Keith. March 2015.
17th Century Tea Caddy.
18th
century tea in the colonies.
COLONIAL TEA TRADE
Some
Thoughts on the China, Tea and Coffee Trade in the American Colonies During the
Colonial Period
by Lee
Hardluck Humphrey, (Originally Published in Muzzleloader Magazine
July-August 1997)
Tea Facts
• In 1768, colonists consumed
almost two million pounds of tea..
• Ninety per cent of the tea drunk
in the colonies was smuggled in.
• Brick tea was known and
available to the European buyers at Canton.
• The price of tea in the colonies
varied from an early price of 24 shillings per pound to a low of 1
shilling 9 pence per pound in 1768.
• Rebellion against the tea tax
was not a result of a raise in the tax (the tax was actually
lowered).
In 1660, a scant two years later, the
first tea tax was imposed by act of parliament: eight pence per gallon on all
tea made or sold in coffee houses (Martin 17). The ponderous and porcine
parliament was quick to do nothing except tax something popular.
The Honorable East India Company had been granted exclusive trade rights
in Asia by act of parliament. However, they were about as mentally agile as
parliament when it came to feeling the pulse of their customers.
Parliament's eagerness to cash in on the affluence of the emerging middle class
and the duplicity of its members by selling their influence to large business
concerns was a formula for political disaster.
A major contributor to the growth
of the English middle class was the business generated by the American
colonies. Merchants grew rich importing exotic goods such as tobacco,
deer skins, Sassafras root and Beaver skins.
As the wealth of American colonists grew and their daily lives became
more civilized, they longed for a means to exhibit their new gentility.
The Dutch were the first to exploit this desire. Coffee and Chinese
porcelains were traded for tobacco. By 1610 the Dutch were dealing in
porcelain by the ton, and in 1619 were supplying the tidewater, Virginia
planters with slaves (Curtis 121). 1680 found the English East India
Company finally in the porcelain business in a significant way. They could
not seem to anticipate the needs or desires of the American colonists. A
prime example of this is coffee. Prior to 1680, coffee was only available
from North Africa. The city of Mocha in Arabia stood alone as the world
trade center. The Dutch, in order to increase profits, established coffee
plantations on the mountains of Java. The early names for coffee, Mocha
and Java, denote their places of origin. The English company waited
another sixty years to establish a coffee plantation in their Jamaican colony,
I suppose to insure that coffee was not just a fad. Playing catch-up with
the Dutch East India Company was a way of life for the English company that
extended to the tea trade.
Tea, the leaves of a lowly bush grown all over Asia, became the force
that shaped nations, made individuals enormously rich, and crumbled
empires. Although tea was well known in the American colonies, by the
last half of the seventeenth century, it was not popular because of its high
cost.
Bohea tea was traded in large enough lots to be listed in the newspaper
at Philadelphia in 1720. The price: a whopping 24 shillings a pound (Kalm
658). Constant high demand and stiff competition from the Dutch drove the
price down to six shillings six pence a box by 1749 (Kalm 670). The
peak import year of 1768 saw a new low in the price of tea at Philadelphia, a
mere two shillings four pence per pound (Labree 333). Although coffee and
chocolate were both available and affordable, they never attained the almost
mystical appeal of tea.
In stark contrast, the French American colonists preferred chocolate and
coffee. "I have never seen tea used here," states
Peter Kalm during his stay in Canada. He further states that they do not
consider it worth their while to send money out of their country for it
(473).
In just two generations, Philadelphians saw tea change from a luxury to
a necessity. By 1768, English, Swedish and Dutch Americans were consuming
three quarters of a pound of tea per capita (Labree 7). Every man, woman,
and child on average was consuming three and one half Chinese cups (about three
ounces per cup) of tea a day.
