Tea is not a "gadget" in history, how many countries and people are involved in the trade and disputes about tea! On December 16, 1773, the Boston Tea Pouring Incident in the British North American colonies was a political demonstration led by boston's "sons of liberty.". The demonstrators disguised themselves as Indians infiltrated merchant ships and poured a whole ship of tea from the British East India Company into Boston Bay in order to rebel against the Tea Tax Act of 1773 enacted by the British Parliament. In 1775, the conflict between the colonial people and the British government intensified, which eventually led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.
The Boston tea party became the trigger for the American Revolutionary War
What is the "middle Chinese" barrier
After 1757, the Qing Dynasty's foreign trade was officially limited to the port of Guangzhou. Although there are still many ports outside of Guangzhou that are engaged in private trade, Guangzhou is the only "official" window for foreign countries. So, how does trade in Guangzhou work in reality?
According to Swedish historian Lisa Herman, the Chinese government has only 4 interpreters in Guangzhou. As trade with Guangzhou increased, officials had no choice but to hire additional assistants. For example, British businessman Charles Frederick Noble said: "Because there are almost no Chinese businessmen who speak foreign languages, we employ people who can speak English or Portuguese. Therefore, for the French, the Dutch, and the Danes, it is necessary to speak either of these two languages. ”
The merchant communicates what he knows to the official, who records the price and quantity of all the goods. Ultimately, Chinese officials are in a good position to have a steady stream of information. In addition, in order to make the Chinese government profitable, the translator even deliberately made a wrong translation. For Europeans, the Chinese is a very difficult language, so many European businessmen think that it would be best if Chinese could speak the European language.
Thus, in order to avoid interference by Chinese officials, Chinese and European merchants created a common language in order to avoid the use of translations as much as possible. It is an artificial language that mixes Middle Chinese, Malay, Portuguese and English.
Wanbangqi goods gathered in Guangzhou thirteen lines of grandeur
It can be seen that in business activities, the interests of the Chinese government and Chinese businessmen are not consistent. This kind of business practice of exploiting loopholes in the state system also existed in the mid-18th century.
Before being limited to the Qing government as the only foreign trade port, Guangzhou had already begun to export tea to Europe. However, only the United Kingdom in Europe consumed a lot of tea, and although Russia was also a tea drinking country, its consumption did not seem to be much in the 18th century.
Trade between Britain and China was monopolized by the British East India Company. Therefore, in theory, the tea exported from Guangzhou to the United Kingdom should almost always be transported by British ships, but in fact there are ships from other countries involved in the transportation.
Why is that? Here, we will examine some of the activities of international trade merchants who cross borders.
The freak of the state conspiring with the merchants: the British East India Company
The "small country" Sweden plays a huge role
Outside britain and the Netherlands, there were companies called the East India Company, which did not have a strong army like the British and Dutch companies. As for the Swedish East India Company, it was much smaller.
The name of the Swedish East India Company is little known in Sweden. As for the company's contribution, no one knows. However, the company has played an important role for the UK.
In recent years, in the study of European business history, the role played by small countries has become the focus of attention. Even trade that is difficult to profit for large countries can be huge profits for small countries. Many small countries maintained a neutral policy at that time and vigorously developed maritime transport. Sweden is the representative of such countries.
The Swedish East India Company was founded in 1731 with a charter and dissolved in 1813. Its base is in Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden. During the company's more than 80 years of active life, 132 voyages to Asia were made. There were 124 trips to Guangzhou, five to Guangzhou and India at the same time, and only 3 trips to India. The concession granted the company a monopoly on trade with all areas east of the Cape of Good Hope, but in reality it meant trade between the Swedish East India Company and Canton.
Ming Dynasty tea horse trade
Moreover, Sweden exports very little goods to China, and it can be said that it is almost focused on imports from China. Most of the imported goods are tea. Of the Swedish East India Company's imports, 69 percent of tea was 69 percent in 1770 and 80 percent in 1780.
Although the company has a foreign trading office in Guangzhou, it has no overseas territories and colonies, and the number of employees remains at 250-300 people. The tea the company will import from Guangzhou for auction in Gothenburg. Therefore, the Swedish East India Company must not be regarded as a privileged business company, because the auction is free economic activity in which anyone can participate.
The Swedish East India Company and the Ostend Company had a close relationship, although the latter existed only briefly between 1723 and 1727. As the name suggests, ostend is a trading company based in Ostend and the Austrian Netherlands. Many employees of the Swedish East India Company used to trade with the company.
It is important to remember that Swedes drink coffee instead of tea. As a result, most of the tea is exported again. Usually, the Swedish East India Company's re-exports account for 20-30% of the total exports. The tea was first exported to the Netherlands and the Austrian Netherlands, thanks to the former Ostend Company. There, the tea was shipped to the German interior, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean before being transported to Britain. The UK is the largest tea consumer in Europe.
Sweden's Gothenburg: full of Guangzhou goods sinking on the doorstep
It can be seen that the tea was not exported directly from Gothenburg to England, but was first transported to the Netherlands and the Austrian Netherlands, and then exported to England. Why go around in circles like this? This is to smuggle tea. In Sweden, tea is a low-grade item, and if it is smuggled, the price will be lower, and even the low-income class can afford it.
