The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy by Jane T. Merritt

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy by Jane T. Merritt Joanna Cohen The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy. By Jane T. Merritt. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017 224 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographical essay, index. Cloth, $45.95; paper, $22.95.) In this neat and engaging book, Jane T. Merritt invites us to re-evaluate the history of tea, and the results are as satisfying and refreshing as the beverage itself. By examining tea through the lens of global political economy, Merritt demonstrates that this commodity was far more than a political symbol for a people on the brink of revolution; it was a commodity that helped to create the sinews of eighteenth-century empire. Moreover, she reveals that the Americans' protests in 1773 were no mere expression of pocketbook politics from provincials; [End Page 221] instead, it was a subtly crafted critique of empire, informed by the world that tea itself had helped to make. Merritt begins with the English East India Company's (EIC) efforts to open up and monopolize trade in China at the start of the eighteenth century. She demonstrates how the EIC's tactics to corner the market resulted in a glut of tea in Europe that was slowly forced by profit-hungry merchants into colonial markets. By the 1730s, Americans had embraced tea not simply as a drink but as a commodity. In one of the most brilliant parts of the book, Merritt demonstrates how tea enabled the growth of imperial commerce. Both portable and marketable, merchants used it to convert complex instruments of credit into cash to pay their tradesmen and sold it to help raise money and even finance war. Tea offered liquidity. Merritt then charts the growing politicization of tea, tacking between the well-known story of taxation and the perhaps less familiar story of the EIC's battle to remain profitable as it sought to expand its power in India and maintain its grip on China. This dual focus reveals why the enforced dumping of low price, low-grade tea by the EIC in America became so contentious. As Merritt argues, American merchants were not simply protesting that they were being cut out of a deal. They also feared that this treatment made them subject to the EIC's inept and heartless policies, akin to the victims of the Bengali famine. It was for this reason, Merritt argues, that although the raiders of the Boston Tea Party chose to dress up as Mohawks, the costume they actually wore was that of the Nabob (99). Their protest was an argument against being at the mercy of an imperial monopoly, a disadvantage that reached across race and space and united them with East Indians. This argument hints at revolutionary ideas about race but goes no further. Merritt argues that a consumer revolution is not simply about the proliferation of goods but a transformation in what they mean (6). Normally this would involve a close look at how consumers bought, used, and experienced tea. But Merritt has not offered this. The result is that by the end of the book readers understand more about what tea does than what it means. Indeed, her book is not really about consumers but commodities. By paying such close attention to the materiality of tea, she has offered an astute interpretation of imperial expansion and its challenges—one that opens up rich new prospects indeed. Joanna Cohen Queen Mary University of London Copyright © 2019 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania