A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World

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How the global tea industry influenced the international economy and the rise of mass consumerism 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

Reviews

"Winner of a 2018 Gourmand World Cookbook Award, U.S. National Winner in Tea"
"Winner of the 2018 PCCBS Book Prize, Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies"
"Co-Winner of the 2018 ASFS Book Award, Association for the Study of Food and Society"
"Winner of the 2018 Jerry Bentley Prize in World History, American Historical Association"
"[Rappaport] tells with authority how tea and the culture of tea drinking has influenced the greater history of the British Empire and the British-influenced world beyond. . . . [Her] description of the ways in which tea has been marketed over the years is entirely absorbing."---Simon Winchester, New York Times Book Review
"Meticulously researched, [A Thirst for Empire] showcases materials from archives scattered across the globe to illustrate how one product's flow across borders was knitting the world together long before the term globalization was coined. . . . Ms. Rappaports book is one of relevance to us all."---Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Wall Street Journal
"The book moves from the coffeehouses of London to the muggy plantations of Assam to the advertising firms of Madison Avenue, revealing the technologies and marketing techniques that were instrumental in achieving tea's global popularity. Along the way, Rappaport touches on the temperance movement, commodity chains, Americans famous dislike of tea, and the sociocultural sphere inhabited by the planter class in Southeast Asia, among many other topics. Exhaustively researched and winningly recounted." * Publishers Weekly *
"The result of prodigious research and full of flavoursome detail, A Thirst for Empire will certainly stimulate."---John Keay, Literary Review
""Lively, thoughtful and highly engaging. . . . Elegant and authoritative. Rappaport's command of scholarship and eye for detail are formidable. She is a subtle and scrupulously attentive user of sources. Yet she also knows how to make these academic qualities and requirements serve the broader demands of informative and vibrant storytelling. On almost every page there is an arresting detail, a surprising observation, a fascinating anecdote, a collectible nugget of trivia."---Matthew Adams, The National
"A sweeping and richly detailed history of tea. . . . A Thirst for Empire is an authoritative and exhaustive work of scholarship. . . . A rich trove of paintings, engravings and photographs beautifully illustrate her themes. Rappaport's treatment of her subject is refreshingly apolitical. . . . Rappaport is clearly motivated by truth-telling rather than case-making."---Pietra Rivoli, Financial Times
"[Rappaport] provides interesting explorations of the health-giving powers attributed to tea, and how it came to be seen as a wholesome and vital drink."---Katrina Gulliver, The Spectator
"This remarkable synthesis of imperial and consumer history concludes that, even after the end of empire, the tea trade survived as a major force in the post-colonial world."---A. W. Purdue, Times Higher Education
"A Thirst for Empire takes a profound view of how people through tea's industry and plantations transformed habits and customs to create our modern consumer society." * The Statesman *
"For Rappaport, tea provides a framework for examining subjects ranging from the Depression and the World Wars, to advertising and decolonization. Her book is tremendously detailed and clearly the result of painstaking research. . . . The patient reader will find A Thirst for Empire provocative and thought-provoking."---Justin Zaremby, The New Criterion
"Rappaport depicts the history of tea as one of opportunism and economics and, often, exploitation of primary producers."---Alan Attwood, Sydney Morning Herald
"A thoroughly-detailed, scrupulously-researched volume."---Aram Bakshian Jr., Washington Times
"Drawing deeply on the historiographies of empire and consumption, [Rappaport] extends these fields with a wealth of primary source material from private, national, and imperial tea marketing ventures. Rappaport masterfully combines gender, commodity, and food studies analysis to reveal the intricate networks and conflicting interests that made tea the lifeblood of the British empire."---Jeffrey M. Pilcher, World History Connected
"A Thirst for Empire stands out as one of the best, serving as a poignant reminder of how important the genre can be to our understanding of cultures and economies."---Troy Bickham, Journal of British Studies

Author Bio

Erika Rappaport is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End (Princeton) and coeditor of Consuming Behaviors: Identities, Politics and Pleasure in Twentieth Century Britain (Bloomsbury).