In Britain, tea is a drink usually taken with milk and sugar added. However, of the four ingredients that create a good cup of tea – water, sugar, milk and tealeaves – only milk and water were to be found in any quantity in Britain until the 17th century. By the 1650s in Britain, the nobility and wealthy became inveterate consumers of sugar. Yet by 1800, sugar had become necessitated in the diet of the British, and by 1900 it was supplying nearly one-fifth the calories in their diet. Sugar’s high-end status fuelled its desirability. More importantly, sugar in combination with tea (whose bitter edge it softened and mildly addictive caffeine it complemented) together with milk (to counter the drink’s astringency) formed a beverage that pervaded British culture.
The teaspoon illustrated this pervasion. Between 1710 and 1720, a teaspoon (exhibit one) was forged and engraved in England out of silver, with an upturned stem but otherwise rather unadorned. Britain began to import tea in the early 17th century, however it was hesitantly embraced by British culture until it was made fashionable by coffee houses in the late 1600s. Tea was originally drunk in the Chinese manner (weak and without milk) but by the early 18th century milk and sugar were added, and small spoons became necessary. This particular spoon, like others of its time, were crafted by specialist goldsmiths, and often supplied as part of a tea service. Teaspoons were part of the ritual of the tea table: Until 1760, the end of the stem would curve upwards in the same direction of the bowl, however from 1760 onwards the stem began to curve down, and the spoon was laid face up on the table surface. The spoon could be used to signal the hostess when the guest had drunk th...
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...ionally devised – because tea is made by infusing dried tealeaves in boiling water, the handle was often in this time made of wood to reduce the temperature of the area in contact. Dresser created utilitarian objects for the general public, and made full use of the latest techniques of mass production in the late 1800s. He frequently designed symmetrical, rectilinear shapes and undecorated surfaces, using modern manufacturing techniques and inexpensive materials to design objects that were both functional and beautiful.
Tea’s commoditization in Britain marks the beginning of today’s global interdependency and commodity exchange. The enduring integration of tea into British life is a microcosmic depiction of the political, economic and social transformations within the 18th and 19th centuries, shaped by its four constituents – water, sugar, milk and tealeaves.
What might be the biggest contribution to what drove sugar trade is consumer demand. Many popular drinks weren’t sweet and sugar was used as a sweetener. According to Sydney Mintz’s sweetness and power, “sugar as sweetener came to the force in connection with three other exotic imports tea,coffee, and chocolate(4)” because tea, coffee and chocolate
Tom Standage has described the beginnings of six beverages: beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola and has found many connections, and information helpful in finding out history of the drinks themselves but also their impacts on the growth of civilization as a whole. This book connects everything with society both past and present, it makes learning about history and the way drinks connect fun and interesting. Like learning without even realizing you are. A History of the World in Six Glasses is more than just talking about each beverage as a single but as a whole, it’s connections, uses, relations, and growth they started.
They have levied war, excited rebellions, dethroned princes, and sacrificed millions for the sake of gain. The revenue of mighty kingdoms has centered in their coffers. And these not being sufficient to glut their avarice, they have, by the most unparalleled barbarities, extortions, and monopolies stripped the miserable inhabitants of their property and reduced whole provinces to indigence and ruin. Fifteen hundred thousand perished by famine in one year, not because the earth denied its fruits, but this company and its servants engrossed all the necessities of life, and set them at so high a rate, that the poor could not purchase them. Thus having drained the sources of that immense wealth, they now, it seems, cast their eyes to America, as a new threat, whereupon to exercise their talents of rapine, oppression, and cruelty. The monopoly of tea is, I dare say, but a small part of the plan they have formed to strip us of our property.
In the first few months of 1773 the British East India Company found it was sitting on large stocks of tea that it could not sell in England. It was on the verge of bankruptcy, and many members of Parliament owned stock in this company. (USA, 1) The Tea Act in 1773 was an effort to save it. The Tea Act gave the company the right to export its merchandise without paying taxes. Thus, the company could undersell American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade. By October, the Sons of Liberty in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston threatened tea imports and pledged a tea boycott.
On a cold December night, a group of townspeople stormed the ships in the Boston harbor and tossed 342 chests of tea into the ocean. This event is known by the Boston tea party, it was a protest of the colonists against the Tea Act which passed by the Parliament on May 10, 1773. This act granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies. Since the tea cargos were the only thing townspeople thrown overboard and they were really careful about the other things on the ship, they are sending a clear message: they are not going to pay the tax on tea. The colonists loved tea, they used it on daily basis. And it is
World History, itself is a very well complicated topic to discuss. Many other authors have tried to condense many years of history in one book. Subjected to fail, Tom Standage’s attempt was a success. Instead of Standage trying to sum up the history, he simply based the book upon a single topic, in this case beverages.
It is not common that when one thinks of the history of the world that the thought of beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, or even Coca-Cola comes to mind. Matter of fact, the thought of a beverage having an impact in history may be the very last thing that comes to mind. But according to Tom Standage in his book A History of the World in 6 Glasses, he argues that these six drinks have had an all-round influence in the history of the world. It is hard to imagine that the drinks we know of today, were the foundation and building blocks of the history that has been engraved in us. As to which beverage has had a greater impact in history, it is a matter of the extent to which each particular drink has contributed to influencing, not just people, but the course of history. Not diminishing the impact of the other beverages, but coffee has had a greater impact in history over tea and the other drinks.
The Tea Act was passed on May 10, 1773 by Parliament. The act granted the British East India Company Tea a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonists. The main reason this passed was to get the East India Company out of bankruptcy, which the company was in due to reduced sales of their tea. The act gave the East India Company two benefits. One was to allow it to market its tea directly to America, using its own agents there. This allowing it to bypass the network of auctions, wholesalers, and colonial merchants through which the tea previously had seen sold. The other benefit was to free the company of the duty on tea that it imported to Britain and then reshipped to America.
Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown. Suprisingly, for something so desireable knowledge of sugar cane spread vey slow. First found in Guinea and first farmed in India (sources vary on this), knowledge of it would only arrive in Europe thousands of years later. However, there is more to the history of sugar cane than a simple story of how something was adopted piecemeal into various cultures. Rather the history of sugar, with regards to this question, really only takes off with its introduction to Europe. First exposed to the delights of sugar cane during the crusades, Europeans quickly acquired a taste for this sweet substance. This essay is really a legacy of that introduction, as it is this event which foreshadowed the sugar related explosion of trade in slaves. Indeed Henry Hobhouse in `Seeds of Change' goes so far as to say that "Sugar was the first dependance upon which led Europeans to establish tropical mono cultures to satisfy their own addiction." I wish, then, to show the repurcussions of sugar's introduction into Europe and consequently into the New World, and outline especially that parallel between the suga...
When we learn about the history of the world we usually divide it up into eras, dynasties, major wars, revolutions, etc. But what we all learn is that even the smallest thing can have a massive impact on history. In this book, Tom Standage chose to look at the way six different beverages altered history. I never knew how important different beverages were throughout history, but Standage was able to prove that beverages were responsible for global revolutions, intellectual and political insights, and good motivators for work.
Most people have heard of The Boston tea party. When American patriots dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded the British ships in the Boston harbor and dumped all of the tea into the ocean. But what most people fail to realize is the great importance behind this protest. To fully understand a topic of history one must first acknowledge the actions behind it. The French and Indian war, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Revenue Act, as well as the Tea Act are all important catalysts of the legendary Boston tea party. Which is why we will discuss these topics before examining the events of the Boston tea party.
“The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation”. This famous quote by Woodrow Wilson accurately shows how the American Revolution impacted the views of society on its country. When referring to this separation from Britain as a beginning rather than a finish it shows unity and the start of something great. When the American Revolution is discussed there are a plethora of affecting aspects that are thought of as important roles. One of these many factors that changed the American Revolution was the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act altered the American Revolution by affecting the Boston Tea Party and the unity in the colonies.
Sara Rose begins her story For All the Tea in China by saying, “There was a time when maps of the world were redrawn in the name of plants, when two empires, Britain and China, went to war over two flowers: the poppy and the camellia.”(Prologue). The purpose of this book is to explain the growing tensions between Britain and China and how that tension then shaped the world. Sarah Rose stresses the importance of the opium and tea trade to the British Empire in this story. When the Chinese began the process to stop the sale of the opium to its citizens and closed the port of Canton to the India Tea Company, the British reacted with anger. They then decided it might would be a smart business move to create a source
It seemed as if tea was a drug for the Europeans because for them it was just so addicting, to the point they would do anything just to get more and more. The only things that were worthy of trading with the Chinese were gingko (type of plant), shark fin, a soft type of wood (used for incense) and silver. As the demand for tea rose, Britain gradually ran out of silver to trade with, and was desperate to find what China wanted. Then, the British resorted to trading in opium. China was very picky about their opium.
With such an obsession with sweet foods, there is an obvious desire for an explanation of how such a once unknown substance took center stage on everybody's snack, dessert, and candy list. That's where Sidney W. Mintz comes into play. He decided to write this book Sweetness and Power, and from the looks of all the sources he used to substantiate his ideas and data, it seems that he is not the first person to find the role that sugar plays in modern society important. By analyzing who Mintz's audience is meant to be, what goals he has in writing this book, what structure his book incorporates, what type, or types, of history he represents within the book, what kind of sources he uses, and what important information and conclusions he presents, we can come to better understand Mintz's views and research of the role of sugar in history, and how much it really affects our lives as we know them.