At that time, the British tea market was monopolized by the British East India Company, because of the high tariffs, tea became an expensive commodity in Britain. So people began to seek cheap smuggled goods. It is estimated that between 1745 and 1746, the British paid about 800,000 pounds a year for smuggling tea. This alone can import about 1500 tons of tea, which happens to be the amount of tea imported in Scandinavia. However, the Pitt Tax Cut Act of 1784 cut the tax rate on tea from 110% to 12.5%. As a result, the British East India Company cut the price of imported tea.
At least until then, tea exported to the Netherlands and the Austrian Netherlands by the Swedish East India Company and others may have been brought into Britain as a drink for the low-income class.
Teahouse in 18th century London
Smuggling by the French East India Company
In the 18th century, France expanded its trade volume in the Atlantic trade competition with Britain. In some cases, French trade growth rates are even higher than in britain, but in Asia this fashion is not able to carry out large activities.
Like The British and the Dutch, France founded the East India Company in 1604, which was converted into a state company in 1664 and renamed the Indian Company in 1719 to trade with East and West India. But in 1731, because routes to Africa and Louisiana were cut off, it again focused on East Indies trade. After that, the company was liquidated (bankrupt) in 1795.
The French East India Company played an important role in tea imports. Like the Swedish East India Company, the company smuggled imported tea into Britain. The base of French East Indies trade was Lorient in the Brittany region. At the end of the 17th century, the population of Brittany was about 2 million, accounting for 10% of the total population of France. The port city of San Malo supplied textiles to Spain and shipped French products to Spain. Saint-Malo was a city of contact with the world, from which the Grand Taufen departed in 1713 to bypass Cape Horn, the southernmost point in South America, to transport textiles (linen) to Peru, where it was purchased with American silver for Chinese goods and returned to France.
Silver, originally produced in the Americas, became the currency for buying products in China. But in the 18th century, textiles, precious metals, and luxury goods were also used as money, so the frequency of use of silver in the Americas decreased.
Ancient Chinese traditional tea trade scene
The main commodities in France were coffee and tea, and the import of tea increased sharply from 100,000 pounds (weight) at the end of the 17th century to nearly 2 million pounds in the second half of the 18th century. Spices, pepper and cotton are also very important commodities.
What should be concerned here is the import of tea. Like Sweden, France is a consumer of coffee, not tea. Therefore, it is highly likely that these teas were smuggled to Britain, Europe's largest tea consumer. According to a study by Delmini on French tea imports, between 1749 and 1764, the total annual import of tea from Guangzhou in France averaged 11.925288 livres, and the average annual import of tea from 1766 to 1775 reached 12.885739 livres. Among them, Brittany accounted for 42.7% and 50.2% respectively. In this era, Brittany accounted for 82.5% of France's total tea imports, most of which were exported to the city of Nantes in Brittany. In the 18th century, Nantes was not only known as a slave trading city, but also for its imported tea from Guangzhou. Even, as an import of the French East India Company, sometimes there is more tea than coffee.
Tea imported from Brittany was mainly shipped to England and the Netherlands. Transport to Britain is likely to be mostly smuggling. It is unclear where it will be shipped from the Netherlands to, but it is possible that some of them will be exported to the UK. Because Brittany's tea is relatively high-end, it may be only the wealthy class in Britain that can drink it.
Japanese Tea Ceremony
Without tea smuggling, tea would not have been widespread in Britain
On a per capita basis, Britain was probably the world's leading tea consumer in the 18th century. However, tea was not necessarily imported by the British East India Company.
Britain, the Countries bordering the English Channel and the North Sea traded with China based on the fact that many Britons began to drink tea. Before the introduction of the tax reduction law in 1784, the amount of tea smuggled was said to be 4 million to 6 million pounds, and some researchers believe that it was 7.5 million pounds. By the middle of the 17th century, tea smuggling had become commonplace.
For Europeans, tea was an important smuggled item. For example, tea is exported from Guangzhou to Hamburg, but the heartland of the city is the Elbe River basin, or even the Baltic Sea region, so it is unlikely that tea will be exported there. Hamburg is known as "Little London" because of its close ties to London, so tea may have been smuggled from Hamburg to London.
It was Britain's high tariffs on tea that led to smuggling. Before the implementation of the Tax Reduction Act of 1784, it was not unusual for tea to be taxed at almost no less than 80%, or even more than 100%.
Ouyang Lun was executed by Zhu Yuanzhang for smuggling tea leaves
The tax cuts law reduces the temptation to smuggle. The British East India Company's tea sales, which were £5.86 million in 1783 and about £15.08 million in 1785, increased considerably. This is probably due to the sharp decline in smuggling volumes.
But before the tax cuts, the largest country smuggling tea to Britain was probably France, followed by Sweden. France smuggles high-end tea and Sweden smuggles low-grade tea, and the two countries jointly promote britain to become the world's highest per capita tea consumer.
In Japan, Kawabei Minoru puts East Indies tea and West Indian sugar in a teacup to show that the world has become one. At the same time, it also illustrates the expansion of the British Empire. But unlike granulated sugar, black tea is not necessarily legally imported from the East Indies and China by British ships. Without smuggled tea, the British probably wouldn't have been so obsessed with tea. From Guangzhou to continental Europe to Britain, a smuggling route was opened.