Cutty Sark

Cooked ???

;-))

..sorry, bad joke........ yes, was very saddened to hear of this on tonights evening news - apparently there's a theory that it may have been arson - unbelievable.

Answering my own question- between 1870 and 1877, perhaps about two- thirds green and one-third red (black). The greens were heavily adulterated but thought to be benign and nobody cared, apparently. The reds were supposed to be pure. After 1877 the Cutty Sark was changed over to regular cargo. Toci

In the late 18th and early 19th century, the huge demand for tea in the UK lead to just about anything available in China being imported. This was the era of "young hyson," gunpowder greens, "bohea" and just about anything that any exporter cold get their hands on being shipped out.

But by the time the Cutty Sark was in business, the British had extensive tea plantations in India and Ceylon, and the British tastes in tea had turned greatly toward the Indian products. The stuff that was coming from China by then were mostly black teas, including yunnans and fujians, as well as some oddities like lapsang souchong that were made for the UK market.

According to this web site:

The Cutty Sark was only on the tea run from 1869 to 1877, a total of eight years. Most of that trade was probably carried out from the British legate port in Shanghai. And as I said, the Chinese tea trade was stagnating if not dying at that point in time, due to competition from India.

--scott

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An excellent book on the topic of the boom and bust of the coastal tea trade in China, if anyone is interested in reading more, is "Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757-1937", by Robert Gardella. After you read it, remember to keep to yourself the fact that tea cultivation in Taiwan was started by foreigners.

Another good place to start is the Opium Wars on Wikipedia. The British sold the Chinese opium from India so they could buy Indian tea. You see that today with the Taliban selling the West all the once religiously prohibited opium it wants. You don't have to count casualties on the battlefield.

Jim

Alex wrote:

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The opium wars actually preceded the India tea industry -- the opium largely came from India. The issue was that China would accept payment for tea only in silver and would not buy British goods. At one point

35% of all the revenues coming into the Exchequer -- the UK equivalent of the Treasury Department -- came from the opium trade, which was largely led by the missionary families, including what became Jardine Mathieson (sp?) the first of the Hong Kong taipans. In the 1840s, Indian tea took over -- after decades of efforts to find native bushes and propogate them. Slavery had been abolished in the UK in several waves, with Earl Grey -- he of all the absurd fictions about "his" tea

-- one of the great radical leaders of reform for 40 years, but mantained in India till, if I recall correctly, 1837. Not a glorious period in British history. Interestingly, just as the McCarthy period or red-baiting and the suspension of so many rights, including the Fifth Amendment, have been kind of airbrushed out of US historical memory, as a kid in the UK I never heard of the Opium Wars and I am fairly knowledgable about history. The geo-politics of tea are kinda interesting. The Opium Wars began the long humiliation of China which was at the time the largest economy in the world.

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Great summary. The silver imbalance was I think due to tea, silk, and porcelain going out and nothing going in. The causes of the war were complex, and cannot be boiled down to British imperialism; again I would recommend reading a whole book about it. I can't remember the author of the one I read most recently.

Also I think it's unlikely that late Qing China had the largest economy in the world on a dollar basis, and I'm not sure that the Fifth Amendment has been "airbrushed out of US historical memory," whatever that means.

There's almost no doubt that mid-Qing China had the largest economy in the world. Whether late-Qing China did or not depends greatly, I think, on your exact definition of "late".

MarshalN

I think we were talking about at the time of the Opium Wars, and I don't have any problem calling that period "late", whether "late" means "towards the end", "after the middle" or "in an advanced state of decay". As to the size of its economy relative to England or the US, I will demur to economists, but I do think it is unlikely that it would be larger in terms of the monetary value of its output. I wouldn't make the same assertion if we were talking about the Yongzheng reign, but then we weren't.

Ah, I always feel guilty getting my university to track down and obtain copies of books that I want for personal reasons. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Agreed. The wars were very much part of imperialism in general, with the French, Americans and Dutch all jostling to benefit from the ending of the British East Indies monopoly relationship. The overt issue was the surrender of 20,000 chests of opium after a 47-day siege of the British factories. As I recall, the underlying issue was the trade imbalance: India produced cotton which China bought in quantities but not enough to equal the value of the tea the UK bought. Pre-opium, Britain shipped around 100 tons of silver a year to China. Around 1840, China was exporting 40 tons a year, net, to Britain. in

1830, Britain imported 30 million pounds of tea from China. In 1879, it was 136 million.

Re the McCarthy period, I didn't mean the 5th Amendment was airbrushed out --just that the era where it happened is conveniently blanked out of most peoples' knowledge, just as my Chinese aquaintances are beginning to talk as if the Cultural Revolution never happened. And if you poll most Brits, they've never heard of the Opium Wars.

Re Cutty Sark. It's amaz> >

Here are some tea and opium numbers: "Between 1781 and 1790, the total amount of tea China shiped to England was valued at 96,267,833 yuan. Meanwhile, between 1781 and

1793, the total amount of woolens and spices that China imported from England was value at only 16,871,592 yuan, or one-sixth of what China sold to England. To eliminate the deficit, England began to ship large quantities of opium to China. The shipment was 200 chests in 1787, 2000 chests in 1800, 5147 chests in 1820, 7000 chests in 1821, 12639 chests in 1824, 21785 chests in 1820, 7000 chests in 1821, 12639 chests in 1824, 21785 chests in 1834 and 39000 chests in 1837." An Outline History of China, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, Translated First Edition 1982,Editor Bai ShouYi,Shanghai People's Publishing House,1980,Printed People's Republic of China, ISBN 0-8351-1000-1

Jim