Eating the Empire - Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Informationen zum Autor Troy Bickham is Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He is the author of many books including The Weight of Vengeance (2012) and Savages within the Empire (2005). Klappentext When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco; when Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea; or when a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware of the mechanisms of imperial rule and trade that made such goods readily available? In Eating the Empire , Troy Bickham unfolds the extraordinary role that food played in shaping Britain during the long eighteenth century (circa 1660-1837), when such foreign goods as coffee, tea, and sugar went from rare luxuries to some of the most ubiquitous commodities in Britain--reaching even the poorest and remotest of households. Bickham reveals how trade in the empire's edibles underpinned the emerging consumer economy, fomenting the rise of modern retailing, visual advertising, and consumer credit, and, via taxes, financed the military and civil bureaucracy that secured, governed, and spread the British Empire. Zusammenfassung Demonstrates the pivotal role that food played in shaping Britain during the ‘long’ 18th century.

Product details

• Authors: Troy Bickham, Bickham Troy
• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.04.2020
• EAN: 9781789142075
• ISBN: 978-1-78914-207-5
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Guides > Food & drink > General, dictionaries, tables; Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, European History, HISTORY / General, Social & cultural history, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Agriculture & Food, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, British & Irish history, Food & society, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Social and cultural history, Cultural studies: food and society, C 1700 To C 1800