It is impossible to explore the culture of the East, of China especially, without encountering the importance of tea. China has a long tradition of tea drinking, and was responsible for acquainting the East and the West. Tea gained popularity throughout the Western world, particularly in Britain, and demand for it increased, China entered a challenging period in their history. Exploring this story shows tea as a social, economic, and political commodity, the catalyst for this conflict and change. Economically, tea led to Britain's exponential economic growth and globalization. Certainly tea was not the lone source of these disturbances, but it was an important one. These excerpts from human history are not intended to reconstruct the story of tea. However, studying tea and the dynamic ways societies have interacted with it provides insight into the rich history of a product that humankind has loved for millennia.
The nineteenth century witnessed the most explosive episode in the history of the tea trade: the Opium Wars. This turmoil centered on economic and outright military conflict between the British Empire and the Chinese. The strength of the tea trade in Western Europe by the mid-seventeenth century led to numerous attempts to supplant the dependency on China with European plantations. Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, led this cause, participating in multiple failed attempts to retrieve and grow tea from China. For the tea-drinking Europeans, China remained their lifeline, something Britain hoped to change. The Seven Years' War (1756-63) and the American War of Independence (1775-83) extinguished the East India Company's silver reserves, which until that point had been the goods used to purchase tea from the Chinese. Vi...
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...eals. Mair and Hoh reinforced this in their study of the conflict, offering, "The long fuse of the 19th-century Opium Wars was lit by the unhappy confluence of two parties profoundly ignorant of each other's history and culture . . ." As for China's economic progress after the conflict, Mair and Hoh offered this tragic footnote: " . . . ¬China's doors were forced open, and the country descended into more than a century of economic hardship, foreign invasions, civil war, revolution, and the collapse of the country's ancient tea industry."
The history of tea both in and out of China is long and far-reaching. It is not limited to violence, either economic or physical. Neither is it a story of peace. Understanding tea's material history, and its orbiting elements, as a change agent yields insight into the clashes of culture and ideology that populate human history.
The global flow of silver effected the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century economically because silver made the world go round, socially because everyone was dependent on some sort of trade, and politically because silver was a high priority to important world powers. In this document based assignment, it would have been convenient to have a document about the opinion of either a Potosi Indian or a peasant from the commercial city of Hangzhou because both points of view would give further insight into the negative side of this time periods lust for silver, and how the insanity ruined lives.
It was obvious that the Colonists weren’t responding well to tighter control from the British, but they did not know how to handle it except to squeeze tighter. In an effort to bring back the East India Company from bankruptcy, the British Crown granted them a monopoly on tea sales to the American Colonies. Without competition, the East India Company had full control over the prices they set. This infuriated the colonists. Pamphlets and protests did not seem to be cutting it anymore, so some felt like action needed to be taken.
At the end of the eighteenth century, China’s goods were much desired by Britain. However, the Chinese saw Europeans as savages and did not want to trade with them. During trade, there was an imbalance in China’s favor, because the Europeans were forced to buy Chinese goods using silver. The Western Imperialists began to grow opium poppies from in India, and then smuggle them into China. China soon became addicted to the drug and spent most of it’s money on the purchase of it from the Europeans and Americans. This shifted the balance of power to be in Europe’s favor.
There are many things that most people take for granted. Things people do regularly, daily and even expect to do in the future. These things include eating meals regularly, having a choice in schooling, reading, choice of job and a future, and many more things. But what if these were taken away and someone told you want to eat, where and when to work, what you can read, and dictated your future. Many of these things happened in some degree or another during the Chinese Culture Revolution under Mao Zedong that began near the end of the 1960’s. This paper examines the novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie and a book by Michael Schoenhals titled China’s Culture Revolution, 1966-1969. It compares the way the Chinese Cultural Revolution is presented in both books by looking at the way that people were re-educated and moved to away, what people were able to learn, and the environment that people lived in during this period of time in China.
Parliament needed to start taxing American colonists throughout the Seven Year Wars. They couldn’t raise taxes in the British population because their taxes were already too high. Their next option was to tax American colonists. American colonists were taxed on coffee, sugar, glass, paper, wine, and printed materials. Previous from the tax, tea from the colonies would be smuggled in from the Dutch since it had to be sent to England first.
