Moving the Tea Plant to India

Moving the Tea Plant to India

The British was determined to move the tea plant to Calcutta in the eighteenth century. The East India Company had a monopoly on the trade of tea but had no interest in growing the plant. But the British wanted India to grow the plant. So they sailed seeds of plants to Calcutta.

In Assam, there was interest to grow the tea plant. The botanist Dr N. Wallich of the East Indian Company asked for Chinese tea plants and seeds from the Botanical Garden company in Calcutta. The plants died in transit. There was back and forth between getting the plant and not getting the plant.

During the Burmese war, they acquired a tea tree seed. They doubted the seeds acquired were the real plant; thus the tea plant was never planted. After which, Bentinck the new Governor, was told to try to grow tea in a new region. Coming to a conclusion, they ended up growing the tea plants in Rio de Janeiro, St Pauls, and St Helena and the tea plant have been found in Nepal. (The history of the Indian tea industry 36-38)