When you think of Britain, one of the first things that probably comes to mind is tea. In fact, tea is so intertwined with British culture today that it’s hard to think of what Britain would be like without its unofficial national beverage. Would you be surprised to learn, then, that tea only arrived in Britain in the seventeenth century? It’s true! While the first real evidence of tea drinking in China dates back to 350 CE, tea wasn’t introduced to Europeans until after the Age of Exploration, when Europeans established maritime trading routes between Europe and Asia (and from trading routes came trading posts and, later, trading empires).

In 1606, after establishing a trading post on the island of Java (in what is now Indonesia), the Dutch East India Company sent its first cargo of tea by sea back to Amsterdam. Tea drinking became popular among the upper classes in Europe, including Catherine of Braganza, who brought the custom with her to England when she married Charles II in 1662. Indeed, part of Catherine’s dowry was a chest of tea, which demonstrates its value in Europe in the seventeenth century. Another, even more valuable, part of Catherine’s dowry was the Portuguese trading colony of Bom Bahia (Mumbai) in India. Charles II transferred this colony to the British East India Company, which held a monopoly on trade between Britain and India. The stage was set for Britain to enter the tea trade and to expand its trading/colonial presence in India.

In 1664, the East India Company placed its first order for tea: 100 pounds of China tea were shipped from Java to Britain. As the tea trade grew, so did the East India Company’s wealth and power. Over time, the East India Company used its monopoly on trade between Britain and India to become the de facto colonial power in large parts of India (but that’s another story). For today, we will pick up the story of tea in England with a man named Thomas Twining, who, having initially trained as a weaver, shifted his attention to trade, particularly the tea trade and the opportunities it offered.

In the seventeenth century, coffee was the drink of choice for ordinary Britons, as tea was very expensive and, accordingly, only consumed by the wealthy. Coffee houses were popular meeting places, where men (only men) would drink coffee, do business, socialize, and discuss politics. Looking to break into the coffee house business, in 1706, Thomas Twining purchased Tom’s Coffee House on the Strand, a road in London connecting the City of London (the traditional heart of the city) with Westminster. The area was newly popular with wealthy Londoners, many of whom had built houses there after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Wanting to stand out among the competition, Thomas Twining introduced tea as a new offering at his coffee house. It soon proved to be a hit.

By 1717, selling tea had become so popular that Thomas Twining acquired a new building at 216 The Strand, which he turned into a shop selling tea, not to drink on-site, but dry tea to consume at home. Social and gender norms of the time prevented women, especially upper-class women, from entering coffee houses, but shopping was considered an acceptable activity. By opening a tea shop, Thomas Twining was able to sell tea directly to wealthy female customers. Tea is still sold in the same shop at 216 The Strand today, which houses the flagship store of Twinings, the company Thomas founded (now a major brand of tea). As a tea drinker and a historian, I’ve long wanted to visit the original Twinings tea shop, and I was finally able to drop by while in London earlier this summer. The shop itself is very small, especially compared to the buildings on either side of it, but the inside is very nice. In addition to shelves of tea and tea accessories, the shop also has a timeline of the history of Twinings, which I greatly enjoyed.

After Thomas Twining died in 1741, his son Daniel took over the business. When Daniel himself died in 1762, his widow, Mary Twining, took over the business. In the eighteenth century, it was unusual for a woman to be active in the operation of a business, especially one as large as Twinings, but Mary persevered against any opposition or disapproval. She successfully ran the business for twenty years during a period marked by the American Revolution (and American colonists’ protests against the taxation of tea) and the East India Company’s continuing monopoly on the tea trade, which artificially inflated the price of tea. In 1783, Mary Twining turned the business over to her son, Richard Twining, who, in addition to other things, commissioned the store entrance that we see today, with a golden lion (symbolizing Thomas Twining’s original shop, called the Golden Lyon) and two Chinese figures (symbolizing the origins of tea in China).

In the nineteenth century, tea became much more affordable due to a combination of factors. Following the Indian Uprising in 1857, the East India Company was gradually deprived of its commercial monopoly over trade between India and Britain and lost its political control over India to the British Crown. Furthermore, after the First Opium War between Britain and China, Britain began to look for alternatives to importing tea from China. (Until this point, the British had been importing tea from China and paying for it by exporting opium into China. In the late 1830s, the Chinese government sought to crack down on the opium trade, leading to the First Opium War.) Having smuggled tea plants out of China, the British created tea plantations in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Tea could now be imported into Britain from within its own empire, demonstrating yet another way in which the history of British tea drinking is wrapped up with the history of the British Empire.

Having become more affordable, tea became the preferred everyday drink of the British working class in the nineteenth century. Because sugar had also become much cheaper in the nineteenth century than previously, working-class Britons drank their tea heavily sugared. Unlike coffee, tea still tasted good when diluted (especially when paired with sugar); working-class people typically drank tea diluted in order to save money and reuse tea leaves. Tea also proved a counterpoint to the typically meager meals of working-class Britons, which usually consisted of dry bread and cheese. Tea also helped make nineteenth-century water a bit more sanitary, as boiling water for tea killed the germs that caused diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Unlike the upper classes, for whom tea drinking was a domestic ritual, done at home, working-class Britons consumed their tea at work. Indeed, many British factories and other places of employment provided their employees with tea (perhaps as a way to boost productivity through caffeine consumption), and tea breaks were built into the working day.

Corresponding to this increased demand for tea, Twinings began selling pre-packaged tea for the first time in the 1880s. This did not take the form of tea bags, however, but rather bricks of loose-leaf tea packaged in specially-patterned cartons. Twinings would not sell tea bags until 1956 and only then at the demand of North American tea drinkers.

Along with the increased popularity of tea among the working class in the nineteenth century came the creation of tea rooms, or establishments that served tea and light refreshments. Many tea rooms opened during the Victorian period and were cheered by social reformers, particularly members of the temperance movement, who were concerned about the working class’s consumption of alcohol. Tea rooms are a significant development in women’s history, as they not only employed women, but also provided a place in which middle-class women could meet and socialize without a male escort at no danger to their reputations. At a time when the suffrage movement was developing in Britain, the existence of spaces for female sociability and political discussion was highly important.

There you have it: the story of how tea became Britain’s unofficial national beverage, wrapped up with the history of the British Empire, social changes, and social reform movements. There’s much more to the history of tea in Britain than I have time for here today – we haven’t even gotten to the difference between cream tea (scones, clotted cream, and jam, served alongside tea) and afternoon tea (sandwiches, cakes, and pastries, served alongside tea, usually reserved today for a special occasion). As I go off to enjoy a cup of tea, I’ll leave you with pictures from my own afternoon tea experience this summer at Bettys Café Tea Rooms in York, a Yorkshire institution and a must-visit place for anyone coming to York.