ABSTRACT
Tea was introduced in the second half of the seventeenth century, and its general employment was not adopted without bitter opposition. Over time, it came to characterize British ideas of gentility and respectability in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries; a historical incident attended with wide-ranging ramifications. Tea came to be regarded as a necessity, the enhanced consumption of which was upheld in a great measure by custom and which essentially dependant on the use of sugar for enhancing its taste and flavour. Opium proved an amazing commodity. The pattern of economic growth and capital accumulation in the East and the West were reversed towards the end of the eighteenth century with opium making a significant contribution towards reshaping of the trade balance. In fact, drugs and the trade in intoxicants like cocoa, tobacco and opium have acted as facilitators in the formation of the British Empire and in the creation of a global capitalistic economy.
