Making Tea

In today's global tea markets, Kenyan producers are dominant players, second only to China and India. Tea holds a similar importance in Kenya's national economy, as the country's leading export and foundation of its agricultural sector. Yet this dominance was far from guaranteed: tea plants are not native to Kenya, and tea cultivation, which began during British colonization, has long been riddled with tension. Tracing the development of Kenya's tea industry from the 1960s to 1990s, this book explores how and why Kenya came to sit at the heart of the international tea trade – and shows how African farmers and laborers were not only impacted by the tea industry, but actively shaped it.

Muey C. Saeteurn argues that Kenya's dominance in the tea market was realized through the efforts of the rural African tea estate workers and smallholder African farmers who creatively negotiated their daily lives amid the changes brought about by the spread of global capitalism. Drawing on rich archival work and oral histories, she considers agricultural development and commodification through the lived experiences of rural Kenyans. Revealing moments when farmers and laborers wielded substantial leverage in their struggles against multinational tea firms and their own government, this book invites us to reconsider accepted narratives of commodity production. In a compelling contribution to histories of capitalism, agriculture, and postcolonial Africa, this book uses the story of tea in Kenya to explore how people far from centers of power and capital still shaped global networks.