The Newfoundland cod fishery.

The hot and dangerous work of boiling sugar.

A scene from a London coffee house where gentlemen like Samuel Pepys were able to sample the new colonial drinks.

In the West Indies slaves were allowed to sell the vegetables they grew in their gardens at Sunday markets.

In the eighteenth century tea time became an established afternoon ritual in the homes of the wealthy.

A village scene in nineteenth-century India.

A Chinese sailor relaxing with a pipe of opium.

The interior of a nineteenth-century labourer’s cottage of the kind so many left when they emigrated. Note the brown teapot on the table.

Meat was so plentiful and cheap in New Zealand that it was ‘enough to make a man dance’.

Maori women preparing food in a traditional earth oven.

A group of Indian indentured labourers in British Guiana.

Indian indentured labourers on arrival in British Guiana.

The Gear Meat Company won prizes for their tinned meats at the Sydney and Melbourne International Exhibitions in 1879 and 1880.