The Influence Of British Tea And Its Effects On British Culture

Although tea was used to make people more attentive rather than intoxicate them, both spirits and tea stirred the economy tremendously because of their demand, and eventually became centerpieces of British culture. Tea temporarily strengthened the mind of whoever drank it unlike spirits that dulled it. Britain emerged as the “...first global superpower...” (Standage 176) and to maintain such high prestige, the population needed to be operating at one hundred percent, and so “If the sun never set on the British Empire, it was perpetually teatime, somewhere at least” (Standage 176). Thanks to tea, the British were able to tirelessly work day and night to maintain their position in the world. Tea allowed the Empire to run smoothly, though, had the British used alcohol instead, they would’ve been “...asleep on the

Tea first came into fashion because of the queen, Catherine of Braganza, who was a devoted tea drinker. Watching her take so much pleasure in tea, the rest of the aristocracy eventually followed through but no one else could because of how expensive the beverage was. The drink would’ve remained a drink of the aristocracy had Charles II not given sweeping rights to the British East India Trading Company, though with them, the India Company “expanded, and profited from the trade in tea … and tea slowly became more widely available” (Standage !91). Tea allowed the economy to flow very well as it “...represented more than 60 percent of the company’s total trade…” (Standage 192). Spirits were wonderful in taste and had high alcohol percentages. They were originally discovered for medical purposes but as knowledge of distillation spread into Christian Europe, the drink became more widely consumed. Eventually, both spirits and tea became the center of English