Extract

Near the close of the eighteenth century, John Roach, publisher and travel-guide author, proudly declared that London taverns were venues where visitors ‘are to be met [with] all the most delicate luxuries upon earth, and where the fortuned voluptuary may indulge his appetite, not only with all the natural dainties of every season, but with delicacies produced by means of preternatural ingenuity’.1 By then the edible produce of imperial trade pervaded British society, as these one-time luxuries moved down the scale of affordability to become semi-luxuries and, in some cases, perceived necessities. Foods ranging from coffee to curry also became the empire's most ubiquitous symbols, and their advertisement, retail, preparation and consumption reflected and contributed to British discussions and perceptions of the empire.

The importance of food to the history of the early empire is incontestable. The English, and later British, penchant for sweet, hot beverages helped to fuel the empire's expansion into Asia, transformed the ecosystems of large swathes of the Americas and doomed millions of Africans and their descendants to slavery.2 European fondness for tobacco was a pillar of the North American empire, as was the transmission of the British love of luxury foods to the colonial populations. American colonists’ ultimate rejection of these imported luxuries, particularly tea, as tools of imperial tyranny ultimately became part of the framework of their political revolution.3 In Britain itself, mimicking and adapting these commodities’ native consuming practices led to such hallmarks of eighteenth-century life as coffee houses and Josiah Wedgwood's porcelain.4

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