The History Of Tea

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream get access to my video streaming service nebula when you sign up for curiosity stream using the link in the description ah here's the history of tea in China they sip it from tiny porcelain cups Tibetans mix it with salt and butter the Japanese whiskey during ceremonies Russians add lemon Moroccan Zaid mint and Americans add a dash of high-fructose corn syrup the Irish and Turks drink it by the book aloud while the call of the chai wallah is known across India where they serve it with milk sugar and spices it was tribute to Chinese emperors sustained meditating Buddhist monks and turned Britain into the deadliest drug dealer in history so what is the history of tea house that changed our world and what does it have to do with Jesus's Chinese brother well let's find out [Music] tea hasn't always been a delicious infusion of leaves and hot water no no the first humans who lived in Tizen native regions around Assam in India and the Szechuan and Yunnan provinces of China chewed tea leaves for thousands of years before brewing them when did we start drinking tea well we don't know exactly most popular legend places its origin around 2500 BCE this handsome chap the mythical Chinese emperor Shen Nong was boiling some water to make it safe to drink when some tea leaves fell into it surprised by this new tasty and energizing drink Shen taught his Chinese subjects how to grow and drink tea drinking tea probably originated in Szechuan ru nan it spread from southern China towards the north with the help of Buddhist monks tea had become their favourite drink as it could help them stay awake during their long meditations the spread of tea follows along with the spread of Buddhism true China and other places in Asia tea in ancient China was quite different to modern tea the Guan Yi is the Chinese dictionary from around the 200s ad and it describes how they made tea they compressed all the dry tea leaves into bricks to make some tea you too snipped a bit off the brick mixed it with some hot water and then added some onion ginger salt and orange apparently he wasn't an enjoyable beverage at this time it was a bitter medicinal drink used to treat stomach aches bad eyesight skin diseases and sleepiness during the Tang Dynasty Chinese civilization reached never-before-seen heights as art culture and cities flourished so did tea technology tea growing and processing methods improve the taste of tea it transformed from a medicine into an enjoyable tree tea houses and tea gardens soon sprang up in cities and towns across the Empire tea became apparent of everyday life from the Emperor all the way down to the peasants it was green tea that was the tea of choice at this time the Chinese didn't start making black tea until around the 17th century the Tang Chinese emperors began demanding the tribute be paid in tea peasants now at the grow tea along with her heavy rice farming workload overworked farmers sometimes had to ignore their rice crops and famine haunted the poorer China while the Emperor sipped away on the finest tribute tees the Emperor no rich booty got even richer trading it across Asia the ancient tea horse rode linked China's Southwest provinces with Tibet vegetables couldn't really grow in the harsh Tibetan climate but now they could mix yak milk yak butter and salt with tea to add a little bit of plant fiber to they're mostly animal-based diet in return they gave the Chinese powerful war horses Buddhist monks and traders moving along the Silk Road brought tea with them into Central Asia and into the Middle East tea at spread from Burma in the South Siberia in the north from Korea and Japan over in the east over to Turkish Mongolian and Russian merchants in the West tea arrived in Japan and Korea in around the late 6th century introduced by Buddhist monks who were returning from their studies in China during Japan's Kamakura era custom of drinking tea reached the samurai DS intimidating warriors soon fell in love with tea they began hosting tea parties and spread tea houses and tea culture across Japan tea warned a complete victory in Japan when the Shogun of Japan saynay Tomo was suffering from a hangover so terrible he and everyone around him thought he was literally about to die until a zen buddhist priest brought the shogun a bowl of tea along in his book on the benefits of tea the cure is hangover and Senate homo became a tea addict and helped spread T cross Japanese society Zen Buddhist monks would create an entire spiritual ceremony around tea which evolved into the Japanese tea ceremony which continues to this day by the time the Ming Dynasty in China tea bricks had fallen out of fashion now steeping loose tea leaves in boiling water was all the rage and they developed black tea by fermenting tea leaves and during this time T began to be traded with the Europeans oddly enough there are really only two ways to say tea in the world one is like the English term tey in Spanish hey and Irish or litt in French the other is some variation of chat like chai in Hindi zai and Russia or China and Turkish both versions come from this Chinese character in Mandarin and Cantonese it's pronounced cha so if a language calls tea so enough cha then tea reached them overland by way of the Silk Road but in min Chinese spoken in the coastal province of Fujian the character is pronounced teh Fujin is where 17th century Dutch merchants traded with China the teh pronunciations spread to Europe by way of the Dutch but the first Europeans to reach China were the Portuguese who traded true Macau where cha is used which is why Portugal is the only Chinese er in a sea of Tay the Dutch brought the first shipment of tea to Amsterdam in 1610 and started spreading it around Europe Europeans didn't quite take the tea the price was a bit too steep for they saw as a bitter and medicinal drink today and it was only useful for its ability to vanquish his heavy dreams ease it the brain of heavy damps and openeth obstructions in the bowel the first he arrived in England in around 1645 but the English weren't keen either they were coffee drinkers that was until the Portuguese princess catherine of braganza and charles ii of england married in 1660 to Catherine loved tea the first thing she asked for when she landed in England was a cup of tea spotting a potential opportunity in 1664 the British East India Company gifted childs and Catherine one kilo of Chinese tea soon all fashionable society wanted to be seen sipping tea just like the Royals the ironically named honorable east india company was founded in 1602 a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth the first it received a monopoly on all English trade with the Far East the East India Company grew enormously wealthy and was an empire in its own right it could conquer territory mint money command armies make war and peace and collect taxes in the early 19th century it had twice as many soldiers as the British crown in 1689 the East India Company started to import tea directly from China through the 1700s the amount of tea being imported rose significantly year after year millions in Britain were now hooked on tea and the tea trade with China was making the East India Company filthy rich but the East India Company found themselves in hot water China held all the power Europeans were only allowed to trade at a single Chinese port Canton and China being the wealthiest place on earth at the time had no interest in British goods China only wanted cold hard silver which the British were running out of so the Honourable company devised a very cunning plan drugs for centuries people across Eurasia used opium the plant used to make morphine and heroin for its pain killing and sedative effects if the British could hook the Chinese on opium they could trade that instead of silver for tea but they would need access to land and labour where they could grow opium so the East India Company began to colonize India in 1757 the Honourable company won a decisive victory over the Indians at the Battle of Plassey which gave them control over a bangle bangle the richest place in India worth about twelve percent