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The Tale of Tea
The Tale of Tea is the saga of globalisation. Tea gave birth to paper money, the Opium Wars and Hong Kong, triggered the Anglo-Dutch wars and the American war of independence, shaped the economies and military history of Tang and Soong China and moulded Chinese art and culture. Whilst black tea dominates the global market today, such tea is a recent invention. No tea plantations existed in the world's largest black tea producing countries, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka when the Dutch and the English went to war about tea in the 17th century. This book replaces popular myths about tea with recondite knowledge on the hidden origins and detailed history of today's globalised beverage in its many modern guises.
- GenresTeaHistoryNonfiction
924 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2019
13 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
About the author
George Van Driem
10 books6 followersGeorge (Sjors) van Driem is a Dutch linguist at the University of Bern, where he is the chair of Historical Linguistics and directs the Linguistics Institute.
He has conducted field research in the Himalayas since 1983. He was commissioned by the Royal Government of Bhutan to codify a grammar of Dzongkha, the national language, design a phonological romanisation for the language known as Roman Dzongkha, and complete a survey of the language communities of the kingdom.
He and native Dzongkha speaker Karma Tshering co-authored the authoritative textbook on Dzongkha. Van Driem wrote grammars of Limbu and Dumi, Kiranti languages spoken in eastern Nepal, and the Bumthang language of central Bhutan. He authored Languages of the Himalayas, a two-volume ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region. Under a programme named Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region, conducted in collaboration with the Government of Nepal and the Royal Government of Bhutan, he collected DNA from many indigenous peoples of the Himalayas.
In Bern, George van Driem currently runs the research programme Strategische Zielsetzungen im Subkontinent (Strategic Objectives in the Subcontinent), which aims to analyse and describe endangered and poorly documented languages in South Asia. This programme of research is effectively a diversification of the Himalayan Languages Project, which he directed at Leiden University, where he held the chair of Descriptive Linguistics until 2009. He and his research team have documented over a dozen endangered languages of the greater Himalayan region, producing analytical grammars and lexica and recording morphologically analysed native texts.
His interdisciplinary research in collaboration with geneticists has led to advances in the reconstruction of Asian ethnolinguistic prehistory. Based on linguistic palaeontology, ethnolinguistic phylogeography, rice genetics and the Holocene distribution of faunal species, he identified the ancient Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatics as the first domesticators of Asian rice and published a theory on the homelands and prehistoric dispersal of the Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic and Trans-Himalayan linguistic phyla. His historical linguistic work on linguistic phylogeny has replaced the unsupported Sino-Tibetan hypothesis with the older, more agnostic Tibeto-Burman phylogenetic model, for which he proposed the neutral geographical name Trans-Himalayan in 2004. He developed the Darwinian theory of language known as Symbiosism, and he is the author of the philosophy of Symbiomism.
He has conducted field research in the Himalayas since 1983. He was commissioned by the Royal Government of Bhutan to codify a grammar of Dzongkha, the national language, design a phonological romanisation for the language known as Roman Dzongkha, and complete a survey of the language communities of the kingdom.
He and native Dzongkha speaker Karma Tshering co-authored the authoritative textbook on Dzongkha. Van Driem wrote grammars of Limbu and Dumi, Kiranti languages spoken in eastern Nepal, and the Bumthang language of central Bhutan. He authored Languages of the Himalayas, a two-volume ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region. Under a programme named Languages and Genes of the Greater Himalayan Region, conducted in collaboration with the Government of Nepal and the Royal Government of Bhutan, he collected DNA from many indigenous peoples of the Himalayas.
In Bern, George van Driem currently runs the research programme Strategische Zielsetzungen im Subkontinent (Strategic Objectives in the Subcontinent), which aims to analyse and describe endangered and poorly documented languages in South Asia. This programme of research is effectively a diversification of the Himalayan Languages Project, which he directed at Leiden University, where he held the chair of Descriptive Linguistics until 2009. He and his research team have documented over a dozen endangered languages of the greater Himalayan region, producing analytical grammars and lexica and recording morphologically analysed native texts.
