History of Tea - The Tea Timeline
By Ron Campbell, Owner of Merkaba
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2700 B.C.: Tea is discovered and credited to Chinese Emperor Shen Nung.

1027-771: Western Zhou Dynasty, tea was a religious offering. During the Spring and Autumn Period, people ate fresh tea leaves as vegetables. Tea's refreshing effect made it a favorite among monks in Za-Zen meditation.

725: T'ang Dynasty: Ch'a, tea in Chinese, becomes part of daily life.

420-479 A.D.: Song Dynasty, formal tea-tasting parties were held, comparable to modern wine tasting. The proper vessel was important and much attention was paid to matching the tea to an aesthetically appealing serving vessel.

222: Tea will be mentioned as a substitute for wine for the first time in Chinese writings of the next half century.

618-907: Tang Dynasty , Tea in China prospered and tea shops became popular. A form of compressed tea referred to as white tea was being produced. "First flushes" were used as the raw material to make the compressed tea.

708: Tea drinking gains popularity among the Chinese in part because water is boiled to prevent intestinal disease. Tea is also valued for its alleged medicinal values.

805: Tea is introduced to Japan as a medicine. The Buddhist bonze (priest) Saicho returns with the first batch of tea seeds. The value of tea in China in enhancing religious mediation had been seen. It received almost instant imperial sponsorship and became a drink of the royal classes and spread rapidly from the royal court and monasteries to the other sections of Japanese society. Emperor Saga, the Japanese emperor, encouraged the growth of tea plants.

800’s: Lu Yu wrote the first Chinese authoritative book on tea, the “Ch'a Ching“. The book explains how tea plants were grown, the leaves processed and tea prepared. It also explains how tea was evaluated and where the best tea leaves were produced. Supported by the Emperor, his work clearly showed the Zen Buddhist philosophy to which he was exposed. It was this form of tea service that Zen Buddhist missionaries would later introduce to Imperial Japan which was elevated to an art form resulting in the creation of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. An explanation of this art form was written by the Irish-Greek journalist-historian Lafcadio Hearn, one of the few foreigners ever to be granted Japanese citizenship during this era. He wrote from personal study, "The Tea ceremony requires years of training and practice to graduate in art...yet the whole of this art, as to its detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. The supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible".

1191: The cultivation of tea in Japan is revived by the Buddhist Abbot Yesai, who subsequently published the first Japanese tea book. Zen Buddhism is introduced to Japan by the priest Aeisai who returns from a visit to China. Aeisai plants tea seeds and makes medicinal claims.

1214: Zen priest Eisai’s two-volume books were published. The first sentence states, "Tea is the ultimate mental and medical remedy and has the ability to make one's life more full and complete". Part One discusses tea's medicinal qualities and also explains the shapes of tea plants, tea flowers and tea leaves and covers how to grow tea plants and process tea leaves. In Part Two, the book discusses the specific dosage and method required for individual physical ailments. He presented a books he had written to the shogun general Minamoto no Sanetomo , lauding the health benefits of tea drinking. After that, the custom of tea drinking became popular among the Samurai.

1391: Emperor Hung-wu decreed that tributes of tea to the court were to be in loose-leaf form. The imperial decree quickly transformed the tea drinking habits of the people, changing from whisked teas to steeped teas. The arrival of the new method for preparing tea required the creation or use of new utensils and vessels.

1484: The tea ceremony was introduced by Japan's Yoshimasa. The shogun had encouraged painting and drama, his reign had otherwise been disastrous, but the tea ceremony will remain for centuries a cherished part of Japanese culture. The Geishi began to specialize in the presentation of the tea ceremony. A special form of architecture was developed for "tea houses", based on the replication of the quaintness of a forest cottage. The integrity of the original Zen concept was becoming lost. "Tea Tournaments" were held among the wealthy where nobles competed among each other for rich prizes in naming various tea blends. Rewarding winners with gifts of silk, armor, and jewelry was totally alien to the original Zen attitude of the ceremony.

