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Provinces are not always as provincial as they seem. This is particularly true of North-East England. While late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century London was becoming an international commercial hub, extending its mercantile and financial tentacles across the globe, and developing a taste for Asian imports, North-East England, particularly Newcastle and Durham, was not far behind. The gentry avidly consumed Chinese imports in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and consumption of these Chinese goods was well established among the middling sort and probably to a lesser degree among the lower sort by the 1740s. Thus, before mid century, the consumption of Chinese goods particularly tea and chinaware had become deeply rooted in the national culture. China had unknowingly civilised the British. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]