Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010

摘要

Commodity histories often deliver less than they promise. We read of spices, tubers and textile fibers that changed the world or ushered in modernity, but are often left wondering if the world would really look all that different without the commodity in question. Carol Benedict makes no extravagant claims for the importance of her subject, but her superbly researched and engagingly written study demonstrates that the history of tobacco and the history of modern China are inextricably linked. Part of the pleasure of reading Golden-Silk Smoke comes from the sheer amount of unexpected, detailed information about Chinese consumer habits, culled from gazetteers, newspapers, medical treatises, poems and literati jottings. Who would have known, for example, that snuff made from Brazilian tobacco was one of the few must-have foreign items at the Qing court, and that large amounts of snuff ("bean