Why Do English People Love Tea
Why do English people love tea so much to the point it's become a part of their culture? is it the taste? is it because it's classy? or is there something else entirely different? Well whatever the reason is The United Kingdom has been one of the world's greatest tea consumer, with an average annua per capita tea supply of 1.9 kg it has been like this since the eighteen century.Tea has been a part of English culture for centuries. It has take root deep into English culture and society. But, why is it like this? Let's find out why tea has become such a prominent part of English Culture.
Tea was first mentioned in 1615, that the earliest known reference to tea by an Englishman took place in a letter exchanged between Mr. R. Wickham, an agent for the British East India Company stationed at Japan to a Mr. Eaton, who was stationed in Macao. In this letter, Wickham asked Eaton to send him "a pot of the best sort of chaw", phonetically an approximation of chàh, the local (Cantonese) dialect word for tea. Another early reference to tea appears in the writings of trader Samuel Purchas in 1625. Purchas describes how the Chinese consume tea as "the powder of a certaine herbe called chia of which they put as much as a walnut shell may contain, into a dish of Porcelane, and drink it with hot water". In 1637, Peter Mundy, a traveller and merchant who came across tea in Fujian, China, wrote, "chaa – only water with a kind of herb boyled in it".
Probably the first factor why tea become such a popular drink in the first place was its reputation as a medicinal drink. Many people (The first one being a Dutch physician named Nikolas Dirx) usually writers claimed the many benefits of drinking tea some of which may have been paid or influenced by Indies companies and merchants that wants to create a market for tea. Whatever the case is, there is no doubt that these writing helped in making tea popular.
The second factor why tea is popular is because it's popularity with aristocrats. According to Ellis, Coulton, Maugher, "tea was six to ten times more expensive than coffee" in the 1660s, making it an extremely expensive and luxurious commodity. Moreover, the proliferation of works on the health benefits of tea came at a time when people in the upper classes of English society began to take an interest in their health. In 1660, two pounds and two ounces of tea bought from Portugal were formally presented to Charles II by the British East India Company.[34] The drink, already common in Europe, was a favourite of his new Portuguese bride, Catherine of Braganza, who introduced it at court after she married Charles II in 1662, and made it fashionable among the ladies of the court as her temperance drink of choice. Catherine of Braganza's use of tea as a court beverage, rather than a medicinal drink, influenced its popularity in literary circles around 1685. Whenever it was consumed in the court, it was "conspicuously on display" so as to show it off.
Accordingly, tea drinking became a central aspect of aristocratic society in England by the 1680s, particularly among women who drank it while gossiping in the home. Catherine of Braganza's introduction of tea to ladies was significant because it made tea an acceptable drink for both sexes, when it easily could have been categorized as a men's drink if it had remained only available in the coffeehouses that only men frequented. Wealthy ladies' desire to show off their luxurious commodities in front of other ladies also increased demand for tea and made it more popular. Another factor that made tea desirable among the elite crowd was the addition of sugar, another luxurious commodity which was already well-established among the upper classes.
And with the tea's lowering prices from it's incredibly expensive price to affordable ones it starts getting adopted by middle classes as a patriotic drink and as drinking it became associated with respectability among middle classes. When people drink they were expected to act in a certain way that represents class. Tea drinking gets intertwined with respectability so much that it cannot fall out of fashion.
By the nineteenth century, tea’s popularity had reached the working class and it was soon considered an everyday necessity among poor labourers. According to the Scottish historian David MacPherson, tea had become cheaper than beer in the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, sugar had also become extremely cheap by this time and the two were almost always consumed together. Though the price of coffee had also gone down by this point, tea was the preferred drink because, unlike coffee, it still tasted good when diluted, which is often how the poor consumed it in order to save money.
Tea had other attractions as well. Drinking a hot, sweet beverage transformed their meals, which generally consisted of dry bread and cheese, and made them go down more easily. The warm beverage was especially appealing given Britain’s cold and wet climate. Further, tea helped alleviate some health problems: drinking tea required boiling the water, thereby killing water-borne diseases like dysentery, cholera, and typhoid therefore making it's drinker more healthy.
Now though, the practice of tea drinking was on a decline in the United Kingdom. There was a 10.25 per cent decline in the purchase of normal teabags in Britain between 1997 and 2002. Even with the decline though tea still remains a popular drink that has taken root deeply in British social and culture and it's going anyway anytime soon.
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