Tea trade

Tea trade is the cultivation, transport, and sale of tea through local and international markets. Its routes and markets have linked producing regions in Asia and Africa with consumers worldwide.

Tea cultivation: The growing and harvesting of Camellia sinensis for leaf used to make tea. Cultivation supplies the leaves that enter domestic and export markets.
Chinese tea trade: The domestic and international commerce in tea produced in China. China was a major source of tea long before European imports expanded.
Thomas Lipton: A Scottish merchant who built a mass-market tea business around direct sourcing and branded retail. Lipton’s business model made packaged tea widely available to British consumers.
Boston Tea Party: A 1773 protest in which American colonists dumped East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. A dispute over tea taxation turned commercial policy into colonial resistance.
Coffee trade: The cultivation, transport, and sale of coffee through local and international markets. Coffee offers a parallel commodity trade with different crops, regions, and consumption histories.
Tea processing: The withering, rolling, oxidation, and drying operations that turn fresh tea leaves into finished tea. Processing determines the form and quality in which tea is traded.
East India Company: An English joint-stock company that conducted trade and exercised political power in Asia from the seventeenth century. Its tea imports shaped British commerce and imperial policy.
Robert Fortune: A Scottish botanist who collected tea plants and production knowledge in China for transfer to British India. His 1848–1851 mission supported the expansion of tea cultivation in India.
Tea and the Opium Wars: The connection between Britain’s demand for Chinese tea and the opium trade that preceded the Opium Wars. Tea payments contributed to Britain’s search for a more favorable balance of trade with China.
Fair trade tea: Tea produced and sold under certification standards intended to improve conditions and returns for producers. It contrasts conventional pricing with standards aimed at producer benefits and labor conditions.

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