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What could be more domestic, more unremarkable, more British than a nice cup of tea?
But you could ask that question the other way round.
What could be less British than a cup of tea,
given that tea is made from plants grown in India, China or Africa
and is usually sweetened by sugar from the Caribbean?
It's one of the extraordinary ironies of British national identity.
Or perhaps it says everything about our national identity
that the drink that's become the worldwide caricature of Britishness
has nothing indigenous about it,
but is the result of centuries of global trade and of a complex imperial history.
Behind the modern British cup of tea lie the high politics of Victorian Britain,
the story of 19th-century empire, of mass production and mass consumption,
the taming of a turbulent and drunken industrial working class,
the reshaping of agriculture across continents,
the movement of millions of people and a worldwide shipping industry.
It's an odd thing to think about as you tuck into the cucumber sandwiches at the vicarage.
It takes one into the heart of the Victorian parlour.
You have this superficial gloss of politeness and sobriety,
but underneath you have this absolutely cutthroat imperial economic agenda.