The Empire of Tea
The Remarkable History of the Plant that Took Over the World
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Narrated by:
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James Adams
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Kelly Birch
About this listen
From Darjeeling to Lapsang Souchon, from India to Japan-a fresh, concise, world-encompassing exploration of the way tea has shaped politics, culture, and the environment throughout history.
From the fourth century BC in China, where it was used as an aid in Buddhist meditation, to the Boston Tea Party in 1773, to its present-day role as the most consumed substance on the planet, the humble Camellia plant has had profound effects on civilization.
Renowned cultural anthropologist Alan MacFarlane and Iris MacFarlane recount the history of tea from its origin in the eastern Himalayas and explains, among other things, how tea became the world's most prevalent addiction, how tea was used as an instrument of imperial control, and how the cultivation of tea drove the industrial revolution. Both an absorbing narrative and a fascinating tour of some of the world's great cultures-Japan, China, India, France, the Britain, and others-The Empire of Tea brings into sharp focus one of the forces that shaped history.
©2009 Iris MacFarlane & Alan MacFarlane (P)2010 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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In the latest volume of his celebrated series of Time Traveler's Guides, Ian Mortimer turns to what is arguably the most-loved period in British history—the Regency, or Georgian England. A time of exuberance, thrills, frills, and unchecked bad behavior, it was perhaps the last age of true freedom before the arrival of the stifling world of Victorian morality. At the same time, it was a period of transition. Conveying the sights, sounds, and smells of the Regency period, this is history at its most exciting—the past not as something to be studied, but as lived experience.
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SKIP THIS BOOK
- By Lady Aristotle on 09-05-22
By: Ian Mortimer
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At Home
- A Short History of Private Life
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.”
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Bryson does it again
- By Robert on 10-15-10
By: Bill Bryson
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Drink
- A Cultural History of Alcohol
- By: Iain Gately
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.
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Amazing!
- By Ben on 02-23-22
By: Iain Gately
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Opium
- How an Ancient Flower Shaped and Poisoned Our World
- By: John H. Halpern, David Blistein
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Opium tells the extraordinary and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an addiction epidemic.
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Opium a poor excuse for a better history.
- By Jeffrey Olsen on 09-12-19
By: John H. Halpern, and others
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Sweetness and Power
- The Place of Sugar in Modern History
- By: Sidney W. Mintz
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eye-opening study, Sidney W. Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar and reveals how closely interwoven sugar's origins are as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies, with its use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat.
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Dated but still worthwhile
- By Acteon on 11-14-19
By: Sidney W. Mintz
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Indian Givers
- How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
- By: Jack Weatherford
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.
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All things Jack Weatherford
- By Robert on 06-03-10
By: Jack Weatherford
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Fordlandia
- The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City
- By: Greg Grandin
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Fordlandia by National Book Award finalist Greg Grandin tells the enthralling tale of Henry Ford’s failed attempts to transform a Connecticut-sized chunk of Brazilian rainforest into a homespun slice of American utopia.
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An eye-opening account of an arrogant man's folly
- By Melissa on 09-17-13
By: Greg Grandin
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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Empire of Things
- How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First
- By: Frank Trentmann
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 33 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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What we consume has become the defining feature of our lives: our economies live or die by spending, we are treated more as consumers than workers and even public services are presented to us as products in a supermarket. In this monumental study, acclaimed historian Frank Trentmann unfolds the extraordinary history that has shaped our material world, from late Ming China, Renaissance Italy and the British Empire to the present.
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An exhaustive attempt to get the story right
- By John on 03-09-16
By: Frank Trentmann
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The Conquest of Bread
- By: Pyotr Kropotkin
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Conquest of Bread, first published in 1892, Kropotkin set out his ideas on how his heightened idealism could work. It was all the more extraordinary because he was born into an aristocratic land-owning family - with some 1,200 male serfs - though from his student years his liberal views and his fixation on the need for social change saw him take a revolutionary path. This led rapidly to decades of exile. It is a passionate, even a fierce polemic for dramatic social change.
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“All is for All”
- By Gabriel on 01-02-19
By: Pyotr Kropotkin
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The Conquest of Bread
- By: Peter Kropotkin
- Narrated by: Jim D Johnston
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Originally written in French, The Conquest of Bread first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journal Le Révolté. It was first published in Paris with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also suggested the title. Between 1892 and 1894, it was serialized in part in the London journal Freedom, of which Kropotkin was a co-founder. In the work, Kropotkin points out what he considers to be the defects of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism and why he believes they thrive on and maintain poverty and scarcity.
