Book description
Apart from water, tea is more widely consumed than any other food or
drink. Tens of billions of cups are drunk every day. How and why has
tea conquered the world? Tea was the first global product. It altered
life-styles, religions, etiquette and aesthetics. It raised nations
and shattered empires.
Economies were changed out of all recognition. Diseases were
thwarted by the magical drink and cities founded on it.
The industrial revolution was fuelled by tea, sealing the fate of
the modern world. Green Gold is a remarkable detective story of
how an East Himalayan camellia bush became the world's favourite
drink. Discover how the tea plant came to be transplanted onto every
continent and relive the stories of the men and women whose lives were
transformed out of all recognition through contact with the
deceptively innocuous green leaf.
Professor Alan Macfarlane is Professor of Social Anthropology at
the University of Cambridge. He is the world's foremost expert on tea
and its social impact and has been the principle social expert on the
acclaimed Channel Four series The Day the World Took Off.
Iris Macfarlane is Alan's mother and was for many years married to a
tea-planter in Assam. She wrote for History Today in the 1960s
and has published many books most notable her translations of Assamese
and Gaelic folk stories. In the early 1990s Iris appeared extensively
on the BBC British Empire series Ruling Passions.
