I Read Books: For All The Tea In China

 

For All The Tea In China; Espionage, Empire And The Secret Of The World's Favourite Drink

This book is about Robert Fortune who travelled twice to China for the East India Company in order to learn about tea. He learned how tea was made (at the time a monopoly of China) by pretending to be a mandarin. He took plants and put them in “Wardian Cases” (terraniums) to transport them to India.

Basically the East India Company sold opium to China and used the revenues to buy tea. This was very lucrative, as opium was banned in China. This led to opium shipments being seized, followed by the Opium Wars that opened up Chinese ports. Of course once it was legal to deal in opium then the Chinese started to make their own, cutting into profits. So in return they stole how to make tea.

There’s more to it than that. The narrative gets a bit fragmented at times, trying to draw together the history of tea in Britain and China, the role of botanists in bringing plants across the world during the 19^th century, how the opening of China by the East India Company broke their own monopolies (though it was not that which ended the Company, which gets its own slightly awkward chapter as tea is peripheral).

Read This: For some interesting stories about tea and hunting plants
Don’t Read This: For a strong singular narrative or even a good sense of Robert Fortune as a person