Behind the Teacup: The Consumption of Chinese Tea in the United States during the Long 19th Century

By tracing tea consumption in the United States after the American Revolution, this paper explores how the power dynamics in the global supply chain influenced consumers’ choices. After the ship, Empress of China, initiated the Chinese-American tea trade in 1784, the United States grew to be the second largest importer of tea from China in the late eighteenth century, second only to Great Britain. Moreover, unlike their English cousins and colonial ancestors who loved black tea, nineteenth-century U.S. consumers developed peculiar preferences to green tea, particularly Young Hyson, and Oolong tea. Americans also created a new denomination, “English Breakfast tea,” to name the high-rank black tea from China. “English breakfast tea” is still in fashion today, but has transformed itself into a blend of Chinese black with Indian, Sri Lankan, or African products in the twentieth century. With China being the only supplier of tea before the Opium War (1839-1842), the Chinese merchant guild, the Cohong, orchestrated the global flow of tea. Relying on their networks with Chinese Hong merchants and abundant capital, the British East India Company and private merchants contracted most black teas before their American counterparts made purchases on the open market for half a century. The power structure of the supply chain thus refashioned Americans’ taste for green tea. The Sino-Anglo Opium War ended the Cohong and opened more tea markets in China’s treaty ports, so Oolong tea from Fujian and Taiwan became a fashionable drink in the United States that marked the unique American taste in tea. After the war, British companies supported black tea production in their South Asian colonies and promoted Indian and Ceylon black teas among U.S. consumers, thus reshaping the identity of English Breakfast tea and the overall landscape of American tea consumption at the turn of the twentieth century.