Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire [Hardcover]

Roy Moxham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2003

Tea came late to popularity in England—after its arrival in Portugal, Holland, and France—but it quickly became a national obsession. And business. Tea gardens and tea shops sprang up everywhere in seventeenth-century England. Demand soon spread to the colonies, where the heavy taxation on tea led to smuggling on a massive scale and, in the New World, cost England her American empire. Tea also drove the British to war with China, to guarantee the supply of pekoe, and it prompted colonists to clear jungles in India, Ceylon, and Africa for huge tea plantations. In time the cultivation of tea would subject more than one million laborers to wretched, often inhuman working conditions. Hundreds of thousands of them would die for the commodity that for four centuries propelled Britain’s economy and epitomized the reach of its empire. Bringing colorful detail and narrative skill to this history, author Roy Moxham—once a tea planter himself—maps the impact of a monumental and imperial British enterprise. In this book, he offers a fully fascinating, and frequently shocking, tale of England’s tea trade—of the lands it claimed, the people it exploited, the profits it garnered, and the cups it filled.

Editorial Reviews

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.

From Booklist

Readers won't find the secret to brewing the perfect cup here. Instead, Moxham explains how a nation's longing for the seemingly innocuous pleasures of a hot cup of tea drew it to commit unspeakable horrors. England took up the tea-drinking habit later than neighboring countries, but no nation took to its tea as did Britain. At first a costly luxury, tea became common in Britain when its traders successfully imported the leaf in vast quantities through commercial dominance of the sea. As trade began, Britain had little of interest to the Chinese, but soon merchants discovered a wildly profitable exchange of British silver for Indian opium for Chinese tea. Chinese efforts to discourage opium smoking led to wars that destabilized the ancient empire, setting the stage for Western dominance. Eventually, Britain likewise exploited India, Ceylon, and Africa to satisfy Britain's lust for tea. A frightening tale, well and relevantly told in a manner that may invite comparison with America's present appetite for oil. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (September 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786712279
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712274
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,859 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thoroughly Fascinating Book, August 4, 2004

By 

N.H. Bookworm (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (Hardcover)

I borrowed this book from my local library to read on vacation. Once I started it, I found it hard to put down. Mr. Moxham made even the mundane parts of tea's history fascinating. I felt as if I had gone back in time and witnessed the many incidents he relayed. I particularly enjoyed how he opened and closed the book with his own experience on a tea plantatation in Africa in the early 1960s. This book was a real historical eye-opener for me on many counts, as well as entertaining and well written. If you enjoy your tea and history, I highly recommend you read this book!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 5 stars as narrative history, 4 for lack of closure, June 21, 2004

By 

Emily Held (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (Hardcover)

this is a fascinating microhistory of tea, bookended with an unfortunately underdeveloped personal narrative. The historical content is superb and both detailed and aware of world events of the time, giving insights into trade agreements as well as growing conditions. Moxham's own year overseeing a tea plantation in Africa is embarrasingly brief in comparison, and ends the book so abruptly I searched beyond the glossary, hoping for at least an epilogue to explain the paucity. It's among some of the very good books on the historical lure of caffeinated products, and well worth picking up, provided you don't expect the boy's own adventure Moxham's opening pages seem to indicate

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging book, November 4, 2005

By 

"KB" Kamla Srinivasan (SF Bay Area and India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (Hardcover)

Roy Moxham's book on Tea is an absorbing read, and is peppered with very useful information and traces the history of tea. Perhaps, Moxham has started off a trend of sorts on single commodity books. His first was about salt and the great hedge of India. In that book his focus was more on the hedge, and less on salt. However in this book is focus is exclusively on tea and how it made its way to the western world.

Moxham's stint as a tea-planter in Africa certainly helps him to gain keen insights into this drink, that is beloved to so many of us. A cup of tea is meant to soothe your jangled nerves, and comfort you. But, what you did not know is that this comfort drink went through a bloody and dark period when it was introduced into Great Britain.

The book is rich with details, and Moxham's love for this plant comes through clearly. After reading the book, everytime I drink a cup of tea I look at the drink with a different perspective. We often forget the hard work that goes into making this comfort drink easily available to us.