History of tea

The history of tea goes back to the distant past of Asia; legends and stories mix to tell its origins in China, more than 2,000 years BC.
Little by little, the preparation and ceremony of tea were to be developed into refined rites which found their ideal path in Chinese Taoism. Japan was then initiated into its delights and made it an essential element of its culture.

It was only in the 17th century that Europe discovered tea when the ships of the East India Company brought back the precious commodity from the Far East. The English then made tea their national drink and its trade was one of the bases of their world supremacy in the era of clippers. An entire art of hospitality was created through tea while the plantations of Assam, the jewel of the Indian Empire, developed in blood and tears: tens of thousands of coolies were massacred there.

Such was the price of the brutal expansion of a conquering economy that would support the refinement of Victorian salons. A drink with a fabulous history, both in its origins and in its most recent developments, tea still seduces imaginations with the exoticism attached to its name. Today it is a global drink, an important economic agent, an art of living, and one of the symbols of the British world.

Number of pages: 256
Publisher: DESJONQUÈRES EDITIONS
Release date: 01/31/1997
Dimensions: 2 × 14.5 × 22.4cm