Robert Fortune
person
Robert Fortune (1812–1880) was a Scottish botanist and plant collector who, in 1848, was engaged by the East India Company — on the recommendation of the botanist John Forbes Royle — to travel into China's closed interior tea districts, disguised and in breach of the restrictions on foreign movement, and to remove tea plants, seed and manufacturing knowledge for use in British India. This was industrial espionage carried out for a state-backed commercial monopoly, and should be described as such rather than as exploration. He used Wardian cases, sealed glazed containers, to keep living material alive on the sea passage, and he recruited Chinese tea makers to accompany the plants to India. He also established, for British readers, that green and black tea are the same plant differently processed.
A person is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
Read in · 1
Evidence · 2
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 3
- English (later British) East India Companycreated_by
- Shanghailocated_in
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kewmember_of
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 33 blocks · 2 evidence · 26 related
- Story
- Robert Fortune (1812–1880) was a Scottish botanist and plant collector who, in 1848, was engaged by the East India Company — on the recommendation of the botanist John Forbes Royle — to travel into China's closed interior tea districts, disguised and in breach of the restrictions on foreign movement, and to remove tea plants, seed and manufacturing knowledge for use in British India. This was industrial espionage carried out for a state-backed commercial monopoly, and should be described as such rather than as exploration. He used Wardian cases, sealed glazed containers, to keep living material alive on the sea passage, and he recruited Chinese tea makers to accompany the plants to India. He also established, for British readers, that green and black tea are the same plant differently processed.
- Knowledge
- English (later British) East India Company
- Robert Fortune
- Shanghai
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- Connections
- English (later British) East India Company
- Shanghai
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
- Opium
- Assam
- Tea
- Robert Fortune
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
- The Opium Wars
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
- Robert Fortune
- Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
- Robert Fortune
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
- Evidence
- Fortune's own published account documents his commission by the East India Company, his travel in disguise into closed tea districts, the use of Wardian cases, the recruitment of Chinese tea makers, and that green and black tea come from the same plant.
- Kew's economic botany holdings document tea as an imperial commodity crop and the Wardian case as the technology that made live transcontinental plant transfer possible.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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/atlas?object=PERSON_ROBERT_FORTUNE&experience=PERSON_ROBERT_FORTUNE