Part 1
So far about the quantities and types of different teas, prices and purchasers in Gothenburg. This
was of course not where the great bulk of tea was consumed. Gothenburg was just the first
European stop for this tea. Most of it was re-exported to the Continent and to Britain.
The second part of the paper we have focused on this re-export, drawing on correspondence
between purchasers of tea in Gothenburg and their contact with merchants and whole sellers in
Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Hamburg.
Maybe short introduction of Irvine et al here
This material reveal the extent to which Swedish teas were competing with tea imported by the
other East India Companies, the French, the Danish, and the Dutch. This competition was by all
account fierce, a characteristic that was further enhanced by how a lot of the tea was sold. The
public sales, either in the form of company auctions, or auctions organised by whole sellers of tea
generated a lot of information which by all account helped press down prices. The tea market was in
this respect a well-functioning capitalistic market. In order to make a profit on this market, it was
necessary to trade in large amounts of tea, something the statistics of top buyers of tea also
indicate.
Not all information was circulated in the public however, the correspondence also suggest that
insider knowledge on the quality of specific lots or sequences of lots directed the purchases of those
trading in tea we have investigated. The diffusion of this private knowledge between traders
reflected social ties and long term affiliations, rather than exclusively (or at least immediately), profit
interests. Family ties and ethnicity were important references points in this exchange of information.
On idea Leos and I discussed is if the public and private information influenced different stages of
the tea sales. It might have been the case that information which was publicly circulated influenced
particularly the first round of sales, the Company sales. E.g. news about the total European import of
tea from China, in terms of the number of chests and different types, was likely to have influenced
the purchasers of tea in Gothenburg more broadly. The effects of inside information about qualities
of specific lots of tea, was in contrast more likely to have an effect on the prices of tea at the next
level of sales, on the whole sell market. The correspondence suggest that it was at this level, where
e.g. Swedish Bohea tea competed with Danish, French and Dutch tea, that aspect to do with quality
mattered particularly.
Next to publicly and privately circulated information the tea trade was also informed by expert
knowledge on tea. The correspondence suggest that it was the tea whole sellers in the Low
Countries, and in this particularly case Amsterdam and Rotterdam that had the last word assessing
the quality of the Chinese tea. With access to tea imported by all the continental East India Company
these whole sellers were well positioned determining qualities and predicting prices. This in contrast
to for example whole sellers in Hamburg who seem to lack over view and knowledge concerning less
well known tea types.
That Rotterdam/Amsterdam became staple markets and information nodes or gateways for Chinese
tea in Europe, the speed by which this happened, as the European consumption of tea increased
rapidly. The different types of information, how it was circulated, and where it was concentrated
helps illuminate levels of connectedness in the 18th century tea trade. It linked Canton with
Gothenburg, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Hamburg. What is largely absent is information from
inland China, about crops, or responses from the end consumers, most of which we assume lived
Britain.
Part 2
Finally, as Leos highlighted initially, the trade in tea became the most important part of the Eurasian
trade in 18th century Europe. However in contrast to porcelain and silk which Europeans imitated
and developed their own versions of, it was not possible to produce tea in Europe.
Does it mean that the tea trade is irrelevant from the point of view of one of the issues at the
forefront in the discussion of the effect of the Asian import on the early modern consumer
revolution in Europe and, in extension, the development of European industries to match the Asian
ones?
Not if you think more broadly about the role of the tea generating a trade in and consumption of
other Asian goods of a more durable character. Goods that the Europeans were more successful in
imitating.
The connection between tea and porcelain is pretty obvious, Chinese porcelain was used drinking
tea. There are also logistical factors, ships carrying tea, a light but bulky goods also needed porcelain
as a ballast. Placed in the bottom of the ships it also protected the tea from dampness.
Other goods, such as e.g. silk, lacquer wear, wall papers, and fans from China might have gained a
passage to Europe for similar reasons, i.e. they could not generate a profit by themselves big enough
to sustain the China trade singularly. However, the existence of a mass market for tea, and the trade
it generated, helped lowering the transaction costs to such an extent that it became lucrative to
import other things than tea.
From a Swedish point of view the relation between the trade in tea and the trade in other Chinese
goods become particularly significant since tea only to a very small extent was consumed in Sweden,
most of the tea was re-exported. Something which was also the case with the Danish imported tea.
This circumstance raises a series of questions about where the other goods, that which was not tea,
ended up once it had been sold at the Company sales in Gothenburg.
Maybe the silk and the porcelain and other goods that gained passage from China to Gothenburg
continued to travel with the tea? Or maybe the trade in tea enabled these relatively poor Nordic
populations to consume Chinese goods in a way that was not in proportion to their income,
compared to more well off areas of Europe? In other words, did the existence of a mass market for
tea in the Low countries and in Britain make poor Swedish people afford Chinese silk and porcelain?
A study of the tea trade can we suggest help understand the geography of the consumption of
Chinese goods more generally.
The tea trade also offers us an opportunity to study the dynamic of the trade between China and
Sweden and how it changed over time. Although tea leaves were recycled by poor consumers, tea
was a perishable goods and hence European tea stores needed to be refilled regularly. Silk and
porcelain had a different life span. Moreover Europeans had managed to imitate the Chinese
production in series of objects the design of which followed trends generated in Europe. All in all this
must have created a consumer market ruled by other rhythms and different demands to the market
for Chinese tea.
A geography and chronology of the tea trade can help illuminate what might have been only partially
overlapping markets for Chinese goods in Europe, working out of sync with one another. Is this
maybe why the cargos of the Swedish East India Company became increasingly more monotone,
why variation in goods decline? Or does it reflect advances in European manufacturing? Or both?