How Tea Took Over the World

In 1773, anger was brewing in the American colonies. For weeks, a group of activists had been meeting in secret to plan a protest unfair treatment of the colonies by England. So on the evening of December 16, a few dozen men snuck onto a British ship docked in Boston Harbor. They dumped an entire shipment of tea into the ocean! 

It may seem like a strange way to protest, but the event known as the Boston Tea Party was a major act of rebellion. That’s because the British controlled the valuable global tea trade. They shipped tea cultivated in Asia to satisfy Europeans’ and Americans’ growing taste for the drink. Destroying tea, a symbol of British power, helped kickstart the colonies’ fight for independence from England.

Since the drink’s pivotal role in the American Revolution, people’s love for tea has only grown. Today, it’s the second most popular drink in the world, beaten out only by water. Each day, people consume about 3 billion cups of tea. But how did the world become obsessed with this beverage?  

All tea is made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant (see How Tea is Made). This plant is native to the jungles of southern China and India. It thrives in environments with high humidity, high temperature, and acidic soil.

The practice of consuming tea originated in southwest China, as early as 6,000 years ago. Historians believe that at first, tea leaves were chewed rather than brewed in hot water. People likely felt energized by consuming the leaves. That’s because tea contains caffeine, a compound that stimulates the central nervous system, which includes the brain and spinal cord. Eventually, people realized that adding hot water to the leaves created a liquid with a complex taste. 

The bitter brew was originally used as a medicine. Over the centuries, the taste of tea improved, and it became an important part of Chinese culture, books, and poetry. By the 11th century, drinking tea had spread to other parts of the Eastern world, like Japan and the Middle East.

In the early 1600s, Portuguese and Dutch traders brought tea from China to Europe. The drink became popular with nobility across the continent—particularly in England. People developed daily tea rituals, including afternoon tea. Tea was a valuable commodity, and the British wanted to control its trade. Ships from the British East India Company—a massive business that traded silks, spices, and other goods from around the Indian Ocean—began importing huge quantities of tea from China.

In the 1720s, tea began to make its way into American colonists’ homes. At first, tea was so expensive that only wealthy people could afford to consume it. Over time, tea became more common. Less wealthy people could buy cheap tea from Dutch smugglers. By the 1750s, the drink had become a household staple.  

Unfortunately, buying so much tea from China became expensive. In the 1770s, the British monarchy gave the British East India Company a monopoly, or total control, over the sale of tea and free reign to crack down on smugglers. The monarchy also taxed tea and other goods shipped to the colonies. The colonists didn’t get a vote in these taxes—and they didn’t benefit from them. Many American colonists were furious. Tea became a symbol of British oppression and colonists stopped drinking it. 

The Revolutionary War began in 1775, less than three years after the famous Boston Tea Party. But this wasn’t the end of tea in America. After the war ended in 1783, Americans quickly returned to drinking tea. Demand for tea in America—and around the world—only continued to grow.

To gain even more money and power, Britain wanted greater control over the tea trade. But the Chinese government had banned citizens from sharing any information about growing or processing tea. Britain’s desire for more tea at a lower cost even led to war with China in the 1840s and 1850s.

Meanwhile, the British East India Company set out to grow tea outside of China. But the British didn’t know the ancient recipe for tea—they didn’t even know that black tea and green tea came from the same plant. So in 1848, they sent a spy learn the secrets of tea making. This spy observed the process for making tea. He stole Chinese tea plants and smuggled them into India. More importantly, he also convinced a group of skilled tea workers to travel back to India with him and help manufacture the tea.

A few decades later, the first tea farms in Darjeeling, India, were established. The British created massive plantations and forced hundreds of thousands of Indian people to work as indentured servants on these farms. Britain’s tea industry in India was soon out-producing China’s and selling the tea for a lower price. Britain expanded their plantations to Sri Lanka, Kenya, and other colonies in their empire. 

Today, most of the world’s tea still comes from China, India, and Kenya. More than 13 million people are employed in tea production. They often work long, difficult hours for low wages.

Among Americans, there is a growing movement to cultivate tea on smaller farms closer to home. Tea is extremely adaptable to new environments, says Tim Gipson. He and his partner founded a tea farm in the U.S. called the Great Mississippi Tea Company in 2012. They’ve found that Camellia sinensis can flourish in the hot, humid regions of the southern United States. 

Over the centuries, tea has grown from a medicinal brew to a global phenomenon, steeped in tradition, culture, and conflict. Around the world, people are passionate about tea, from bright green matcha in Japan and spicy chai in India to chewy tapioca-filled bubble tea in Taiwan and sweet iced tea in the U.S. Any way you pour it, this beverage “just naturally brings people together,” says Gipson.