01 ISSUE X
FEBRUARY 2026
FEBRUARY 2026
giving you the tea
The history of tea is one of not just culture, but also conquest, and quiet violence.
By Isabelle Mizerk-Thorrens
Tea is one of those seemingly simple things that can be easy to overlook because of its familiarity, but it is everywhere. It can come in tea bags or fancy canisters, be served in fine china or paper cups, and be found anywhere from bodegas to palaces. It’s easy to treat tea as neutral, part of an aesthetic, and as a comforting beverage that feels separate from history.
But once you actually look into where tea comes from, that comfort starts to fade away.
Image via FramePhoto/Folhapress.
Tea is produced by drying the leaves of a flowering evergreen plant native to East Asia, called Camellia sinensis. Its consumption can be traced back thousands of years to the Tang dynasty in China, where it was deeply connected to spiritual and medicinal rituals. It was prepared slowly and deliberately. That relationship extended to the objects in which it was consumed. A special type of ceramic was developed specifically for tea: what we call “china.” These thin, fragile cups weren’t just decorative; they were a crucial part of the tea ceremony. The act of drinking tea could not be rushed and came with multiple steps and customs. Even the way the cup was held mattered.
It wasn’t until nearly two thousand years later that tea was introduced to Europe, largely through colonial trade networks controlled by companies like the British East India Company. In Europe, tea quickly became a luxury reserved for the aristocracy. In England, it was popularized by Catherine of Braganza, the wife of King Charles II. As part of her dowry, Catherine brought with her a casket full of tea from her home country of Portugal, where she had grown up drinking it. In Europe, like in China, consuming tea was about more than just enjoying the taste. It signified a person’s status: it wasn’t about drinking it as much as displaying it. The china mattered just as much as the tea itself. Porcelain cups, whether imported from China or later produced in European factories, became symbols of refinement, wealth, and access to global commodities.
As tea imports increased and prices dropped, it spread beyond elite salons into working-class households in England. By the eighteenth century, tea had become a daily staple in British life and an essential part of their culture, with the creation of the country’s own ceremonies surrounding the beverage. What’s strange is how quickly this shift made tea feel normal and even domestic. Over time, tea was marketed as tradition, not conquest. The violence that made tea’s accessibility possible faded into the background, replaced by the idea of tea as something that’s comforting and familiar.
By the nineteenth century, Britain’s demand for tea had reshaped global economies. The country faced a massive trade deficit with China, because as its citizens’ appetite for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain grew, its silver reserves dwindled. Chinese consumers had little interest in British goods. This meant that Britain had to pay for its imports with large quantities of silver, resulting in a significant depletion of the country’s reserves. To solve this problem, the British East India Company began illegally smuggling opium grown in British-controlled India into China. The opium trade funded Britain’s tea consumption while devastating Chinese port cities through addiction and death. Tea wasn’t just a drink again. It became a reason for war.
The Opium Wars that followed were violent conflicts between the Qing dynasty and Western powers. China lost both wars and was forced to cede Hong Kong, which became a British colony. Around the same time, Britain began cultivating tea in India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to break China’s monopoly on production. They created huge tea plantations, taking land and relying on harsh labor systems to produce tea cheaply and in massive quantities. It’s strange to realize that some of the most “beautiful” tea regions today were shaped by this exploitation.
What’s unsettling is how quiet all of this is. Tea doesn’t feel violent. Unlike weapons or monuments, it enters the body gently. It steeps slowly. It stains porcelain cups over time. It doesn’t announce itself as harmful. Even china reflects this contradiction. It’s delicate and breakable, yet designed to last. Porcelain survives in museums while the lives that produced it are forgotten. A cup can shatter instantly, but the systems behind it don’t.
That history is still there, even when it’s easy to forget. Brands like Twinings and Fortnum & Mason continue to profit from legacies built during the height of the British Empire. India, although no longer a British colony, remains one of the world’s largest tea producers. Those systems didn’t disappear. They just stopped being noticed.
Tea often feels far removed from this history. It exists in cafés and salons as something quiet and reflective. But that distance is part of the story.
Isabella mizerk-thorrens is _.