Popularisation of Tea: Smugglers and Different Varieties of Tea

Abstract

By the eighteenth century, the consumption of tea in England and the Dutch Republic had quickly developed from a luxury hot beverage enjoyed by the rich few to a drink enjoyed throughout virtually the whole of society. Economic historians often contend that taking into consideration the amounts of tea brought to Europe, the real popularisation of tea, and of other Asian commodities, was only possible after 1820.1 Others have argued that fundamental changes in the consumption of tea in England and the Dutch Republic were already afoot early in the eighteenth century, and their populations had already had access to tea at this early date. Such East India company historians as Chaudhuri and Glamann point to eyewitness accounts mentioning the deep inroads tea had already made into Dutch and English society.2 Anne McCants has demonstrated that the great majority among the poorest of the poor in the Dutch Republic had equipment to make tea in their possession as early as the 1730s.3 Blonde and Ryckbosch have shown that the custom of drinking such hot beverages as tea had become a normal ritual in the households of Antwerp in this period.4 In the first half of the eighteenth century, the emphasis in the return cargoes of the VOC and the EIC also shifted to a preponderance of cheap varieties of tea, marking a steering away from more luxurious and expensive varieties of tea.5