The writer George Orwell is said to have said "Real tea comes from Assam". But what exactly is Assam, and how did it become so popular? We'll look at that here.
The area
As far back as the 18th century, Sir Joseph Banks suggested that tea should be grown in Assam, but it took a while for this to become a reality. It is an area in north-east India that stretches out along the Brahmaputra River, between the Himalayas and the mountains of Burma. There it encloses the northern part of Bangladesh. The fertile soil made it a disputed area, which for many centuries was controlled by the Burmese.
First encounters
Scotsman Robert Bruce was a British officer who helped fight the war against the Burmese who then ruled Assam. During a trading trip in 1823, he came to Rangpoor, where he met the Singpho leader Bisa Gaum. When Bruce found wild tea plants in the area after a tip-off, he agreed with Gaum that the next year he would get tea plants to take with him. He realized that if tea could be grown in India, it would be a big deal. The following year, Bruce died, and his brother Charles Bruce took over and transported the tea plants to Golkata. He also wrote about the Singpho people's habit of making and drinking tea.
The change of 1833
There was little interest in the tea plants. The lucrative tea trade with China made it economically uninteresting, until the East India Company's tea monopoly in China suddenly ended in 1833. The East India Company then sent an expedition from Golkata to Assam, a journey that took four months. Once there, they continued to explore suitable sites for tea cultivation by elephant, boat or on foot.
First experiments
In 1836, experiments began with imported Chinese tea plants. The tea plant, Camellia sinensis, comes in two main varieties, the Chinese and the Indian. It turned out that the Chinese plants could not withstand the heat in Assam, but the more robust local plants that Charles Bruce tried did. Getting started with tea cultivation in Assam was an extreme challenge. The last stretch up the Brahmaputra was shallow and rough, so smaller barges had to be pulled up the river, and the last stretch was sometimes traveled by elephant. Malaria, cholera and tigers lurked in the jungle. To cultivate a piece of land, you first had to capture some wild elephants and tame them to do heavy work like carrying logs. In the early days, it typically took three months to travel from Golkata to the interior of Assam. By the 1890s, there was a partial railroad, cutting the journey time to two weeks, and by the 1940s, the trip took 30 hours.
Success at the auction
In 1838, the first shipload of Assam tea arrived in London. To great excitement, the eight tea chests that made the journey were auctioned off to the highest bidder. The first lot was sold at a price (21 shillings per kilogram) that would be equivalent to almost SEK 4000 per kilogram today. Enthusiasm therefore knew no bounds, despite the difficult situation. The rewards could be great, and as in other industries both past and present, it resulted in an economic bubble. In the 1860s, lots of people with no experience went into big business. Bogus tea companies with minimal or no tea production drew in naive investors. Working conditions were marginally better than slavery, as large numbers of immigrants were brought in to do the work. Despite the collapse of companies and all the other difficulties, business grew in Assam, and thanks to its strong flavor, soon became a favorite of the ever-thirsty British.
The rest is history
Today, Assam is considered the largest contiguous tea district in India and the world, with between 750 and 1500 tea estates, depending on how you count. Other districts in India include Darjeeling and Nilgiri. According to the Indian Tea Board, Assam now produces around 630-700 thousand tons annually, which is more than 10% of world production.
