Assam

Assembled from 15 blocks · 3 evidence · 17 related

1. Story
2. Assam is a region of north-east India in the Brahmaputra valley, annexed by the East India Company after the First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826. Tea grew there natively and was already being processed and drunk by Singpho communities before any British involvement: Robert Bruce was shown the plant in 1823 by the Singpho chief Bessa Gam, with the local noble Maniram Dewan acting as intermediary. British commercial cultivation followed from 1834 under a government Tea Committee, and expanded through a plantation system built on land alienation and indentured labour recruited from outside the region, with high mortality on the gardens. Assam remains one of the largest single tea-producing regions in the world.
3. Knowledge
4. Assam
5. Connections
6. Camellia sinensis
7. English (later British) East India Company
8. Assam Company
9. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
10. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
11. First Assam tea auctioned in London
12. Evidence
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. The Company's Canton trade, its tea purchases and cargo accounting, and its administrative decision-making are documented in a single surviving institutional archive.