ROBERT FORTUNE

SCOTTISH, 1812-80

The botanist and explorer Robert Fortune began his career in his native Scotland before moving to England to work for the Horticultural Society of London. It commissioned him to undertake a three-year expedition to China in order to gather plant samples, including some varieties of tea, which was forbidden to leave China. Over the following two decades Fortune frequently travelled to China, where he disguised himself as a Chinese merchant and broke local laws in order to acquire tea plants. These were then cultivated in India in the East India Company’s plantations by Chinese tea specialists that he had persuaded to work for the British.