Page 29 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1806 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

sweated labour in the gardens.The conditions have slowly Goodwin, J. (1990). The gunpowder gardens: Travels through India and
improved, but are still often deplorable. China in search of tea. London: Chatto & Windus.
Hobhouse, H. (1985). Seeds of change: Five plants that transformed
mankind. New York: Harper & Row.
Tea and Macfarlane, A., & Macfarlane, I. (2004). The empire of tea: The remark-
able history of the plant that took over the world. New York: Overlook
Social History
Press.
Tea is easily prepared for drinking, but its preparation is Ukers,W. H. (1935). All about tea. New York: The Tea and Coffee Trade
sufficiently elaborate to encourage the human love of play Journal Company.
and ceremony. In East Asia it had an enormous effect on
social life through the tea ceremony, which drew on ele-
ments of religion (especially Daoism in China and Zen
Buddhism in Japan) and had a profound influence on Technology—
aesthetics in areas as diverse as ink painting, pottery, and
architecture.The Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and British Overview
developments in porcelain and pottery, themselves highly
important trade goods, were centered on tea bowls and uman beings cannot fly, or fight with their teeth
other tea ware. In present-day Japan, mastery of the tea Hand claws, or run, swim, or climb as handily as
ceremony is considered a sign of good breeding, and the other animals. Instead, using our brains, we have devised
tea ceremony industry is quite large. tools and skills that have given us power over the natu-
Drinking tea altered gender relations, meal times, and ral world and permitted us to thrive almost everywhere
etiquette. It helped raise the status of married women in on the planet. These tools and skills—in a word,
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. It made the technology—have also given some people power over
English breakfast less meat-intensive and allowed the others. To understand history, we must know who pos-
evening meal to be held later. It also led to new formal sessed what technologies and how they used them. The
gestures of politeness and courtesy surrounding the history of technology is the history of power over nature
preparation and serving of tea. and over people.
Today, tea is drunk by approximately three billion peo-
ple a day. Long appreciated for the gentle stimulation its Technology before and during
caffeine content provides,tea is also highly regarded for its the Advent of Agriculture
ability to kill the microorganisms that cause many water- Humans and their tools evolved symbiotically over mil-
borne diseases, and today it is highly touted for its antiox- lions of years.The hominid Australopithecines who lived
idants.Historically,it has affected politics and the relations in Africa from 4 to 2.5 million years ago used river cob-
between nations and empires. It encouraged the develop- bles as crude choppers to smash the bones of dead ani-
ment of new types of ship and ingenious factory machin- mals. Descendants of the species Homo erectus made
ery; it funded great trading companies and inspired hand axes by breaking flakes off both sides of a stone;
literature and philosophy. It is indeed a remarkable plant. they also learned how to control fire. With these tools,
some hominids hunted big game while others gathered
Alan Macfarlane
plants and insects. The size of their brains increased in
tandem with their use of tools, while their teeth and jaws
Further Reading grew smaller.
Clifford, M. N. (1992). Tea: Cultivation and consumption. London & New The species Homo sapiens, humans like ourselves,
York: Chapman & Hall.
Forrest, D. (1985). The world tea trade: A survey of the production, dis- appeared more than 150,000 years ago. They made a
tribution and consumption of tea. Dover, NH: Woodhead-Faulkner. multitude of specialized tools, such as spear points, scrap-