208 desert were physically punished and absconders tracked. The tea pickers were oppressed by the dominant planters in a milieu of racial prejudice and virtually unlimited power.16 TEA CONSUMPTION IN BRITISH SOCIETY Most Britons during the Victorian age probably knew little of this overtly coercive labour regime, enforced by the companies associated with the British Rāj in India. Nevertheless, tea from India, which by the 18th century was purchased and drunk by wide sections of British society, connected home and the Empire. In the course of a single century, its consumption had changed from being an overtly exotic luxury, affordable only to a few and usually consumed in public, to an everyday drink, enjoyed by ordinary people at home. During the 19th century, tea became the ‘national beverage’ and developed into a symbol of domesticity and national identity, which was not only English, but imperial.17 Although from the 18th century onwards middle- and working-class people consumed tea at home, it never entirely lost its exotic and slightly luxurious connotation. Advertisements stressed the dual significance of tea: as a luxury and a daily necessity.18 In order to emphasize the element of exceptionality, which had been integrated into ordinary life, the wealth and the fashion sense of the lady of the house, glamorous tea sets were manufactured. Some were made of bone china, decorated with Far Eastern scenes (fig. 5). Expensive, silver-plated teapots, strainers, sugar bowls and milk jugs were also fashioned. Whilst Chinese tea was traditionally drunk with lemon, Indian tea was taken with milk. Much of the public debates focussed on the purity of the tea, and in this context, the packaging of the tea leaf played an important role. Even though it was an exotic commodity from India, its packaging, traditionally in metal tins with bold, colourful designs, stressed the Britishness and safeness of the product. In the home, tea caddies in various designs and materials were used to keep the tea fresh (fig. 6). Tea cosies – knitted or made of fabric – were made to keep the pot warm for longer. During the 1920s, labour resistance to the indenture system grew and eventually led to its official abolition, but not until 1926.19 Between 1937 and 1940, trade unions emerged on various tea estates. Despite this, adverse power structures, characterized by physical coercion, violence and extra-legal methods of labour control by planters in many instances continued to operate.20 Today, multinational blenders and retailers dominate the scene, leaving little reward for the tea pickers.21 Nevertheless, the tea industry is still one of the largest employers in India today. Nowadays, there is another strong dependency apparent in relation to tea: the dependency on a changing climate. In the context of global warming, the hilly regions of South Asia, which for tea cultivation depended on regular and continuous rains, have become so dry that plantations have to be irrigated artificially, leading to higher prices on the global market, less competitive wages for the tea-picking workers and the loss of some tea gardens. Nonetheless, after China, India is still the second largest exporter of tea today. 1 Pickersgill 2017, 395. 2 Varma 2017, 17. 3 Fromer 2008, 531, 535–537; Pickersgill 2017, 399–400; Varma 2017, 15. 4 Varma 2017, 17. 5 Fromer 2008, 532. 6 Fromer 2008, 532, 534, 537. 7 Behal 2006, 145. 8 Varma 2017, 15, 19, 21. 9 Behal 2006, 143–144, 156. 10 Behal 2006, 156; Varma 2017, 39–42. 11 Varma 2017, 25–26. 12 Behal 2006, 145, 156, 159. 13 Behal 2006, 156–158. 14 Behal 2006, 156. 15 Gothoskar 2012, 33–34; Varma 2017, 16. 16 Behal 2006, 158–159. 17 Fromer 2008, 531–532. 18 Fromer 2008, 537–540. 19 Behal 2006, 169. 20 Behal 2006, 145, 150, 153. 21 Gothoskar 2012, 33, 36. Bibliography: Behal 2006 R. P. Behal, Power Structure, Discipline, and Labour in Assam Tea Plantations under Colonial Rule, International Review of Social History, Suppl. 14: Coolies, Capital, and Colonialism: Studies in Indian Labour History (2006): 143–172. Fromer 2008 J. E. Fromer, ‘Deeply Indebted to the Tea-Plant’: Representations of English National Identity in Victorian Histories of Tea, Victorian Literature and Culture 36 (2008): 531–547. Gothoskar 2012 S. Gothoskar, This Chāy is Bitter: Exploitative Relations in the Tea Industry, Economic and Political Weekly 47, 50 (2012): 33–40. Krieger 2009 M. Krieger, Tee: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Cologne 2009). Pickersgill 2017 B. Pickersgill, The British East India Company, John Bradby Blake and their Interest in Spices, Cotton and Tea, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 34, 4 (2017): 379–401. Varma 2017 N. Varma, Tea in the Colony, in: N. Varma, Coolies of Capitalism: Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour, Work in Global and Historical Perspective 2 (Oldenburg 2017): 15–42. Vries 2009 P. Vries, Zur politischen Ökonomie des Tees: Was uns Tee über die englische und chinesische Wirtschaft der Frühen Neuzeit sagen kann, Stabwechsel: Antrittsvorlesungen aus der Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Wien 1 (Vienna 2009).
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