Customer Reviews

Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If James M. Cain wrote history, this is the style he would employ.
Hobhouse's terse, unflowered prose moves the narrative along, and he
has an an attitude: cynical. If you liked Marvin Harris and Jared
Diamond, and I know you did, you'll like Henry Hobhouse because he has
a similar myth-exploding, cant-debasing, and finely tuned BS detector
a-working.

The five plants are quinine, the potato, sugar cane,
cotton, and tea. He's a little thin on the properties of the plants,
but strong on the historical consequences. His explanation of why
slavery died and why it remains a dead institution is excellent. (NOT
because it is immoral, although it is that, but because slavery is
inefficient, economically speaking.) Beware some unusual syntax.

On first reading of H. Hobhouse's Seeds of Change, it covered only 5 plants. So finding that he had added Cocoa was a surprise. It was also a pleasure. As before Henry has done a great job. He has taken his insights of the changes caused by these plants further in his book FORCES OF CHANGE. As with Jim Burke's CONNECTIONS, Mr. Hobhouse has done an excellent job in presenting the hidden impact of the biologicals over the last several hundred years. Our generations are seeing the immense impact of the Internet. His doumentation of the impact of plants which led to "Forces of Change" had still not been adequately treated in tech and in academic forums. We are still "snowblind" on the global impacts of so many things. It is not surprising that the rapid changes are still obscured by the dust of change. Ultimately, however, I think that H. Hobhouse's contribution to "systemic insights" will be an excellent clarifier of the values of our times as well as the differentials of the last half millenium.

Totally fascinating. Reminds me of Howard Zim's People's History of the United States. Lot's of facts, figure, and dates without being overwelming, with good continuity throughout the various sections. There is so much about the forces on world history that we don't understand. Would the world have been without widespread Black slavery if there had been no sugar and cotton plantations? What would Africa and the United States be like now? Would China have become a major world power in the 19th century if it had not been for the tea and opium trade? Very thoughtful. I listened to a books-on-tape version from the local library and want to get copies for friends and family.

This book consists of a collection of historical essays about six plants: quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, and coca. For each plant, the author provides historical information about when it first began to be used (especially by Westerners), and how its use spread across the planet. Some of the information was quite interesting, particularly since the author is British and presents the material from a British point-of-view, emphasizing facts that may be less familiar to Americans. Unfortunately, no in-text citations are provided, but there is a short bibliography at the end of the book. The essays often spill over into topics that are, at best, only marginally related to the subject at hand, such as an overview of Japanese foreign trade in the tea chapter, or the role of corn whiskey in the economy of the Southern states in the early Nineteenth Century in the cotton chapter. Hobhouse has an interesting habit of giving his own meaning to words, such when he defines "Negro" as being a West African Black with sickle cell anemia, or "husbandry" as applying to plant breeding. He also uses the term "slavocracy" to refer to the political situation in the pre-Civil War South, presumably on analogy with "democracy" and "theocracy", but in those words, the first root identifies the rulers, not the ruled. This book may provide a light introduction to some of the topics covered, but I wouldn't rely on it for serious study of an academic nature.

I havn't read this book in a while but came across an editorial by Hobhouse recently and I thought I'd check to see if it's still in print. I recall some rather strange notions about our 'current' lack of fiber in our diet and the dire effect it may have, but in most areas where he dosn't range too far afield it's a good read. A reader above found the book racist but I don't recall anything like that. If you like Hobhouse try to dig up Edgar Andersons ' ' Plants Man and Life'. Not an inspired title but a very good book as well.

I havn't read this book in a while but came across an editorial by Hobhouse recently and I thought I'd check to see if it's still in print. I recall some rather strange notions about our 'current' lack of fiber in our diet and the dire effect it may have, but in most areas where he dosn't range too far afield it's a good read. A reader above found the book racist but I don't recall anything like that. If you like Hobhouse try to dig up Edgar Andersons ' ' Plants Man and Life'. Not an inspired title but a very good book as well.

Henry Hobhouse's writing and his 'systemic' analysis of agriculture is similar to James Burke's "Connections" and Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". Hobhouse's career as columnist, scholar, farmer, and historian is best exemplified by the fruits of his work. Both "Seeds of Change "and "Forces of Change" show how systemic analysis
does not have to degenerate into a "reductionist" fantasy. His multi-disciplinary mastery of subjects, methods, and cultural criteria are best examined by reading than by commentary. His work is a master-piece of subject matter familiarity and it shows the best way to exprapolate detailed information to apply it to a specialized culture and to individual disciplines.

Hobhouse presents a unique, entertaining view how much of recent human history - the last 500 years - has been driven by the sugar, quinine, tea, cotton, and the potato.

Thouroughly researched, and very insightful. And.. Blissfully free of the PC'ness of academia which makes many recent works unreadable.

It is a shame that such a book is out of print - but many local libraries seem to have a copy

I read this book 10 years ago and am still savoring it. You may not be a history buff nor a gardener, but this book is as readble as any airport novel, and has the added pow of self-enrichment. No one who reads it will be wasting their time. -from a non-intellectual

Let me begin by saying that this book is a worthwhile read for those interested in the connections between agriculture and the formative histories of current economic superpowers. Its worth comes not from its broad scope and social commentary. It is instead a stimulus to research further to learn the true histories of these plants and to accumulate factual citations from which to draw conclusions. The "macrohistory" approach is very readable, but Hobhouse's supposedly factual arguments are too often convoluted with opinion and personal politics and include no citations (as mentioned in many other reviews). As you progress through the book, his point becomes less and less clear, until the potato chapter, where it dissolves completely. He spends at least 3/4 of the chapter talking about the history of Ireland prior to the potato famine, with digressions into irrelevant and anecdotal English history. Interesting, if you want to know how snobby Brits feel about Irish peasants, but entirely unecessary in the discussion of "transforming" mankind. I had hopes that the chapter would conclude with a brilliant tie of Irish history to the rest of the world, but was presented with a weak afterthought of how the Irish shaped politics in the US. The coca chapter (added later) was a little better, but again, he failed to tie his arguments together at the end. He also neglected to properly research the chemical constituants of the tea plant, or to update them for the new volume. I can see why, since this would not only have negated about half of the arguments he made in the book about tea driving history in the same way as his other "addictive" plants, it would also have necessitated a much-needed re-write. Hobhouse clearly did not want to do this because, as he states in the intro to the 2005 edition:

"It is a tribute to the thesis, and a great pleasure for the author, that no fair-minded critic was able to dispute or despoil the main contention. Nor, because of superb editing in 1984, was any detail found wanting."

In the end, this is a book that should not be read for its factual content but for its entertainment value.