coffee. Let me tell me.

Are you feeling rebellious? Not really. No. So tea doesn't have that. Even though in Asia, in Hong Kong. Hong Kong, you would still have tea house. Right, okay. Which in the back of tea house there might be a broth or something, yeah.

Yeah, but obviously in Britain the kind of morality of tea drinking, the sobriety, it's sober, it's domestic, it's private and it's classy. Right. It's quite. Because it was, wasn't it? In the Victorian era, there was this sort of an amazing movement towards improvement, wasn't it? Yes. It was all about improvement and health. Yeah.

You know, the first mention of tea is always from English doctors. Yeah. I read so many things about English prescribed tea. It's like, what? Really? Yeah. For all sorts of complaints? Yeah.

Yeah, okay. Patients come. That would honestly make the NHS work. I mean, it really would. I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? If it was tea prescribed for everything. Prescriptions, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Take two tea bags of tea twice a day.

But you're also in, you know, in Victorian parks, for example. You know all the sort of the big parks in London, yeah, yeah. Victoria Park in Hackney or, indeed, Victoria Park in Manchester. They were all about improvement and, you know, everything you did in, like, drinking of tea. Yeah. You know, it was all about that stuff, wasn't it? Yeah. The gardens and green space at that time, I think, you know, yeah.

We were just very, very worried about what was happening in society, and tea was a sort of a solution to it, possibly. But the fascinating thing is that it sounds so calming and so tranquil, and yet tea had caused these two enormous wars that destabilise China and change the course of the world. And we need to get to the 20th century. And this is where we get tea planted again in a new British colony. Yeah.

Which you might, I mean, we have mentioned it. Do you know where? Well, presumably. Well, in the 19th century. The 20th. In the 20th century. Early. Well, lots of in India, presumably.

But it's been, I assumed it had been there forever. After India. Where did it go to next? Salon. Sri Lanka. And one more. East Africa. Kenya. Kenya.

Very good. Yeah. absolutely. So 1903 Kenya becomes a kind of plantation of tea and again that's where Britain gets most of its tea today. Yeah. So that's a certain... Yeah. India and Kenya, not so much from China. If you go to Fortiname Mason...

Always, I mean, why wouldn't you? And they have the Chinese tea but the problem is they drop it. Very systematically by machine, you can tell. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know why people I love your judgment, young men. You're so like, why are people doing this? It's amazing.

But the 20th century tea is being grown in Africa, having been grown in India, having been stolen from China. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's amazing stuff, isn't it? You put it where you can. It got countless wars with Mongols and two wars with Britain. Absolutely. What I love is when I was a kid, the Asterix books, my favorite books as a kid, the joke is that the Britons would stop for a cup of tea in the middle of battle.

And obviously that's not true, but there is something to it that the Britain's, we need our tea. Yeah. I didn't know all tea came, most of our tea came from East Africa. Yeah, yeah. So there you have it here. The not entirely ethical story of how tea became Britain's national drink. Are you still a fan of tea or are you morally compromised now? No, I'm perfectly happy with all that.

But I don't know, I'm sort of interested in why we're fascinated by the tips of tea. That's our marketing thing, isn't it? Is that an important thing that you only have the tip of the tea? No, because it depends. Because the tip of the shrub. Well, PG tips is tips, isn't it? When you go and pick the tea, the ones at the top, it's the tenderest. The ones at the bottom is older, so it's hard to.

But of course, there are people who like, you know, the older leaves. And most people take for the younger ones at the top. Okay. When it's budding out. Well, yeah. Something's fascinating. The history of tea is the history of horticultural history, imperial history, economic history, domestic, class.

It's all there. The nuance window! So it's time now for the nuance window. This is where Hugh and I put our feet up and pop on the kettle to have a little brew. For two minutes, while Professor Yang Wen takes center stage to tell us something we need to know about the history of tea. So I'm going to get my stopwatch up. You have two minutes on the clock. Take it away, Professor Chong.

On the one hand, tea has been extensified, diversified, because you can see bubble tea, fruit tea, right, fruit drinks. And in China, people actually drink tea with roasted peanuts, roasted sesame, roasted soybean, ginger and all those. So it's kind of a diversification. On the other hand, I think, As you said earlier, there's decline in tea drinking. I think there will be a regeneration or renewal.

You know why? Because of the environmental movement, that our care for the environment, we should eat natural, drink natural. So tea is a natural thing. A plant, like a vegetable. You drink it and it's good for your health. It's good for the environment.

