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    Tea and The Industrial Revolution

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    Nguyễn Thanh Trung
    The passage discusses Professor Alan Macfarlane's theory that changes in drinking habits, specifically the increased consumption of tea in Britain, were a contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution. [1] Macfarlane argues that tea and beer helped prevent water-borne illnesses like dysentery, allowing urban populations to grow. [2] He notes that while other countries met some requirements for industrialization, Britain's widespread drinking of tea, with its antibacterial properties, distinguished it from places like Holland and China. [3]

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    Tea and The Industrial Revolution

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    Nguyễn Thanh Trung
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    The passage discusses Professor Alan Macfarlane's theory that changes in drinking habits, specifically the increased consumption of tea in Britain, were a contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution. [1] Macfarlane argues that tea and beer helped prevent water-borne illnesses like dysentery, allowing urban populations to grow. [2] He notes that while other countries met some requirements for industrialization, Britain's widespread drinking of tea, with its antibacterial properties, distinguished it from places like Holland and China. [3]

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    The passage discusses Professor Alan Macfarlane's theory that changes in drinking habits, specifically the increased consumption of tea in Britain, were a contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution. [1] Macfarlane argues that tea and beer helped prevent water-borne illnesses like dysentery, allowing urban populations to grow. [2] He notes that while other countries met some requirements for industrialization, Britain's widespread drinking of tea, with its antibacterial properties, distinguished it from places like Holland and China. [3]

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    54 views5 pages

    Tea and The Industrial Revolution

    Uploaded by

    Nguyễn Thanh Trung
    The passage discusses Professor Alan Macfarlane's theory that changes in drinking habits, specifically the increased consumption of tea in Britain, were a contributing factor to the Industrial Revolution. [1] Macfarlane argues that tea and beer helped prevent water-borne illnesses like dysentery, allowing urban populations to grow. [2] He notes that while other countries met some requirements for industrialization, Britain's widespread drinking of tea, with its antibacterial properties, distinguished it from places like Holland and China. [3]

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    of 5

    Reading Practice

    Tea and the Industrial Revolution


    A Cambridge professor says that a change in drinking babits was the reason for the
    Industrial Revolution in Britain. Anjana Abuja reports

    A Alan Macfarlane, professor of anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge


    has, like other historians, spent decades wrestling with the enigma of the Industrial
    Revolution. Why did this particular Big Bang – the world-changing birth of industry-happen
    in Britain? And why did it strike at the end of the 18th century?

    B Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock. ‘There are about 20 different
    factors and all of them need to be present before the revolution can happen,’ he says. For
    industry to take off, there needs to be the technology and power to drive factories, large
    urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy transport to move goods around, an
    affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy and a
    political system that allows this to happen. While this was the case for England, other
    nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these criteria but
    were not industrialising. All these factors must have been necessary. But not sufficient to
    cause the revolution, says Macfarlane. ‘After all, Holland had everything except coal while
    China also had many of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two
    missing factors that you need to open the lock.’

    C The missing factors, he proposes, are to be found in almost even kitchen cupboard.
    Tea and beer, two of the nation’s favourite drinks, fuelled the revolution. The antiseptic
    properties of tannin, the active ingredient in tea, and of hops in beer – plus the fact that
    both are made with boiled water – allowed urban communities to flourish at close quarters
    without succumbing to water-borne diseases such as dysentery. The theory sounds
    eccentric but once he starts to explain the detective work that went into his deduction, the
    scepticism gives way to wary admiration. Macfarlanes case has been strengthened by
    support from notable quarters – Roy Porter, the distinguished medical historian, recently
    wrote a favourable appraisal of his research.

