The History of Apples: Modern Fragility (Part 5)

From myth and legend to cider-fuelled revolutions, from Johnny Appleseed’s frontier orchards to the Victorians’ quest for the perfect pippin, the story of the apple has been anything but ordinary. In the final part of this five-part series, John and Patrick follow the fruit onto the world stage - when refrigeration, global shipping, and empire transformed it into an international commodity. From Tasmania’s “Apple Isle” and Cecil Rhodes’s Cape orchards, to Japan’s remarkable embrace of the fruit that would one day give us the Fuji, the apple became both a tool of empire and a symbol of modernization.