History of tea war on China was one of Britain's tactics, it also began to explore, then executed, a plan to use India for growing tea. After tea plants were smuggled out of China, plantations were established in areas such as Darjeeling, Assam, and Ceylon. As an attempt to circumvent its dependence on Chinese tea, the East India Company sent Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to China to purchase and bring out of China tea plants, which were then taken to India, although it was the discovery of native varieties of tea plant in India which proved more important for the development of production
Tea production in Sri Lanka missions abroad to give an extra push to the island's 'green gold'". $15 million was funded to promote Sri Lankan brands on international markets during the Iraq war. Later in 2003 the island suffered severe floods in the lower growing tea areas of Sri Lanka. However production still increased slightly by 1.3 percent to in 2004, as the crop recovered. Kenya surpassed Sri Lanka as the largest exporter of tea with an 8.9 percent growth in exports for the year totalling nearly . In 2004 actual tea production in Kenya had increased by more than 11 percent to reach ,