Seeds of Change: Six Plants That Transformed Mankind

This work of economic and botanical history argues that a handful of crop plants remade trade, empire, and daily life. Hobhouse takes six in turn - among them sugar, tea, cotton, the potato, cinchona (quinine), and cocoa - and follows each from origin and cultivation through plantation labour, shipping, and the industries and wars that grew around them. Disease, slavery, and the search for substitutes appear as part of the same story as taste and profit. The book is thematic world history organised by plant, not a gardener's manual and not a biography of botanists.

Quarter-bound in brown cloth with Modigliani paper sides printed with a colour design by Neil Packer. Pale green endleaves printed in brown with a map. Green slipcase.