'A HISTORY OF...'//'TEA TIMELINE'//OUGD504-SUMMER

TEA TIMELINE

16TH CENTURY
-1597 First mention of tea in English.

17TH AND 18TH CENTURY 

• 1601 English East India Company founded.

• 1610 Dutch East India Company market tea.

• 1657 Tea sold at Garaway's Coffee House, London.

• 1664 The English East India Company present Charles II with some tea.

• 1706 Twinings founded.

• 1744 First attempt at tea cultivation in the United States.

• 1772 Tea first successfully cultivated in the United States.

• 1773 The Boston Tea Party protesting taxes on tea.

• 1799 French botanist Francois Andre Michaux, brought the Camellia sinensis plant to the United States and gave it to Henry Middleton.

19TH CENTURY

• 1812 Andrew Melrose founded Melrose's tea company.

• Tea planting in the Indian district of Darjeeling had begun Dr. Campbell, a civil surgeon of the Indian Medical Service. Campbell was transferred to Darjeeling in 1839 and used seeds from China to begin experimental tea planting, a practice he and others continued during the 1840s. The government also established tea nurseries during that period. Commercial development began during the 1850s

• 1867 Tea first sown in Ceylon/Sri Lanka

• 1866 James Taylor visited India to learn about tea plantations.

• 1867 James Taylor established a tea factory at Loolecondera

• 1869 Cutty Sark clipper built - the last merchant ship to be so built. Coffee-rust fungus destroyed most of the coffee plants in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka): this led to the establishment of the tea industry there.

• 1872 James Taylor started upon the construction of a larger tea factory in Loolecondera.

• 1875 James Taylor sent the first consigment of tea to the UK. Yu Quianchen developed Keemun tea

• 1891 Nilgiri Planters Association founded.

20TH CENTURY

• 1900 Scientific Department of Indian Tea Asociation (ITA) established.

• 1903 First patents on tea bags. Indian Tea Cess Bill

• 1904 First commercial sale of tea bags. Benjamin Ginsberg, Russian immigrant to Southern Africa became interested in Roobois and started its commercial development.

• 1906 The Book of Tea (茶の本) by Okakura Kakuzō published.

• 1911 Tocklai Experimental Station established, India.

• 1924 Mrs Florence Philips, a tea planter's wife smuggled a box of tea seeds out of India and these were planed in Chipinge (Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe): led to the development of the tea industry in the then colony.

• 1953 Clanwilliam Tea Cooperative established South Africa.

• 1953 Tea Act India established the Tea Board of India

• 1954 Rooibos Tea Control Board established.

• 1958 Rain Flower tea developed.

• 1964 Tea Research Association TRA established, India, with Tocklai as the centre of activities.

• 1977 Tea Ordinance 1977 established the Bangladesh Tea Board.
• 1987 The Charleston Tea Plantation established in its present form.

• 1991 Hangzhou National Tea Museum opened.
• 1992 Museum to commemorate James Taylor built in Ceylon.

21ST CENTURY

-2007 Tenfu Tea College established.