Silk and Tea in the North

Scandinavian Trade and the Market for Asian Goods in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Hanna Hodacs

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781137455437
• eBook ISBN: 9781137455444
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This book links the trade of the Danish and Swedish East India companies to the British taste for tea, a Scandinavian craving for colourful Chinese silk textiles, import substitutions schemes and natural history in the eighteenth century. It is a global history exploring the exchange of silver for goods in Canton. It is also a European history studying the wholesale market for Asian goods in Gothenburg and Copenhagen, the formation of taste and the impact of fashion in the blending of tea and the assortments of colours on wrought silk destined for markets across Europe. Linking material history to political economy and the histories of science, this book ends on the threshold of the nineteenth century, the rise of the second British Empire in Asia, and the creation of synthetic dyes in Europe.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Colour Plates
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Global, European and Scandinavian Histories and the East India Trade
• 1 The Scandinavian Trade with China
• 2 Dusty, Ready-blended Tea from the North
• 3 A Colourful Cargo for a Motley People
• 4 Transferring and Substituting Tea and Colours
• 5 Conclusion – New Chronologies and Geographies
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Bibliography
• Index