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Tea Parties examines the creation and significance of global markets for Indian tea from its earliest history in the 1820s through the formal end of the British Empire in the 1960s. It does so to consider what role imperialism played in the development of global forms of mass consumption. Even as the Victorian economy divided the world into producing and consuming nations, it also created structures and ideologies that broke down those divisions and imagined much of the world as potential consumers. Though economic historians have long acknowledged the significance of non-western markets, recent scholarship has failed to consider how imperialism shaped the cultural, social and political history of global consumer cultures. A focus on how Indian teas were sold in markets as diverse as North America, Europe, Africa and South Asia, illuminates how imperial and racial ideologies were critical to creating and conceptualizing transnational economic relationships and cultures.