Tea feast were the beginning of feminism.
What could be more harmless Cup of tea? This drink conjures up only pleasant images. Surprisingly, there was a time when tea was considered very dangerous, especially for women, it even became a threat to the traditional social structure.
Until the mid-SIXTEENTH century, tea was virtually unknown outside Asia. With the opening of trade routes between East and West, the Chinese (and later Indian) tea became important trade items. Almost from the beginning, the Europeans considered tea to be “spoiled” because he was associated with the opium trade.
In 1662 the Royal bride Catherine of Braganza travelled from Portugal to United Kingdom. Among the wedding dowry was a few bags filled with the best Chinese tea. Hard-core fan of tea, Catherine soon presented the drink to her husband, king Charles II Stuart, and the judgment of the English public. So there was a national love.
Like most new “stuff”, tea almost immediately got its supporters and opponents. Many English writers and thinkers extolled the anticipated benefits of tea gave courage, made smarter, treated all diseases. But many felt differently. Already in 1682, a critic called the tea drying highly conducive to old age and changing the complexion”.
During the following decades, the tea of the upper classes came down to the common people, and the sensation became even louder. People considered it ‘dangerous as opium”. The newspaper article claimed that tea makes men weak and despicable, and harmful to women, causing a reduction in vital energy, promotes abortions and reduced milk feeding. In General, the tea was a “bad drink” – he was of foreign origin and not as nutritious as milk or beer.
When the tea party has firmly entered the lives of British people, many have a sense of habituation, which was thought to cause alcoholism. And even worse: it was the fear of addiction. Moreover, tea contains caffeine, it is also often taken with another threat of the New world: sugar, which causes people to gain weight, from his blackened teeth, and changing nature.
In the course of the eighteenth century, revolution has engulfed America and Europe. “Normal” people take control of their own destiny. The lower class began to demand improvement of conditions of life and, increasingly, drank tea. A rebellion began in the tea houses and coffee houses as a response to the “open society” on problematic issues. In 1773 in Boston Harbor angry locals threw ships into the water, boxes of tea, which was the beginning of the American revolution to the war of independence of the United States.
With the emergence of the tea drinking tradition, women have the opportunity to come together that was not there before. If men in society always talked a lot, now women can enjoy a tea, brew together. So there were first sprouts of the future of feminism.
