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Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

18th-century Porcelain in Colonial Inventories (data gathered by author)

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Tea Consumption in America
By most estimates, Americans were sipping away about two million pounds of tea annually in the late 1760s, with some estimates as high as six million pounds—that being the total amount exported by the English East India Company from Canton in 1766.[4] Estate inventories from the five major seaports in 18^th-century Anglo-America reveal that the presence of porcelain in American homes over this period rose dramatically, and where there are cups and saucers, there is tea—both on board ship and in the pantry. Durable hard-paste porcelain was used as ballast, raising tea chests above the threat of salt water in a ship’s hold, just as it was used at home as the only acceptable ceramic vessel able to withstand the heat of boiling tea water and the scorn of fashion critics.
Only a small portion of all this tea, however, came to America from the English East India Company vendors in London. Both contemporary Company officials and latter-day historians agree that somewhere between two-thirds to nine-tenths of the tea consumed in the North American colonies entered illicitly. American merchants generally picked up tea directly from Dutch shippers in the Caribbean, in places such as the Dutch colonies of Curacao and Surinam. The Dutch shipped 4.5 million pounds of tea from Canton in 1766, so not far behind the six million of the British. They also imported porcelain bowls and other Chinese commodities.
But the English East India Company had, nevertheless, become dependent on the American consumer as an outlet for its tea.[5] They were frustrated by New England merchants, who controlled a booming American-based tea trade despite the monopoly on the Eastern Hemisphere held by the English East India Company and restrictive Navigation Laws meant to protect that monopoly.

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^{[4] Drake, Francis, ed., Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of Letters and Documents Relating to the Shipment of Tea..., Boston: A.O. Crane, 1884; Labaree, Boston Tea Party
[5] Tea Leaves, 191-202; Labaree, Boston Tea Party, pp.6-8.}