1500: Ming Dynasty: In imitation of spouted wine earthenware, the first teapots were made at Yixing, near Shanghai famous for its clays. Black, green and oolong tea become prevalent.

1591: Japanese teamaster Rikyu Sen formalized the tea ceremony.

1597: The first English mention of tea appears in a translation of Dutch navigator Jan Hugo van Lin-Schooten's Travels. Van Lin-Schooten calls the beverage chaa.

1610: Tea reaches Europe, carried by the Dutch from Bantam, Java. The Portuguese created trade routes to China and brought back tea to Portugal. From Lisbon the Dutch East India Company transported the tea to Holland, France and Germany.

1618: Imperial Russia was attempting to engage China and Japan in trade at the same time as the East Indian Company. The Chinese embassy in Moscow presented several chests of tea to Czar Alexis.

1623: The first annual public Japanese tea ritual, known as the "Tea Journey" is held.

1650: Peter Stuyvesant brought the first tea to American colonists in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. The John Company was granted the unbelievably wide monopoly of all trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of Cape Horn. Its powers were almost without limit and included among others the right to; Legally acquire territory and govern it. Coin money. Raise arms and build forts. Form foreign alliances. Declare war. Conclude peace. Pass laws. Try and punish law breakers. It was the single largest, most powerful monopoly to ever exist in the world. All of power was based on the importation of tea.

1652: The first samples of tea reached England. Tea quickly proved popular enough to replace ale as the national drink of England. Because of heavy taxation, it was regularly smuggled into Britain. The complex network of smuggling often began in Holland and France.

1657: Garway's Coffee in Exchange Alley between Cornhill and Lombard streets.house in London holds the first public sale of tea. Garway's starts to advertise the "Virtues of the leaf tea." The East India Company undercuts Dutch prices and advertises tea as “a panacea for apoplexy, catarrh, colic, consumption, drowsiness, epilepsy, gallstones, lethargy, migraine, paralysis, and vertigo“.

1658: The London periodical Mercurious Politicus carries an advertisement: "That excellent and by all Physitians approved China Drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other nations Tay, alias Tea, is sold at the Sultaness Head, a cophee-house in Sweeti Rents."

1665: England imports less than 88 tons of sugar, a figure that will grow to 10,000 tons by the end of the century as tea consumption (encouraged by cheap sugar) increases in popularity.

1670: English colonists in Boston became aware of tea, but it was not publicly available for sale until twenty years later. Tea Gardens were opened in New York City, already aware of tea as a former Dutch colony. The American settlers were heavy volume tea drinkers; they consumed more tea than all of England at that time.

1675: Tea was available in common food shops throughout Holland.

1680: Madame de la Sabliere, wife of the French poet, introduces France to the custom of drinking tea with milk. Pouring the milk into the cup of hot tea cooled the tea slightly, making it less apt to break her cherished eggshell porcelain tea cups.

1684: Tea sells on the Continent for less than 1 shilling/lb, but an import duty of 5 shillings/lb makes tea too costly for most Englishmen and encourages widespread smuggling. The English consume more smuggled tea than is brought in by orthodox routes.

1689: The Trade Treaty of Newchinsk established a common border between Russia and China, allowing caravans to then cross back and forth freely. The trip was 11,000 miles long and took over sixteen months to complete. The average caravan consisted of 200 to 300 camels. As a result of such factors, the cost of tea was initially prohibitive and available only to the wealthy.

1708: The United East India Company was created by a merger of Britain's two rival East India companies. The company ships China tea as well as other goods. Tea mania swept across England as it had earlier spread throughout France and Holland. Tea importation rose from 40,000 pounds in 1699 to an annual average of 240,000 pounds. Tea was drank by all levels of society.

1712: The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope is a mock-heroic poem describing a day at Hampton Court where Queen Anne does "sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea".

