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Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
Chinese-Style, Japanese Green Tea for Americans: Japanese Tea Exports to the United States, 1860 to 1890
Dr. Robert Hellyer
Department of History, Wake Forest University
Date: January 16, 2018 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Venue: Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiry: (852) 3917-5772, ihss@hku.hk
Abstract
In 1860, Japan became the first state to challenge China’s centuries-old monopoly of the world tea market as it began to ship green teas to the United States, then a predominately green-tea consuming nation. Americans quickly took to Japanese green teas, which US stores initially promoted as having distinct differences in flavor from established Chinese varieties. Yet by the mid-1860s, Western export firms in Japan’s treaty ports had switched to producing “Chinese-style” teas that became indistinguishable from competing Chinese varieties. Despite the similarities, Japanese teas continued to gain market share at the expense of Chinese teas.
This presentation will explain how the key role of Chinese experts in Japan’s nascent export industry prompted the development of Chinese-style, Japanese green tea exports tailored for the US market. It will also examine the ways in which US advertising, through its use of contrasting images of Japanese and Chinese, influenced US tea consumption patterns in the late nineteenth century.
About the Speaker
A historian of early modern and modern Japan, Robert Hellyer (Ph.D. Stanford) served on the faculty of the University of Tokyo, taught at Allegheny College, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard before coming to Wake Forest in 2005. His previous research on Edo period foreign relations was presented in a monograph, Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640-1868 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). He has also published on the socio-economic integration of the Pacific Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, he is a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He is completing an international history of Japan’s export of green tea to the United States from circa 1850 to 1950, a project for which he received Smithsonian, Japan Foundation, Sainsbury Institute, and NEH fellowships to support research in Japan, Britain, and the United States. He is also a co-organizer of a multi-year, trans-continental project exploring the Meiji Restoration in advance of the 150-year anniversary in 2018.
Interdisciplinary Lunchtime Seminar
Chinese-Style, Japanese Green Tea for Americans: Japanese Tea Exports to the United States, 1860 to 1890
Dr. Robert Hellyer
Department of History, Wake Forest University
Date: January 16, 2018 (Tuesday)
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Venue: Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Enquiry: (852) 3917-5772, ihss@hku.hk
Abstract
In 1860, Japan became the first state to challenge China’s centuries-old monopoly of the world tea market as it began to ship green teas to the United States, then a predominately green-tea consuming nation. Americans quickly took to Japanese green teas, which US stores initially promoted as having distinct differences in flavor from established Chinese varieties. Yet by the mid-1860s, Western export firms in Japan’s treaty ports had switched to producing “Chinese-style” teas that became indistinguishable from competing Chinese varieties. Despite the similarities, Japanese teas continued to gain market share at the expense of Chinese teas.
This presentation will explain how the key role of Chinese experts in Japan’s nascent export industry prompted the development of Chinese-style, Japanese green tea exports tailored for the US market. It will also examine the ways in which US advertising, through its use of contrasting images of Japanese and Chinese, influenced US tea consumption patterns in the late nineteenth century.
About the Speaker
A historian of early modern and modern Japan, Robert Hellyer (Ph.D. Stanford) served on the faculty of the University of Tokyo, taught at Allegheny College, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard before coming to Wake Forest in 2005. His previous research on Edo period foreign relations was presented in a monograph, Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640-1868 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). He has also published on the socio-economic integration of the Pacific Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, he is a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He is completing an international history of Japan’s export of green tea to the United States from circa 1850 to 1950, a project for which he received Smithsonian, Japan Foundation, Sainsbury Institute, and NEH fellowships to support research in Japan, Britain, and the United States. He is also a co-organizer of a multi-year, trans-continental project exploring the Meiji Restoration in advance of the 150-year anniversary in 2018.
Title:
Chinese-Style, Japanese Green Tea for Americans: Japanese Tea Exports to the United States, 1860 to 1890
Speaker:
Dr. Robert Hellyer (Associate Professor, Department of History, Wake Forest University)
Date:
January 16, 2018
Time:
12:00 nn – 1:00 pm
Venue:
Room 201, 2/F, May Hall, The University of Hong Kong (Map)
Language:
English
Enquiry:
(Tel) (852) 3917-5772
(Email) ihss@hku.hk
In 1860, Japan became the first state to challenge China’s centuries-old monopoly of the world tea market as it began to ship green teas to the United States, then a predominately green-tea consuming nation. Americans quickly took to Japanese green teas, which US stores initially promoted as having distinct differences in flavor from established Chinese varieties. Yet by the mid-1860s, Western export firms in Japan’s treaty ports had switched to producing “Chinese-style” teas that became indistinguishable from competing Chinese varieties. Despite the similarities, Japanese teas continued to gain market share at the expense of Chinese teas.
This presentation will explain how the key role of Chinese experts in Japan’s nascent export industry prompted the development of Chinese-style, Japanese green tea exports tailored for the US market. It will also examine the ways in which US advertising, through its use of contrasting images of Japanese and Chinese, influenced US tea consumption patterns in the late nineteenth century.
A historian of early modern and modern Japan, Robert Hellyer (Ph.D. Stanford) served on the faculty of the University of Tokyo, taught at Allegheny College, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard before coming to Wake Forest in 2005. His previous research on Edo period foreign relations was presented in a monograph, Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640 – 1868 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). He has also published on the socio-economic integration of the Pacific Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
During the 2017 – 2018 academic year, he is a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He is completing an international history of Japan’s export of green tea to the United States from circa 1850 to 1950, a project for which he received Smithsonian, Japan Foundation, Sainsbury Institute, and NEH fellowships to support research in Japan, Britain, and the United States. He is also a co-organizer of a multi-year, trans-continental project exploring the Meiji Restoration in advance of the 150-year anniversary in 2018.
