Book Review - A History of the World in 6 Glasses

A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if I didn't already have some knowledge of much of the history it relates. This book is what I call a pop history. And I don't use this term derogatorily; I love pop history. Pop history makes history palatable. Interesting. Like gossip. It is usually lighter on deeper themes and academic prowess but it's readable and entertaining, and usually teaches me a little something. Sometimes I get interested enough in a topic or a person that I look in the bibliography for dour historical tomes to learn more.

But this pop history covers ground I've already covered in the dour historical tomes, so it was less a-ha! and more, oh, yeah, that.

So, really, it's probably a five star book if you don't already know the greatest hits of ancient history (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome), early modern European history (Enlightenment), Chinese history (mostly as it relates to Britain and the opium wars), and American imperialism/isolation/path-to-superpower.

I learned about bappir, "beer bread" (unleavened bread containing the ingredients kept in government store houses and crumbled into the brewers vat) created just so beer ingredients could be stored for longer periods of time without rotting.

I learned that ancient depictions of beer drinking show one large vessel and many people around it with straws. Communal. Standage interpolates that the tradition of "clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid" is a nod to the ancient practice of drinking out of the same bowl.

Alcoholic beverages are intrinsically linked to climate; beer where grains grow, wine where grapes grow, rum where sugar grows. What is so abundant that we don't need to eat it all to survive so we can ferment some of it to get drunk?

Beer gets its reputation as barbaric because wine was the drink of the Roman empire because grapes grow in the Mediterranean climate and grains mostly grew in the north, which had to be conquered and "civilized" by Rome. When Rome fell, beer should have taken over again, as those northern Visigoths and Vandals came from the barbaric beer-drinking north to sack the empire, but Visigoths and Vandals liked wine, too, and passed laws making destroying vineyards illegal.

Wine is also central to Christianity, which, along with its connection to the Roman empire, contributes to its association with civilized humanity.

And why don't Muslims drink wine? Muhammed apparently preached abstention from alcohol because it clouds the mind (though he was known to enjoy lightly fermented date wine), but it could also be because the Islamic culture was trying to erase the Roman culture and Islam was trying to erase Christianity; erasing wine kills many birds with one stone.

And what is distilling? It makes fermented alcohol more-so. The boiling point of alcohol is lower than the boiling point of water, so the vapor collected in the distilling process produces a liquid with a much higher alcohol content than fermented beverages. So distilled wine is brandy. Distilled beer is whiskey.

And sugar and slaves. The Greek and Roman empire enslaved much of its population, but since the empire's fall, slavery in Europe was not as common. The spread of Christianity, which forbids the enslavement of one Christian by another Christian, contributed to the decrease of slavery. But then, in the race for empire and control of sugar, labor was needed. To get labor AND protect profit margin, slaves were needed. So theologians declared that Black Africans were not fully human, therefore they could not be converted to Christianity, therefore they could be enslaved.

Rum is distilled from the left-overs of the sugar trade. The stuff they were throwing away; it was made out of trash and didn't rot, so it kept easily on ships and in hot weather. Therefore, it became the drink of choice in the new world. It gets its name from the the southern England slang word "Rumbullion," meaning a brawl or violent commotion. Admiral Edward Vernon, trying to make the rum supply last longer, mixed it with water and lime and sugar; a primitive cocktail. This drink came to be called "grog" (Vernon's nickname was Old Grogram) and it also prevented scurvy, a bonus.

Did you know the Molasses Act caused the American Revolution? Well, maybe not, but Standage makes a convincing case. Molasses, the byproduct of the sugar industry which is distilled into rum, came mostly from the French colonies in the Caribbean. The British crown passed a law that their colonies in the Americas could only buy molasses from British islands. But the British sugar islands did not produce nearly enough molasses to supply the rum needs of the British colonies in the Americas. So the colonists ignored the law and the crown didn't enforce it. "Henceforth," Standage writes, "the colonists felt entitled to defy other laws that imposed seemingly unreasonable duties on items shipped to and from the colonies. As a result, the widespread defiance of the Molasses Act was an early step along the road to American independence." John Adams wrote at the time, "I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes."