His interdisciplinary research in collaboration with geneticists has led to advances in the reconstruction of Asian ethnolinguistic prehistory. Based on linguistic palaeontology, ethnolinguistic phylogeography, rice genetics and the Holocene distribution of faunal species, he identified the ancient Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatics as the first domesticators of Asian rice and published a theory on the homelands and prehistoric dispersal of the Hmong-Mien, Austroasiatic and Trans-Himalayan linguistic phyla. His historical linguistic work on linguistic phylogeny has replaced the unsupported Sino-Tibetan hypothesis with the older, more agnostic Tibeto-Burman phylogenetic model, for which he proposed the neutral geographical name Trans-Himalayan in 2004. He developed the Darwinian theory of language known as Symbiosism, and he is the author of the philosophy of Symbiomism.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 2, 2020
I’m done with the longest book on tea that I have ever read! The Tale of Tea by George van Driem is a whopping 864 pages and chock-full of information. The Tale of Tea can be divided into the following sections:
1. The Primordial Origins of Tea
2. Tea Spreads to China
3. Tea Arrives in Japan and Korea
4. East Meets West: the Intrepid Portuguese
5. Dutch Capitalism and the Globalisation of Tea
6. The English Take to Tea: Wars in Europe
7. Interlude: Coffee and Chocolate
8. Taxes vs Freedom from Oppression
9. Tea Transformed: Wars in Asia
10. Tea Terroir and Tea Cuisine
11. Tea Chemistry and Fanciful Concoction
12. Tending the Tea Garden
Personally, I found the chapters on the origins of tea, the history of tea in China, Japan, and Korea, and the later chapters on the history of tea in countries such as Brazil, Georgia and the Azores to be the most helpful to me. I took so many notes in the first three chapters and I even did a blogpost on the history of scientific nomenclature of camellia sinensis because it was fascinating!
Some things I learnt, so you can have a taste of what the book talks about:
- Robert Fortune did not discover that green and black tea came fromthe same plants. There was a misconception going around, but in the beginning, when tea first arrived in Europe, the botanists there were pretty clear that it was by the same plant.
- Other Chinese hanzi that were contenders for the word “tea” include: 茗 (ming) and 荼 (tu), among others! These words are no longer in use, so it was actually pretty difficult to write them using the Hanyu pinyin keyboard!
- “Border Road Tea 路边茶” that was exported to Tibet, Turkestan, Mongolia and other regions, “met lower standards of quality than the tea that was to be consumed in China, and transportation was difficult.”
- The British weren’t the only ones to tax tea. Acording to the book, “the sudden thriving trade in tea inspired Zhao Zan, a powerful official in the spendthrift Tang government of emperor Dezong to impose a 10% tax on the production of tea in 782. The Tang government soon found, however, that it was not able to apply the tax effectively because local potentates in Sichuan would exact the tax but then withhold the revenue from the court or merely pay a quota.”
- The difference between Chinese and Japanese tea contests: “Whereas the Chinese tea tasting contests focused on determining which tea was the best, the Japanese contests originated as a competition in order to identify which tea came from the superb tea garden at Toganoo in Kyoto and so to distinguish honcha (本茶 ‘true tea’) from hicha (非茶 ‘false tea)’ originated from other tea gardens.” Very soon after inception of the tea contests in Japan, the tea from gardens at Uji came to be denominated as Honcha
There was a lot that I liked about The Tale of Tea. As you can tell, it’s full of information, a lot of it new to me, and the coverage was truly global. Although only the first three chapters focused on tea in Asia, the information in there was much more detailed yet wider in scope than most other books I’ve read. I also appreciated the fact that many small tea-producing countries were discussed because we don’t normally hear about them.
I also liked all the myth-busting done. Apart from the myths of Shennong and Robert Fortune, van Driem also deals with the story of how tea was popularised in England. In contrast to the commonly told story of how Catherine of Braganza popularised tea in England, van Driem argues that Catherine was “notoriously conservative in her culinary preferences” and that “records of the period attest neither to her drinking tea before her arrival in England nor to her bringing tea with her to Britain.” Instead, he points out that having been in exile in Netherlands and Paris, Charles II would have been familiar with tea which was a trendy beverage in those two countries.
Another point of note was the origin of the practice of afternoon tea in England. George van Driem differs from Erika Rappaport in that he doesn’t think that the practice of afternoon tea started with the temperance movement, rather, argues that it’s a practice imported from the Dutch. It’s in the section on how the English take to Tea and I’d recommend reading that if it’s something you’re interested in.
This is a very minor detail, but I was also delighted to find a footnote about the origin of TWG and its lawsuits with Mariages Freres. It’s something that I’m always surprised more people don’t know about, so I appreciated the long footnote about the whole thing.
On the other hand, the van Driem has a tendency to go on long tangents, which is probably why the book is so long. The chapter on Taxes vs Freedom from Oppression was my least favourite because it digressed into discussions on gay tea parties and McCarthyism (interesting but is camellia sinensis actually involved in this?), Edward Snowden, and the modern American tea party. It seems like a stretch to connect these topics to the tea plant and I wasn’t convinced about the merits of this chapter.
So, is this book worth it? On Amazon.com, The Tale of Tea costs USD$299 (I might have made another mistake in the video) which converts to over SGD$400. That’s a lot. On one hand, there’s a lot of information in here and the book is definitely very highly researched. On the other hand, the book isn’t without its flaws (see: point on digressions).
Personally, my opinion is that this book isn’t for people who are just getting into tea. It’s more for people who are looking to go deep into the history of tea, in which case, as a researcher this book may be worth it for you. But if you can find a copy of the book in the library or in a friend’s house, you should definitely try to borrow it.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
1. The Primordial Origins of Tea
2. Tea Spreads to China
3. Tea Arrives in Japan and Korea
4. East Meets West: the Intrepid Portuguese
5. Dutch Capitalism and the Globalisation of Tea
6. The English Take to Tea: Wars in Europe
7. Interlude: Coffee and Chocolate
8. Taxes vs Freedom from Oppression
9. Tea Transformed: Wars in Asia
10. Tea Terroir and Tea Cuisine
11. Tea Chemistry and Fanciful Concoction
12. Tending the Tea Garden
Personally, I found the chapters on the origins of tea, the history of tea in China, Japan, and Korea, and the later chapters on the history of tea in countries such as Brazil, Georgia and the Azores to be the most helpful to me. I took so many notes in the first three chapters and I even did a blogpost on the history of scientific nomenclature of camellia sinensis because it was fascinating!
Some things I learnt, so you can have a taste of what the book talks about:
- Robert Fortune did not discover that green and black tea came fromthe same plants. There was a misconception going around, but in the beginning, when tea first arrived in Europe, the botanists there were pretty clear that it was by the same plant.
- Other Chinese hanzi that were contenders for the word “tea” include: 茗 (ming) and 荼 (tu), among others! These words are no longer in use, so it was actually pretty difficult to write them using the Hanyu pinyin keyboard!
- “Border Road Tea 路边茶” that was exported to Tibet, Turkestan, Mongolia and other regions, “met lower standards of quality than the tea that was to be consumed in China, and transportation was difficult.”
- The British weren’t the only ones to tax tea. Acording to the book, “the sudden thriving trade in tea inspired Zhao Zan, a powerful official in the spendthrift Tang government of emperor Dezong to impose a 10% tax on the production of tea in 782. The Tang government soon found, however, that it was not able to apply the tax effectively because local potentates in Sichuan would exact the tax but then withhold the revenue from the court or merely pay a quota.”
- The difference between Chinese and Japanese tea contests: “Whereas the Chinese tea tasting contests focused on determining which tea was the best, the Japanese contests originated as a competition in order to identify which tea came from the superb tea garden at Toganoo in Kyoto and so to distinguish honcha (本茶 ‘true tea’) from hicha (非茶 ‘false tea)’ originated from other tea gardens.” Very soon after inception of the tea contests in Japan, the tea from gardens at Uji came to be denominated as Honcha
There was a lot that I liked about The Tale of Tea. As you can tell, it’s full of information, a lot of it new to me, and the coverage was truly global. Although only the first three chapters focused on tea in Asia, the information in there was much more detailed yet wider in scope than most other books I’ve read. I also appreciated the fact that many small tea-producing countries were discussed because we don’t normally hear about them.
