Get the Kettle On, It's Time for Tea: A History of the Most British Tradition
It’s not just Downton Abbey. In just about every show imported from Britain there’s a common denominator: tea. Tea is very important to the British and has been for almost four hundred years. It helped win World War II—in 1942, Britain bought up virtually all the tea in the world (except in Japan), knowing how vital it was to morale. Tea was rationed at 2 oz. per person per week until 1952--that's three cups of tea a day.
But back to the beginning—in England, that is. (Tea has been around in China for thousands of years). Tea was probably introduced to the British Isles by Catherine of Braganza, who came from Portugal to marry Charles II in 1662. England, dealing with a new monarch following a Civil War and the Interregnum, had come in late to this particular beverage game but enthusiastically made up for lost time. Tea quickly caught on among the wealthy, and the East India Company, a massive global corporation that controlled Indian exports, traded opium grown in India for tea from China.
