Author chronicles how England ‘stole’ tea

FOR ALL THE TEA IN CHINA: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History. By Sarah Rose. Viking. 272 pages. $25.95.

Afternoon tea. Was ever there another phrase more redolent of civilized refinement? Our images may be of finger sandwiches and tissue-thin porcelain, but Sarah Rose's history of how tea came to be cultivated outside China reads like an adventure yarn. History's hand was especially lavish here, providing a tale steeped in drugs, money, piracy, masquerade, espionage and the fate of nations, along with a hero by the improbable name of Robert Fortune.

In 1848 Victorian England, tea taxes accounted for nearly 10 percent of tax revenues. China was the sole source of the world's quality teas, and guarded the secrets of production in its forbidden and forbidding interior. The trade equation was balanced by opium. Fear that the Chinese would lose their taste for opium or begin producing it themselves gnawed at England. Britain needed its own tea industry.

The East India Company turned to Fortune, whom gardeners also have to thank for many favorite plants, including corsage gardenias and kumquats, products of his first collection trip to China. Fortune was tasked with collecting and smuggling tea plants, seeds and workers. That he not only succeeded but lived to tell the tale is nothing short of amazing, and Rose does full justice to his accomplishment in her fast-reading, appealing book.