I would only question your Englishness if you actually made it so that dwarves made their own tea. You need to mod it so that Dwarves invade and colonize humans, force them to grow opium.... then sell the opium to the elves for tea. That is the proper Imperial tea supply chain.
Dark times in a Dark Dwarf Fortress.
Huh. And here I had it the other way around. I thought they bought it from India, invaded china and forced them to buy it in return for tea... Or was it only when they banned opium imports from England did England invade? Maybe that's it. Either way, profits were in the billions, modern money wise :p
British love their tea...
I think we're saying the same thing. The Opiums Wars were over the British (and to a later and lesser extent Americans) selling a banned narcotic (opium) to the Chinese. The idea of exporting opium from India--Bengali in particular (and in the case of the USA, Turkey) was not the first thing they hit upon. However, the value of the goods demanded from China (tea, rhubarb, silk, porcelain) far exceeded the limited demand for western goods in the largely self-sufficient Chinese market. The current accounts deficit was made up in raw silver shipped from the West to China. This was unsustainable. Ultimately opium had the proper demand level and value density to balance the trade.
To mirror this, Dwarves should not produce their own tea. It should be distilled from the tears of elvish prisoners... or just imported but never produce any seeds.