Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
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.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Assam · region · India
- Camellia sinensis · plant species · Yunnan–Assam borderlands · not located
- Tea · trade good · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
A History of the Assam Company 1839–1953
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.
T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh · 1957 · Partly verified
H. A. Antrobus, 'A History of the Assam Company 1839–1953' (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1957) — company history written from the Assam Company's own records
Genetic analyses of ancient tea trees provide insights into the breeding history and dissemination of Chinese Assam tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica)
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.
Horticultural Plant Journal / ScienceDirect · 2024 · Verified
PubMed PMID 38807909; ScienceDirect article identifier S2468265923000811
Recorded on Assam
- Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
- Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
- Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- The Opium Wars
- First Assam tea auctioned in London
- First tea planted at Darjeeling
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China · 1848–1851
- Treaty of Nanking · 1842-08-29
- First tea planted at Darjeeling · 1841
- First Assam tea auctioned in London · 1839-01-10
- The Opium Wars · 1839–1860
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded · 1834
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty · 1784
- Boston Tea Party · 1773-12-16