The Empire Of Tea

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: A strange and unsatisfactory work by two authors, this feels very much like
two books packaged as one. One of the books reads the like work of a health
nut, an extended panegyric on the joys of tea, primarily the health
benefits. The second book is a long rant about the evils of growing tea in
Assam and the part the British had in this.

Both these books are not
especially inspiring; for example the rant against the British would have
been a much more worthwhile work if placed the supposed evils of the
British in context, comparing what they created to what had gone before and
to India outside the tea plantation. A chapter towards the end claims to
make some attempt to provide a balanced viewpoint, but still does nothing
to actually place the situation in context; instead it simply treats us to
a "he said, she said" view of history.

The book included two or three interesting points, for example:
* Introduction of tea in the west contributed to public health because it
resulted in boiled water being drunk;
* Likewise it contributed to a substantial reduction in drunkenness because
it could be drunk all day without side effects:
But really wasn't worth the hassle of wading to the dreck to get to them.


Rating:
Summary: An Immoderate View of a Moderate Brew
Review: "The Empire of Tea," written by Cambridge University cultural anthropologist Alan MacFarlane, combines the general history of tea consumption, and its impact on civilization, with the particular history of tea production in the Indian state of Assam under the British Raj.

According to MacFarlane, consumption of tea was vital in sustaining the imperial population growth of China, Japan, and Great Britain. Boiling water for tea, the argument goes, destroyed many water-borne pathogens (cholera, etc.) that would otherwise have decimated these populations in the era before modern sewage treatment. Moreover, drinking tea (rather than alcoholic beverages, the only other alternative to "raw" water) avoids the harmful effects of overconsumption of alcohol. Thus it was, that Tea became, in Macfarlane's view, almost literally the fuel of the British Empire.

The author explains that tea's benefits came at a high cost, namely, the imperial depradations of Great Britain in their effort to obtain control over this vital resource. One example was the Opium War, which was fought to equalize the trade balance between Great Britain and China (basically, opium for tea). However, Macfarlane expends his greatest passion on the exploitation of native tea-workers in Assam. Several chapters sustain this argument, which seems motivated, at least in part, by the author's family connection to tea farming in that province.

It might fairly be argued that this book exaggerates both the benefits and the social costs of tea cultivation. On the plus side, the reader will come away with an increased appreciation of the large role which this seemingly ordinary beverage has played upon the world stage.