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If we were all perfect. That's a big if.
- By DesmoProfundis on 06-07-21
By: Peter Kropotkin
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The Road to Wigan Pier
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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When Orwell went to England in the 30's to find out how industrial workers lived, he not only observed but shared in their experiences. He stayed in cramped, dreary lodgings and subsisted on the scant, cheerless diet of the poor. He went down into the coal mines and walked crouching, as the miners did, through a one- to three-mile passage too low to stand up in. He watched the back-breaking, dangerous labor of men whose net pay then averaged $575 a year.
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Frederick Davidson's a Great Reader
- By Debali on 01-11-09
By: George Orwell
What listeners say about The Empire of Tea
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Paul Z.
- 06-20-10
Good Book
This book has three parts: 1. Iris MacFalanes recollections of living as a tea planter wife in Assam, which was a very interesting piece of primary documentation. 2. A cultural history of tea cultivation, focusing on Assam and the role of tea in the British Empire (the narrowing to one main location allows for a reasonable change over time and gets way from the shotgun effect that a lot of pop history uses). 3. A treatise and justification of tea drinking; which as someone who drinks copious amounts of tea in a coffee world I applaud.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Melissa
- 11-07-22
Chapter 1 Is Where the Literary Gift in This Book Is Found
The author’s mother wrote a wonderful memoir in the first chapter of this book. To me, it was the highlight of this book!
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- A. Hallberg
- 05-29-12
Boring
Is there anything you would change about this book?
Add recent information about scientific studies of tea components and effects on brain and physiology instead of constant repetition of "stimulating and relaxing to the constitution". More comparison with coffee and alcohol. Updated information on recent tea growing economics and effects on growing countries. Why can't we grow tea in US? Discuss Celestial Seasoning, Liptons and Bigelow; recent changes in tea market and future trends.
What could Alan Macfarlane and Iris Macfarlane have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Consolidated history of Indian and Chinese tea growing. Way too much about boring history of the abusive planter families and the arrogant British colonialists.
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
Narrator was fine.
Did The Empire of Tea inspire you to do anything?
Switch to alcohol.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Historic Philosopher
- 12-19-11
Found very informative and yet very entertaining
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Empire of Tea?
I found particularly interesting the analysis of how the British and Japanese empires that adopted tea developmed more quickly at the same as when Germany and France as coffee drinkers developed more slowly,
Any additional comments?
Very interesting approach to content I would not have thought much on before.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Amazon Customer
- 11-17-16
A little dry, but worth the listen
I enjoyed this audiobook. There is a lot of good information, and it looks at several perspectives. Just be prepared for some very dense material.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Doris
- 09-04-10
Good; Could have been much better
This book presents a good deal of information about tea, mostly about the merchandising of tea. It is very factual, very British-centric, and useful to a point. It could have been much better, however. The cultivation of tea began in China. A lot more detail about the importance and cultivation of tea in China could have been fascinating. The book also needs more anecdotes - it's very dry. A bit more about the myths surrounding tea would have created more understanding of the plant's importance. A lovely description of the Japanese tea ceremony, and of the much later tea ritual in England, would have created more atmosphere. A couple scandals of the tea trade would have added some intrigue. All those stories are there in the history of tea, but sadly they seem not to have interested the author. I have read more exciting histories of the cultivation of tulips, which, while lovely, cannot begin to compete with tea for historical significance to human culture. I'm still waiting for that tea book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Max
- 03-03-12
Not what the title says...
What did you like best about The Empire of Tea? What did you like least?
Liked the narration. Didn't like the title (it is misleading).
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
This book is NOT about planting, growing, preparing or drinking tea. Furthermore it is VERY brief history of tea.This book is a colorful description and history of suffering and humiliation of Indian natives, caused by English West-India Company in Assam province of India.
What about James Adams and Kelly Birch ’s performance did you like?
I enjoyed James Adams performance very much. If it wasn't for him I'd probably wouldn't listen to the rest of the book.
Could you see The Empire of Tea being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
No, but it may be a good background for another story.
Any additional comments?
If your interested in tea production, culture, methods of preparation, or a complete history of this plant - this is NOT a book for you.But if you just need to waste your credit on something, or you are interested in history of Assam province in India - buy the book.
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6 people found this helpful