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    The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
    The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
    The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

    Written by Lizzie Collingham

    Narrated by Jennifer M. Dixon

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In The Taste of Empire, acclaimed historian Lizzie Collingham tells the story of how the British Empire's quest for food shaped the modern world. Told through twenty meals over the course of 450 years, from the Far East to the New World, Collingham explains how Africans taught Americans how to grow rice, how the East India Company turned opium into tea, and how Americans became the best-fed people in the world.

    In The Taste of Empire, Collingham masterfully shows that only by examining the history of Great Britain's global food system, from sixteenth-century Newfoundland fisheries to our present-day eating habits, can we fully understand our capitalist economy and its role in making our modern diets.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9781541480995
    The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

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    Reviews for The Taste of Empire

    3.5/5

    21 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The flavor of this book is show up for the evolution of British food consumption, stay for for the examination of a food production system largely based on various degrees of labor exploitation, as Collingham starts with the exploitation of the Newfoundland cod fisheries and English efforts to plant their vision of agriculture in Ireland, to the climax of the Great Bengal Famine of World War II. The book thus ends on a weak note, as the author contemplates a contemporary British food culture that often feels like a pantomime of empire but seems to be unsustainable. I suspect that the real brick through the window is Collingham's argument that the damage done by the British opium trade in China has been exaggerated, though she is quite unsparing of other British crimes in the pursuit of the calories needed to keep their industrial machine turning.
    • 4/5
      This is a wide ranging book on this history of foods and meals in the England and the British Empire between 1545 and 1996. It is not a systematic review which was originally off-putting. But the use of narrative began to peak my interest and I went through the book. This is an attempt as to what cookery and family living was actually like among different classes of people. Because off the empire, food sources are from everywhere, and meals are shown to be very diverse, even if not the paragon of nutrition. Part 1 covers Newfoundland, Ireland, New England, West Indies, West Africa and Covent Garden - London. Part 2 covers Lancashire, South Carolina, South Africa, and Boston. Part 3 takes one Bihar, New Zealand, British Columbia, and the Society Islands (near Tahiti. Part 4 covers Guyana, Manchester (England), Kenya, North African desert, and London at Christmas.