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Reviews (2)
Jun 17, 2025
Nice lock, works well....
Nice lock, works well.
May 10, 2010
Entertaining History-Lite
Sarah Rose's retelling of Robert Fortune's journey to the tea districts of China is a fast, engaging read. Rose supplies the modern reader with information not found in Fortune's original narrative, filling in details about the tea trade and setting the story in the context of the larger economic picture. For a reader who is looking for something quick and entertaining to read on vacation, it's a good choice.
For serious history buffs, however, the lack of source citations may be disappointing. The author's assurance that any quoted material came from a letter, a memoir, newspaper or other contemporaneous source may be all well and good, but it's the material not in quotes that one wonders about. What of Rose's extraordinarily detailed descriptions of what Fortune saw and did, not to mention her intimate accounts of his thoughts and feelings? This is information she could not possibly know for certain. In striving to make history accessible, Rose indulges in novelization -- perfectly fine for fiction "based on a true story", not so good for a work claiming to be nonfiction.
The subtitle of the book ("How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History") is not quite accurate, either. "Scotland" is not synonymous with "England," and as there are so many Scottish players shaping the events (Robert Fortune being one of them) that "Britain" should have been the term used. Furthermore, to say the drink was "stolen" is not quite right, either -- Fortune was meticulous about paying for his plants and seeds, and he saw to the hiring (rather than the kidnapping!) of Chinese tea experts. It would be more in line to say he was guilty of smuggling tea plants and tea experts out of the country.
Nevertheless, I did find the book enjoyable enough to be worthwhile -- as long as I took certain passages with a hefty grain of salt.