Here's a fun tea fact from a real American: In North America we've been drinking tea for thousands of years. We would make it out of Yaupon, the only naturally caffeinated leaf in North America. _Now let's spill the real tea:_ Before 1492, the drink was refered to as "black drink" due to how it was strongly prepared and dark. And due to the integration of the Five "Civilized" Tribes (I can call them that, as one of the "Uncivilized" it is even my duty to do so, others should not) into Southern US society... the way the black drink was brewed and imbibed has been preserved well into the modern times. The practice of iced tea (and sweet tea in the South) instead of the individually brewed and drunken hot is actually a pure American tradition... only culturally appropriated by the colonizers due to their interaction with the "Civilized." In fact, yaupon was what Southerns used to drink (and drank again during the Great Depression due to its cheapness compared to importing)... but swapped to brewing tea in the same way but exclusively using the tea leaf instead (after the Great Depression) because African Americans would drink the yaupon version... So remember, the next time a kenraken wants to get all high and mighty about "proper" tea: that American tea is older than their "proper" English way. (And that it's not ⚪.)
Also!!! Indigenous groups from modern day Paraguay/Uruguay/Brazil have historically used the Yerba Mate leaf for tea and plant medicines for centuries!
As awesome as your info is, if we want to be technical, the term "tea" is reserved for beverages produced from the camellia sinensis plant. Yaupon based beverages are technically a tisane. That doesn't change any of the incredible history of yaupon, or the impact it had in North America, it's just me being pedantic. ❤
Nopeee, tea was originally practiced in Ancient Chinese festivities and ceremonies. Why do you think an East Asian country old as Japan, in the olden times of Feudalist Japan, was having tea ceremonies. And they still to this day practice tea ceremonies. So homie, tea isn’t exclusive and doesn’t belong to the British and Western European countries.
@@elliotsangestevezChocolate is actually African though, Elliot lmao. The first chocolate bar was from Ancient Egyptians and Black Coffee Beans and Coffee was cultivated in Ancient Mesopotamia. 😂😂
As a gongfu tea enthusiast, I’m so excited for this video. Anytime I mention my gongfu tea hobby, most people think European unless I mention the gongfu part, but I brew mainly Chinese teas and I only brew them Chinese style, and it’s annoying to have to constantly explain how different both things are and how tea is actually really good, but most Americans can’t brew it right for shit
@@Jacob-us5sz it’s annoying but the flip side is, it’s always great though when people are open minded who have never experienced gongfu tea have especially a strong oolong or a Pu’erh or a white tea with me and then the feel Cha Qi for the first time and they’re like “omg, WTF is happening”… watching that happen is pure magic and they also realize that this tea actually doesn’t taste mid and they walk away with a new experience and a new mindset
@sleepysartorialist gongfu is the same word that comes into English as "Kung Fu" and it means something like "with skill". So Gong Fu Cha is skillfully prepared tea. The difference is you use a lot of leaves for the amount of water and you flash steep it, like 5 to 20 seconds depending in the tea. And you pour it into small cups and you do that over and over again like 9, 10, 11 or more times. You can really enjoy the tea throughout the evolution of the flavors and aromas from the first to the last steeping. You do this with high quality, loose leaf Chinese tea, not bags. It doesn't require any sweeteners or milk or anything and the tea isn't bitter or anything. It's the best way to enjoy good Chinese tea. I'm an Oolong guy myself.
I recently discovered a herbalist near me selling leaves for actually reasonable prices. It's sent me down a rabbit hole of teas and 🍃 and seasonings, experimenting with my own flavor and developing my own brews over time is satisfying. The medicinal affects are also beneficial ^_^ I think as slow living grows an easy way to get into the pace is with tea brewing and herbal experimentation!
The medicinal affects of tea is why I got into it. I've started mixing in herbs and spices with certain teas to help when I don't feel good and it is fun trying to get it to taste good as well
U should check this brief history of tea in South Asia in this article- All the Tea (Not) in China: The Story of How India Became a Tea-Drinking Nation
Speaking of leaves with caffeine, if you want to grow your own caffeine source, pick up a Yaupon Holly (Ilex Vometoria) which is a common shrub or tree probably sold at your local garden center. It's native to North America.
Pls give us part two. I hated learning about this shit in middle school but when given the context of real people and culture and colonialism (which is affecting us all still) it’s super fucking interesting and I really wanna part 2 😭😭😭
as a chinese language learner who also tries to learn more about history of India rn this is such a great find! the material and your presentation are very good!
I don't know if anybody's already mentioned Mate Tea yet. It's a popular traditional drink in north Argentina and south Brazil (where my family is from). We drink it anywhere and everywhere at every social gathering from something called a cuja (cup made from a pumpkin) with a metal straw, that is given around and shared. It's also drank in Syria because of some Argentinian politician introducing it there or something. In Germany there is a trend of drinking carbonated Mate ice tea right now.
Honestly... I'm more than ready for a part 2! Let's gooooooo! As a tea-lover, this was super interesting and I particularly enjoyed those moments where I'd remember something I learned in history class in high school
There is too little content and essays about tea on youtube. As a tea lover this is amazing Edit: and as a german, that pronounciation at 8:40 was perfect actually
The Chinese pronunciations are really good, too! I’m really grateful that this channel took the time to learn how to pronounce all the non-English words when discussing history.
this was incredible. history and discussion following one topic but with world spanning tangents to give the full richness and context to really understand.
Thanks for making this! I really like how you use tea as lens to pick up a bunch of overlapping topics, and will definitely look into hybridity more closely.
i really enjoyed this - thank you for your work researching it. definitely interested in a part 2, and to hear more on tea's class representation. i have lots of kettles, teas, ceramics, etc. as part of my tea enjoyment hobby. it's easy to lean on that stuff as having a more 'pure'/'elevated' experience - i definitely had to undo an old bougieness about brewing methods when i first got into it. 59:30 - 1:00:10 is so good. appreciated the reading references as well!
Wow this sounds so cool. I've always appreciated the art of ceramics and the hard work that goes in taking care of them (as my mom keeps reminding me 😅). Big 👍 to you enjoying chai.
This was such a fantastic, well-researched video. I love camellia sinensis in all forms. I feel I have a tendency to think of our era as the one where cultures and peoples became fluid *globally* and as I dive into topics like the chilli plant or tea, it makes me realise how so much of what we take for granted in our daily lives has a long history; specifically, a long history rooted in colonialism. Really thought provoking. Anyway would love to see a part 2 as well.
I loved seeing this story told continuously - I knew about most of it, but from a bit of trivia here and there. I'd love to see more food history like this!
I've heard the thought that people back then must've been trying random plants in a whimsical way but when I think about it, a lot of them must've been out of desperation and starvation
Eliot, this is a great viedo. Well researched. Please consider making a part 2. Mabye you could touch on the effect of the tea trade in the Americas, and the native tea usurped by colonizers. The example of Mate tea comes to mind. In this case we see how tea is appropriate by the spaniards, although not before punishing the native Southamericans for supposedly partaking in demonic rituals. Give me a heads-up if you need some references/bibliography.
Tea actually played an important role in the geopolitics and revolutions in history. Once China discovered and cultivated tea, it played an important role in the Tributary system of China. Then, 2000 years later, the Chinese tea evolved into European tea, India slowly existed as a entity as a whole due to British tea espionage which later crippled China's monopoly on tea production, leading to a shift in the global tea trade. Finally, China rapidly transitioned into a Republic by Sun Yat Sen and his followers fueled by the urgency to reform the nation after experiencing humiliating military defeats by the British and other European powers as well as economic failures since 1841.
