"The Two Tea Countries"; fantastic thesis on the struggles between India & China for the tea market of the 19th century

[mbanu]

The two tea countries: competition, labor, and economic thought in coastal China and eastern India, 1834-1942, by Andrew B. Liu: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/do ... 2/download

Read this over the weekend; absolutely fantastic! Covers the Indian tea-mania of the 1870s, the way that credit shaped the Qing-era Chinese tea industry, and some intriguing ideas behind the economic and labor underpinnings of the tea industry at the time; the appendix at the end about how Keemun tea may have been invented as a tax dodge was a nice touch.

The author has a book coming out in April, "Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India" that seems like it might be a popularization of his research; definitely keeping an eye out.

[Bok]

That sounds very interesting!

[debunix]

Thanks for the link. Downloaded and will browse a bit. Please keep us posted if the book gets published. There can be a lot more in the way of interesting side notes and things a bit too far off topic for a thesis that can be included when you're writing for such a different audience.

[bentz98125]

Looks fascinating. Eager to see if it sheds any light on how the tea trade dovetailed into the birth of international heroin narcotraffic as Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Polit ... heast_Asia) alludes to.