Introduction
The British drink almost 36 billion cups of tea each year, a trend set by King Charles II’s Portuguese wife, Queen Catherine. The tea itself came exclusively from China, which by the early Nineteenth Century had become a cause for concern. What if China were to close her ports to Europe, as neighbouring Japan had done? So the Government set up a Tea Committee.
IN January 1834, under the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck, a committee was appointed ‘for the purpose of submitting a plan for the introduction of tea-culture into India.’ In the following year, plants and seed were brought from China,* and widely distributed throughout the country. Government itself undertook the formation of experimental plantations in Upper Assam,* and in the sub-Himalayan Districts of Kumaun and Garhwal in the North-Western Provinces.* A party of skilled manufacturers was brought from China, and the leaf which they prepared was favourably reported upon in the London market.*
Forthwith private speculation took up the enterprise. The Assam Tea Company was formed in 1839, and received from the Government an extensive grant of land, with the nurseries which had been already laid out. In Kumaun, retired members of the civil and military services came forward with equal eagerness. Many fundamental mistakes as to site, soil, and methods of manufacture were made in those early days, and bitter disappointment was the chief result.
* China was not the only place where tea was grown, but it was the only place where tea was grown that the English could stomach. “It had been naturalised in Brazil, where it had grown magnificently,” tea historian Harold Mann tells us, “in St Helena, in Java, in Prince of Wales’ Island, — but the tea made in these places was very unsatisfactory. Of that made in Prince of Wales’ Island (Penang) it was stated that it had ‘acquired the appalling property of a nauseating and slightly emetic drug.’” The need for an alternative source was felt strongly for political reasons: the great fear was that China would do as Japan had done, and cut itself off from European trade altogether.
* Assam is a State in northeast India, on the eastern side of Bangladesh (Assam is joined to the rest of India by the narrow Siliguri corridor at the top of West Bengal). See Google Maps, and also ‘A Numbered map of India’s states’ at Wikimedia Commons, where Assam is numbered 3 and West Bengal is numbered 28.
* Garhwal and Kumaun or Kumaon are the two constituent Divisions of the State of Uttarakhand in northern India, to the north of New Delhi. The administrative centre of Kumaun is Nainital. See Google Maps.
* The first auction of Indian tea took place in London on January 10th, 1839, and a product that could be produced for a shilling a pound sold for many times that, reaching 34s per lb for one lot of Assam pekoe after frenzied bidding among sixty rivals. The winning bid for this and every other lot came from Captain John Rhodes Pidding (1803-50). He was a former East India Company employee and now a tea merchant, who sold Chinese tea through licensed distributors all over the country and declared in local newspapers from London to Newcastle-upon-Tyne that his Howqua’s Mixture Tea was ‘as supplied to the Royal table.’
Précis
Concern over the country’s dependency on China for her lucrative market in tea led the British Government to set up a committee in 1834, tasked with establishing a tea industry in India. Under William Bentinck’s supervision, Chinese tea and experts on its cultivation were brought to Assam, but a series of costly mistakes sapped the confidence of investors. (58 / 60 words)
Concern over the country’s dependency on China for her lucrative market in tea led the British Government to set up a committee in 1834, tasked with establishing a tea industry in India. Under William Bentinck’s supervision, Chinese tea and experts on its cultivation were brought to Assam, but a series of costly mistakes sapped the confidence of investors.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, because, if, just, may, unless, until, whereas.
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