Tea Smuggling Through History

The tea trade has been booming for hundreds of years, and where there’s trade, there are taxes. Unfortunately, where there are taxes, there are smugglers that want to avoid paying them. It may seem strange to think about people smuggling it now that we can easily buy tea from specialty stores online, but it was a big business back then. It started when British businessmen smuggled it out of China to break the country’s monopoly on the tea market. Britain then got a taste of its own medicine when people started sneaking past the tax collectors in the colonies.

Taking Tea from China

Once upon a time, China controlled essentially all of the world’s tea production. That was a big problem for Britain since tea was just as popular in Britain then as it is now. China produced very high-quality tea, but it was also very expensive. They initially bought it from China in exchange for opium, but that led to a war when the Chinese emperor banned the drug. Britain eventually decided that it was better to grow tea in its own colonies, but that meant finding a way to bring it there.

Robert Fortune solved that problem for Britain. He was a botanist who had already spent some time in China, so he was the perfect choice to sneak a few plants out of the country. He collected both the plants and the information on how to grow them, and he brought it to British India. India’s tea industry boomed, and China’s monopoly shattered.

Tricking Tax Collectors

Tea spread throughout the British Empire. The East India Company had a monopoly on the tea trade, which consisted mostly of loose leaf black tea, and it inflated prices to pad its profits. The government also got in on the action and levied large taxes on tea imports. Many people who wanted cheaper tea simply turned their back on legal imports and went to their local smuggler for a discount. Americans were famous for avoiding the tax at the time, but the smuggling happened all over the British Empire. It was so common that many villages purchased all of their tea from smugglers.

Smugglers often mixed their tea with other products to save money or make it seem more appealing. Sometimes they used relatively safe plants, which made something similar to modern blended fruit tea, but that was rare. They often used toxic chemicals and hid the results with dye. That drove people to prefer black tea over green tea, since it was easier to see if it was pure or not. The smuggling gangs also had a tendency to turn as violent as modern drug cartels. Their common acts of violence were enough to turn the public against that particular gang.

The Modern World

Tea smuggling became less common after the East India Company went out of business and taxes got reduced. It was simply too cheap to be worth the risk of getting caught. Tea is still among the most popular drinks in the world, but people no longer have to fear getting arrested for selling it in the modern world.