Tea war : a history of capitalism in China and India

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Title:

Tea war : a history of capitalism in China and India

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Author:

Liu, Andrew B., author.

ISBN:

9780300243734

Personal Author:

Liu, Andrew B., author.

Physical Description:

xi, 344 pages : illustrations, maps, charts; 25 cm.

Series:

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

Contents:

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Spellings, Transliterations, and Translations -- Introduction -- 1. The Two Tea Countries: A Brief History of the Global Tea Trade -- Part I: Competition and Consciousness: The Chinese and Indian Tea Industries, 1834-1896 -- 2. Incense and Industry: Labor-Intensive Capital Accumulation in the Tea Districts of Huizhou and the Wuyi Mountains -- 3. A Crisis of Classical Political Economy in Assam: From Economic Liberalism to a Theory of Colonization, 1834-1862 -- 4. After the Great Smash: Tea Mania, Overseas Capital, and Labor Intensifi cation in Assam -- 5. No Sympathy for the Merchant? The Crisis of Chinese Tea and Classical Political Economy in Late Qing China -- Part II: Coolies and Compradors: Tea and Political Economy at the Turn of the Century -- 6. Coolie Nationalism: The Category "Freedom" and Indian Nationalist Campaigns against Labor Indenture -- 7. From Cohong to Comprador: China's Tea Industry Revolution and the Critique of Unproductive Labor -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J

Abstract:

Tea remains the world's most popular commercial drink today, and at the turn of the twentieth century, it represented the largest export industry of both China and colonial India. In analyzing the global competition between Chinese and Indian tea, Andrew B. Liu challenges past economic histories premised on the technical "divergence" between the West and the Rest, arguing instead that seemingly traditional technologies and practices were central to modern capital accumulation across Asia. He shows how competitive pressures compelled Chinese merchants to adopt abstract, industrial conceptions of time, while colonial planters in India pushed for labor indenture laws to support factory-style tea plantations. Further, characterizations of China and India as premodern backwaters, he explains, were themselves the historical result of new notions of political economy adopted by Chinese and Indian nationalists, who discovered that these abstract ideas corresponded to concrete social changes in their local surroundings. Together, these stories point toward a more flexible and globally oriented conceptualization of the history of capitalism in China and India.

Subject Term:

Tea trade -- China -- History.

Tea trade -- India -- History.

Capitalism -- China -- History -- 19th century.

Capitalism -- China -- History -- 20th century.

Capitalism -- India -- History -- 19th century.

Capitalism -- India -- History -- 20th century.

Tea trade -- China -- 19th century.

Tea trade -- China -- 20th century.

Tea trade -- India -- 19th century.

Tea trade -- India -- 20th century.

HISTORY / Asia / China.