How Assam Tea Began

Assam tea was not discovered. It was commissioned. The East India Company already held the valley, lost its China tea trade in 1833, set a committee to ask whether tea could be grown inside the Empire, and sold the first eight chests in London in 1839. Here is how those moves, and the people behind them, made an industry.

Before the Committee, a Kingdom Tore Itself Apart

The 1834 Tea Committee took British Assam for granted. It was earned by a 57-year Assamese civil war that killed roughly half the kingdom's own people, then a jealous governor who let a foreign army in to settle a private grudge. Here is the precondition the founding story leaves out.