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Zusammenfassung von A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Name: A History of the World in 6 Glasses
Rating: 4.3 (206 reviews)
Author: Tom Standage

Tom Standage

How your favorite drinks changed the world

4.3 (206 Bewertungen)

18 Min.

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A History of the World in 6 Glasses
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What’s in it for me? See how the world’s favorite beverages have influenced human history.

What’s your favorite drink? Do you enjoy a nice beer after work? A glass of wine with your meal? Or maybe you prefer to stay off the bottle, sticking with tea and coffee?

Whatever your tipple of choice might be, there’s a good chance that it has a rich history you have yet to learn about – and that’s where these blinks come in. They show you how some of our most beloved beverages, from rum to Coca-Cola, were discovered, developed and drunk. As well as learning how these drinks changed over time, you’ll also get an insight into how the drinks themselves changed the course of human history.

In these blinks, you’ll also find out

how a tax on rum helped force the British out of America;
why the French Revolution could be blamed on drinking coffee; and
why one Soviet general tried to disguise his Coca-Cola as vodka.

This is a Blinkist staff pick

“My favorite blinks are those that describe fascinating micro-histories of everyday things you might consider boring at first sight. In these blinks, I learned that some of the most common drinks have had a huge impact on historical events.”

– Laura, German Editorial Lead at Blinkist

The discovery of beer contributed to the rise of settled civilizations.

Most people enjoy a glass of beer now and then, but have you ever wondered who invented it? Well, beer was actually never invented – it was discovered.

The origins of beer date back to the end of the Ice Age, around 10,000 BC, when people in the area known as the Fertile Crescent – present-day Middle East and Egypt – were producing wild cereal grains in abundance.

People soon found that when grains were soaked in water, their starch converted to malt. When gruel was made with this malted grain and left to ferment for a few days, it turned into an intoxicating and slightly fizzy drink. People enjoyed its taste and the way it made them feel, so they started to produce more and more of it.

The desire to produce beer was one of the reasons humans began to settle and, eventually, farm.

At the time, life was based on hunting and gathering, so humans could only utilize certain areas of land for short periods, and weren’t able to store food. But as their desire for grain-based products like beer and bread increased, they began to look for a constant supply of grain.

This lead them to discover that stored cereal grains could gradually be consumed over a period of several months, or even years. As they came to understand the benefits of storage, they also realized that it was better to stay near grain reserves.

The need for grain eventually led people to develop agriculture, too. They began to deliberately plant and cultivate it as their society grew more reliant on grain-based food products – like beer.

Beer, in turn, became a bigger part of daily life as these early settlements developed into larger civilizations. Beer was a symbol of civilized life and sharing it became a sign of hospitality. It was even used in some religious and state ceremonies.

In fact, beer is described as the drink of the “civilized man” in the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in Mesopotamia and widely regarded as human history’s first great work of literature.

Wine was an important status symbol for the ancients.

Wine is a widely affordable commodity in the modern world, and is enjoyed by the upper and lower classes alike. But this wasn’t always the case.

In the ancient world, wine was only available in small quantities and was expensive to transport, so only wealthy elites had access to it. The Assyrians, for instance, viewed wine as a symbol of prestige. In 870 BC, Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal made wine the drink of choice at a massive feast he held for the Empire’s elite, as it showcased his power to import the costly beverage from faraway lands.

Alcoholic spirits spread from the Middle East and Europe through trade and the invention of distillation.

Alcohol-producing technology continued to expand over the years and reached another milestone when people in the Arab world developed the distillation process. While the new spirits produced there didn’t gain much traction for religious reasons, they soon took hold in Europe.

For starters, Europeans believed that distilled wine had healing powers. Michael Salernus, an Italian alchemist, first experimented with the process after reading about the distillation of wine and salt in Arab texts from the twelfth century. Though the resulting spirit wasn’t very pleasant, it soon became regarded as a cure for a number of maladies, from heart diseases to paralysis.

Coffee became the drink of choice within intellectual circles across Europe.

In the Middle Ages, another game-changing drink was developed: coffee. While it first became popular in the Arab world, by the seventeenth century demand began to grow across Europe too.

Before coffee became widespread, it was common for Europeans to drink beer or wine throughout the day. Most drinking water was contaminated, so a glass of weak beer or wine was a safer bet.

Long a staple of Chinese culture, tea rose to prominence in the West when it was adopted by the British.

Drinking tea is a well-known English tradition – but the English weren’t the first to introduce it to Europe. Tea came to Europe in the seventeenth century on trading ships from China.

China had long resisted trade with Europe as Chinese merchants felt they didn’t need European goods. But that changed in the mid-sixteenth century when they began to seek more silver and gold. China soon developed a trading relationship with Portugal, where they sent silk and porcelain, and later expanded their trade to other European nations.

The British love of tea had an impact on the Industrial Revolution and the global balance of power.

By the eighteenth century, coffee was losing ground to tea in industrial workplaces like factories, as the British Empire continued to promote tea. As such, the rise of tea coincided with – and perhaps even drove – the Industrial Revolution.

Tea, like coffee, helped keep workers awake. But it had another benefit of its own: it reduced waterborne diseases because of its antibacterial properties. The industrial workers of Britain could now sleep in crowded living spaces without being so vulnerable to the spread of disease. In turn, more people could join the workforce, and more workers meant more factories.

Soda took off in the United States, and Coca-Cola soon emerged as the market leader.

About one century later, another groundbreaking drink emerged, this time in the United States: soda.

The British scientist and clergyman Joseph Priestley was the first to invent carbonized soda, after he discovered the process of dissolving gas into water.

Coca-Cola became a global phenomenon when the United States abandoned its isolationist policy.

Coca-Cola is now a major international brand, but it’s hard to imagine a product that’s more distinctly American. So how did it spread across the globe?

Coca-Cola began its international journey when the United States abandoned its policy of isolationism. Prior to the Second World War, the Coca-Cola company was much like the American government: it had little interest in expanding abroad.

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Worum geht es in A History of the World in 6 Glasses?

A History of the World in 6 Glasses (2006) is a look at human history through an unusual lens: our favorite drinks. These blinks outline the global rise of beer, wine, alcoholic spirits, tea, coffee and soda, and how they each played into major historical developments as they spread around the world.

Bestes Zitat aus A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Coca-Cola supplies three percent of all human liquid intake.

—Tom Standage

Wer A History of the World in 6 Glasses lesen sollte

Beer lovers, wine enthusiasts, spirits connoisseurs, coffee addicts and Coca-Cola devotees
Anyone interested in the lesser-known details of human history or global power politics

Über den Autor

Tom Standage is an English journalist and author whose articles have appeared in several major publications, including The Economist. He has also written six books, including The Victorian Internet.

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