The British thirst for tea had become insatiable by the mid-19th century, but there was one problem: nearly all of it came from China. For the East India Company, this dependency was a costly vulnerability. What they needed wasn’t more silver to trade but a way to break China’s monopoly entirely. Enter Robert Fortune: a Scottish botanist with a talent for subterfuge, a taste for adventure, and an uncanny knack for survival.
In this first part of a two-part series, John and Patrick trace the remarkable early life of Fortune - from his humble Scottish beginnings to his acclaimed first expedition in China that put him on the map. With the East India Company desperate to grow its own tea in India, Fortune is entrusted with a daring mission: to steal the secrets of tea production from deep within the Chinese heartland.
Clad in local robes and speaking rough Pidgin, Fortune navigated a dangerous landscape few foreigners ever saw - sneaking through the storied city of Hangzhou and gaining rare access to a green tea factory. But what he found there would shock even him: Chinese producers were secretly poisoning the tea, adding toxic pigments to create a more vibrant hue for foreign buyers.
Join John and Patrick as they trace the first steps of this daring mission, where botany, espionage, and empire collide, and the fate of tea - and indeed, global trade - hangs in the balance.
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In Sponsorship with Cornell University: Dyson Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
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