Tea is my favorite drink in the world and I love seeing content about it, recipees, curiosities, the history of the plant and the beverage and also discourse about it. I would love to see more content like this and see the rest of your stuff on the topic. This was a great video! :)
Part Two, that's a yes! Enjoy your speaking voice, calm with good enunciation not just in English but in other languages necessary for the context of your well-researched story/dissertation/vlog. Through my own reading (not school, of course, are you kidding haha) there were quite a few names/entities/locations/historical events that I could tick off as being familiar with, but there were also quite a few that you were able to make known to me within the context of my own general knowledge and that's always exciting. So whenever you drop Part Two, I'm there for it! Good luck!
Hello! I like this video and I would love to see the second part :) Really appreciate the multifaceted approach. And it's fascinating to think of the way empires really hinge themselves around the plants that alter our perception - tea, coffee, sugar, but also chocolate, coca, hemp, and of course poppies. All of them instruments and weapons of empire, often both fuel and coping mechanisms for the subjects of capitalism. Made me think!
Excellent video!! I greatly admire the work you put into making this easy to follow and understand; tea has such a rich history with complex dynamics, especially from an international viewpoint. It was fascinating to learn about how war and colonialism wove into tea's cultivation and proliferation in areas outside of China. Thanks for bringing up the term 'hybridity,' a concept that I've thought around but never had the words to properly describe to others. It really sheds a new light on how I look at cultural traditions and the obsession with 'purity.' Time to do some of my own deep dive research into Homi Bhabha! I absolutely would be interested in whatever you have planned for Part 2. In the meantime, I'm sharing your video with all my friends who also love tea.
I recommend 'Puer Tea: Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic' by Jinghong Zhang. It mostly covers the time period after the tea industry in Yunnan is already decimated, to a crazy boom and crash that happened in the early-mid 2000's. Very much a tulip craze moment, where puer tea was heavily marketed as an investment, drastically driving up prices. The book also muses on what "authentic" puer tea is, puer connoisseur culture in China, and the relationships between farmers/merchants/government.
43:32 mughal is pronounced as moo(like the English word too) ghul (gh a bassy ,airy version of g, same goes for dh in budhaa,gandhi, i know english doesn't have those alphabets😅)
To be fair in Germany when we talk about Tee we talk about all types of Hot drinks produces by putting some kind of leaves and stuff in hot water. Not just Black tea. But also not soup.
When I initially saw the title, I thought I wouldn't be interested in this topic. I was very wrong. Watched some of it with my morning coffee and it greatly alleviated my morning anxiety. Thank you.
a little random side note; the area where tea is native to 'India' is essentially the same continuous geographical and even cultural area of Southwest China, Northern Burma and Northeast India (which all border each other) inhabited by local tribes who share cultural similarities and lifestyle.
Not only am I here cause Elliot is criminally underrated, the title of the video reminds me of the album The Price of Tea In China by underrated rapper Boldy James 🎤🫡
40:14 According to the University of Wyoming's currency converter... First Joint Stock: £418,000 in 1613 is worth $122,027,356.72 in USD today (€115,267,041.16 or £100,047,020.46). Second Joint Stock: £1.6 million in 1617 is worth $477,528,134.08 in USD today (€451,073,075.45 or £391,512,758.14). So the East India Company was raking in hundreds of millions of pounds at a time!!
Im really down for part 2 ^^/ especially this idea on how to enjoy stuff that came from colonization. I struggle with this, my family is latinx mestizo, the type that we cant trave our "lineage" to nothing (none of the three main races or any of the ethnicities that emigrated later). I look at things that the colonizer brought and frown, but if i tried to do the things from the first nations that would be appropiating their culture (which i dont want to do). How to hold things while acknowledging the ugly place they came from (colonization).
