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08Part One · History

The Tea Debt and the Opium Accounts

How Britain’s demand for tea led to the opium trade and the Opium Wars, how Britain learned to grow its own tea, and how opium was finally ended in China.

In this chapter

  • The “Tea Debt” and the Opium Reckoningtea’s arrival in Britain, the tea duty and the silver drain, the opium trade, Commissioner Lin and the two Opium Wars
  • How Britain Stopped Needing Chinese TeaRobert Fortune’s mission to China, and the plantations of Assam and Ceylon
  • How It Ended for Chinathree attempts to end opium in China, and the century of humiliation
  • The Company’s Accountswhat the East India Company’s records show

Questions this chapter answers

  • What was the “tea debt,” and why did Britain turn to opium?

    The answer is in the book →

  • What did the Treaty of Nanking give Britain, and what did it say about opium?

    Hong Kong island, five open ports, the end of the Cohong monopoly and 21 million silver dollars; about opium it said nothing at all.

  • How did Britain come to grow its own tea?

    Robert Fortune, sent to China in 1848, brought out plants and tea makers; the plants mostly died, but the craft of working the leaf, applied to the local Assam bush, did the rest.

  • How was opium finally ended in China?

    The answer is in the book →

Short answers only. Chapter 8 gives the full account, with 11 footnotes to 9 sources.

Read more in the book

Sources

11 footnotes to 9 sources. Full references are in the bibliography.

  1. Teng, Ssu-yü and John K. Fairbank. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.
  2. Ellis, Markman, Richard Coulton and Matthew Mauger. Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf That Conquered the World. London: Reaktion Books, 2015.
  3. Mui, Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui. “The Commutation Act and the Tea Trade in Britain 1784–1793.” The Economic History Review 16, no. 2 (1963): 234–253. DOI 10.1111/j.1468-0289.1963.tb01728.x.
  4. Commutation Act 1784 (24 Geo. III, Sess. 2, c. 38), “An Act for Repealing the Several Duties on Tea…” Royal assent August 20, 1784.
  5. Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China (Treaty of Nanking). Signed August 29, 1842.
  6. Convention of Peking between Great Britain and China. Signed October 24, 1860.
  7. Fortune, Robert. A Journey to the Tea Countries of China; Including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills; with a Short Notice of the East India Company’s Tea Plantations in the Himalaya Mountains. London: John Murray, 1852.
  8. Zhou, Yongming. Anti-Drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China: Nationalism, History, and State Building. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
  9. Marshall, Jonathan. “Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in Nationalist China, 1927–1945.” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 8, no. 3 (1976): 19–48. DOI 10.1080/14672715.1976.10404414.