The photo above shows the tea pickers waiting for their results to be weighed and their wages paid. This photo was taken in the Bogor area, Preanger in 1931. This tea was then usually sent to the Netherlands to be processed in tea factories before being sold, including to Indonesia.
After the transportation and telecommunications revolution, with the invention of the steamship and telegraph, coupled with the opening of the Suez Canal, Dutch companies flocked to invest in Indonesia.
One of the targets was tea plantations in highland areas such as West Java. Tea, along with various other natural products, became Indonesia's leading export commodity at that time.
The tea plantations that are widely available in West Java today are mostly inherited from the Dutch colonial period. It's a bit chilling to think that the tea we drink today grows on the same soil as the tea people drank a hundred years ago.
Have you had tea today?
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