What could be more British than a cup of tea? what has proved a more resilient vice in Western life than tobacco? What are the origins of our enthusiasm for spice, smoke, and sugar? James Walvin illustrates how the tastes of the British people, and ultimately the sensory predilections of the entire west, were profoundly transformed by the fruits of distant empire and trade. Tracing the history of British global trade and the drive for imperial preeminence to the rise of a new kind of domestic material consumption, Fruits of ...
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What could be more British than a cup of tea? what has proved a more resilient vice in Western life than tobacco? What are the origins of our enthusiasm for spice, smoke, and sugar? James Walvin illustrates how the tastes of the British people, and ultimately the sensory predilections of the entire west, were profoundly transformed by the fruits of distant empire and trade. Tracing the history of British global trade and the drive for imperial preeminence to the rise of a new kind of domestic material consumption, Fruits of Empire devotes chapters to the allure and spread of tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, the potato, and sugar, thereby revealing a continuum between the British passion for empire and the contemporary Western passion to consume. Lively and revealing, Fruits of Empire is that unusual work of history that will both inform and entertain.
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Seller's Description:
VG+ in NF jacket. Small Octavo. Black boards and spine with shiny gilt lettering on the spine. Book has a tiny chip in the lower edge of the front board about two inches over from the tip of the outside corner. White endpapers. Binding is straight and tight. Pages are all clean, white, and crisp. 219 pages. Dust Jacket-has just the faintest trace of rubbing at the front corner of the tail of the spine and at the extreme tips of a couple of the outside corners. Tiny chip in the lower edge of the front cover over the chip in the board. Upper and lower edges sharp and jacket is clean, including the white rear cover. No price on the flap, but a university press, so unsure of edition. Rare.
