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- ISSN: 2589-4617
- E-ISSN: 2667-2081
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‘Kräuter die in unsern Landen wachsen’
Kruidenthee als reactie op de consumptie van Chinese thee in het achttiende-eeuwse Heilige Roomse Rijk
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 56, Issue 2024, Oct 2024, p. 130 - 153
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- 01 Oct 2024
Abstract
Abstract:
During the eighteenth century, the consumption of Chinese tea became a widespread phenomenon all throughout the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. Germans from a multitude of social backgrounds took to the consumption of this psychoactive substance in their daily lives. Shortly after its introduction, the popularization of tea was followed by a counterreaction by German writers and intellectuals, in an attempt to stem the import of this colonial product by foreign trading companies. These writers put forth a wide array of medicinal, social, economic, theological and even nationalistic arguments, polemicizing against the consumption of Chinese tea. To strengthen their arguments, they used language borrowed from a sixteenth-century tradition in which German humanists reacted against the introduction of exotic goods and spices out of Asia and the Americas. To counter the popularity of Chinese tea, eighteenth-century German intellectuals proposed an alternative in the consumption of herbal tea wrought from local ‘German’ flora. By these means they sought to ward off the perceived negative impact of a globalizing world on their own culture, economies and societies.
© Christian Rijnberg
Keyword(s):
colonialism;
early modern nationalism;
Germany;
globalization;
protectionism;
psychoactive revolution