Veritas, they are talking about thousands of years ago when they say "modern times", not necessarily the 1850s.
So perhaps 2,000 years ago blue was all the rage in East Asia, but not so, say, 3,500 years ago. In any case, the author is not responsible for the idea, he's just reporting. You can listen to the radio program he's reporting on here:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/ An informative discussion if nothing else. Did you know that ALL the colours we humans perceive are based on just THREE we have some place in our eye, and our brain just mixes them up to give us the colourful visual field we perceive?
Didn't know that either, until this little article/radio program. Some animals have fewer bases (just two) or even less, so that their world is mostly black and white with splashes of red. When they see a rainbow, they see something far thinner than the 7 or so colours we humans see. But some animals have more than humans, like four, and there's a fish with even more, so that we just can't even
imagine all the amazing colous they see that we don't! The rainbow they see is far thicker and more glorious than ours, their world a whole lot more colourful.
@Terminator, apparently this whole idea of how language influences human perception, particularly of colour, is some kind of significant topic in some circles, I've discovered: Apparently, once the "word-processor" bit of the brain that names collours is messed around with, the Russians who can easily tell some shades of colours apart (which in their language are distinguished as separate colours, not just different shades) faster than Americans, slow down to the level of the Americans in telling the shades apart once the "word-processor" that names them is messed around with. Google: Russian language colour Himba...May you'll find the article, I can't, though read it a few days ago. EDIT: Here it is:
https://eagereyes.org/blog/2011/you-only-see-colors-you-can-nameFunny thing, though: I STILL can't, for the life of me, see the difference in the green square from the rest! To me, they are exactly the same and I've looked at it a gazillion times. Even knowing the answer, I still don't see it.
Perhaps there's an age element there: If you were trained from childhood to see green as basically one colour with lighter (light green) or darker (dark green) variations like me, perhaps this is all you see as an adult except with some serious effort. If you are Himba and hear them mention a gazillion greens and point them out from childhood, your brain is trained to see these colours and what sets them apart from childhood. If there's not much training in the "uniqueness" or differences of blue, it might indeed be harder to tell it apart.