Beatrice Hohenegger is an Italian-American writer and filmmaker whose Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West (2006) brought a cultural studies and postcolonial perspective to tea history — examining tea not just as a beverage but as a vehicle of empire, trade violence, and cultural exchange — and whose curatorial work for the Fowler Museum at UCLA helped establish tea history as a legitimate subject for serious museum scholarship.
In-Depth Explanation
Hohenegger’s approach to tea is humanistic and politically engaged rather than purely connoisseurship-focused. She situates tea in the broader story of global trade, colonialism, and the often-violent encounters between European empires and Asian producing cultures.
Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West (2006): The book covers:
- Tea’s origins in China and its early cultural history there
- The Portuguese, Dutch, and British trade routes that brought tea to Europe
- The colonial plantation economies of India, Ceylon, and Africa — their human costs and labor systems
- The Opium Wars and their tea-trade dimensions
- Tea’s cultural significance in different global contexts
The title “Liquid Jade” comes from an older Chinese description of green tea. The book’s great strength is connecting the aesthetic and cultural aspects of tea to the economic and political structures that moved it around the world.
Steeped in History: The Art of Tea (2009): Hohenegger edited this companion volume to an exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA — one of the first major American museum exhibitions dedicated to the material culture of tea (teaware, trade objects, art). Her editorial and curatorial work brought tea into an academic museum context that had largely overlooked it.
Cultural studies approach: Hohenegger’s perspective is influenced by postcolonial theory — attention to how histories get told from whose perspective, who benefits from trade’s “civilizing” narrative, and what the costs of the global tea economy were for the people who grew it. This makes her work complementary to, but distinct from, connoisseurship-focused authors like Pettigrew or Gebely.
Related Terms
See Also
Research
- Hohenegger, B. (2006). Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West. St. Martin’s Press.
Summary: Her primary work; a cultural history of tea examining its journey through colonialism, trade, and cultural exchange from East to West.
- Hohenegger, B. (Ed.) (2009). Steeped in History: The Art of Tea. Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Summary: Exhibition catalogue edited by Hohenegger exploring the artistic and cultural dimensions of tea, bringing tea history to academic and museum audiences.