During its 300 or so years in Britain, tea has made the transition from the exotic to the ordinary. Initially arriving as a Chinese mild stimulant, by the 1860s it was so prevalent that it could be written that “the great Anglo-Saxon race are essentially a tea-drinking people”. The national drink had a dark history: the taste for sugary tea fuelled the British empire; it underpinned the slave trade; and led to the Opium wars. But an academic paper last month found that the cuppa was much more central to England’s own development than previously understood.
Historians like to ask why the Industrial Revolution took place here in the 18th century and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia. Answers have ranged from religion to culture to politics. Several historians argue that sugar played a critical role in fuelling workers. Could it be that sweet, boiled water infused with a mildly addictive plant produced a healthier as well as more energetic population just when England needed labour? That appears to be the case put forward by Francisca Antman, an economist at the University of Colorado.
