Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
Engaged by the East India Company, Robert Fortune travelled in disguise into the closed green and black tea districts of China, collecting seed, living plants and detailed manufacturing knowledge, and recruiting experienced Chinese tea makers to accompany the material to India. The plants travelled in Wardian cases; the consignment that reached the government nursery at Saharanpur in 1851 is reported at over twelve thousand surviving plants. This was industrial espionage undertaken for a state-backed commercial interest, breaching both Chinese restrictions on foreign movement and Chinese control of a manufacturing secret.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Robert Fortune · person · not located
- English (later British) East India Company · chartered company · not located
- Camellia sinensis · plant species · Yunnan–Assam borderlands · not located
- Shanghai · city · China
- Darjeeling · region · India
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew · botanical institution · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
A Journey to the Tea Countries of China; including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills
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.
John Murray, London · 1852 · Verified
Robert Fortune, 'A Journey to the Tea Countries of China; including Sung-Lo and the Bohea Hills; with a short notice of the East India Company's tea plantations in the Himalaya mountains' (London: John Murray, 1852)
Economic Botany Collection — tea specimens and Wardian case material
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.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew · 19th century onward · Partly verified
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Economic Botany Collection (Sir Joseph Banks Building), Camellia sinensis holdings and Wardian case records; catalogue searchable at ecbot.science.kew.org
Recorded on Robert Fortune
- Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- The Opium Wars
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
- First tea planted at Darjeeling
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Treaty of Nanking · 1842-08-29
- First tea planted at Darjeeling · 1841
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen · 1839-06-03/1839-06-25
- The Opium Wars · 1839–1860
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded · 1834
- Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam · 1823
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty · 1784
- Boston Tea Party · 1773-12-16