1720: America, tea was a generally accepted staple of trade between the American Colony and the Mother country. It was especially a favorite of colonial women. Tea trade was centered in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. As tea was heavily taxed, even at this early date, contraband tea was smuggled into the colonies by the independent minded American merchants.

1723: Robert Walpole reduces British duties on tea.

1740: Soen Nagatani developed Japanese sencha. Sencha is now one of Japan's mainstay teas.

1767: The Townshend Revenue Act passed, imposing duties on tea, glass, paint, oil, lead, and paper imported into Britain's American colonies. A town meeting held at Boston to protest the Townshend Act adopts a non-importation agreement.

1768: The East India Company imports 10 million pounds of tea per year into England.

1770: The Boston Massacre leaves three dead, two mortally wounded, and six injured following a disturbance between colonists and British troops. Parliament repeals the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767. Prime Minister North has used his influence to have the act repealed.

1773: The Tea Act passed by Parliament lightens duties on tea imported into Britain to give relief to the East India Company which has 7 years' supply in warehouses on the Thames and is being strained by storage charges. The Tea Act permits tea to be shipped at full duty to the American colonies and to be sold directly to retailers, eliminating colonial middlemen and undercutting their prices. "Two Letters on the Tea Tax" by John Dickinson are published in November. Agitator Samuel Adams has organized the Boston Tea Party action with support from John Hancock, whose smuggling of contraband tea has been made unprofitable by the new measures. On December 16, at the Boston Tea Party, American colonists dressed as Mohawk Indians dump the entire Boston consignment of the John Company's tea into the harbor in protest of the exorbitant tea tax. Next, the group board East India Company ships at Griffen's Wharf, and throw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Tea is left to rot on the docks at Charleston. New York and Philadelphia send tea-laden ships back to England, but men of "sense and property" such as George Washington deplore the Boston Tea Party.

1774: The British ship London docks at N.Y. April 22, and the Sons of Liberty prepare to follow the example set at Boston 4 months earlier. While they are making themselves up as Mohawks an impatient crowd boards the vessel and heaves the tea overboard. Colonists at York, Maine, and Annapolis, Maryland, conduct tea parties like the one at Boston. News of last year's Boston Tea Party reaches London January via John Hancock's ship Hayley. Parliament passes coercive acts to bring the colonists to heel. George III gives assent March 31 to the Boston Port Bill and Boston Harbor is closed June 1 until the East India Company shall have been reimbursed for its tea and British authorities feel that trade can be resumed and duties collected.

1780: The smuggling within the tea trade was thought to be as large as the legal trade.

1784: Parliament further lowers British import duties on tea. The lower duties end the smuggling that has accounted for so much of the nation's tea imports and hurt the East India Company as the rewards become too small to justify the risks.

1790: Boston merchants starts a triangular trade with clothing, copper, and iron to the Columbia River to be bargained for furs. The sea captains will sell the cargoes at Canton and return round the Cape of Good Hope with Chinese porcelains, teas, and tiles.

1796: In Russia, the samovar, adopted from the Tibetan "hot pot" made it‘s preview. It could run all day and serve up to forty cups of tea at a time. Again showing the Asian influence in the Russian culture, guests sipped their tea from glasses in silver holders, very similar to Turkish coffee cups.

1797: English tea consumption reaches an annual rate of 2 pounds per capita, a figure that will increase fivefold in the next century.

1820: The book "Adulteration of Foods and Culinary Poisons" by English chemistry professor Frederick Accum shows among other things that counterfeit China tea is made from dried thorn leaves colored with poisonous verdigris. Caffeine is isolated by the German chemist Friedrich Ferdinand Runge.

1823: Acting for the British government, Charles Bruce smuggles knowledgeable coolies out of China and puts them to work transplanting young tea bushes into nursery beds to begin tea plantations.

1824: Cadbury's Chocolate has its beginnings in a tea and coffee shop opened by Birmingham, England. John Cadbury will employ a Chinese to preside over his tea charter. The Royal Navy reduces its daily rum ration from half a pint to a quarter pint, and tea becomes part of the daily ration.

