A History Of The World In 6 Glasses By Tom Standage

“A History of the World in 6 Glasses,” by Tom Standage gives the detailed history of 6 drinks that changed the world. These drinks include beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. The drink I found the most interesting and appealing was tea. The history of tea appealed to me the most because of how it dramatically influenced culture, trade, geography, and society in China, India, Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, America, and many more counties around the world. Tea has affected religions, societies, economies, and politics from areas in Japan to America. Also, tea had been used, not only as a drink, but as medicine, food, etc. Making tea even more interesting to me.

Tea had evolved in the jungles of the eastern Himalayas,

Both Buddhist and Taoist monks found that drinking tea was a crucial aid to meditation, since it enhanced concentration and banished fatigue with the presence of caffeine. In Japan, tea ceremonies had been taken to its greatest heights and the making of tea had become an honor reserved for the head of the household. The entire Japanese ceremony Is extremely intricate and can take more than an hour to accomplish. "The Japanese tea ceremony was the very principle of tea culture, the result of taking a drink from Asia, imbuing it with a diverse range of cultural and religious influences, and filtering it through hundreds of years of accumulated customs and rituals," Tom Standage said. Tea itself, had been used in the form of bricks which was used as currency. Tea in brick form provided a light and compact store of value that one could consumed. The use of tea as currency was one example of how tea had an economic impact on the world. Another example, is tea being trading between China, Britain, and India. Stores in Britain had been set up, where men and women could buy tea. These are only a few examples of economic impacts tea have had. Tea affected societies in Britain, China, India, America, Canada, etc. “From the top of British society to the bottom, everyone was drinking tea. Fashion, commerce, and social changes all played their part in the embrace of tea by the English…All classes consumed it…Tea had reached around the world from the world’s oldest empire and planted itself at the heart of the newest,” Tom Standage wrote. During the American Revolution on December 16, 1773, a group of protesters had tipped 342 chests of tea into the Boston harbor. There was also the First Opium War during 1839-1842, involving China and Britain. The British East India Company was a simple company that had been granted a monopoly on imports to England from the East Indies.