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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 581.6309
EAN: 9781593760496
ISBN: 1593760493
Label: Counterpoint
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: November 22, 2005
Publisher: Counterpoint
Studio: Counterpoint
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A personal and highly original take on the history of six commercial plants, Seeds of Change illuminates how sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, quinine, and the cocoa plant have shaped our past. In this fascinating account, the impassioned Henry Hobhouse explains the consequences of these plants with attention-grabbing historical moments. While most records of history focus on human influence, Hobhouse emphasizes how plants too are a central and influential factor in the historical process. Seeds of Change is a captivating and invaluable addition to our understanding of modern culture.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The book includes too many of the author's opinions and too little history. For example, he indicts sugar as the cause of most of the health problems we suffer. I disagree, and wanted more information on sugar's importance in world economics and its cultivation.
"Seeds of Change" was disorganized and lacks the scholarship of a Kurlansky book. I wanted to read about the history of the plants and their influence on the world. Instead, I received a mish-mosh of opinion and politics.
Rating:  -
I'm a history graduate student working on the history of commodities in the early modern period, so this book sounded like it would be perfect for me. Unfortunately, I find myself writing an amazon review for the first time in several years because I find this book to be dangerously misleading and an example of what history shouldn't be: vague and uncritical.
I came away from the book dismayed by Hobson's retrograde style of thinking about history and his exceptionally sloppy, generalized and anachronistic statements about whole civilizations. A good example: Hobson writes that the Inca "worshipped their State," likens them to "modern European dictators" and says that they didn't resent the conquistadors, but instead "admired the trickery of their conquerors." This entire paragraph has no footnotes, so its impossible to see where Hobson got this ridiculous idea from, but it reads like a racist textbook from the 1920s. Calling Africans "negroes" and the like doesn't help matters.
I hate to be so negative, because I think that the overall conception of the book is an excellent one. But this is an example of truly bad history. For a book that covers similar ground but does so with a fine eye for accuracy, sources and critical analysis, I recommend Marcy Norton's new book on the history of tobacco and chocolate, "Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures."
Rating:  -
For my research at this time, I only read the section on sugar. This section was filled with historical errors and biased, prejudiced language. Very few of his interpretations were orthodox. . He lumped all Arabs together as always having a low opinion of physical work. Furthermore, according to Hobhouse, they have all enjoyed making trade agreements, all the time. He cited Arabs as having been partly responsible for African race-based slave trade. This was not accurate; Europeans did not use intermediaries at this point in history. He further cited these same men of mixed "Arab-Negro" decent as having been solely responsible for the shift to only using African slaves. Although the validity of this was questioned, a statement of this nature needed citations, for which he provided none. He also used vivid descriptions that in context of everything else he said contributed to negative stereotypes, for example, that slaves were "pinned like a pig to await a buyer." In an effort to make the destruction of Africans more normal or acceptable, Hobhouse said that it should be remembered that white Europeans had short, nasty life spans, too. Even if this had some truth, he ignored the fact that Africans had absolutely no choice of coming to the Americas. To him only Europe and North America constituted the civilized world during the age of slavery. When discussing the declining Native populations and their relationship to involuntary labor, Hobhouse neglected to mention the New Laws of 1541. When discussing abolition efforts he cited the economic theory of mercantilism, not inhumanity, as having been the only reason slavery was abolished. Even here he ignored slave rebellions and slave resistance. What about the Haitian revolution? Furthermore, to him Maroons were only fierce Africans who caused trouble. Maroons had every reason to be rebellious. To Hobhouse, slaves only produced one-tenth of their value, thus not being economical. Hobhouse concluded by saying Cuba and other Latin American countries have been dependent on the world for their survival. He further stated these countries have never tried to be independent and that they have had an absence of respect for hard work and its reward of profits. What if Latin American countries have not wanted to buy into the European/North American concept of needing profits and money? I would stay away from this book.
Rating: -
This book consists of a collection of historical essays about six plants: quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, and coca. For each plant, the author provides historical information about when it first began to be used (especially by Westerners), and how its use spread across the planet. Some of the information was quite interesting, particularly since the author is British and presents the material from a British point-of-view, emphasizing facts that may be less familiar to Americans. Unfortunately, no in-text citations are provided, but there is a short bibliography at the end of the book. The essays often spill over into topics that are, at best, only marginally related to the subject at hand, such as an overview of Japanese foreign trade in the tea chapter, or the role of corn whiskey in the economy of the Southern states in the early Nineteenth Century in the cotton chapter. Hobhouse has an interesting habit of giving his own meaning to words, such when he defines "Negro" as being a West African Black with sickle cell anemia, or "husbandry" as applying to plant breeding. He also uses the term "slavocracy" to refer to the political situation in the pre-Civil War South, presumably on analogy with "democracy" and "theocracy", but in those words, the first root identifies the rulers, not the ruled. This book may provide a light introduction to some of the topics covered, but I wouldn't rely on it for serious study of an academic nature.
Rating:  -
I havn't read this book in a while but came across an editorial by Hobhouse recently and I thought I'd check to see if it's still in print. I recall some rather strange notions about our 'current' lack of fiber in our diet and the dire effect it may have, but in most areas where he dosn't range too far afield it's a good read. A reader above found the book racist but I don't recall anything like that. If you like Hobhouse try to dig up Edgar Andersons ' ' Plants Man and Life'. Not an inspired title but a very good book as well.
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