Write a one page paper on how tea changed the course of American. How did it lead to colonies to declare independence from Great Britian? What happened from the French and Indian war to the last of the intolerable acts that made the colonist so angry that we fought for freedom. How was tea the last straw that caused the revolution to begin. You can write in story form, direct paper form or in a journal entry. Do not make this complicated, its like condensed story that is being told in a historical manner.

"Excellent and by all physicians approved, China drink called by the Chineans Tcha, by other Nations Tay, alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness Head Coffee Houseby the Royal Exchange, London," writes Thomas Rugge in 1658 (quoted in Curtis 122).  And so, by word of pen and mouth, we have the faltering first steps of the infant tea industry that would change the course of nations and shape the thinking of great minds.      

In 1660, a scant two years later, the first tea tax was imposed by act of parliament: eight pence per gallon on all tea made or sold in coffee houses (Martin 17).  The ponderous and porcine parliament was quick to do nothing except tax something popular.  The Honorable East India Company had been granted exclusive trade rights in Asia by act of parliament.  However, they were about as mentally agile as parliament when it came to feeling the pulse of their customers.  Parliament's eagerness to cash in on the affluence of the emerging middle class and the duplicity of its members by selling their influence to large business concerns was a formula for political disaster.                

A major contributor to the growth of the English middle class was the business generated by the American colonies.  Merchants grew rich importing exotic goods such as tobacco, deer skins, Sassafras root and Beaver skins.  

As the wealth of American colonists grew and their daily lives became more civilized, they longed for a means to exhibit their new gentility.  The Dutch were the first to exploit this desire.  Coffee and Chinese porcelains were traded for tobacco.  By 1610 the Dutch were dealing in porcelain by the ton, and in 1619 were supplying the tidewater, Virginia planters with slaves (Curtis 121).  1680 found the English East India Company finally in the porcelain business in a significant way.  They could not seem to anticipate the needs or desires of the American colonists.  A prime example of this is coffee.  Prior to 1680, coffee was only available from North Africa.  The city of Mocha in Arabia stood alone as the world trade center.  The Dutch, in order to increase profits, established coffee plantations on the mountains of Java.  The early names for coffee, Mocha and Java, denote their places of origin.  The English company waited another sixty years to establish a coffee plantation in their Jamaican colony, I suppose to insure that coffee was not just a fad.  Playing catch-up with the Dutch East India Company was a way of life for the English company that extended to the tea trade.