The Opium War wasn't fought for opium, it was fought for tea
Britain bought Chinese tea but had nothing to sell in return; China took only silver, and the world's silver was drained dry. What Britain finally picked up was Indian opium. The driver of that 1839 war was not opium — it was tea.
The video won't play here. Listen to the audio instead:
The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
What's in a British tea bag is dust and fannings
Tea is graded by wholeness into four levels: leaf, broken leaf, fannings, dust — the last two being the siftings left over. Yangwen says the British market drinks mainly these last two grades, packed into tea bags; China drinks whole leaves, with attention to leaf shape, body, and a complete ritual. Her exact words are that China doesn't drink dust, only leaves. Hugh jokes that dust sounds like a country singer, and Greg admits the British really are drinking fannings. Yangwen came to Britain in 1996 and still doesn't understand why milk and sugar go into tea — once added, by her standard it is ‘no longer tea’.
— Yang WenThe Mongols wanted tea, the Central Plains wanted horses
Yangwen says tea defined China's premodern relations with Mongolia and Central Asia. Nomadic peoples were not settled and needed tea, iron pots and silk, which could only be obtained from China; China was a rice-and-wheat farming civilisation and lacked horses. Hence the historical tea-horse exchange, trading goods at fixed ratios. Once the relationship broke down, the Mongols, lacking tea, raided south — the 1449 Tumu crisis is the example: the Ming army was encircled by the Mongols and roughly 50,000 soldiers were captured along with the emperor. After that the Ming closed the Great Wall for a time, but blockade was never a long-term solution, and in the end the gates had to be reopened for the tea-horse trade.
— Yang WenThe name of tea betrays the road it travelled
Tea's spread left linguistic traces. Yangwen says that in Mongolian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic and Persian, tea is called cha, while in English it is tea — the overland camel caravan routes left cha, the sea routes left tea. Greg made up a rhyme for it: ‘If it travels by car, it is cha. If it goes by the sea, it is tea.’ The value of this clue is that the same product entered different civilisations via two completely different trade networks, and even its name forked. Tea reached Europe in the early 17th century, with the Portuguese and the Dutch East India Company as the earliest suppliers.
— Yang WenChina took only silver, and drained the world dry
By the late 18th century, China had sucked the world's silver into its treasury. Yangwen says that from Vasco da Gama's voyage in 1497 to 1793, Europeans and Americans came to buy tea, porcelain and silk, while China took only gold and silver, and over several centuries the Europeans found they had nothing China wanted. She quotes the missionary Robert Hart: the Chinese have the best food (rice), the healthiest drink (tea), the best clothing material (silk), and need nothing from Britain. In 1793 the Macartney mission demanded free trade, and the emperor's attitude was: I permit my subjects to sell you a little tea, and that is a favour. The only thing Britain had left that could break into China was Indian opium.
— Yang WenThe stolen green tea grew into black tea in India
In 1843, to break its dependence on Chinese tea, Britain sent the botanist Robert Fortune to infiltrate China's interior and steal tea plants. He bought a fake queue, wore a hat to cover his unshaved forehead, and travelled deep into the mountains, digging up whole tea plants and shipping them back to Assam in India. Yangwen points out an irony: what he stole was mainly green tea from the southeast coast, and grown in Assam's stronger sunlight and richer soil it turned into black tea — the raw material now regarded as the archetypal British black tea is in fact a Chinese green tea variety. Fortune himself did not get rich from it; Yangwen says he did not die wealthy.
— Yang WenThe Industrial Revolution was pushed along by tea and sugar
Some economic historians have argued that the Industrial Revolution was driven by tea. Yangwen says caffeine plus the sugar in tea let the working class refuel at half past ten in the morning and half past three in the afternoon, working longer and producing more; Sydney Mintz's Sweetness and Power is the representative statement of this argument. The same logic explains why tea replaced small beer in the mid-18th century as the middle class's breakfast drink of choice. By 1923, 53% of the world's tea supply was being drunk in Britain.
— Yang WenBritain's tea today comes mainly from Kenya
Tea cultivation moved with the colonial map. The seedlings stolen out of China first took root in Assam in India; by 1885 India was exporting 35,000 tons of tea a year, which Greg converts into 7,000 African elephants. In 1903 Britain opened plantations in Kenya, and Yangwen says Kenya is today Britain's main source of tea. She also notes that Chinese tea bought today at places like Fortnum Mason has mostly been systematically machine-cut, so the leaf shape can't be seen, and what you drink is not the tea she recognises.
— Yang WenTea bags cost the British tea's ritual
In the nuance window, Yangwen offers a prediction: tea will revive. The reason is the environmental movement — people should eat natural things and drink natural things, and tea is a plant to begin with, like a vegetable, good for health and the environment; on the other hand, the modernisation of the tea bag makes her feel tea has lost its ritual, and perhaps its nutrition too. Greg steers the topic to the China–Britain difference: in Chinese tea drinking, the waiting itself is the ritual; the British place more emphasis on the time spent chatting with people after the tea is brewed. Hugh admits he has never experienced so-called ‘slow tea’.
— Yang WenIn their own words · checked verbatim
But in China, we don't drink dust. We drink leaves.
Yang Wen8:13
The Mongols wanted tea. We want their horse.
Yang Wen27:53
by the late 18th century, China had sucked in all the world's supply of silver. And China isn't buying anything from Britain.
Yang Wen28:53
So the opium war is a tea war. Yes, for tea.
Yang Wen29:53
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.
Yang Wen30:53
the tea that he stole from China were largely green tea because they're from southeastern China. And when they harvested the tea in Assam, it became black tea.
Yang Wen39:04
there is an economic historian who made the case that the Industrial Revolution is powered by tea.
Yang Wen42:12
Figures
| British daily tea consumption | about 76 million cups | 2:02 |
| Portuguese settle in Macau / Spanish reach the Philippines | 1535 / 1571 | 20:34 |
| British East India Company annual tea imports | 12 million pounds (1757) | 24:46 |
| Tea tax before and after the Commutation Act | from 119% to 12.5% | 25:46 |
| Indian annual tea exports | 35,000 tons, about 7,000 African elephants (1885) | 40:05 |
| Britain's share of global tea consumption | 53% (1923) | 42:12 |
| Kenya begins tea cultivation | 1903 | 45:13 |
| Tea plants stolen by Robert Fortune | about 20,000 | 52:33 |
Glossary
- Camellia sinensis
- The scientific name of the tea plant, an evergreen shrub and the sole source plant for tea.
- fannings
- A grade finer than broken leaf in tea grading, mostly used as tea bag material.
- dust
- The finest grade in tea grading, the main ingredient of British tea bags.
- Commutation Act
- The 1784 British act that cut the tea tax from 119% to 12.5%.
- tea brick
- Tea pressed into bricks to make it easier to transport to Mongolia and Russia.
- Tumu crisis
- The 1449 battle in which the Ming army was encircled by the Mongols and the emperor was captured.
How to listen
Anyone who wants to understand the silver–opium–tea economic chain behind the Opium War; listeners interested in Chinese trade history who can tolerate a comedy host's banter.
The opening guest pleasantries and the two minutes where Hugh talks about his own family tree can be fast-forwarded.