Question

s tea displaced beer as the defining national drink, it became a symbol of the rebranded British character – polite and respectable, with none of the old boisterous conviviality. An anonymous temperance poem from the nineteenth century makes the point:

With you I see, in ages yet unborn,

Thy votaries the British Isles adorn,

Till rosy Bacchus shall his wreaths resign,

And love and tea triumph o’er the vine.

–A History of the World in 100 Objects,
Neil MacGregor

What type of source does MacGregor use in this part of the text?



What is the purpose of the source?

Answer 1

Type of source: A primary source — an anonymous nineteenth‑century temperance poem (a contemporary literary/textual source).

Purpose of the source: MacGregor uses it as illustrative evidence to show contemporary attitudes — it demonstrates how temperance rhetoric framed tea as a moral, respectable national drink replacing alcohol. The poem functions both as propaganda for the temperance cause and as a vivid, contemporaneous testimony supporting his argument about the cultural shift.