Tea: Addiction, Explotation and Empire by Roy Moxham ...
from the Amazon.co.uk site ...
Roy Moxham is Conservator of the University of London Library and a teacher in the University's Institute of English Studies. His first book The Great Hedge Of India was the extraordinary story of his quest for one of the forgotten wonders of the world. Now, aided by his experiences as a tea planter in early 1960s Africa, Roy has written the definitive book on the history of Tea, which is appropriately subtitled Addiction, Exploitation And Empire.
Dominic Kennerk, Waterstone's Online: I never realized what a murky history there could be behind something as sedate as a cup of tea.
Roy Moxham: When I first planned this book, I had no idea of the 'dark history' my researches would uncover. I merely thought that growing tea was something I knew a fair amount about, that I would enjoy finding out more of the history of tea, and that I could make both the growing and the history interesting for a general audience. My own time as a tea planter was full of comic episodes, and I have described some of these. The violence and oppression of earlier times came as a total surprise.
Dominic Kennerk: Do you think the suffering caused by the tea industry in India, Africa and Ceylon was more indicative of the 'age of empire', than of the industry itself?
Roy Moxham: I am very wary of generalizing about the British Empire. I have always thought that there were both good and bad facets to the Empire. For example, the British were instrumental in suppressing the Arab-run slave trade in Eastern Africa to the benefit of the people there. On the other hand, the slave trade the British themselves set up to work the sugar plantations in the Caribbean was terrible for the West Africans. Similarly you cannot generalize too much about the tea industry as a whole. In Darjeeling, for example, the conditions for the tea workers were no worse, and perhaps better, than was the norm in India. In Assam, however, the British behaved abominably. Empires are run for the benefit of the rulers, not the ruled. Nevertheless, there has always been a percentage of the ruling elite who have done their personal best to behave humanely. Unfortunately, they have often been in a minority. Conditions on the tea estates markedly improved after about 1920, as more liberal attitudes inside Britain filtered through to the colonies. Before then, what Sir Harry Johnston, the first governor of what is now Malawi, wrote in 1897 probably applied across much of the Empire: The ideal of the average European trader and planter in Tropical Africa would be a country where the black millions toil unremittingly for the benefit of the white man. They would see that the Negroes were well fed and not treated with harshness, but anything like free will as to whether they went to work or not, or any attempt at competing with the white man as regards education or skilled labour would not be tolerated. That, at least, was an improvement on what had happened in Nineteenth Century Assam.
Dominic Kennerk: You mention that British Military excursions, sent to protect the opium for tea trade in China, had repercussions that echoed down to modern China.
Roy Moxham: The opium that the British forced the Chinese to legalize continued to cause huge social problems in China until the middle of the Twentieth Century. Hong Kong, which became British as a result of the Opium Wars, only reverted to China in 1997, and this soured relations between Britain and China until then. The Chinese taught their children to dislike the British for what they had done to China, and to distrust the West in general. These attitudes are only now being dissipated.
Dominic Kennerk: Aside from much of the hardship caused by the Tea industry, you do show how it was an age of adventure and exploration by often intriguing characters. Are there any individuals you identified with?
Roy Moxham: I found Robert Fortune a very sympathetic character. He was, of course, a most distinguished botanist and plant collector, which I shall never be. He was also exceptionally fearless. However, I can relate to his travels, often in disguise, across China in search of tea. In a small way, it reminded me of my travels in dangerous areas of India searching for remnants of the Great Hedge.
Dominic Kennerk: How much did your unique perspective as a tea planter in Africa, in the early 1960s, help you write the book?
Roy Moxham: Quite a bit. Tea is a complicated crop to grow and process, so it helped to be familiar with the details. The biggest advantage, however, was to be able to identify with a forgotten world
- where young British men, with no particular expertise, went out to the tropics and took charge of vast estates and workforces.
Dominic Kennerk: Did researching and writing the book affect the way you looked back on your time in Africa?
Roy Moxham: Yes. I had no idea of how the early planters had acquired their huge acreages of land, or of how the tax system had been introduced to force the Africans into working for the Europeans.
Dominic Kennerk: There are many fascinating things in the book and I particularly liked the culture around tea that developed in China.
Roy Moxham: I too was struck by the Chinese reverence for the finest teas. I was particularly impressed with the precautions taken against the leaf being tainted when plucked - how the pluckers, supposedly virgins, were forbidden to eat garlic, onions and strong spices. And of how they wore silk gloves, with slits in the tips, and snipped off the tea shoots with their, frequently washed, fingernails. In later years, the shoots were cut off with gold scissors.
Dominic Kennerk: I like the jacket image for the book, and there are some terrific illustrations used throughout. How important are these?
Roy Moxham: The cover picture is by Edward Miller. He also did the cover for The Great Hedge Of India, which was much admired. The tea cover is deliberately redolent of the hedge one. The theme was my idea, as I wanted something to make people realize that this was a violent history, and not about tea-cosies. I think the illustrations are important to give the book a lighter feel. This is not an academic book, but there is a lot of historical information, and I wanted to emphasize that it was for a general audience. My favourite picture is of 'Tapner & Cobby & the Smugglers going to hang Chater the Custom House officer in a well.' All very gruesome, but the smugglers look so elegant!
Dominic Kennerk: Are there any particular writers or books that influenced or inspired you in writing of Tea?
Roy Moxham: Seeds of Change, by Henry Hobhouse, is a little classic of this genre, and I saw how I could amplify his approach to concentrate on a single plant and its influence. While researching Tea I was very taken with Peter Ward Fay's The Opium War, 1840 - 1842, which is both scholarly and readable, a rare combination these days, when good narrative is often despised by academics.
Dominic Kennerk: Have you a favourite tea?
Roy Moxham: When I was a planter, much of our tea went to Typhoo, and I developed a liking for that kind of slightly superior 'navvy tea.' I have now switched to Teadirect, which is similar. While writing the book, I tried many kinds of tea, and found little I really liked. The one exception, somewhat surprisingly, was Japanese green tea. I find this intensely green tea most refreshing. One of my students is Japanese, and she did a Japanese tea ceremony for me, which was immensely interesting - more for the etiquette than for the tea, which is particularly astringent!
Dominic Kennerk: Current conditions in some of the tea growing countries are still poor. Towards the end of the book you say there are laudable 'Fair-trade' organizations, such as Teadirect who are trying to improve this, but that very significant change needs to come about from inter-governmental co-operation. Why do you think there is little sign of this?
Roy Moxham: I see very little prospect of the tea producing countries co-operating to reduce production to raise the price of tea to a 'fair' level. Their people are often desperate to make any money, however little. This is a consequence of wages in the developing world being driven down by unfair competition from the rest of the world. Probably the best chance of raising the tea workers' wages is for the World Trade Agreement to be reformed so that there is a fairer market. We need an end to the huge subsidies in Europe and America and to the dumping of the surpluses that undermine producers in other countries. This would raise all wages in the developing countries, including those of the tea workers. We should all press for fairer world trade.
Dominic Kennerk: What are you up to next, Roy?
Roy Moxham: I retire from being conservator of the University of London Library in 2005, and then intend to divide my time between London and India. I have one or two ideas for books about India, which will need time there to research. I am currently doing what research I can here in London, to give me a flying start.