“John Hancock organized a boycott of tea provided by the East India Company, which was subject to an import tax, and helped to enforce the boycott by smuggling tea in so that the colonists would not go without their favored beverage.” This is what resulted in the Tea Act. "The trade in tea with China that was the most viable in the 18th century. Tea accounted for more than 60% of the Company’s total trade in the late 1700's. Customs duty on tea was providing 10% of the British government's annual revenues.” The Tea Act being passed was not aimed to make the American colonists angry, but it made many mad. American colonists could buy no tea unless it came from the company. American colonists saw this law as yet another meaning of “taxation without representation” because it meant that they could not buy tea from anyone else without spending a lot more money. There was a bad reaction to the Tea Act.
Most people have heard of The Boston tea party. When American patriots dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the British ships in the Boston harbor and dumped all of the tea into the ocean. But what most people fail to realize is the great importance behind this protest. To fully understand a topic of history one must first acknowledge the actions behind it. The French and Indian war, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Revenue Act, as well as the Tea Act are all important catalysts of the legendary Boston tea party. Which is why we will discuss these topics before examining the events of the Boston tea party.
including tea resulting in the infamous Boston Tea Party. King George was eventually humbled as the American colonies
Rebellions had broken out around 1796 and 1804 and again in 1813, and the Manchus were losing their control over the immeasurable region (Jayawardena, 1986, p.168). French, Dutch, British and American boats, utilizing Macao as a base, entered similarly as Canton where specie and opium which shaped 57% of Chinese imports in 1838 were traded for tea, porcelain, silk and cotton products (Jayawardena, 1986, p.168). This restricted exchange, on the other hand, could not fulfill colonialist intrigues. The Industrial Revolution had introduced a time of development and Western nations requested that China opened up as a business opportunity for the products of its manufacturing products and factories as source of raw materials (Jayawardena, 1986, p.167). The British pursued the first war animosity on China; once the Chinese were defeated the British took over Shanghai. Once new rules and regulations were forced and agreed by the Chinese; the colonizers was still not satisfied attacking the Chinese again. Generally, China 's prevailing philosophy had been Confucianism, and according to this ideology the significant social institution is family. This is where everyone in the society has to position their role and for women it meant the obedience of her husband and if she is not married, her father (Jayawardena, 1986, p.169). In addition, women were expected to
Greenberg, Michael. British Trade and the Opening of China 1800 - 42. New York: Monthly Review, 1979. Print.
“The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation”. This famous quote by Woodrow Wilson accurately shows how the American Revolution impacted the views of society on its country. When referring to this separation from Britain as a beginning rather than a finish it shows unity and the start of something great. When the American Revolution is discussed there are a plethora of affecting aspects that are thought of as important roles. One of these many factors that changed the American Revolution was the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act altered the American Revolution by affecting the Boston Tea Party and the unity in the colonies.
Allingham,, Philip V. "England and China: The Opium Wars, 1839-60." The Victorian Web: An Overview. 24 June 2006. Web. 06 Apr. 2011.
It seemed as if tea was a drug for the Europeans because for them it was just so addicting, to the point they would do anything just to get more and more. The only things that were worthy of trading with the Chinese were gingko (type of plant), shark fin, a soft type of wood (used for incense) and silver. As the demand for tea rose, Britain gradually ran out of silver to trade with, and was desperate to find what China wanted. Then, the British resorted to trading in opium. China was very picky about their opium.
The early nineteenth century was the beginning of the Qing Dynasty’s downfall. During this century multiple issues, including economic pressures, corruption, domestic rebellions and foreign wars, challenged ... ... middle of paper ... ... a more sustainable society.
The 1911 Revolution kicked out the Qing Dynasty and broke the barriers to different developments in China. However, the 1911 Revolution has only provided a framework of a republic and made changes in some particular aspects related to immediate problems and difficulties in society. Hence, the relationship between the revolution and the subsequent development of China was very weak. On one hand, I do not agree with the latter part of the statement that the 1911 Revolution brought new problems to China. The conflicts and problems that China suffered in the early/ mid 1910s were mainly due to the weakness of the military force, conflicting political organizations and disorder in society. On the other hand, I agree with the first part of the statement that the 1911 Revolution did not bring peace to China afterwards. In the following paragraphs, I am going to focus on explaining the reasons of emerging new problems in China and also illustrate my points on the factors of the 1911 Revolution which could not bring in peace to China related to the conditions of the country.