The long eighteenth century—which Troy Bickham defines as the period between the ascension of William and Mary in 1688 and Victoria's coronation in 1837—witnessed Britain's rise to imperial preeminence. According to the author, “The British empire had exploded from a collection of English colonies and trading outposts into a vast trading network and territory over which a white, largely British-born minority attempted to rule” (161). Few, if any, facets of British culture were unaffected by British imperialism, as well as by the growth of consumerism and Enlightenment thought that fed off of it. In Eating the Empire, Bickham seeks to understand these wholesale changes through the items that everyday Britons ingested. By largely focusing on sugar, tea, tobacco, and coffee, and then moving outward to consider British foodways more broadly in two chapters, Bickham questions how inhabitants of England and Scotland understood their place in a burgeoning empire even...
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Review Article|
January 01 2025
Britain's Appetite for Empire
Troy Bickham,
Eating the Empire: Food and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain
(London
: Reaktion
, 2020
). Pp. 288
. 89 ills. ₤20Eighteenth-Century Life (2025) 49 (1): 141–146.
Citation
Jordan B. Smith; Britain's Appetite for Empire. Eighteenth-Century Life 1 January 2025; 49 (1): 141–146. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-11523788
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