I guarantee I could point to five different teas in your cupboard and tell you how one or more ingredients was at one point the fuel for or the product of an act of revolution. It wouldn't even be hard. Agriculture and food history is intrinsically linked with human connection and struggles for power, and the world of tea and spice is both bloody and full of love.
It was inevitable that tea should associate itself with revolution and rebellion. A beverage with its roots tapped deep into the rich groundwaters of both community connectivity and horrifying acts of oppression, tea has served as valuable cash crop for centuries and invaluable empathy engine for millennia. I'd like to talk to you today about tea in a specific sense (c. sinensis, beloved specimen) and tea in a looser sense (yerba mate, they could never make me exclude you).
Yes, this blog post is a thinly veiled call to arms in the face of our current fascist, oppressive dictatorship here in the United States and abroad. Come at me; I stand by it.
British Imperialism vs the Mighty Farm Worker
Let's start with an obvious entree into tea as a tool for uprising: Masala Chai.
Tea may be native to Northeast India, and has certainly been enjoyed as a health beverage by local indigenous populations for time immemorial, but was not broadly cultivated in until the 1830s, when the British colonizers established large plantations intended to produce for international trade.
We can talk at length about the Indian Tea Market Expansion Board and their push to market tea in the British style to the native population all across India in the early 1900's, but that's a talk for a future lesson in the many insidious faces of the propaganda machine. Let's circle back later.
What I really want to focus on today is the birth of Masala Chai as a practice from the oppressed, for themselves and one another, and how it has become intrinsic to the Indian identity, moving up and west across the Silk Road to heal and connect families all the way through the Levant.
Adding milk and sugar to tea was initially put into practice by British plantation owners to boost energy in their field laborers: an excuse to demand longer, harder work days. The afternoon milk tea break was a mandatory practice, and soon the workers began to bring spices and herbs from home to supplement their milk tea with Ayurvedic healing properties.
In short: "You can force us into a lifestyle which would damage our health, but we'll bring our own folk remedies to the workplace and institute our own healthcare system."
This was the beginning of Masala Chai (literally "spiced tea"), a practice which made its way in various forms into just about every home in India, Nepal, Tibet, all the way over to Iran, Egypt, Kenya and beyond. Any household can have a chai recipe featuring flavors of their own family, their own folk medicine, their own soul. This is a beautiful practice, a fragrant rebellion, a way to heal in the face of harm quietly and with dignity.
In my home, I make my chai with whatever spices best suit my needs. Flagging energy? A classic mix of warming spices and black tea will boost circulation and offer a gentle caffeine bump. Sinus infection? A mint-ginger chai is just the thing! Sleeplessness? I'll take mine decaf and add adaptogenic turmeric with soporific apple.
The beauty of chai is that it allows us to take care of ourselves and each other in a flexible way that honors our ancestors and our own knowledge and invites our guests into our lives in a deeply intimate format. Suck on that, colonizers!
The Lesson: Tools of the oppressor can be claimed and reshaped to heal, connect, and solidify identity among the oppressed.
The American Tea Revolution(s)
Speaking of colonizers, back in the thirteen colonies, John Smith (yes that one) put forth a concerted effort to popularize coffee, but saw no luck getting his fave drink going. He whined in his diary that tea culture was already too strong due to the immigrants' British Isles roots. British, Dutch, and Portuguese traders all had strong tea distribution lines to the colonies...until the Brits shut down those supply lines, claiming a monopoly and happily supplying tea to cowboys and debutantes alike until taxation got out of hand and colonial protestors made their displeasure known via the Boston Tea Party by chucking chests of import directly into the harbor.
Yes, this is certainly a case of rejecting rather than adopting tea to make a statement to the oppressors. Boycotting in early action, and very effectively employed! The British tea traders took a major hit to their revenues and had to scramble to find new markets. It took nearly a century for tea culture to regain any real popularity in what by then became the United States of America.
While coffee was adopted as a popular alternative after the Tea Party, John Smith never saw his beloved coffee culture take off on Turtle Island. Ha.
The Lesson: Boycotts have been working for hundreds of years. They hit the oppressor where it hurts and offer the lower class an effective opportunity to stick it to the man.
Yaupon Holly, Squashed by the British Regime, but Making a Comeback!
While the entire above taxation squabble was in the process of coming to a head, there was even more evil tea work being done by the Brits much further south than Boston.
Yaupon Holly, North America's only caffeinated native plant, was once a very common alternative to tea in the Southeast US. The colonists in this region sent cuttings back to family in England, where it also became quite popular for short period. Due to its lack of tannins, no sugar was needed to make this plant palatable. It grows easily and quickly anywhere it’s planted, and became a direct threat to the British government of the mid-1700s, as they relied heavily on tea and sugar taxes. The government, of course, was not having it.
The British Ministry of Trade declared Yaupon Holly a “savage emetic,” citing the native practice of drinking Yaupon, or “black drink,” to get amped for battle, then intentionally puking it back up to fight on an empty stomach while full of caffeine. The Ministry even went so far as to change its scientific name to ilex vomitoria, while associating true tea (c. sinensis) with the queen’s own "civilized" practice.
There were quite literally widespread marketing campaigns saying "You don't want to be a savage, do you? Be civilized and take your true tea with milk and sugar, just like the queen!"
While the tribes which made use of this plant for ritual, social, and health applications were almost entirely relocated on the Trail of Tears, the plant itself was too resilient to eliminate and enough records were kept of its use that the history of Yaupon is still with us. It has taken three hundred years for the reputation of Yaupon Holly to bounce back, but bounce back it has! In recent decades, Yaupon farms have popped up all along the US South, and the crumbling infrastructure of Florida's dying citrus industry has a ray of hope in the hyper-sustainable Yaupon, which is gaining popularity by the day in the contemporary specialty tea market.
You can now find Yaupon Holly and its story in most grocery stores, and farmers with failing introduced crops are turning back to native plants for produce with less ecological impact and greater economical benefit to local communities!
The Lesson: Local, native, community-sourced connections have always been here, and no amount of squashing by oppressors can erase them. We can always reclaim what connects people and takes care of the land.
The Catholic Church vs. Yerba Mate
When the Catholic Church first migrated to South America in the 1870's, they hated how Argentine laborers and would-be convertees socialized, connected, and energized over their native drink, Yerba Mate, so a propaganda campaign was launched to paint it as an evil plant. It was asserted that by partaking of Yerba Mate, the unsaved Argentines allowed Satan's influence to flower inside of them and prevented God from entering to save their souls.
Obviously having none of this, the people of Argentina raised such a ruckus in defense of their culturally vital beverage and rioted at the church, breaking the masonry they'd constructed with their own hands and forcing the terrified clergy inside the sanctuary. The bishop appointed to the region had to give up and declare a "vision from God" had informed him that Yerba Mate was indeed a plant of His creation and that He actually wanted the people to partake.
From this moment on and even until today, Yerba Mate has been a beloved drink lauded by the Catholic Church for its zesty energy and power to form community bonds. Pope Francis, the first Latin American pope, actually declared it his favorite drink and a staple to keep on-hand at the Vatican.
The Lesson: The common people have greater collective power than the few in lofty positions. When we stick together, they must fear us and listen to our wants and needs.
And Now, it's Our Turn
It is clearer by the day that our choices have impact and that no decision is without statement on our values. The products we buy fund companies which in turn fund political agendas or redistribute to local community. The places we spend our time and the people with whom we spend said time and the ways in which we connect each cause small, everyday ripples, shaping our collective identity into the one we select for ourselves.
The tea table has a history of creating philosophers, activists, and experimental thinkers, not to mention the life force our beverages bring to our kitchen tables and our communities.
Tea is to fuel connection.
Tea is to fuel inspiration and action.
Tea is to bring us together and make us stronger than the sum of our parts.
Cheers to you and me and us together, Teaheart. Let's get together over a cuppa and scheme for a better world together, yeah?
xoxo, Friday
