There’s an old saying that I’ve referenced many times on this site: “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. And, at the turn of the 20th century, it was literally true. Britain’s empire was so vast that the sun was indeed always shining on some piece of land controlled by the British.
But there’s another saying from the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels that’s equally true: “the entire British Empire was built on cups of tea”. And indeed, at the height of the British Empire, one could find Englishmen in cities from Sydney to Calcutta to Johannesburg to London to Kingston to Toronto, all sipping cups of tea as they went about their daily business. And for that, Englishmen could thank a man named Robert Fortune.
It all started in the late 17th century, when the English upper class developed a mania for all things Chinese. Porcelain, silks, lacquered furniture and, above all, tea were so highly coveted by the English gentry that they were snapped up, regardless of price, as quickly as they could be unloaded from ships in London’s dockyards.
But, like so many things in history, there was a problem: the Chinese weren’t interested in any of the goods the English wanted to trade for tea. The Chinese looked down their noses at England’s main export – wool cloth – and aside from a tiny trade in clocks, watches and scientific instruments, the English were stuck paying the Chinese cash for their tea. And the problem with this is that there were only so many silver coins in England, and shipping them halfway around the world to buy tea wasn’t only dangerous and foolhardy, it also caused inflation at home, as the currency supply continually shrank as the demand for tea increased.
But if the Chinese didn’t care for England’s trade goods, they were mad for opium, a product readily available in England’s newest colony, India. So the directors of the East India Company created a “trade triangle”, where English goods were shipped to India and sold, and the proceeds from that sale were used to buy opium, which was then shipped to China where it was exchanged for tea, which was then shipped back to England.
Scotch eggs are a dish that always looked interesting to me. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen them on a restaurant menu anywhere.
On December 31, 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for an abandoned brewery in Dublin at the rate of £45 per year. That was the beginning of the now-massive Guinness brand, and it was all headquartered at the St. James Gate brewery, now one of Ireland’s most popular tourist destinations.