Are Jesus and Saka both lame?

[Luis Anaconda]

Tea was the reason we needed an empire!

Coffee is for ****ers

You know we have beer right?

[Peter]

It didn't though. This was a chunk of my history BA.

If the Chinks hadn't rejected the 1790s MacCartney trade mission, we'd have been able to flog them stuff to then buy tea off them. They refused, so from the 1820s, we're running up such a trade deficit we have no more silver to buy tea.

Consequently we both rob their tea cutting and start planting our own in Darjeeling {then Assam} and flog them Bengali opium to get more silver from them to buy more tea just in case.

We also sell this opium around our Asian empire and 70% of govt revenues in the empire there came from the opium taxes which wouldn't have happened without our tea addiction.

The Victorian Asian empire was "an empire of opium" according to one of the major historians.

Oh, and add in the fact that we won WW2 buy buying up the entire global supply of tea in 1942 - every single fecking leaf.

Sorry, the glw was in India when this part of my imperial history degree came up and I just took drugs and went down the tea/empire/war wormhole for a couple of months reading all the academic papers on Jstor about it.

Tea helped win and sustain the empire and ensured its transition to the commonwealth instead of us civilised cricket playing nations speaking either Kraut or Nip.

The glory of tea is proven by the fact that in the sub-continent, the only thing every caste and religion agrees upon is that tea's the drink and it should be very sweet with the milk in the pan with the leaves.

If Chai is good enough for Parvati and Shiva, it's good enough for you. To suggest otherwise, sir, is pistols at dawn talk.

Yeah, exactly!

[Peter]

You know we have beer right?

Not first thing in the morning. Well, not for me, anyway