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

by Lizzie Collingham (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 254 ratings
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A history of the British Empire told through twenty meals eaten around the world

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.
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  1. Print length
    324 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Basic Books
  5. Publication date
    October 3, 2017
  6. File size
    75841 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a wholly pleasing book, which offers a tasty side dish to anyone exploring the narrative history of the British Empire." ---Max Hastings, Sunday Times (UK)

About the Author

As a retired board-certified music therapist, licensed counselor, and veteran of the Michigan Opera and several community theaters, Jennifer Dixon has explored the power of words and music to motivate, inspire, provoke, soothe, and heal. She brings this unique perspective to her work as an audiobook narrator.

Lizzie Collingham is an associate fellow at the University of Warwick. The author of three books, including The Taste of War and Curry, she lives in Cambridge, England.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01N9ZKQTR
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (October 3, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 3, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 75841 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 324 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0465056660
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 254 ratings

About the author

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Lizzie Collingham

Lizzie Collingham

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
254 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Stopdown
5.0 out of 5 stars So much to learn about things I've never stopped to consider. Buy it.
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2018
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Not only that, it was listed on the reading lists I respect (both of them) as the best nonfiction book of the year. I would concur.
4 people found this helpful
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BolderK
4.0 out of 5 stars Great historic socio-political perspective on food and trade
Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2018
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While traveling in former colonial India and Sri Lanka we read this book to get a real perspective on the socio-political and culinary impacts of empire and global trade. Fascinating and informative read. Recommend it for history and food buffs.
3 people found this helpful
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Nadia zapuchlak
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved!
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2018
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I love history and food so naturally I found this a lovely read!
2 people found this helpful
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Michael C Nichols
5.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend it.
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2018
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One of those books that is chocked-block full of information. I highly recommend it.
2 people found this helpful
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William A. Mcintosh
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent bok
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017
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full of more history than earlier books I have read
4 people found this helpful
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sceca
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2018
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interesting view of the British empire's histry
One person found this helpful
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Paulo Reimann
3.0 out of 5 stars Not What I Thought
Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2018
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I have read several books about food vis a vis history. This one being the weekest. If history is what you are looking for, there are many much better ones.
2 people found this helpful
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R. J. P
5.0 out of 5 stars Good for a Foodie and Anglophile
Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2018
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This was a fun read
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Top reviews from other countries

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Canadian Gal
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and readable
Reviewed in Canada on December 30, 2022
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This is a wonderful book -- very cleverly conceived, based on deep learning, but very accessible and enjoyable to read. Highly recommended!
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Bghd
5.0 out of 5 stars The Empire Buffet
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 17, 2021
Verified Purchase
This isn't an entirely conventional history of food, feeding or food technologies in Britain and its Empire (and even beyond- the USA was very much part of Britain's informal food empire until well into the twentieth century with farming decisions and technological innovation driven by British demand rather than purely local conditions). Instead the twenty shortish chapters start with a focus on a specific meal consumed in a specific place, ranging from the crew of the "Mary Rose" preparing to eat their mandatory fish stew before she sank in 1545 to Afro-Guyanese diamond miners tucking into iguana curry in 1993. This in turn provides an opening for Collingham to recount some aspect or other of the wider story, ranging upstream and downstream in time. The result is something of a collage which comes together to paint the wider story as the inter-relationships between the different parts become clear. While there are some issues with this approach (her examples aren't strictly chronological and one could perhaps have ordered them differently) it broadly works and helps to put a human dimension on what could easily become a rather dry and abstract exercise in economic and social history. Each chapter comes with a recipe too- a bonus for my wife (for whom this book was bought as a present), though I don't expect to be served the one setting out how to prepare laudanum any time soon.

The great strength of Collingham's approach is that it is genuinely global, showing how crops which barely appeared on British plates or in British cups nevertheless moved around the world as a result of Empire- rice taken from Senegambia to South Carolina by enslaved Africans and converted into the regional staple, maize distributed across Africa and Asia to the extent that in parts of Africa it is now seen as a traditional crop. On the way we see how heavily sweetened tea became a British staple (with very mixed consequences for the British poor) and how first the nation's bread, then its meat supplies came from further and further afield in an era where food miles were probably seen as a positive. We encounter half-forgotten products like vi-cocoa and long lost retail outlets like the butchery chains set up by American or Argentinian producers of chilled meats to distribute their wares. The massive role of food processing in the Industrial Revolution is covered-how many people know that Blake's "dark satanic mill" was almost certainly a London flour mill?

Collingham doesn't neglect the more unpalatable aspects of imperial history- the displacement of local crops and, in some places, local people to make way for imperially oriented monocultures, for instance (though she takes an interestingly revisionist line on the opium trade with China). She is however mercifully free from the finger-wagging self-righteous virtue signalling that mars so much academic writing about empire these days and her conclusions are all the stronger for it. There are a couple of points which she doesn't dwell on but which came to my mind. Firstly, it's striking how far settler imperialism from Tudor Ireland to New England to late nineteenth century New Zealand, converting vast tracts of what was other people's land into more or less close facsimiles of an idealised British small scale mixed farming landscape, was hailed not just by imperial planners but also by spokespeople for the labouring poor as the first step to the creation of an ideal social order without lords and aristocrats- a view held by the settlers themselves when it's possible to hear their voices. Secondly, I wonder how the British population would have reacted to cuts in rations in 1943 to head off the Bengal famine. There's much debate over just how far ordinary British people were involved in the Empire project, with very different views propounded. Collingham suggests that they might have been far more involved than they realised themselves.

A final thought. Collingham touches on Dutch imports like margarine. It would be fascinating to do a sequel on non-imperial linkages, from hopped beer and elite French cuisine to Italian ice cream and the supposed Jewish origins of fish and chips.
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David Wood
5.0 out of 5 stars Evaluation d'envoi
Reviewed in France on January 27, 2020
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Le livre est arrivé en bon état un peu avant la date prévue. Je suis donc entièrement satisfait.
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Sayan SenGupta
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended.
Reviewed in India on September 26, 2018
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Terrific!The first thing that comes to the fore is the meticulous research that seems to have gone into the book.The second big winner is the language.Even though the book is essentially a historical account there isn't a single dull moment.The facts the book present are so wonderful, sometimes hugely startling, that one is simply glued to the pages.A must read for all interested in colonial history.A special shout out to those interesting pictures and plates.
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Janet Wawrzyniak
4.0 out of 5 stars Knowledge is a wonderful thing.
Reviewed in Canada on January 7, 2021
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Well researched and fascinating. It is heavy going at times, but worth the effort .
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