Abstract

More than 1,100 tons of tea were put up for sale in Gothenburg in August 1754. It was the largest quantity sold at a Swedish East India Company (SEIC) auction before the Seven Years’ War. The tea cargo was packed in 14,499 chests of various sizes, 380 tubs and more than 5,000 canisters; tea was by far the bulkiest of goods shipped to Gothenburg from Canton. All but a fifth of the tea in the 1754 shipment was the cheap black type called Bohea. The logistics of this trade involved moving these large quantities of Bohea tea from the Wuyi Mountain area in southeastern China where it was produced, to Canton, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and to the Northwestern fringe of Europe. This would be daunting enough, but the journey did not end in Gothenburg — the headquarters of the SEIC, on the West Coast of Sweden. After the auction, the chests were loaded onto smaller ships destined for places including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Ostend.

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