Starting in 1660, the tea tax roller
coaster kept the price of tea in a constant state of flux. The ups and
downs of the gallon tax, the stamp act, the 25% importation tax, and
finally the tea and window act of 1768, resulted in an artificially high price
for English tea. At Amsterdam, tea could be bought for 2 shillings
2 pence a pound and smuggled into Boston at a final cost of three shillings per
pound as Thomas Hancock did in 1754 (Labree 10). The equivalent tea with
all duties paid cost Boston merchants 4 shillings 1 pence. One 450 pound
chest (360 pounds net) of Bohea tea could garner the merchant-smuggler almost
£20 in extra profit. Thomas Hancock brought in fifteen chests of Bohea
tea in the aforementioned manner and after all expenses, netted over £200
(Labree 100). It is no wonder, considering the incentive, that over 90%
of the 1.5 to 1.8 million pounds of tea consumed annually was smuggled in by
the Dutch and enterprising colonists (Labree 7). These estimates seem
high. However, the estimates of those on the scene are even higher as we
see in this excerpt from a letter from Messrs. Hutchinson of Boston dated 10
September, 1771: "From a more particular estimate of the consumption
we are of the opinion, the two towns of Boston and Charleston consume a chest,
or about 340 pounds of tea, one day with another....In this proportion, the
consumption may be estimated at 19,200 chests per annum, or upwards of six
millions of pounds....Here we find the Dutch traders continually gaining ground
upon us. If teas do not fall with you before the spring shippings, we
fear the Dutch will carry away all the trade of the Colonies in this
article." (Quoted in Drake 192-93)
An excerpt from a proposal by Gilbert
Berkly to the East India Company states, "This country is now become
an object of the highest consequence, peopled by about three millions of
inhabitants, one third of whom, at a moderate computation, drink tea twice a
day...[this] makes the yearly consumption of 5,703,125 lbs." (Quoted
in Drake 200)
On May 26, 1773, when this letter and
proposal were sent to London, Mr. Berkly did not know that the ill fated
shipments of tea were already in process. The point of these missives to
the East India Company was to make money for the writers. One cannot
escape the conclusion that they may have padded the estimates. The mark
in their favor is that they wrote these letters over eighteen months apart and
from two separate colonies. The calculations they compiled were amazingly
similar.
To placate the East India Company, in
1767, parliament eliminated the 25% ad velorum tax on tea to be exported to the
colonies. But, in 1768, they passed the Townshend Act placing a three
pence per pound duty to be paid at the port of entry. Taking advantage of
this, English merchants shipped a record 868,792 pounds of tea to American
ports. At Boston it sold for a heretofore unheard of price of 1 shilling
9 pence per pound (Labree 333). This caused an unprecedented upsurge in
tea consumption. If the adage "Everything that is good or fun must
be illegal, immoral, or fattening," is true it, could certainly be applied
to tea drinking in colonial America.
Moral indignation at having to pay taxes
directly to English collectors peaked along with tea consumption.
Campaigns against English tea popped up like bubbles in a rocky brook.
The substitution of Labrador tea for the English import was encouraged.
A Boston news paper offered this
verse:
Throw aside your Bohea and your green
Hyson tea,
And all things with a new fashioned duty;
Procure a good store of the choice Labrador
For there'll soon be enough here to suit ye;
These do without fear, and to all you'll appear
Fair, charming, true, lovely, and clever;
Though the times remain darkish,
Young men may be sparkish,
And love you much stronger than ever. (Quoted in Labree 27-28)
Procure a good store of the choice Labrador
For there'll soon be enough here to suit ye;
These do without fear, and to all you'll appear
Fair, charming, true, lovely, and clever;
Though the times remain darkish,
Young men may be sparkish,
And love you much stronger than ever. (Quoted in Labree 27-28)
Another aspect of the tea mania was
exhibited , as Labree reports: "A Countryman, a periodical of
the time, had several reasons for supporting the anti-tea campaign.
He told first of a friend's family who consumed so much butter with its tea
biscuits that there was no longer enough to take to market. 'There
is my daughters Jemma and Keziah' the friend noted, 'two hearty trollops as any
in town, forenoon and afternoon eat almost a peck of toast with their tea, and
they have learned me and their mother to join them,' he ruefully admitted; 'and
as for Jeremiah, he can hardly live without it, a
booby'" (29). Well, that takes care of the immoral and
fattening, and we've already accounted for the illegal part.
Because of the aforementioned propensity
for smuggling, it is extremely difficult to catalog the types of tea brought
into the American colonies. The only records kept with any regularity
were those of the English East India Company. The records we will use are
for 1773. One can only hope that after one hundred plus years in the tea
business, they would have figured out what was popular and would sell.
The shipping records are only the tip of the tea iceberg.
The black teas listed are:
Bohea 1586 chests
Congou 70 chests
Souchong 35 chests
Congou 70 chests
Souchong 35 chests
Green teas:
Hyson 70 chests
Singlo 290 chests (Labree 335)
Singlo 290 chests (Labree 335)
This shipment represented a last ditch
effort by the East India Company to clear out a vast surplus of tea in their
warehouses. The urge to speculate was so strong they could not
resist. William Palmer wrote in May, 1773 that one type of tea never
exported to America should be included: "...also and
particularly Singlo tea, might be introduced into America..." (Drake
190) The company agreed and the records show the 290 chests in the above
shipping list. The reason for this speculation was stated by Palmer in a
later proposal dated August 5, 1773.
