A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World
by Erika Rappaport
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"Tea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. Over centuries, profits from its growth and sales funded wars and fueled colonization, and its cultivation brought about massive changes--in land use, labor systems, market practices, and social hierarchies--the effects of which are with us even today. A Thirst for Empire takes a vast and in-depth historical look at how men and women--through the tea industry in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa--transformed global tastes show more and habits and in the process created our modern consumer society. As Erika Rappaport shows, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries the boundaries of the tea industry and the British Empire overlapped but were never identical, and she highlights the economic, political, and cultural forces that enabled the British Empire to dominate--but never entirely control--the worldwide production, trade, and consumption of tea. Rappaport delves into how Europeans adopted, appropriated, and altered Chinese tea culture to build a widespread demand for tea in Britain and other global markets and a plantation-based economy in South Asia and Africa. Tea was among the earliest colonial industries in which merchants, planters, promoters, and retailers used imperial resources to pay for global advertising and political lobbying. The commercial model that tea inspired still exists and is vital for understanding how politics and publicity influence the international economy ..."--Jacket. show lessTags
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ThingScore 88
And while there are an enormous amounts of details to sift through, those who are fond of tea will especially appreciate the numerous side stories of this important beverage.
added by krishh
On almost every page there is an arresting detail, a surprising observation, a fascinating anecdote, a collectible nugget of trivia.
added by krishh
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Food
133 works; 2 members
History: Asia
103 works; 1 member
Author Information
5+ Works 124 Members
Erika Rappaport is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Shopping for Pleasure (Princeton0 and coeditor of Consuming Behaviors (Bloomsbury).
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Common Knowledge
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- British Empire
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