Description
Within the dramatic story of one of the vital greatest acts of corporate espionage ever committed, Sarah Rose recounts the fascinating, not likely circumstances surrounding a turning point in economic history. By the center of the nineteenth century, the British East India Company faced the lack of its monopoly at the fantastically lucrative tea trade with China, forcing it to make the drastic decision of sending Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to scouse borrow the crop from deep within China and bring it back to British plantations in India. Fortune’s danger-filled odyssey, magnificently recounted here, reads like adventure fiction, revealing a long-forgotten chapter of the past and the wondrous origins of a seemingly peculiar beverage.