Sri Lanka - History Every Tea Enthusiast Should Know

OK. Maybe it's not imperative to know, but it's still pretty interesting. ;)

Early on (circa 6 BC) Sri Lanka was dominated by the Sinhalese (a Buddhist people), however over time, the Tamil people from India took over as more and more people migrated over to the island.  the Tamils were people of the Hindu faith.

They didn't really get along all that well (this appears to be a recurring theme in history), So they fought it out and the Tamils established a presence in the Kandy region, and The Sinhalese move further down to the South of the island.

Eventually Europe steps into the picture.  The Portuguese arrive and establish 'friendly'  trade with the islanders, but by 1505 they have control over the whole island except for the Kandy region.  The Tamils are worried so they ask the Dutch to help them (silly!), and by 1658 the entire island except for Kandy is now controlled by the Dutch.  by 1796 the British had moved in and by 1815 they had control of the ENTIRE island.

Could all this fighting really be over tea?!  No, of course not!  It was over coffee.  Up until the 1860's the island grew mainly coffee.  The coffee plantations in the 1860's was literally wiped out by a type of pant virus known in plain english as 'coffee rust'.  At this time the main crop was replaced with tea.  The first plantings were from cuttings from the Aasam region in India.

(This file was originally shared by Colby Otero and was taken from his Flickr Account at this location.  He has allowed usage of his photo under Creative Commons.)

James Taylor was one of the first from the British to plant a tea garden in the Kandy region.  He planted in 1866, and by 1872 he had built himself a tea processing plant.  In 1875 the first shipment of tea was sent to England.  Sir Thomas Lipton recognized that tea was a potentially lucrative product and hooked up James Taylor as his supplier of tea,  and well as you know, Lipton teas became famous for their teas from Ceylon.

Sri Lanka's tea production has grown to be the third largest tea producing country in the world. There are 6 tea growing regions ( Kandy, Dimbula, Nuwara Elia, Uda Pussallawa, UVA and Ruhuna) of which 5 were covered in the tea tasting here.

The island was first named Ceylon in English, and in 1972 the name was changed to Sri Lanka which means 'beautiful island'.  Incidentally in 1948 the British finally relinquished their rule and Sri Lanka became what is known as  a self governing dominion of the commonwealth nations.  Which I believe is the same as Canada!!