India, Oct. 3 -- A global superpower is fuming over a trade deficit and scrambling to even the scales.

Reality #2: It is also trying to steal trade secrets from the other country.

Reality #3: An opioid epidemic is raging.

This isn't America-and-China today; it's actually Britain-and-China, in the 18th and 19th centuries. And the object at the heart of it all: Tea.

When Catherine of Braganza wed Charles II in 1662, she introduced tea into the English court. What started as a royal indulgence soon cascaded through aristocratic households. Caffeine colonised England in different ways. Coffee, as we saw in an earlier column, was consumed in coffee houses, sparking intellectual debate among men, but tea. tea was feminine, consumed in a lei...