I also liked all the myth-busting done. Apart from the myths of Shennong and Robert Fortune, van Driem also deals with the story of how tea was popularised in England. In contrast to the commonly told story of how Catherine of Braganza popularised tea in England, van Driem argues that Catherine was “notoriously conservative in her culinary preferences” and that “records of the period attest neither to her drinking tea before her arrival in England nor to her bringing tea with her to Britain.” Instead, he points out that having been in exile in Netherlands and Paris, Charles II would have been familiar with tea which was a trendy beverage in those two countries.
Another point of note was the origin of the practice of afternoon tea in England. George van Driem differs from Erika Rappaport in that he doesn’t think that the practice of afternoon tea started with the temperance movement, rather, argues that it’s a practice imported from the Dutch. It’s in the section on how the English take to Tea and I’d recommend reading that if it’s something you’re interested in.
This is a very minor detail, but I was also delighted to find a footnote about the origin of TWG and its lawsuits with Mariages Freres. It’s something that I’m always surprised more people don’t know about, so I appreciated the long footnote about the whole thing.
On the other hand, the van Driem has a tendency to go on long tangents, which is probably why the book is so long. The chapter on Taxes vs Freedom from Oppression was my least favourite because it digressed into discussions on gay tea parties and McCarthyism (interesting but is camellia sinensis actually involved in this?), Edward Snowden, and the modern American tea party. It seems like a stretch to connect these topics to the tea plant and I wasn’t convinced about the merits of this chapter.
So, is this book worth it? On Amazon.com, The Tale of Tea costs USD$299 (I might have made another mistake in the video) which converts to over SGD$400. That’s a lot. On one hand, there’s a lot of information in here and the book is definitely very highly researched. On the other hand, the book isn’t without its flaws (see: point on digressions).
Personally, my opinion is that this book isn’t for people who are just getting into tea. It’s more for people who are looking to go deep into the history of tea, in which case, as a researcher this book may be worth it for you. But if you can find a copy of the book in the library or in a friend’s house, you should definitely try to borrow it.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
September 2, 2021
Some chapters of the book have almost nothing to do with tea. As a tea scholar, i find the first half of the book more interesting than other. Overall it’s very well researched. But i don’t think is worth 300 euros (approximately). It’s a good book to read, but not for learning about tea in details.
December 13, 2019
Driem is a wonderful scholar. Here the reader would have access to never heard before interviews with Medieval personalities. And do not forget the thousands of hours Driem spent reading prehistoric letters on tea.
June 21, 2021
It's not researched thoroughly. There are some discrepancies. It would be interesting to do some peer reviews on this book from academic scholars in the USA.
January 31, 2023
The Tale of Tea came recommended to me by Don Mei from Mei Leaf Tea.
If I could only own one book on tea, this would be the one—I bought the Kindle version (the hardback is over 3 kilos!). It is very comprehensive and includes many aspects of tea history and is very well researched and referenced.
I bought The Tale of Tea as part of my research for my own book, Teahead's Bible on Caffeine Management and it was very helpful.
If I could only own one book on tea, this would be the one—I bought the Kindle version (the hardback is over 3 kilos!). It is very comprehensive and includes many aspects of tea history and is very well researched and referenced.
I bought The Tale of Tea as part of my research for my own book, Teahead's Bible on Caffeine Management and it was very helpful.
August 23, 2022
I've only read a part about tea in Japan, so my review considers only this part of the book.
It is detailed and well researched, touching on the history of tea drinking and tea cultivation in Japan as well as describing the current state of the industry. It did feel a bit rushed though as if the author wanted to talk about so many different things but was limited by the number of pages. It might also be a bit difficult to understand for somebody not familiar with Japanese history, as the author drops dozens of names well known to Japanese people or someone who studies Japan, but completely unknown to the general western public.
It is detailed and well researched, touching on the history of tea drinking and tea cultivation in Japan as well as describing the current state of the industry. It did feel a bit rushed though as if the author wanted to talk about so many different things but was limited by the number of pages. It might also be a bit difficult to understand for somebody not familiar with Japanese history, as the author drops dozens of names well known to Japanese people or someone who studies Japan, but completely unknown to the general western public.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews