Taste Paradise (See how spices, coffee, tobacco, and wine create the intimate paradise of the human world)

Author: (English) Schivelbusch, W. (Author), Li Gongjun, Wu Hongguang (Translators)
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Every society has its pleasures and narcotics; society enjoys them, needs them, and can afford them. In 1194, when the Scottish King visited King Richard I of England, to show exceptional hospitality, the Scottish King received a special tribute of two pounds of pepper and four pounds of cinnamon daily. To us today, such a gift seems strange, but in medieval Christianity, it was quite ordinary: pepper was not only used as a spice but also a symbol of wealth and status, and often served as a substitute for money as a medium of exchange. People's tastes began to become more refined, and luxury goods from the East began to transform the crude knight culture, and after the discovery of sea routes to India, they became a decisive factor in the European economy. Why did Europe introduce entirely new pleasures at a specific period? Were coffee, tea, or tobacco mere discoveries of colonial rule, or did they satisfy people's previously unmet needs? What were these new needs? Germany had no colonies at the time and had to import coffee from abroad, which led to a massive campaign against foreign beverages. When beer and wine could no longer resist people's fervent passion for coffee, chicory coffee was discovered as a substitute. At that time, people drank not only "bean coffee" but also this substitute coffee. Similar to coffee was tobacco, which was considered a "beverage" in people's minds in the 17th century. Later, it was smoked in pipes, and it was not until the rapidly developing industrial era that it was rolled into cigarettes for consumption. The development speed of alcoholic beverages was also quite rapid and worthy of attention: the bar of taverns became very convenient and friendly, which largely met the needs of heavy drinkers in the industrial era. A critic from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung once commented on the author of this book: "Wolfgang Schivelbusch dares to break the mold. He tries to explain to people how pleasures have affected the history of medieval and modern Europe."