tea (n.)

English tea and Turkish çay belong to the two largest families of names for the same drink. Both go back to Chinese. Most Chinese varieties use a form like cha; Southern Min, spoken in Fujian and Taiwan, has forms like te. Which one a language borrowed often tells us who brought the tea.¹

Dutch traders bought through Xiamen, then known in Europe as Amoy, and took te into Dutch as thee. English tea and French thé belong to that family. Overland trade carried forms of cha across much of Asia and into eastern Europe. “Tea by sea, cha by land” describes a broad pattern, with exceptions. Portuguese traders also arrived by sea, but their route went through Macao, where they encountered Cantonese cha. Portuguese still calls the drink chá.¹

A Portuguese tea drinker helped make it fashionable at the English court. Catherine of Braganza married Charles II in 1662 and brought her tea-drinking habits with her. London coffee houses were already serving it in the 1650s. The East India Company placed its first order for tea in 1664, as demand grew.²

By the middle of the nineteenth century, tea was drunk daily across British social classes. Afternoon tea gave it a meal of its own between lunch and dinner. The sugar in the cup had a history too: its growing availability depended on enslaved labour on Caribbean plantations. The domestic habit was tied to the commerce and coercion of empire.³

Across the Atlantic, the East India Company’s tea became the object of a protest. The Tea Act of 1773 helped the financially troubled company sell directly to the American colonies. It kept the existing tea duty and gave the company advantages over colonial merchants; it imposed no new tax. Opponents feared both its monopoly and the precedent of accepting taxation by a Parliament in which they had no representatives.⁴ On 16 December 1773, protesters boarded three ships in Boston and threw their tea into the harbour. The event became known as the Boston Tea Party.⁵

In Japan, the cha sound is part of chadō, the way of tea. The practice developed over centuries, with the sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyū central to the tradition followed by Urasenke.⁶ A host chooses utensils, a hanging scroll and sweets with the season and the guests in mind. Flowers may be those growing at that time of year. The arrangement should help guests feel cool in summer and warm in winter. Learning to receive the tea and appreciate what has been prepared is part of the practice too.⁷

In Türkiye, tea was known well before the Republic. Seyyid Mehmed İzzet’s Çay Risalesi, published in 1878, discussed its varieties and how to prepare it.⁸ Republican policy helped establish domestic production: a 1924 law supported tea cultivation around Rize, and the first factory opened in 1947. By 1963, domestic production could meet the country’s demand.⁹

Coffee had already left its name in the morning meal. Turkish kahvaltı, breakfast, comes from kahve altı, literally “under coffee”: food eaten before drinking coffee. Tea now accompanies that breakfast, often in a tulip-shaped glass.¹⁰

There is a glass on the balcony of The House here, in the morning and evening.

She poured another glass of tea.