Steeped in History

After water, tea is the most frequently consumed beverage on the face of the earth. In ancient China tea was regarded as one of the seven daily necessities of life; for many Japanese it has served as a ritual element in the quest for enlightenment. In England afternoon tea holds an immutable place in the popular imagination, while in the United States it is often associated with the American Revolution.

While various teas have been prepared in an assortment of ways and have played parts in countless culinary practices, it is also important to note that tea is and nearly always been a highly important commodity. As such, it has played a variety of striking and often paradoxical roles on the world stage--an ancient health remedy, an element of cultural practice, a source of profound spiritual insights, but also a catalyst for brutal international conflict, drug trafficking, crushing taxes, and horrific labor conditions.

In the course of Steeped in History, editor Beatrice Hohenegger and eleven distinguished historians and art historians trace the impact of tea from its discovery in ancient China to the present-day tea plantations of Assam, crossing oceans and continents in the process. In so doing, they examine the multitude of ways in which tea has figured in the visual and literary arts. These include not only the myriad vessels fashioned for the preparation, presentation, and consumption of tea but also tea-related scenes embellishing ceramics and textiles and forming the subject of paintings, drawings, caricature, songs, and poetry.

Foreword
Acknowledgments

Teatime: An Introduction / Beatrice Hohenegger

Part One. China, Cradle of Tea Culture / Beatrice Hohenegger
1. Tea in China: From Its Mythological Origins to the Qing Dynasty / Steven D. Owyoung
Learning Pottery in Yixing, China / Terese Tse Bartholomew

Part Two. The Way of Tea in Japan / Beatrice Hohenegger .
2. Buddhist Thought and the Way of Tea / Dennis Hirota
3. Dissension in the World of Tea: The Fashion for Sencha and Chinese Culture in Early Modern Japan / Patricia J. Graham
4. The Sacred and the Profane: The Role of Women in Edo Period Tea Culture / Reiko Tanimura

Part Three. The Tea Craze in the West / Beatrice Hohenegger
5. Tea and the Middle Class / Woodruff D. Smith
Tea and the Conversation Piece / Angus Trumble
6. Determining the Growth and Distribution of Tea Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America / Barbara G. Carson
7. Beyond Boston: Prerevolutionary Activism and the Other American Tea Parties / Jane T. Merritt

Part Four. Tea and Empire / Beatrice Hohenegger
8. Teapots, Opium Pipes, Guns: From the Canton Trade to the Opium War, 1700–1842 / John E. Wills Jr.
9. Tea, Labor, and Empire in India / Elizabeth Kolsky

Notes
References Cited
Index
Contributors