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Commutation Act cuts British tea duty

Parliament reduced the duty on tea from about 119 per cent to 12.5 per cent, replacing the lost revenue with a window tax. Legal tea immediately undercut the smuggled trade, which had been carrying more tea into Britain than legal imports, and consumption expanded sharply. The Act converts tea from an elite luxury into a mass commodity, and in doing so massively increases the volume Britain must buy from China — and therefore the size of the payment problem.

Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.

Subjects

Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on Tea

  1. Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
  2. Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
  3. Silver ore is registered at the Cerro Rico of Potosí
  4. Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
  5. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
  6. Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
  7. Qing trade confined to Canton
  8. Boston Tea Party
  9. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  10. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
  11. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
  12. The Opium Wars
  13. First Assam tea auctioned in London
  14. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
  15. Treaty of Nanking
  16. Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
  17. The Great Exhibition
  18. The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
  19. The first London Marathon

Related

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