Tea drinking in Korea began at the end of the 4th century. (Other sources say it was the 6th or 7th century.)  It was brought by the Buddhist monks from China and used to keep alert during meditation. (Martin)

In the early 1000's it was drunk at special occasions like weddings.  As interest in Buddhism declined in the early 1400s, interest in tea also declined.  Most tea gardens were destroyed. (Martin)

The earliest known mention of tea in Europe was published in Venice in Chai Catai translates roughly to “Tea of China”. Catai was a name given to northeastern Asia at this time, including Mongolia and northern China. Chai was a variation of ch’a, the name by which tea is still called in India, Afghanistan, Iran, and elsewhere.

It is thought that the first European to encounter tea was a Portuguese Jesuit Father, Jasper de Cruz, in 1560. He was a missionary on the first commercial trading trip permitted by China from Portugal. (Martin)

Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter on December 31, 1600 to the John Co. (later became the East India Co.) to promote Asian trade. Tea was brought to Europe by the Dutch sometime between 1606 and 1610 (Dutch East India Co.) By 1611, tea became a regular trade item for both the Netherlands and Portugal. (Martin)

In the mid-1600s tea became very popular in Paris. The Dutch brought tea to London in 1657. The British East India Company was struggling against their Dutch and Portuguese competition. The British East India Company was not able to be successful at importing tea until 1669.

Tea became popular in England when the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza married Charles II of England in 1662 and brought tea to the royal court. The marriage opened new trading routes for the British company with Brazil, the Portuguese Indies and Bombay. They then received the charter that granted then a monopoly on trade with China and India. (Martin)

At the end of the 1600s, the Brits planted tea seeds in chests and brought tea samples from China to England by boat. The plants did survive and some reached maturity but the quality was poor. It took until the mid-1800's for the Brits to become highly successful tea growers. (Beautheac)

In the 17th century, tea drinking in Britain was still uncommon as tariffs , established in 1660, were quite high. Like silks, china, and chocolate, tea became a status symbol because it was so expensive and hard to obtain. The first public sale of tea in Britain was by Thomas Garraway in 1657. (See British Tea House History for more information.) The tariffs were lowered in the 1780s because tea smuggling had become so prevalent. Suddenly demand far outpaced supply. A system of organized crime arose to fill the need. The legitimate tea mongers had trouble competing. (Moxham) Servants in upper class homes used to dry and resell used leaves as well.

Another way demand was met during this time was through the adulteration of teas. Sloe, the fruit of blackthorn, was frequently used to fill out black tea supplies as were the leaves of trees including birch and ash. Hawthorn was used to supplement green tea. In order to color these tea concoctions tannins from other trees were used as were chemicals and pigments like verdigris, ferrous sulfate, and copper carbonate and even dung from sheep! (Moxham)

In the 18th century, England's demand for tea was growing rapidly so it needed to increase its trading capacity with the only tea source: China. China desired silver but England hit upon a new plan. They began trading opium for tea, requiring farmers in India to grow poppies instead of food, resulting in widespread hunger in India and addiction in China. The resulting Opium Wars caused a tragic toll in China. (more info to come...) (Martin)

In 1823, the East India Company learned that there was a wild tea plant in Assam, India. The plant was located and over time the area was cleared to form a tea plantation. The hope was that by developing strong tea production in India, reliance on trade with China would be reduced. The East India Company even had its own army and it fought in India for land. It was eventually granted a monopoly by the Indian government. India eventually changed from a trading partner to an imperial colony. (Martin)

Lord Bentinck, Governor of India in 1828, set up a "Tea Committee" in 1834 which included representatives from East India Company, Indian tea dealers, and two Indian citizens. This committee sowed the seeds for the first tea estates in the British Empire. They then sent botanists to China to collect plants, research growing methods, and to bring growers to help start plantations in India.

n the mid to late 1800s, tea plants were brought from Assam to Sri Lanka (under British rule from 1795 to 1948) after experimental plantings in the early part of the century began to show promise. They tried both the Chinese variety and the Assam variety. The Chinese plants did not produce quality tea but the assamica varietal flourished. The production of tea in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) took off when the coffee industry there was decimated by a plant fungus in 1869. (Beautheac)

In 1850, Thomas Lipton was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He worked in his family's grocery store until he was 15 and moved to the US. There he worked on plantations and then in the food section of a department store in New York. In 1869 he returned to Scotland and started his own business (because his father was resistant to making any changes to the family business.) By 1880 he had 20 general stores. Ten years later he owned 300 stores. He was a master of self-promotion and advertising. He traveled to Colombo, Sri Lanka and purchased 4 plantations following the collapse of the coffee industry. He added innovations to these gardens including rolling machines, dryers, and transportation systems. He began offering tea in packets of standard weight and quality, lowering the price by selling directly. He created tea blends that were formulated for the water quality of particular towns. By 1894 he had a London staff of 500 and 10,000 employees in the plantations, factories, stores, and warehouses. He brought Lipton tea to the US market in the late 1800s and it has stayed popular ever since. (Beautheac)

It goes without saying that tea's popularity in Europe, and particularly Britain, continued through the ages. Beginning in 1927 there was even a "Tea in the Air" service offered by Imperial Airways Ltd. in England. Flights flew from London to Paris, May through October. (Ukers)

Tea came to New York as immigrants traveled from Europe. Thus, tea drinking evolved withe same cultural traditions as in Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia.

Coffee houses and tea gardens were developed as in London and they often even had the same names.

In Boston and Philadelphia, silver and porcelain tea services became important symbols of status. (Pettigrew)

In the early 1700's, scented green teas from China were the most popular teas.

In the 1760s, tea was the third largest import after textiles and manufactured goods.

The Boston tea party took place on December 16, 1773. In protest of the high British tea tariffs, colonists dressed as Native Americans, boarded ship, and threw 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The event was repeated in other cities throughout the colonies. (Stella)

In 1893, Ceylon tea was introduced to the US and the world market at the World's Fair in Chicago. More than 1,000,00 packets were sold. (Stella)

In the early 1900s most US tea came from China and in the Midwest green tea was most prevalent. Indian tea was brought to the US during the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Englishman Richard Blechynden was the importer. It was very, very hot during the fair and few were interested in a hot beverage. He decided to pour it over ice and market it as a cold beverage. Iced tea was invented and has continued to grow in popularity. (And Midwesterners still love green tea. In the early 1980's Lipton was still selling their only green tea product there.) (Pratt)