Tea's popular story lends itself to a glamorous history that invokes Chinese emperors and British traders, in many cases ignoring indigenous communities who have their own versions of tea history. Indigenous tea history is often overlooked in the conversation, but there were many groups throughout history who cultivated tea – like the Singpho in Assam or the Bulang and Hani in Yunnan – albeit in different forms to what we know today. (And that's not even including those whose tea culture extends beyond the realm of Camellia sinensis!)
Atlas Tea Co. operates on Gundungurra and Dharug Country in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia. Our country has a long and storied indigenous history and as we stepped into the business of tea trading we wanted to ask ourselves what it means to sell a product whose modern global infrastructure was built largely on appropriated land and on stolen trade secrets.
Table of contents
Indigenous origins
When Robert Bruce traveled to India to meet Chief Bisa Gam of the Singpho in 1823 he claimed to have "discovered" Assamese tea. But the Singpho people had been cultivating Camellia sinensis var. assamica for over a thousand years. While the encounter was deemed a 'discovery', it was in fact just the Western witness to a long standing agricultural system on a much smaller scale than exists today.
Similar systems existed across the tea-growing world. The Bulang, Hani, and Yi peoples of Yunnan developed agroforestry methods that produced tea without clearing forest. Some of their cultivated tea trees, still in production today, are over 1,700 years old. It is in these ancient tea forests, whose reach extends beyond the borders of China down into Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos where some unique tea cultivation methods are still found.
Appropriation and legacy
The transformation from indigenous cultivation to plantation agriculture was rapid and deliberate. In Assam, the British East India Company cleared forests, displaced Singpho communities, and imported indentured workers under the kangani system – a debt-bondage arrangement that locked mostly women workers into multigenerational dependency. The same template was applied in Sri Lanka, Kenya, and elsewhere across the empire.
Many of these structures are still in place. An estimated 9 million people work in tea production today, the majority women, many of them descendants of indentured labour and earning below subsistence. Fair-trade certification covers only a small fraction of global volume and carries fees that smaller producers often can't afford, which relates to our thoughts on tea certification. Indigenous communities in tea regions are rarely compensated when their cultivation and processing knowledge ends up in "organic" or "sustainable" product copy.
What this means for us
For us, this is all grounds for specificity in our language. The romantic notion of "connecting to the land through tea" tends to ignore the people who were dispossessed of their land in order for mass tea plantations to thrive, or those whose standards of working on the land in which tea is grown is a far cry from those who enjoy the benefit of their labour.
We don't have a good answer to how we reconcile tea's colonial inheritance, and we won't pretend sourcing choices alone resolve it. What we try to do is be as specific as possible with what we do know: identify where the tea comes from, how to best treat it when its in your possession, and acknowledge that the custodianship of both the land we operate on and the lands where our tea is grown once belonged to someone else.
We love tea and the unique opportunity it gives us in getting to experience how the climatic conditions of a place can so dramatically change the flavour that lands in our cup. This is why we want to share tea with you, in hopes you'll find joy in it like we do.
Frequently asked questions
Who were the original cultivators of tea?
Tea (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis) was originally cultivated in China. There are many different origin stories - some more far-fetched than others - but archeological evidence dates tea seeds being discovered in the tomb of Emperor Jing of Han in 141 BCE, with a text reference noting the buying and preparation of tea leaves from 59 BCE.
The Singpho of present-day Assam cultivated indigenous tea varieties (var. assamica) for over a thousand years in India before the British arrived. And many other cultures had their own versions of 'tea' culture, boiling and brewing numerous herbal drinks for spiritual or medicinal purposes.
What was the kangani system?
The kangani system was a labour arrangement the British East India Company used on Assam tea plantations, recruiting workers - mostly women - from other regions under debt bondage that passed across generations. Its structural effects are still visible in plantation conditions today.
Does fair-trade certification resolve tea's colonial legacy?
Fair-trade and similar certifications raise wages and standards where applied, but they cover a minority of global tea volume, and certification fees often exclude the smallest producers. These types of certification are useful but not entirely sufficient.