"As it would be a great object with
the company to introduce, if possible, the consumption of Singlo tea into
America, that being a kind of tea which spoils by age, much more than Bohea,
and also that of which they are much more considerable overloaded with...even
to sell it in America, at the quoted price of Bohea, by which means they might
be relieved from the disagreeable alternative of selling it here under prime
cost....." (Quoted in Drake 242, my emphasis)
The tea business in England itself was
not good. The Dutch were landing ships daily along remote beaches and
off-loading cargo. Sixty-six percent of the two pounds of tea
consumed per capita in England was smuggled (Twining 4). This loose
tea, or untaxed tea was causing the company great financial harm (Twining
22), thus the plan to dump huge quantities of cheap tea on the American
market. The Honorable East India Company's plan failed. The tea was
rejected or dumped and the stage for rebellion in the colonies was set.
Bohea tea, pronounced Boo-hee (Ukers
510), was by far the most popular tea. It was so popular, that the word
bohea became the slang term for tea. It consisted of the scrap tea,
broken orange pekoe, pekoe, and souchong dumped In a pile and then
sifted. The best was put in chests and the twigs, fannings and dust were
used to make brick and tablet tea, all of which was used and sold under the
generic name Bohea. The Cantonese preferred brick tea, therefore we
know it was both known and available to the tea buyers at Canton.
Souchong tea is the largest leaf
tea. It has less caffeine than the others. This tea is smoked like
other black tea, but seems to retain the smoky flavor more than others,
apparently because of the larger leaf area that is not rolled up.
Congou tea is the highest quality
black tea. The leaves are twisted for curing. Congou is pronounced
Kung-foo according to Thomas Wu, a California tea dealer. The Keemun
Congou is the original English breakfast tea. It requires the hands of a
master (kung fu) to cure this tea properly.
Young Hyson tea is the most
desirable green tea and is the first picking in the spring before the monsoon
rains. Pinhead gunpowder is Young Hyson rolled into pellets by the
picker.
Singlo tea is a later picking of larger
leaves and cured green. Gunpowder is Singlo rolled by hand into pellets
and cured.
All Chinese teas that were available at
Canton during the eighteenth century are available now. However. some
names have been changed, and a little research is required to identify
them.
_______________________
Bibliography
Curtis, Julia
B. "Chinese Export Porcelain in Eighteenth Century
Tidewater Virginia" Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 17
(1987) 119-44.
Drake, Francis S. "Tea
Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents Relating to the
Shipment of Tea to the American Colonies in the Year 1773, by the East
India Tea Company" 1884. Detroit: Singing Tree, 1970.
Kalm, Peter. " Peter Kalm's
Travels in North America: The English Version of 1770"
Ed. Adolph Benson. 1937. New York: Dover, 1987.
Labree, Benjamin. " The Boston
Tea Party" New York: Oxford UP, 1964.
Martin, R.
Montgomery. "The Past and PresentState (of the) Tea Trade
of England (and of the) Continents of Europe and America; and a
Comparison Between the Consumption; Price of, and Revenue Derived from
Tea, Coffee, Sugar, Wine, Tobacco, Spirits, Etc." London:
Parbury, Allen & Co., 1832.
Twining,
Richard. "Observations on the Tea and Window Act and on the
Tea Trade" London: T. Cadell, 1784.
Ukers, William H. "All
About Tea Vol. 2 of 2" New York: Tea and Coffee Trade
Journal Co., 1935.
Tea
Money Of China
Tea was never used as money in the colonial Chesapeake. A survey of
colonial newspapers does not turn up advertisements for brick tea. Academic
articles do not mention brick tea in relation to the North American colonies.
Probate inventories do not mention brick tea. Surviving material culture has no
connection to brick tea. The most evidence for brick tea is found in museum
lore and in some colonial vendors’ catalogues. Additional info: Rodris Roth,
“Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America,” Material Life in America:
1600-1860. “Mythbusters; Tea in the 18th Century,” Past Masters News, Vol. 7,
No. 2, Spring 2004.
BRICK TEA/TEA BRICKS are
not sold by the Grocery. There is no evidence to support it.
Brick tea was made from the sweepings of the tea sorting floor, mixed with ox
blood or manure, compacted into bricks for easy transport on the China Road
into Siberia. Once there, it was generally mixed with rancid yak butter for a
dish, not a beverage. Brick tea and tea bricks were not available in western
Europe or in the colonies. Many have argued that it was here, but none have
come up with any primary source documentation to place it here. No equipment
designed for rendering brick tea useable has been found in the Colonies or
England. "Tea bricks were sold direct to Tibet and Russia and invented
before modern packaging. The brick is composed of all of the plant, stalk and
all." (Emily Hahn, The Cooking of China, 1968)
The above are only a few of the primary sources I have on brick tea
but none of them refer to brick tea being import into the United States or
Britain in the 1860s.
The
highest-priced grade was Hyson, at 5/- per pound, just 15 chests comprising
1,134 pounds, for an average of 75 pounds a chest.
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