As a person who is a proud westerner, I find it quite interesting that Great Britain for centuries colonized and tried to reduce these countries to nothing. Now both china and India are rising along with their influence, ideology, culture, and population. Well chinas birth rate fell of a lil bit and India took their spot but nevertheless their population is growing.
tfw I've been looking for a good Pu-erh tea since forever, but whenever I find some it smells like fish which means it's not travelled properly and has moulded. The first time this happened I was hoodwinked by a seller and got sick from it, which is rare because I've got an immune system straight outta a comic book. Erry time since I've just said no. One day I'll find a drinkable cup and see if it's worth all the fuss. That bein' said, I've got agood supply of TieGuanYin now so I'm not complainin' too much. Purple leaf tea is still nigh on impossible to source, tho.
Context: A "company" used to literally just be a bunch of people. Companies would be formed to conduct an expedition and then they would dissolve once it was done because the people in that company would physically part ways. The idea of a company as a large scale _buisness_ evolved out of that: "Why dissovle our company? Everybody here wants to sail back to Asia to get more of that sweet drinking leaf ASAP anyway so let's just stick together for a bunch of voyages." A "company," therefore, went from describing a bunch of people on the same geographical journey to a bunch of people who work and do buisness with each other as colleges.
i remember when i was little and my friends were over for dinner and we were having lahpet thoke, and everyone was laughing and poking fun about how burmese eat tea leaves (i am burmese) and how everyone else made the drink and we silly burmese ate the leaves a little bit later my farther comes in and starts boasting, saying things along the line of "burmese are the ONLY ones who thought to eat the tea leaf!!" which just made us laugh even more the mention of myanmar was unexpected in this video, it was a nice suprise :) thank you
Look, I don't even like tea but I loved the video! Fascinating to learn more about tea and some somewhat historical things about tea, even though I don't like it and much prefer coffee. 
What a weird claim to make…how tea became European and then slap in big bold letters the word “COLONIALISM”, like a warning ⚠️ sign. Tea is tea, it’s a global product that we all have and it can belong to anyone. I don’t care about stereotypes of how tea became associated with the British Empire, the past is the past, it is what it is, big deal.
I think you may be my favorite RU-vidr lol. I wish I could meet ppl like you irl. Any tips? I wanna go to my local zen Buddhist place but it seems incredibly rich, it's in a multi-million dollar house and in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in my city. Rubs me the wrong way
Hi, can you collaborate with Foreign Man in a Foreign Land dude??? Lol. I would to see a 3 hour livestream of y’all just talking about societal norms and socio-political issues in our modern society in the United States especially. I would love to see y’all engage and enjoy each other’s existence 😼😼.
A little correction: Siraj-Ud-Dawla wasn't that bad of a guy. He didn't mistreat his kingdom . But some people were jealous of his power and knew he was vigilant enough to catch his royal members do illegal trading with the british. Some of his own family members wanted to takeover his power to meet their greeds. he wasnt supposed to be the nawab in first place but the crowned prince, his cousin, was a drunkered alcoholic and could easiy be manipulated. Thats why the former king handed over he power to him. As a young nawab he[was inexperienced and way too] considerate] and trustful for his own safety .So they conspired against him .
I could be wrong, but maybe one exception to the "T- by sea" and "CH- by land" thing is the Portuguese (a language of a seafaring people) word for tea, which is "chá".
I was waiting the entire time for the Opium War to come up. The British obsession with tea cannot be overstated. They were losing (iirc) over a fifth of their treasury in silver to China annually. Not excusing the abhorrent things they did, merely adding that the British coffers were bleeding out because of their people's love of Chinese black tea. (And if I recall, the Chinese didn't even view Black Tea in high quality in contrast to the popular teas. They gave them their scraps and charged them an arm and a leg for it.) Loved the video. Hope Part 2 eventually makes it way.
The Britsh didn't just up and decide to grow tea one day after the first opium way -- they _didn't even know what it was._ They could figure out tea was a plant, sure, but China would never tell them which plant it was. That was the most clever part of the restrictions China had imposed.
