Tea Tree (Camellia sinensis) Trade

Timeline

1. c. -300–600Bashu and Jiangnan · ChinaThe tea tree was domesticated from wild resources in the southwest; Lu Yu's Classic of Tea in the Tang systematically summarized picking, processing, and drinking, as tea evolved from medicinal and gruel use into a popular beverage, laying the commodity foundation for later trade and tea-horse exchange.
2. 960–1340Sichuan-Shaanxi Tea-Horse Road · SouthwestFrom the Song onward the government officially exchanged tea for horses, pressing compressed tea bricks for pack transport; the Yuan inherited and expanded the tea-licence system, with tea bureau offices in Sichuan, Huguang, and elsewhere managing production and distribution, making tea cultivation and processing a key economic species linking farming regions with the steppe empire.
3. 1340–1349Dadu, Jiangnan tea districts, and Tibet · JiangnanIn the 1340s the Yuan still collected tea taxes through the tea-licence monopoly; Jiangnan spring tea and tea bricks moved north to Dadu via the canal system, while western-route tea entered Tibet in exchange for horses; Zen monks' tea rites (precursor to the matcha way) continued during Japan's Nanboku-chō division, and Chinese tea was also transshipped at Southeast Asian ports. Europe still centered on spices and tea had not yet become a bulk import, but by the 1340s the East Asian–Inner Asian tea trade was already a key link in a cross-civilizational species economy.
4. 1600–1800Holland, Britain, and South Asian colonies · EnglandIn the 17th century the Dutch and British East India Companies imported tea from China, spurring European consumer fashion; in the 18th–19th centuries Britain established large tea plantations in South Asia, making the tea tree a global cash crop and extending and amplifying the transcontinental tea-trade logic formed before the 1340s.