Tea : Addiction, Exploitation and Empire - Hardcover

Moxham, Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1841195693 ISBN 13: 9781841195698

Publisher: Constable, 2003

Synopsis

The British were slow to take up tea, lagging behind the Portuguese and Dutch, and even the French. When they finally took it to their hearts, however, it became a national obsession. They covered their kingdom with tea gardens and tea shops. The taxation of tea led to massive smuggling, and the loss of their American empire. To guarantee their supply of tea they went to war against the Chinese. Intrepid planters cleared the jungles of the empire - in India, Ceylon and Africa - to plant up tea. They moved over a million people to work on the plantations, where hundreds of thousands of them died of ill treatment. Eventually the British gained control over most of the world tea trade. Moxham tells the story of this monumental enterprise, and its impact on four centuries of British and world history. Once a tea-planter himself, he explains how tea was traded, grown, manufactured and marketed to satisfy the British thirst for fine tea and large profits.

About this title

About the Author

Roy Moxham has been a tea planter and a gallery owner. He is currently Conservator of the University of London Library and also a teacher and Associate Fellow in the University's Institute of English Studies where he teaches an MA in The History of the Book. He lives in central London and has recently begun renovation of a ruined fortified house in the remote temple town of Chitrakut. His first book The Great Hedge of India (2001) was a huge international success.

From Publishers Weekly

Moxham (The Great Hedge of India) tells the story of how Britain's thirst for tea meshed with its thirst for empire, with devastating repercussions throughout the world. He points out that after tea first came to England from China in the 1700s, it was in great demand but heavily taxed, which led to an increase in smuggling and eventually played a role in England's loss of the American colonies. He then shows that as tea consumption rose, the East India Company paid for Chinese tea with Indian opium, with consequences that resonate in China to the present day. Then, in the mid-1880s, the East India Company began growing tea in India, which culminated in the importation of slave labor from China, Malaya and Bengal. Flogging, low wages, inadequate food, substandard housing and nonexistent medical care contributed to miserable conditions for these workers. Once tea workers started to unionize and nationalism threatened British domination of the tea industry in India, the British turned to Africa. Moxham concludes his provocative book with a description of the year he spent in 1960 as assistant manager on a tea estate in Nyasaland (now Malawi), where the British planters were still arrogantly confident of their racial superiority and fiercely opposed to Nyasaland's growing independence movement. Moxham's searing history of the commodity that has for centuries been so important for England's economy provides plenty of food for thought to go with that next cup of tea. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Constable
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1841195693
• ISBN 13: 9781841195698
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224