Robert Fortune, the tea spy

In 1848, the East India Company entrusted Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist, with a special mission: to discover the secrets of tea-making in China and to collect tea seeds and gain knowledge of traditional techniques in order to make India the new “tea field” of the British Empire. This tale of industrial espionage disrupted the geography and structure of the tea world.

Tea was introduced into Britain in the 17th century and within a few decades had become a popular beverage. In the early 1840s, the country was hit by a famine that decimated the working class. Milk and sugar were added to tea to help workers get through the long working day until it was time for the (meagre) evening meal. At the time, Britain sourced its tea exclusively from China, which had held the secret of the drink’s production for more than 5,000 years. In 1839, the two nations fought in the first Opium War. Humiliated by its defeat, China imposed 70% taxes on tea imports into the British territory. The market value of the plant rocketed. Fearing a national revolt, the powerful East India Company decided to break the Chinese monopoly by producing its own tea in India.

Fortune’s mission

Two Scottish brothers, the Bruces, identified a subspecies of wild tea tree in Assam. As the climate was conducive to tea cultivation, the Honourable Company commissioned botanist Robert Fortune to produce tea profitably. His mission was to collect plants and seeds from the best tea plants, transport them to the Himalayas, and hire “experienced tea growers and good manufacturers without whom we will not be able to develop our plantations in the Himalayas”.1 And so the venture began…

A forbidden trip to China

Robert Fortune’s arrival in China marked the beginning of the era of colonial tea production. The Scotsman was a plant hunter who had already travelled to the country and was seen by his peers as a cultivated adventurer prepared to risk his life to discover new species. After the Opium War, no Westerner was allowed to travel to China under penalty of death. To get around this threat and travel unnoticed, Fortune adopted traditional dress and wore his hair in a long plait. He claimed to have travelled from a distant region beyond the Great Wall to justify his Western features and accent. It was an effective disguise, despite a few situations where he was almost discovered. The easiest plants to buy were in the south of the country, but connoisseurs knew that the best-quality black teas were produced in the north, in the Yellow Mountains region, where no European had yet set foot. So Fortune embarked on the journey of a lifetime, heading into a wild and unexplored landscape. Over the months, he discovered China’s turbulent rivers and took advantage of the journey to the tea regions to search the riverbanks for new flowers and fruits. After many days he arrived in the territory of Hwuy-chow in the Huang Mountains, where he found the first plantations. He spent time observing them, noting that the locals did not touch the weakest tea plants, instead waiting for them to become more vigorous before picking the leaves. He marvelled at the pickers’ dexterity and managed to steal the seeds of the Camellia sinensis plants, which he was still convinced were used only to produce green tea. His journey continued to Anhui in the Yellow Mountains, where once again he managed to get his hands on tea plants and seeds that were used to produce black tea. Through close observation he learnt that black tea and green tea come from the same plant, and that only the way the leaves are processed after picking is responsible for the tea’s colour. The mystery was solved at last.

The arrival of tea in India

Transporting tea to India was not without its difficulties. Camellia sinensis plants wilt when they are taken out of the ground, and keeping them watered in constrictive pots causes them to develop mould. The first dispatch of plants was a failure. Then he used Wardian cases (wood and glass boxes in the form of miniature greenhouses), which prevented these problems. This proved to be a reliable system. The plants arrived healthy and the mission was a success. And so tea farming spread through India and the foothills of the Himalayas before being introduced to the island of Sri Lanka. Robert Fortune thus helped improve tea growing and production in a rapidly expanding British empire. In 1856, the first tea plantation was established in Darjeeling. By 1874, the region was home to 112 gardens.

From his fruitful excursions to China, Fortune also brought back hundreds of varieties of flowers and fruits including kumquat, jasmine and azaleas, forever changing the face of the English garden. Above all, he helped perpetuate the British tradition of taking a little time for oneself in the afternoon over a cup of tea! •