    D Macfarlane had wondered for a long time how the Industrial Revolution came about.
    Historians had alighted on one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required
    explanation. Between about 1650 and 1740the population in Britain was static. But then
    there was a burst in population growth. Macfarlane says: ‘The infant mortality rate halved in
    the space of 20 years, and this happened in both rural areas and cities, and across all
    classes. People suggested four possible causes. Was there a sudden change in the
    viruses and bacteria around? Unlikely. Was there a revolution in medical science? But this
    was a century before Lister’s revolution*. Was there a change in environmental conditions?
    There were improvements in agriculture that wiped out malaria, but these were small gains.
    Sanitation did not become widespread until the 19th century. The only option left is food.
    But the height and weight statistics show a decline. So the food must have got worse.
    Efforts to explain this sudden reduction in child deaths appeared to draw a blank.’

    E This population burst seemed to happen at just the right time to provide labour for the
    Industrial Revolution. ‘When you start moving towards an industrial revolution, it is
    economically efficient to have people living close together,’ says Macfarlane. ‘But then you
    get disease, particularly from human waste.’ Some digging around in historical records
    revealed that there was a change in the incidence of water-borne disease at that time,

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    especially dysentery. Macfarlane deduced that whatever the British were drinking must
    have been important in regulating disease. He says, ‘We drank beer. For a long time, the
    English were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops, which were added to help
    preserve the beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was introduced on malt, the basic
    ingredient of beer. The poor turned to water and gin and in the 1720s the mortality rate
    began to rise again. Then it suddenly dropped again. What caused this?’

    F Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities about the same
    time, and also had no sanitation. Water-borne diseases had a much looser grip on the
    Japanese population than those in Britain. Could it be the prevalence of tea in their culture?
    Macfarlane then noted that the history of tea in Britain provided an extraordinary
    coincidence of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until Britain started a direct dipper trade
    with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time that infant mortality was
    dipping, the drink was common. Macfarlane guessed that the fact that water had to be
    boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea meant that the breast milk
    provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation sipped
    tea like the British, which, by Macfarlanes logic, pushed these other countries out of
    contention for the revolution.

    G But, if tea is a factor in the combination lock, why didn’t Japan forge ahead in a tea-
    soaked industrial revolution of its own? Macfarlane notes that even though 17th-century
    Japan had large cities, high literacy rates, even a futures market, it had turned its back on
    the essence of any work-based revolution by giving up labour-saving devices such as
    animals, afraid that they would put people out of work. So, the nation that we now think of
    as one of the most technologically advanced entered the 19th century having ‘abandoned
    the wheel’.

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    Questions 1-7
    Reading Passage has seven paragraphs, A-G.

    Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

    Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet

    List of Headings

    i The search for the reasons for an increase in population

    ii Industrialisation and the fear of unemployment

    iii The development of cities in Japan 4 The time and place of the Industrial
    Revolution

    iv The time and place of the Industrial Revolution

    v The cases of Holland, France and China

    vi Changes in drinking habits in Britain

    vii Two keys to Britain’s industrial revolution

    viii Conditions required for industrialisation

    ix Comparisons with Japan lead to the answer

    1 Paragraph A 1.....................

    2 Paragraph B 2.....................

    3 Paragraph C 3.....................

    4 Paragraph D 4.....................

    5 Paragraph E 5.....................

    6 Paragraph F 6.....................

    7 Paragraph G 7.....................

    Questions 8-13
    Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

    In boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet, write

    TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

    FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

    NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

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    8..................... China’s transport system was not suitable for industry in the 18th century.

    9..................... Tea and beer both helped to prevent dysentery in Britain.

    10..................... Roy Porter disagrees with Professor Macfarlane’s findings.

    11..................... After 1740there was a reduction in population in Britain.

    12..................... People in Britain used to make beer at home.

    13..................... The tax on malt indirectly caused a rise in the death rate.

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    Solution:
    1. iv 8. NOT GIVEN
    2. viii 9. TRUE
    3. vii 10. FALSE
    4. i 11. FALSE
    5. vi 12. NOT GIVEN
    6. ix 13. TRUE
    7. ii

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