|
Commercial production of tea in India began after the conquest of large areas by the British East India Company, at which point large tracts of land were converted for mass tea production.〔 The widespread popularity of tea as a recreational drink began in earnest in the 1920s, after a successful advertising campaign by the Tea Board and several mass promotion drives by the Government, using railway stations as a base.〔 Today, India is one of the largest tea producers in the world, although over 70 per cent of its tea is consumed within India itself. In this, India is also among the top 5 per-capita tea consumers. A number of renowned teas, such as Assam and Darjeeling, also grow exclusively in India. The Indian tea industry has grown to own many global tea brands and has evolved into one of the most technologically equipped tea industries in the world. Tea production, certification, exportation, and all other facets of the tea trade in India is controlled by the Tea Board of India. == History == Chinese varieties of tea were first introduced into India by the British, in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. The British, "using Chinese seeds, plus Chinese planting and cultivating techniques, launched a tea industry by offering land in Assam to any European who agreed to cultivate tea for export."〔 Maniram Dewan (1806-1858) was the first Indian tea planter, and is credited with establishing the first commercial plantations of the Assamese variety of tea. Tea was originally only consumed by Anglicized Indians, and it was not until the 1920s (and in rural North India, the 1950s) that tea grew widely popular in India through a successful advertising campaign by the Tea Board.〔Sen, Colleen Taylor. p. 26. "Ironically, it was the British who introduced tea drinking to India, initially to anglicized Indians.. tea did not become a mass drink in India until the 1950s when the India Tea Board, faced with a surplus of low-grade tea, launched an advertising campaign to popularize tea in the North, where the drink of choice was milk."〕 Prior to the British, the plant may have been used for medicinal purposes. Some cite the Sanjeevani tea plant first recorded reference of tea use in India. However, studies have shown that Sanjeevani plant was probably a plant unrelated to the tea plant (''Camellia sinensis'') and is likely to refer either to ''Selaginella bryopteris'' or to ''Desmotrichum fimbriatum''. In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale production of tea in Assam, India, of a tea variety traditionally brewed by the Singpho people. In 1826, the British East India Company took over the region from the Ahom kings through the Yandaboo Treaty. In 1837, the first English tea garden was established at Chabua in Upper Assam; in 1840, the Assam Tea Company began the commercial production of tea in the region, run by indentured servitude of the local inhabitants. Beginning in the 1850s, the tea industry rapidly expanded, consuming vast tracts of land for tea plantations. By the turn of the century, Assam became the leading tea producing region in the world.〔Adivasis in Assam http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/may/soc-assamadi.htm〕 Writing in ''The Cambridge World History of Food'', Weisburger & Comer write: "The tea cultivation begun there () in the nineteenth century by the British, however, has accelerated to the point that today India is listed as the world's leading producer, its 715,000 tons well ahead of China's 540,000 tons, and of course, the teas of Assam, Ceylon (from the island nation known as Sri Lanka), and Darjeeling are world famous. However, because Indians average half a cup daily on per capita basis, fully 70 percent of India's immense crop is consumed locally." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of tea in India」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|