Robert Fortune | Signed contract for tea growers, 1855

Robert Fortune

Contract signed, also signed in Chinese by nine tea growers from Jiangxi with transliterations of their names into the roman alphabet, further signed and subscribed by Charles Sinclair, interpreter to the British consulate in Shanghai (“wages commence from 9^th August 1855, date this […] from Shanghai”), with two red ink stamps of the British Consulate, Shanghai, 250 x 610mm, backed onto thicker paper (total length 790mm), worn and stained with slight loss to Fortune’s signature, rolled

THE ORIGIN OF THE INDIAN TEA INDUSTRY. The botanist Robert Fortune (1812-1880) travelled extensively in China in the 1840s and 50s, and in 1851 successfully, and illicitly, transferred thousands of young tea plants from China to the north-western provinces of India on behalf of the East India Company. Tea had long been cultivated in India on a small scale but Fortune’s introduction of high-quality plants was crucial to the rapid expansion of the Indian tea industry in the second half of the 19^th century, and Chinese strains of tea are used to produce Darjeeling tea to this day. Fortune was the first westerner to recognise that the difference between green tea and black tea were produced from the same species of plant using different method of production. He well understood that good quality plants alone were not sufficient to develop the Indian tea industry, and he also recruited skilled growers from Chinese tea-producing regions to work on developing the nascent Indian industry.

The current contract dates from Fortune’s third expedition to China (1852-56), during which period he focused his attention on regions that produced black tea (now firmly established as Britain’s favoured tea). It was an eventful expedition which took place during the early period of the Taiping Rebellion. Fortune’s own account of this expedition, Residence among the Chinese (1857), refers to the current contract. He records that the nine men were “natives of the prince of Kiangse [Jiangxi]”, which was the source of Moning and Ning-chow teas. The latter were of particular interest to Fortune, as the region had previously specialised in green tea until an enterprising local merchant successfully switched production to high quality black tea for the export market:

“From the high character these Ning-chow teas had acquired in foreign markets I was well-pleased in being able to engage the services of manufacturers from that district. An engagement was drawn up in English and Chinese by Mr Sinclair, interpreter to the Consulate, which was signed by the men and myself; an advance of one hundred dollars was given to each man for the support of their families during their absence, and thye were desired to hold themselves in readiness to sail by the first steamer. An old mandarin with a white button, a native of Kiangse, and head of the Kiangse hong in Shanghae, attended with them men at the Consulate, and became security for them at the time that each man received his advance of wages.”