And coffee and the Enlightenment. For many years I have taught my history students that throughout much of history, water wasn't safe to drink, so fermented beverages were consumed instead. Coffee and tea, bringing water to a boiling point before ingesting it, makes water safe, too. Once these beverages were popularized of course people got new ideas; they weren't constantly besotted. They were hopped up on caffeine. Ergo, coffee caused the Enlightenment. Standage's chapters on coffee agree with my thesis. The coffee houses of 17th century London were the driving force of not only science and philosophy, but also business and commerce. "The period of rapid innovation in public and private finance, with the floating of joint stock companies, the buying and selling of shares, the development of insurance schemes, and the public financing of government debt, all of which culminated in London's eventual displacement of Amsterdam as the world's financial center, is known today as the Financial Revolution. The need for colonial wars made it necessary, and the fertile intellectual environment and speculative spirit of the coffeehouses made it possible." Standage goes further to interpolate that Seattle is home of Starbucks AND Microsoft...coffee, innovation, networking--just like 17th century London.

Tea. Spread through the Asian continent along with Buddhism (Taoist monks found it an invaluable aid to meditation, enhancing concentration and banishing fatigue). Then became an integral part of Chinese culture. Then adopted by Britain and edited into the height of their culture.

It also made people healthier in England. It made water safer. It had antibacterial antioxidants that passed into breastmilk and helped to reduce infant mortality. Tea helped keep people alive so they could live tightly packed in the cities and run the machines of the Industrial Revolution. It made Wedgewood and Twining household names. And it caused some horrific behavior in the colonies, government-sanctioned illegal drug smuggling, the Opium Wars. All for tea. And profit.

Standage's final beverage is Coca-Cola, which started as a snake oil cure and through serendipity and luck and war became a symbol not only of globalization but of the United States' power and prowess in driving the culture and economics of the entire world. It traveled with the military in two world wars (and was sanctioned and financially supported by the US government; the military built bottling plants for Coca-Cola AND allowed them a pass on sugar rations, all because Coke helped keep morale high).

My favorite anecdote, one I'd never heard before, was Coke as a Cold War weapon;
"Perhaps the most unlikely convert to Coca-Cola was General Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, the Soviet Union's greatest military leader, who successfully defended Russia from German attack and later led his forces into Berlin to end the war in Europe. Zhukov was one of the few people who dared to disagree with Joseph Stalin, the brutal Soviet leader, who could not do away with Zhukov because of his popularity and heroic stature. During post-war negotiations over the division of Germany, Zhukov was introduced to Coca-Cola by Eisenhower and took a strong liking to the drink. But he was reluctant to be seen enjoying something so closely identified with American values, particularly as the rivalry between the two superpowers intensified. So Zhukov made an unusual request: Was it possible to make Coca-Cola without coloring, so that it resembled vodka, the traditional Russian drink? His request was passed to the Coca-Cola Company, which duly obliged and, with the endorsement of President Harry Truman, devised a colorless version. It was shipped to Zhukov in special cylindrical bottles, sealed with a white cap and labeled with a red Soviet star."

Pepsi, the also-ran, tried to disrupt Coca-Cola's world-wide dominance, mostly by attempting to capitalize in markets where Coke was hated because it was so categorically American ("When we think of Communists, we think of the Iron Curtain. When they think of democracy, they think of Coca-Cola," read a placard at the 1948 Coca-Cola Company annual meeting). In places where America began to be hated (France, the Middle East, the Soviet Union) Pepsi tried to move in. In 1959, Nixon and Kruschev were photographed drinking Pepsi at a Moscow trade-fair of American products. Nixon, after losing the election for the governor of California, joined Pepsi's law firm and became Pepsi's ambassador overseas. Pepsi, not tainted by anti-communist propaganda, started to move into those markets, led by Nixon, the creator of much anti-communist propaganda. Is this irony?

Standage closes with an epilogue predicting that water will be the beverage driving history and politics in the 21st century. Water. Without which none of these other beverages could exist. Full circle.





View all my reviews