1825: British colonists in Ceylon plant coffee bushes.

1826: The first tea to be retailed in sealed packages under a proprietary name is introduced by John Horniman whose sealed, lead-lined packages have been designed in part to protect his tea from adulteration.

1830: Congress reduces U.S. duties on coffee, tea, salt, and molasses imports.

1831: Boston's S. S. Pierce Co. has its beginnings in a shop opened to sell "choice teas and foreign fruits" by local merchant Samuel Stillman Pierce.

1833: The East India Company loses its prized monopoly in the China trade (most of it in tea) by an act of the British prime minister Charles Grey, 69, second Earl Grey.

1837: Major Samuel Shaw becomes first U.S. consul at Canton, and more Americans are encouraged to enter the China trade.

1839: Some 95 chests of Assam tea arrive at London and are sold at auction. Unlike green China tea, the leaves from India are fermented and the new black tea, less astringent than green tea, begins to gain popularity.

1840: Afternoon tea is introduced by Anna, the duchess of Bedford. The tea interval will become a lasting British tradition.

1849: Parliament abolishes Britain's Navigation Acts June 26, ending restrictions on foreign shipping. U.S. clipper ships are permitted to bring cargoes of China tea to British ports.

1850: Tea catches up with coffee in popularity among the English. The first U.S. clipper ship to be seen at London arrives from Hong Kong after a 97-day voyage. The Oriental carries a 1,600-ton cargo of China tea and her $48,000 cargo fee nearly covers the cost of her construction. British shipbuilders are inspired to copy the Oriental's lines but are handicapped by English rules of taxation that consider length and beam in measuring tonnage while leaving depth untaxed. The short deep ships built at Aberdeen and on the Clyde do not approach the speed of the U.S. clipper ships, which soon abandon the China trade for the more profitable business of transporting gold seekers to California.

1851: The London Great Exhibition forbids sale of wine, spirits, beer, and other intoxicating beverages but permits tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, lemonade, ices, ginger-beer, and soda water.

1855: A Report of the Analytical Sanitary Commission of `The Lancet' is published at London. A. H. Hassall reports that all but the most costly food and tea contain trace amounts of arsenic, copper, lead or mercury.

1856: The first tea is planted in the Darjeeling District of Northern India.

1861: U.S. tariffs rise as Congress passes the first of three Morrill Acts which will boost tariffs to an average of 47 percent. Duties on tea, coffee, and sugar are increased as a war measure.

1866: More than 90 percent of Britain's tea still comes from China. The Great Tea Race from Foochow to London pits 11 clipper ships who race to minimize spoilage of the China tea in their hot holds. The skippers crowd on sail but the voyage still takes close to 3 months.

1869: The coffee rust Hamileia vastatrix appears in Ceylon plantations and will spread throughout the Orient and the Pacific in the next two decades. It will destroy the coffee-growing industry, and soaring coffee prices will lead to wide-scale tea cultivation. The English clipper ship Cutty Sark, built for the tea trade, sails for Shanghai to begin a 117-day voyage with 28 crewmen to handle the 10 miles of rigging that control her 32,000 square feet of canvas.

1871: Huntington Hartford of the A&P sends emergency rail shipments of tea and coffee to Chicago, most of whose grocery stores have burnt in the great October fire. Newer steamships began to replace the great clipper ships.

1876: Glasgow grocer Thomas Johnstone Lipton opens his first shop. Lipton sailed to America at age 15 to spend 4 years learning the merchandising methods employed in the grocery section of a New York department store.

1879: "The Cup of Tea" is painted by Mary Cassatt.

1884: The last shipment of Ceylon’s coffee beans will leave the island in 1899.

