タグ: Tea_ENG

★★★★☆ An informative history book around tea - which obviously focuses heavily on Britain, China and India. It is a nasty colonial history that we must not forget. 

🔽 log 🔽
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TEA: 
Addiction Exploitation and Empire (Brief Histories)
Roy Moxham 2003
258 pages
Read in 2020.08

🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

Very informative, it calls itself "brief" because it's the name of this series but it's not that brief, don't take it lightly.

A history book around tea - which obviously focuses heavily on Britain, China and India.
How British spoiled and destroyed the moral of China, with the famous final blow with the Opium War, and how they took advantage of India completely and systematically, simply for the benefit of British. 
It is a nasty colonial history that we must not forget, that Britain today is based on. 

Almost the same fate as chocolate, it's originally outside the European vicinity, so they decided to move to Africa which is close enough for easy trade and of course the cheap labour.
Cheap tea is made closer to to Europe, in Kenya today.
 

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

A Brief History of Tea

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
A Brief History of Tea

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
A Brief History of Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire (English)

★★★★★  This book talks about Darjeeling tea – history, the people, the owners and workers, the soil; its problems are as iconic as its taste. Darjeeling tea is iconic, that no other place could recreate, yet it’s stuck in its colonial history.

🔽 log 🔽
Darjeeling: A History of the World’s Greatest Tea
Jeff Koehler, 2015
286 pages
Read in 2022.04


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽
All about Darjeeling tea, in details. Extensively in details. 

It talks about all the background - history, the people (the owners and workers), the soil; the problems are as iconic as the taste.
Darjeeling tea is iconic, that no other place could recreate, yet it's stuck in its colonial history. 
And it's entirely based on the exploitation.  
A painful fact is, a cup of Darjeeling tea could cost more than a day's wage of the plucker. It's located in such a unique bit of the planet, that living there alone is a hard job (access to water, heating). 
And also uniquely, unlike other iconic drinks like champagne or whiskey or even matcha, Darjeeling tea is not as appreciated in its own country, India.

With all the problems, will people continue to drink Darjeeling tea? 
Will people continue to make Darjeeling tea?

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World's Greatest Tea

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
Darjeeling: A History of the World’s Greatest Tea

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
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