Ep. 140-15 | A Fortune for the East India Company

Published: Jan. 24, 2015, 4 p.m.

b"The mid 19th Century brought another sea change to the tea industry. Demand continued to grow all over Europe and North America. China's tea industry, which depended mainly on countless artisanal tea growers rather than a few large-scale producers, creates bottlenecks and unreliability in the tea supply chain. The demand had become more than China's exporters could handle. This was also due in part to the well-known political and social disasters happening in China during the second half of the 19th century. The British East India Company begins to put serious consideration into growing tea in India to cut the Chinese out.\\nWe also meet Charles Bruce, the Father of India's Tea Industry. We also encounter the botanist, horticulturist, and man of adventure Robert Fortune. We close the episode with the exploits of Fortune's first China trip and his discovery that green and black teas both come from the exact same species of plant, Camellia sinensis. The famous Guangcai porcelain \\u5149\\u5f69 of Guangzhou (Canton) is also briefly explained.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices"