Fruits of empire
Subtitle: exotic produce and British taste, 1660-1800
By: James Walvin.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 219
Subjects: Produce trade -- Great Britain -- Colonies -- History; Consumption (Economics) -- Great Britain -- History; Great Britain -- Commerce -- History -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Commerce -- History -- 17th century; Great Britain -- Colonies -- Commerce -- History; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 18th century; Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 17th century
Description: What could be more British than a cup of tea? What has proved more resilient vice in Western life than tobacco? What are the origins of our enthusiasm for spice, smoke, and sugar? James Walvin here 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 pre-eminence 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 199-212) and index.