Simply Darjeeling!

“Traveling from East to West over thousands of years, tea has played a variety of roles on the world scene — in medicine, politics, the arts, culture, and religion. Behind this most serene of beverages, idolized by poets and revered in spiritual practices, lie stories of treachery, violence, smuggling, drug trading, international espionage, slavery, and revolution.”

In Liquid Jade, recently published by St. Martin’s Press, Beatrice Hohenegger explores the story of tea from east to west.

“Trading Places,” a great virtual exhibition by the British Library in London, tells the story of the British East India Company, which grew from a loose association of tradesmen into the “grandest society of merchants in the universe.”

The exhibition traces the history of the company over two centuries, from its beginnings in London in 1600 and its first trading post in Asia to its expansion into India, China, Indonesia, Japan, and Persia to its loss of the trade monopoly in 1834.

The East India Company was also prominent in the tea trade. In 1664, it placed its first order: 100 lbs of China tea to be imported to Britain. Tea drinking took hold soon, and annual imports climbed from 4,713 lbs in 1678 to 4,727,992 lbs in 1750.

Visit the online exhibition at http://www.bl.uk/whatson/exhibitions/trading/exhibition1.html.