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Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam

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The Scottish trader Robert Bruce was taken to the Singpho chief Bessa Gam, through the intermediary Maniram Dewan, and shown a tea plant already cultivated, processed and drunk locally. British accounts describe this as the discovery of Assam tea; it was in fact the point at which an existing indigenous practice became legible to a colonial state. After Robert Bruce's death in 1824, his brother Charles Alexander Bruce continued the work and produced the first manufactured samples for official assessment.

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Evidence · 2
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Connections · 3
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 47 blocks · 2 evidence · 43 related

  1. Story
  2. The Scottish trader Robert Bruce was taken to the Singpho chief Bessa Gam, through the intermediary Maniram Dewan, and shown a tea plant already cultivated, processed and drunk locally. British accounts describe this as the discovery of Assam tea; it was in fact the point at which an existing indigenous practice became legible to a colonial state. After Robert Bruce's death in 1824, his brother Charles Alexander Bruce continued the work and produced the first manufactured samples for official assessment.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Tea
  5. Camellia sinensis
  6. Assam
  7. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
  8. Connections
  9. Assam
  10. Camellia sinensis
  11. Tea
  12. Camellia sinensis
  13. English (later British) East India Company
  14. Assam Company
  15. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
  16. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
  17. First Assam tea auctioned in London
  18. Tea
  19. Darjeeling
  20. Yunnan
  21. Assam
  22. Growing conditions for tea (altitude, rainfall, drainage)
  23. Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
  24. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
  25. First tea planted at Darjeeling
  26. Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
  27. Camellia sinensis
  28. Silver
  29. London
  30. Tea Horse Road (Chamagudao)
  31. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
  32. English (later British) East India Company
  33. Tea culture
  34. Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
  35. Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
  36. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
  37. Qing trade confined to Canton
  38. Boston Tea Party
  39. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  40. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
  41. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
  42. First Assam tea auctioned in London
  43. The Opium Wars
  44. Treaty of Nanking
  45. Evidence
  46. Documents the 1823 Singpho tea encounter, Charles Bruce's samples, the 1834 Tea Committee, the January 1839 London auction of Assam tea and the founding of the Assam Company.
  47. Yunnan holds the primary genetic diversity of Camellia sinensis var. assamica, with distinct gene pools around Pu'er, Lincang and Xishuangbanna and north-east India near the south-western range limit.
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/atlas?object=EVENT_ASSAM_TEA_REPORTED&experience=EVENT_ASSAM_TEA_REPORTED