THIS is a coffee-table book with beautiful and rare photographs of 18th and 19th centuries when the British manned the tea plantations and made tea-drinking fashionable in our society.
Tracing the history of the origin of tea in 1664 and the rising demand for the beverage in Great Britain, the author says that all this prodded the East India Company to gather leaves of tea growing wild in Assam and gradually the Assam Company came into existence and began to grow, produce and sell tea in India, especially to the British settlers. Europeans managed the plantations while the locals were recruited for collecting and growing tea. The earliest tea made by the Assam Tea Company was in 1840, from leaves gathered from the wild plants growing in the Sibsagar district. Initially the Assam Tea Company suffered losses but with change of management, the bankrupt company recovered the losses. Then other tea gardens and companies were established and the year 1856 marked the termination of the pioneering era. By the end of the 1860s, tea had “settled down in its place as one of the staple products of India, with a fair future before it.”
Subsequently the tea industry in Assam and in other parts of India developed rapidly with periodic depressions in prices and profits. In 1869, investments increased and the area under cultivation also increased. Greater attention was paid to production of better quality tea and by 1900, India produced 197,460,664 pounds of tea on 522,487 acres of land with Brahmaputra Valley contributing 75,287,500 pounds alone.
The book presents a comprehensive account of the journey of tea through the Raj and subsequently in post-Independence India to merge with the future generations. Ever since its discovery in the 1800s in Assam, tea is accepted as India’s favourite beverage, cutting across layers of the society, both economic and regional.
The book will be enjoyed not only by tea producers but by tea drinkers too.
(Contemporary Targett Pvt Ltd, 22-23, Panorama, RC Dutt Road, Vadodara, Gujarat)
