First, its coffee plants rotted. Then, the bottom fell out of the coffee market. In the early 1880s colonial Ceylon faced disaster, but within ten years it was surviving, then thriving as a major cultivator of tea. Wenzlhuemer (British studies, Humboldt-U. zu Berlin) well describes how the colony in essence changed technologies in a remarkably short time, describing the unique geography of Ceylon, its fates as it changed from an ancient and sovereign nation to a colony to three different European nations, its population's ethnicity and religion, the rise of coffee as a principle export, the resources the nation used to make the transition to tea, the alternatives, the systems of administration and education and the development of new elites, the role of immigrants to Ceylon and religious revivals (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim), and the shifts in thought that had to come before Ceylon became a temple of tea. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)