Imperial Wine Audiobook By Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre cover art

Imperial Wine

How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World

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Imperial Wine

By: Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre
Narrated by: Lianne Walker
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About this listen

Imperial Wine is a bold, rigorous history of Britains surprising role in creating the wine industries of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. Here, historian Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre bridges the genres of global commodity history and imperial history, presenting provocative new research in an accessible narrative. This is the first book to argue that todays global wine industry exists as a result of settler colonialism and that imperialism was central, not incidental, to viticulture in the British colonies.

Wineries were established almost immediately after the colonization of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand as part of a civilizing mission: tidy vines, heavy with fruit, were symbolic of Britains subordination of foreign lands. However, British drinkers were apathetic towards what they pejoratively called "colonial wine." The tables only began to turn after the First World War, when colonial wines were marketed as cheap and patriotic and started to find their niche among middle- and working-class British drinkers. This trend, combined with social and cultural shifts after the Second World War, laid the foundation for the New World revolution in the 1980s, making Britain into a confirmed country of wine-drinkers and a massive market for New World wines. This book is sure to satisfy any curious reader who savors the complex stories behind this commodity chain.

The book is published by University of California Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2022 Jennifer Regan-Lefebvre (P)2024 Redwood Audiobooks
Great Britain World Wine Imperialism Colonial Period
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Critic reviews

"Interesting. Well-written. Thought-provoking. I learned a lot." (Wine Economist)

"This wide-ranging transnational history gives fascinating...insights into the connections between viticulture and Empire." (Richard Toye, author of Churchill's Empire)

"Elegantly written and with impressive far-ranging research..." (Stephen V. Bittner, author of Whites and Reds)

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