The history of tea starts in China, where leaves from the Camellia sinensis plant were boiled as a medicinal drink for centuries before they became an everyday one. Britannica dates the shift to daily drinking to about the 3rd century CE. From there tea moved to Japan with monks, reached Europe through Dutch and Portuguese traders in the 1600s, and by the 1800s it was tangled up in opium, war and revolution.
Did an emperor really find tea in 2737 BCE?
The famous story says the emperor Shennong was drinking boiled water around 2737 BCE when leaves blew into his bowl. It is a good story, and it is a legend. Britannica puts it plainly: according to legend, tea has been known in China since about 2700 BCE. Nothing in the sources consulted ties it to a dated record. Lu Yu's Classic of Tea mentions Shennong in its history chapter, which tells you the legend was already old by the 8th century.
What the evidence does show is humbler. In 2016 archaeologists reported tea from the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han, in Xi'an, which suggests Han emperors were drinking it as early as the 2nd century BCE. The earliest credible written record is a medical text by Hua Tuo, dated to the 3rd century CE, which says that drinking bitter t'u constantly makes one think better. Some claims push tea back to the 10th century BCE, but they rest on shaky ground: the modern Chinese word for tea, cha, only came into use in the 8th century CE.
What Lu Yu wrote in The Classic of Tea
Around 760 to 762 CE, in the Tang dynasty, a writer named Lu Yu finished a short book in three scrolls and ten chapters, about 7,000 characters long. It describes fifteen tools for picking, steaming, pressing, drying and storing tea, and twenty-eight items for brewing and drinking it. It ranks eight tea-growing regions. It also gives instructions for boiling, which tells us how people drank tea at the time: pressed into cakes, then roasted, ground and boiled.
Lu Yu's own life reads like a novel. He was an orphan from what is now Tianmen in Hubei, adopted by a Buddhist monk at the Dragon Cloud Monastery. He refused monastic robes and ran off to join a circus as a clown. At 14 a local governor, Li Qiwu, gave him a teacher and the run of his library. His original manuscript is lost, and the earliest surviving editions date from the Ming dynasty.
Tang tea was often boiled with ginger, onions and other seasonings. Steeping leaves in hot water, closer to what we do now, became popular under the Song, which also had loose-leaf teas and a whisked powdered form. In 1391 the Hongwu Emperor decreed that only loose tea would be accepted as tribute.
How tea reached Japan
Buddhist priests carried it east. Saicho brought tea seeds back from China in 805 and Kukai in 806. The Zen priest Eisai introduced seeds to Kyoto in 1191 and wrote his Kissa Yojoki, a book on drinking tea for health, in 1211. By the 13th century, Britannica notes, cultivation was established in Japan. Much later came refinements that anyone who drinks Japanese green tea knows by name: sencha, developed by Soen Nagatani in 1738, and gyokuro, by Kahei Yamamoto in 1835.
Who brought tea to Europe, and when?
The first European mention of tea is in Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Voyages and Travels, printed in 1555. Portuguese ships had reached China in 1516, and Gaspar da Cruz published the first Portuguese account of Chinese tea in 1560. Britannica says the Dutch East India Company carried the first consignment of China tea to Europe in 1610. By 1636 tea was known in France.
England came a little later. The first English record is a 1615 letter from Richard Wickham. Thomas Garway was selling tea in London by 1657. Britannica dates the English East India Company's first tea shipment to London, brought from Java, to 1669. Official imports are recorded from 1664, and that first year's total was two pounds and two ounces.
Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who married Charles II in 1662, is usually credited with bringing tea drinking to the English court. The marriage is documented; how much one queen changed a nation's habits is harder to measure. The numbers tell the real story. By 1801 Britain imported about 24 million pounds of tea a year, up from a couple of pounds in 1664.
How tea, silver and opium led to war
British demand for Chinese tea had a catch: China wanted little that Britain made, so Britain paid mostly in silver. Opium grown in British-controlled India offered a way to reverse the flow. Britannica says that from the early 19th century the East India Company financed the tea trade with illegal opium exports to China. By 1831 about 20,000 chests of opium a year were moving.
In 1839 the Daoguang Emperor sent Lin Zexu to end the trade. Foreign traders in Guangzhou surrendered 20,283 chests and 200 sacks of opium, which were destroyed publicly on the beach. Britain answered with force. The Treaty of Nanking, signed on 29 August 1842, ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain, opened five treaty ports to British merchants and gave British subjects extraterritoriality. Tea did not cause the war by itself, but the silver it drained from Britain's accounts shaped the opium trade that did.
The 342 chests of Boston Harbor
The Tea Act received royal assent on 10 May 1773. It let the East India Company, then sitting on a large surplus of tea in London warehouses, ship tea straight to North America and export it duty-free from Britain. The Townshend tax collected in the colonies stayed. The company's tea would be cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea, but buying it meant accepting Parliament's right to tax.
On 16 December 1773 the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships, the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, and dumped the tea over about three hours. Many sources say 342 chests, which Britannica repeats; the East India Company manifest and the British National Archives say 340. The cargo weighed 92,616 pounds. Some participants dressed as Mohawk warriors, though the famous 1846 print exaggerates how many did. Britain repealed its tea tax in 1785, which ended the widespread smuggling.
Smuggling plants out of China
Britain still bought its tea from China. The East India Company wanted its own supply and sent the Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to China to get plants and skilled tea makers. He used Wardian cases to keep the plants alive on the voyage. Most of the Chinese plants died. The native Assam variety, discovered on the Burma-Assam frontier in 1824, proved better suited to the strong dark brew British drinkers wanted, though the know-how Fortune brought mattered to the tea industries of Assam and Sri Lanka.
Britannica says the British introduced tea culture to India in 1836 and to Ceylon in 1867, at first with Chinese seed and later with Assam plants. The Dutch got Java going in 1826 and 1833. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tea was growing in Russian Georgia, Sumatra, Iran, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Queensland.
For sugar, the sweetener that went into so many of those cups, see the story of sugar. The other great caffeinated drink has its own story in the history of coffee, and the long-distance trade that carried spices and tea alike is covered in Silk Road foods.
Questions people ask
Who discovered tea?
No one person is documented. Chinese legend credits the emperor Shennong around 2737 BCE, but that is a story, not a record. The earliest physical evidence is tea found in the mausoleum of Emperor Jing of Han in Xi'an, from the 2nd century BCE, and the earliest credible written mention is a 3rd-century medical text by Hua Tuo.
Who wrote the first book about tea?
Lu Yu, a Tang dynasty writer, wrote The Classic of Tea between about 760 and 762 CE. It is about 7,000 characters long, in ten chapters. It covers tools, making tea cakes, brewing utensils, boiling, drinking, tea history and a ranking of eight growing regions.
How did tea get to India?
Tea plants were found growing wild along the Burma and Assam frontier in 1824, and Britannica says the British introduced tea culture to India in 1836. The East India Company also sent Robert Fortune to China for plants and tea makers. Most Chinese plants died, and the native Assam variety proved more important.
How many chests of tea were thrown into Boston Harbor?
Many sources, including Britannica, say 342 chests were dumped on 16 December 1773. The East India Company manifest and the British National Archives give 340. The tea came from three ships, the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver, and weighed 92,616 pounds.
Filed under Trade Routes
Want more stories like this?
One food history story, every week. No spam, just the stories behind what the world eats.