I think I've ever drunk a vegetable. Yeah. But it's similar. You drink natural stuff, not processed and not, you know, the tea has been modernized in the tea bags and everything. So I think it's lost, so the price of progress, if you will, that you have progressed, you don't have to go tea leaves anymore, but then in that process, you lost the essence, you lost the ritual and you lost probably the nutrition of the tea.

So I hope there might be a renewal of sticking to the nature. Amazing. Thank you so much. What do we think to that? Sticking to nature, renewal of the tea. Can we go back to the slow tea? Well, I don't think I've ever been at the slow tea. I mean, it's one of the things about tea is that it's quite quick, isn't it?

Yeah. But I do absolutely understand the importance of ritual. I just think we take it in a slightly different way. It's a kind of the making of the tea isn't the ritual. The drinking of the tea is the ritual with other people for us, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I agree.

Yeah. Yeah. In China, the waiting is important. Yeah. Perhaps in the UK, it's more about pop on the kettle and have that chat that you wouldn't normally have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So what do you know now? It's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Hugh to see how much he has learned. Hugh, I suspect you're a confident quizer. I get the feeling that you're very good in a quiz. Well, yeah, depends on what it's about, of course, isn't it? It's about tea. about a quiz.

Oh, tea, maybe not. Yeah, sorry, I won't be asking you questions about, you know, which 1968 movie won an Academy Award. This is tea only. These are all things we've talked about. Yeah. So, ten questions. Here we go.

Question one. Which of the six types of tea is the rarest type of tea in terms of colour? In terms of colour, I don't remember that being mentioned, but I'm going to go for yellow. Oh, it is yellow. Well done. Very good. Question two.

What grade of tea is yellow? used most in the UK. The worst grade. The dust. It is the dust. That's right. Absolutely. We love our dusty fannings. Question three, according to a Japanese origin myth, what horrifying act by a Buddhist monk led to the miraculous growth of a tea plant? It was, he removed his own eyelids. It is. Which isn't a very good marketing story for tea, if I might say. No, he threw them on the ground and thereby a plant grew to grow tea. But that's a weird thing to do. Question four. What did China trade tea with with the Mongols? Well, they traded for horses.

They did, didn't they? The standard currency unit, of course. Question five, which Portuguese princess is sometimes wrongly credited with bringing tea to Europe or even Britain? That would be Catherine de Brighanza. Very good, yes, Queen of Charles II. Question six, what problematic product did Britain trade for Chinese tea after running out of silver?

Well, that unfortunately, and I can only apologise. was opium. It was. Question 7. Who was hired by the East India Company to steal plants, or tea plants, indeed, from China? I can't remember his first name,

but his second, his surname, was Fortune. It was, yes, Robert Fortune, who didn't get paid. Or get a membership of the RH. He's got literally nothing for doing that. Question 8, how did Fortune pull off his heist? He disguised himself. He wore a, you know, it's kind of a plat at the back and a hat.

And that was enough, apparently. Yeah. And he went out high into the hills and he stole shrubs. He did 20,000 shrubs and several Chinese workers and enough. He stole the workers. He took them finish. Yeah, he did. Yeah, follow me.

Yeah, follow me. 5,000 tonnes and it was 7,000. That's very impressive. I'm giving you two points there, bonus points. This for a perfect 11 out of 10, which country was tea introduced to in 1903 and is now Britain's primary tea provider? That would be Kenya.

11 out of 10. Hooray. Well done. Fantastic. Beautiful. So the history of tea is sort of the history of everything, really. It's all rather exciting. But unfortunately, also quite tragic at times.

So apologies on behalf of Britain. But thank you so much, Hugh. Thank you so much, Professor Yang Wen. And if you want more from Yang Wen, of course, we have our very funny episode on Dowager Empress Sushi. She was quite an extraordinary woman. If you crave more facts about our fave food and drinks, we've got episodes on the history of ice cream,

chocolate, coffee, spices, and, of course, the first celebrity chef, Alexei, who's one of my faves. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, I'd just like to thank our fantastic guests in History Corner.

We had the brilliant Professor Yang Wen Chong from the University of Manchester. Thank you, Yang Wen. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. And in Comedy Corner, we had the hilarious Hugh Dennis. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you. And you, you lovely listener, join me next time,

as we leap into the kettle and steep ourselves in another unfamiliar time period. But for now, I'm off tea shopping with Yang Wen. Hopefully she can show me the least dusty options. Bye! Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like evil genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, evil animals.

Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, are bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages, and we're going there. Domestic cats, evil or genius? Pig out on evil animals in the evil genius

podcast feed, first on BBC Sounds. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive head first into the mud

blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.