I have been on-and-off reading a book given to me by my son entitled “history of the World via 100 Objects (in the British Museum)”. It is a rather unusual book of 100 chapters each of which starts by describing a museum object dating all the way from the stone age to the modern era. From the description the book traces the origin of the object and the historical times during which the object was created. This way, the history of the world and of mankind came alive rather than the typical dry and time sequenced account given in history books.

One of the chapters deal with a tea drinking set created around the middle of the 19^thcentury which of course was the height of the British Empire and for most Chinese the beginning of the opium war and the humiliation of China for 150 years. Now, how the British populace began drinking tea as a national beverage apparently got started by the lack of clean drinking water in the early 19^thcentury. Diseases were rampart due to this lack of sanitation. Thus, alcohol becomes a popular substitute for health reasons. But this habit made lots of the workers unfit for work during the day which was unacceptable socially and economically. As a result, the government pushed for hot tea with milk and sugar as an alternative and created a demand for tea which at the time was only available from China.

The British traded opium for tea as an inexpensive means of commerce which of course led to the opium war. But this is not all. To end the Chinese monopoly of tea, the British also managed to start tea plantation in India. In addition, they transplanted a large number of Indians to the island of Sri Lanka and annexed land for tea planting and production. This of course contributed to the conflict and civil war with native tribes that lasted well into the end of the 20^thcentury (the Tamil tigers vs. the Sri Lanka government).

Here is a bit of international history resulted from a simple commodity, “TEA” and a desire to improve public health.