Hey #medievaltwitter does anyone have references to scholarship on the question of why medieval Europeans did not import tea? They had access to Chinese products, so why not tea? My search for "tea" on the IMB turned up bupkis.
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For sure and that was basically the question, right - why did they develop a taste for pepper, dyed silks, spikenard etc but not for tea. How did it fail to get established even when access per access wasn't the problem. Obvs no one answer, but fascinating to think about/
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As you have shown so many times, Europeans imported and loved lots of foreign stuff! Just really interesting to think about what's not on the list of those things.
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Oh, absolutely! And I totally agree, it's a genuinely fascinating question! Incidentally, looking around, I gather there's some reason to think there may have been some post-Mongol tea drinking in parts of Persia & a 15thC ref to someone from Arabia obtaining some...
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(Laufer, Sino-Iranica, pp. 553–4)
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Excellent! Thank you for this ref - so cool!
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