1885: Both America and England, fine hotels began to offer tea service in tea rooms and tea courts. Served in the late afternoon, Victorian ladies (and their gentlemen friends) could meet for tea and conversation. Many of these tea services became the hallmark of the elegance of the hotel, such as the tea services at the Ritz (Boston) and the Plaza (New York).
1889: Rust finishes off Ceylon's coffee industry.

1890: Thomas Lipton enters the tea business to assure supplies of tea at low cost for his 300 grocery shops. He offers "The Finest the World Can Produce".

1898: Annual British tea consumption averages 10 pounds per capita, up from 2 pounds in 1797. Congress imposes the first U.S. federal tax on legacies June 13 in a War Revenue Act that also provides for excise duties and taxes on tea, tobacco, liquor, and amusements.

1900: The last camel caravan carrying tea departs Peking for Russia. During the same year, the last link of the Trans-Siberian railroad is completed. Although the Revolution intervened in the flow of the Russian society, tea remained a staple throughout. Tea (along with vodka) is the national drink of the Russians today.

1902: Barnum's Animal Crackers are introduced by the National Biscuit Co., which controls 70 percent of U.S. cracker and cookie output. It joins the line of Nabisco products that includes Social Tea Biscuits.

1904: Due to the unbearable heat, iced tea is invented at the St. Louis World's fair when sweltering fairgoers pass him by, but as in the case of the ice cream cone. Dr Shepard's South Carolina grown tea wins "Best in Show" medal. Tea bags are pioneered by New York tea and coffee shop merchant Green tea and Formosan continue to outsell black tea five to one in the United States.

1909: Thomas Lipton begins blending and packaging his tea at New York. His U.S. business will be incorporated in 1915, and 3 years after his death in 1931 his picture will begin appearing on the red-and-yellow packages that identify Lipton products.

1908: Mr. William Sullivan, tea merchant in New York, inadvertently invents the tea bag. Thomas Sullivan who sends samples of his various tea blends to customers in small hand-sewn muslin bags. Finding that they can brew tea simply by pouring boiling water over a tea bag in a cup, customers place hundreds of orders for Sullivan's tea bags, which will soon be packed by a specially developed machine.

1910: Japan introduces machine manufacturing of green tea and began replacing handmade tea. Machines took over the processes of primary drying, tea rolling, secondary drying, final rolling, and steaming.

1912: Edward Filene begins holding free tea dances. Hotels began to host afternoon tea dances as dance craze after dance craze swept the United States and England. Often considered wasteful by older people they provided a place for the new "working girl" to meet men in a city, far from home and family.

1918: British food rationing begins eventually including 2 ounces of tea (weekly).

1924: The song "Tea for Two" is written by Vincent Youmans.

1925: Africa passes the million-pound mark in tea shipments. Brooke Bond begins buying land and planting tea in Kenya.

1946: Nestle USA introduced the first instant tea, Nestea.

1953: White Rose Redi-Tea, introduced by New York's Seeman Brothers, is the world's first instant iced tea.

1958: Three Hundred years after China tea was first introduced to England, it is sold there for the first time by its Chinese producers.

Today: Automation has contributed to improved quality control and reduced labor. Sensor and computer controls have been introduced to machine automation so that unskilled workers can produce superior tea without compromising in quality. This combination of Nature's bounty and manmade technical breakthroughs combine to produce the most exceptional tea products sold on the market today.

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Ron Campbell and his wife Kathy own and operate Merkaba, which features a wide variety of teas and tea items, and gifts for all your spiritual and cultural needs. Their teas come from all over the world and include organic herbal teas, healing teas, Yerba Mate, green teas, black teas, oolong, white teas, pu-erh, flavored tisanes, chai teas, flavored and blended teas. You'll find all kinds of tea products including filters, thermometers, tea bag squeezers, tea cozies, gourds, tea pots and tea sets, mugs and cups, mesh tea infusers, bombilla and even coffee and tea scoops. For more information about Merkaba's retail shop in Idyllwild, CA, or online store visit: http://www.southwestblend.com/merkaba/index.htm