of the world's GDP was the proto industrial textile and shipbuilding capital of the world within 15 years of the East India Company seizing control 10 million Bengalis were starved to death and Mangal was Dean dust realized and contorted into a massive opium field the British drowned China with Indian ground opium opium was already illegal in China but by the middle of the 19th century one in every three Chinese adults were opium addicts by 1840 the opium trade brought Britain revenues of three point eight billion modern dollars and that rose to about twenty-two billion by 1879 the infusion of cash into Britain from the tea and opium trade let them build a powerful modern Navy while an opioid crisis devastated China in 1839 the Chinese emperor was fettle he sent an official down to Canton to deal with this crisis and that official seized 1.2 million kilos of opium and dumped it into the sea soon British gunboats opened fire on the Chinese this standard the First Opium War of 1839 242 British warships devastated Chinese cities and armies opium addicted Chinese soldiers couldn't really put up much of a fight the Emperor was forced into a humiliating peace treaty China would pay for the cost of the war and the destroyed opium hong kong was handed over to Britain and the Canton system ended the Europeans could now trade with China true Canton and four other ports in an L bankrupt war-torn and drug-addicted China things began to boil over in 1850 a rebellion against the Ching dynasty was led by Hong Xiuquan the self-proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ yeah I know didn't expect that this rebellion killed about 30 million people and during this rebellion the British and French launched a second opium war in 1856 the Emperor was again forced to negotiate and even more Chinese ports were open to foreigners and opium was legalized in China by 1800 enough tea was being imported into Britain to provide one kilo of tea per person per year that's about six hundred cups tea had now become a staple of British life for all classes British and tea were inseparable the British Empire was riding a wave of tea but they were keenly aware that it was the Chinese I grew it processed it and sold it to them at a lucrative profit why should China make a fortune of its own product when the East India Company could take that fortune instead from around 1778 the British had been aware that tea plants grew wild in Assam in India stripped of its trade monopoly with China in 1834 the East India Company finally started paying attention native Assam tea the company discovered you could make decent tea from Assam leaves but they couldn't make its auntie taste as good as Chinese tea so back to the drawing board they went Sam was a low-lying tropical region but the Himalayan region had similar growing conditions as China's best tea regions Assam tea didn't grow well there but if they could get their hands on some Chinese tea plants everything would fall into place the trouble was that the Chinese government banned Chinese citizens from sharing any information and growing or processing tea or trading tea plants with foreigners so if the East India Company wanted tea for India they were going to have to steal it the thief will be Scottish botanist Robert fortune which is honestly like an excellent name for a person about to steal an entire industry he was sent to China in 1848 by the East India Company steel the finest tea plants and to learn how the Chinese manufactured tea fortune dressed-up is the Chinese person because foreigners weren't allowed outside of the trading ports using this disguise fortunate tea farms and factories had learned that all teas came from the same plant camellia sinensis before this the British thought different teas came from different plants what fortune was taught that the differences between green and black tea were the results of processing alone black tea was fermented or green tea wasn't after years in China fortune learned the entire tea making process obtain all the necessary equipment sent back thousands of tea plants from China's best tea growing regions and somehow managed to convince six Chinese tea masters to go to India with him within years India's tea industry was out producing China's and doing it for a lower price British colonialism at tea plantations expanded into Burma Cylon East Africa and other places were tea to be grown during the last half of the 19th century tea estates covered India especially a SAN as the tea plantations grew sowed the need for labor the search for cheap labor centered on Bengal where Indian slaves were taken from their homes to tea plantations in Assam the conditions on these plantations were horrific owners refused to provide enough food disease was rampant clean water wasn't provided and child labor was common today Assam is one of the most underdeveloped and poor states in India and is home to several separatist movements nowadays over 13 million people are employed in tea production workers still often work long difficult hours for low wages on tea plantations where they often have to live poor working conditions and disease are still extremely prevalent but luckily we live in a world with the East India Company or empires no longer have a monopoly on the tea trade a fairer wealth distribution across the tea supply chain and better practices are possible organizations like Fairtrade and the ethical tea partnership help small tea farmers receive fair prices for their products and monitor living and working conditions among other issues today tea is the second most popular beverage in the world after water global consumption of tea is forecasted to reach 297 billion liters by 2021 by choosing to buy sustainable and human-friendly teas the lives of tea producers can be improved significantly and over the last 20 years conditions on at least some of the tea plantations have improved due to these efforts when robert fortune snuck those plans out of China he couldn't have imagined how large the tea industry would come his adventure in China was fascinating and I wish I could have discussed it in more depth there are pirates bad disguises and many many mistakes but I feel better knowing that you can see his entire adventure by watching tea war The Adventures of Robert fortune over on curiosity stream curiosity stream is a streaming video service that gives you access to thousands of documentaries they even offer exclusive original documentaries featuring great minds like David Attenborough Stephen Hawking and Ron Swanson you'll get unlimited access starting at just $2.99 a month if you sign up over at curiosity stream com forward slash cogito and use a promo code cogito during a signup process but wait there's more curiosity stream loves educational creators and wants to support them so they're offering cogito viewers free access to nebula when you sign up over at curiosity stream com4 slash cogito nebula is a streaming video platform I'm helping to build along with a bunch of other craters like Wendover productions soaps notes and rare earth there you can go watch some of your favorite youtube craters content ad free along with a bunch of nebula originals like real Engineering's logistics of d-day series rare earths new documentary illegal alien or Tom Scott's new gameshow money all ad free and earlier than YouTube this video is upon nebula days ago and any behind the scenes or extra content I create will go up on nebula first so go to a curiosity stream for cogito and you can access to thousands of high-quality documentaries on nebula and Clearstream and you'll be helping to support educational creators without having Asatru ads so that was a basic overview of the history of tea it isn't even close to covering everything one video simply can't cover everything but as always all of the sources used and further reading can be found in the description below and let the tank my patrons because they make this channel possible if you'd like to help support the channel over on patreon you can find the link also in the description if you want to watch more videos there are some on the screen right now and thank you so much for watching

