A Botanist in Disguise Stole Tea From China to Grow It in India

The traveler moving through the mountain tea districts of China did not look like a British botanist, and that was the point.

His name was Robert Fortune, a plant collector hired by the British East India Company, and he was on a covert mission to steal the crop that China alone supplied to the world. He disguised himself and made a dangerous trek through China's mountain tea country.

Britain had good reason to want its own supply. For years it had been buying enormous quantities of Chinese tea and paying in silver, until the cost grew too painful. So British traders began exchanging tea for opium, creating an addiction crisis inside China.

In 1839, Chinese authorities seized and burned large stores of British opium to reject Britain's sway over the country. That crackdown set off the First Opium War. Combat spread along China's seaboard until 1842, when the beaten Qing rulers, China's ruling dynasty at the time, handed Hong Kong to Britain and agreed to commerce under harsh conditions. The loss undercut China's weight in the world for well over a hundred years.

Company leaders also hoped to raise tea on their own ground and command more of the trade. That was Fortune's assignment.

He brought living tea plants along with skilled workers who knew how to grow and prepare tea out to Darjeeling, in India, then under British control. From Darjeeling the plant moved onward, helping turn tea from a costly import into a fast-growing everyday staple.

Tea now stands just behind water as the planet's most widely drunk beverage. It is drunk sugary in Turkey as Rize tea, salty in Tibet as butter tea, and in almost as many other ways as there are cultures that drink it.