Patriotic History of Coffee and Tea

Before 1600, alcoholic beverages with enough alcohol in them to kill bacteria were the safest and most popular drinks. Water was unsafe and unpopular. Coffee and tea became very popular because they used boiled water, which killed bacteria, and they tasted good and gave a nice caffeine mood boost.

Tea became so popular in England that the government, in order to offset falling tax revenues from alcoholic beverages, licensed coffeehouses and levied a tax of 8 cents per gallon. The English East India Company had been given the monopoly on tea in 1669 and its profits helped finance the colonization of India and brought about the Opium Wars between England and China. The East India Company further strengthened tea drinking in England in the late 1700's by a "Drink Tea" campaign. Cheap tea, high taxes on alcoholic beverages, and patriotism all combined to create the British tradition of tea drinking.

America was also part of the British tea drinking tradition, at least until Parliament's greed and disregard for the American colonists' rights allowed passage of the Stamp Act in 1765. The Americans boycotted English tea in 1767 and switched to smuggled tea and increased their consumption of coffee. The East India Company was hurt financially by the boycott so the British government gave it permission to sell tea without the tax. This tax-free tea was shipped to America in several ships and would have solved the "taxation without representation" protest but for the fact that American merchants were prevented from making profit. It was the American merchants who rebelled at this tax-free tea. Their rebellion culminated when 342 chests of English tea were dumped into the Boston Harbor December 16, 1773.

The same patriotism that turned England into a nation of tea drinkers had the opposite effect in America. The choice of tea or coffee determined one's loyalty. Those loyal to the Crown chose tea, and the Americans, in their attempt to rid themselves of everything English, became a nation of coffee drinkers.

Robert