Channel: Cogito

Views: 498,333

Keywords: History of tea, history of tea in england, history of tea in india, history of tea in china, darjeeling tea, the history of tea, shen nong, east india company, green tea, black tea, food & drink, what is buddhism, what is hinduism, ancient china, british empire, chinese history, tea history, food history, history of coffee, about tea, history of tea documentary, history of tea, chai tea, the history of tea drinking

Id: 6S0hlv5sUbw

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Captainirishy]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars the British Empire in the nineteenth century was one of the biggest drug dealers on the planet

[u/beaupipe]

Now do China, Fentanyl, and the United States.

[u/cuteshooter]

Addicted to money

[u/hello-fellow-normies]

this was in part due to the Chinese hoarding all the silver and gold, and almost bankrupting the British empire.

so the brits wanted tea, and lots of it. the Chinese had a monopoly on it and only accepted silver or gold for it. they also refused to buy anything from the British, imposing extremely high tariffs on all foreign goods.

the brits tried to find any kind of middle-ground , but the Chinese court would not negotiate with 'inferior people' (anyone not Chinese was/is inferior).

this went on for decades. the reason the Chinese wouldn't negotiate was cultural and racial chauvinism.

[u/multigrain-pancakes]

Til: you can get addicted to...tea?

[u/buddhist-truth]

Brits are basically mafia drug cartel run as a country