How Did The British Raise Tea In The 18th Century

In the 18th century, the rights to trade at Canton had granted the company with direct imports of Chinese goods, such as tea, silk and porcelain. This increasing availability of tea from China had made the price of tea fall and made it more accessible to general public in England. The growing popularity of tea had transformed the item from luxury good into commercial commodity. This condition had encouraged the company to import more tea and thus made tea the mainstay of imports from China displacing silk by 1718. The company’s monopoly on imports from China was sustained through the exchange of British silver for Chinese tea. The Chinese were not interested in any of the British or European goods because they had possessed abundance of goods within their

The British EIC and the British government seized every opportunity they came across to obtain tea while still generating profits. This included the counterbalance of the tea trade with the opium trade. The British were able to extract opium from its colony in India and traded it to China. The subsequent events, which included disputes with Chinese authorities regarding the opium trade, could be easily encountered with its military power. Moreover, the British could turn the tables and acquire concessions from the Chinese authorities. The British territorial possessions and existing control of India had enabled them to expand their influence in the region. The tea and opium trade performed by the British could be encapsulated as the driving forces of the British Empire in Asia. The trades influenced how the British implemented the rules in India and engaged in business transactions with China in order to generate profits for themselves. Therefore, tea and opium cannot be disaggregated from the British imperial history since the two commodities had practically expanded the empire to its greatest