Robert Fortune, Tea Thief : the Man, the Legend….the Myth
Museums, books, magazines, blogs etc. characterise Robert Fortune as an intrepid plant-hunter and master of disguise, a ‘daring ‘industrial/corporate spy’ who in 1851 smuggled 20,000 tea plants and trade secrets out of China, the man who broke China’s tea monopoly and transformed Indian (Assam, and even Darjeeling) tea, and the man who used the newly invented Wardian-cases to transport his plants in order to pull off ‘history’s greatest act of corporate espionage’. Articles about Robert Fortune are written under sensationalist headlines like “The Great Tea Heist”; ‘The Great British Spy who cracked the Secret of Chinese Tea’; and “How England Stole Tea From China”
In an age of debate on intellectual property (and China), the irony writes itself.
But what if I told you the truth was pretty far from this? That the world has fallen for a story of intrigue and deception. The basics are correct. Fortune’s two factual books about his travels to China sold very well - best sellers almost - with the Victorian public. They went to second and third editions and were even translated to other languages. But the wider impacts of his trips to China (most notably the trip he made to China in 1848-1851) are rather - how can I say this - exaggerated.
So what’s the truth of the matter? Here’s what articles credit to Mr Fortune (or more accurately debit).
Myth 1 : Robert Fortune was the first to go to China in search of tea seeds and plants.
Reality : Categorically no. As much as twenty years before Fortune set foot in China in the 1840s, others had already been there, done that, and shipped the seeds.
The Dutch got there early. In the 1820s, the gloriously named Jacobus Isidorus Lodewijk Levien (or J. J. L. L. for short!) Jacobson, of the Netherlands Trading Society made multiple runs to China (and Japan) for seed, plants, tools and skilled workers, and established tea on Java’s uplands. By the mid‑1830s Java already counted its tea bushes in the ‘millions’. Probably Jacobson should really wear the ‘tea thief’ crown.
But Jacobson was hired by the Dutch East India Company. Surely Robert Fortune can be classified as the first Englishman (well, Scot actually) to go where no-one had boldly gone before? Again, no. The British East India Company’s Tea Committee, in 1834, sent its Secretary, George James Gordon, together with an interpreter Karl Gützlaff, to the Amoy/Anxi tea hills to procure seed and know‑how. Their first large consignment of ‘80,000 tea seeds’ reached Calcutta Botanic Garden in January 1835 - thirteen years before Fortune’s East India Company funded journey.. From there, seed and seedlings were distributed to Assam, the ‘Himalayan nurseries’ (Kumaon, Garhwal, Dehra Dún), and to the South.
So when Fortune appears on the scene, 14 years or so after George J Gordon, India already has Chinese stock growing, nurseries operating, and tea being made.
Myth 2 : Fortune ‘stole’ 20,000 tea plants from China.
Reality: No plants were stolen. By his own account, Fortune refers to ‘procuring’ and ‘buying’ tea seeds in his book. Certainly it was not allowed to bring plants or seeds out of China so they had to be smuggled, which is somewhat different to stealing perhaps. As for plants. Well Fortune’s own narrative makes clear that he ‘sowed seed into Wardian cases’ and many ‘germinated during the voyage’. What arrived were largely ‘seedlings’, not armfuls of mature, uprooted bushes. Further, Fortune was definitely not allowed to be more than a day’s journey outside the treaty ports that were open for trade. He broke this rule. But there was no sense in which Fortune was a thief in the night, sneaking into tea gardens.
However, long before Fortune was despatching his seeds, George J. Gordon had brought out ‘80,000 seeds’ (in 1835), and Jacobson in Java had already planted ‘millions’ of seeds. But again, no thievery. George J Gordon refers to procuring seeds - and took gold with him with which to exchange
Myth 3: Fortune ‘introduced’ tea to India.
Reality: Tea was already in the ground. The Calcutta Botanical Garden raised George J Gordon’s China seed and sent some of the stock to Assam (20,000 plants were sent to Assam with 8,000 surviving the journey) and the Himalayan nurseries. And Robert Bruce had already made his brother, Charles, aware of a varietal of the tea plant growing wild in Assam. Fortune’s consignments were an addition, not the birth. The ‘Great Tea Heist’ was already well underway.
Myth 4: Fortune took tea to Darjeeling.
Reality: The East India Company were initially interested in Darjeeling as a place for a sanatorium. In terms of tea though, early Darjeeling plantings drew on the Chinese seed that was growing in Kumaon (from George J Gordon’s trips) under government distribution. In fact in 1841 it was Dr Archibald Campbell who brought Chinese seed from Kumaon and started growing tea near his bungalow at Beechwood, Darjeeling; by 1852 officials were already noting healthy China and Assam plants at Beechwood and nearby Lebong plots. It was in 1856 that the tea industry was established as a commercial enterprise in Darjeeling.
Fortune advised on tea growing in Darjeeling; but there’s no evidence that his own consignments were planted there.
Myth 5: Indian tea would not have been possible without Wardian cases. They ‘created’ Indian tea.
Reality: These airtight glass containers improved survival and logistics, yes. But by 1851 – when Fortune’s Wardian cases reached Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh ‘in a very healthy state’ with 12,838 plants (and more sprouting) – something like two million bushes from earlier imports were already established across the government plantations in India. Indian tea had already been ‘created’ and was thriving. And in any case (pun intended), the man to thank for the Wardian case was Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward (1791-1868). Ward was a London physician and plant enthusiast. The Wardian case was in use by 1841, by Kew, for seed and plant global travel, ten years before Fortune needed them to transport his seeds.
Myth 6: Fortune was the unrivalled authority on tea cultivation as well as black‑tea processing..
Reality: Dr William Jameson, Superintendent of the government plantations certainly would beg to differ on that score After his visits to the tea plantations around Saharanpur in 1851 (at which point around 660 acres was under cultivation) and again in 1856, Fortune wrote reports on the plantations’ conditions. Dr Jameson’s response was scathing. He declared “I may at once state that every suggestion made in the Report for improving the Plantation has already been carried out, and many of them for years.” and also “...I think, with the raw materials I (Jameson) possess, much has been done. All the suggestions made by Mr. Fortune are no novelties to us” And Jameson later wrote about Fortune ‘he never saw black tea made in China’ and that his ‘practical knowledge of coarse black teas came from Indian factories.’
Myth 7: through his travels, Fortune single‑handedly raised the quality of Indian tea with superior Bohea stock.
Reality : Terroir matters. George J Gordon brought back bohea stock when he travelled to the Amoy district well before Fortune’s travels. Gordon notes while in Amoy ‘We found that one of the seed contractors had dispatched a quantity of Bohea seeds, arrived during our absence, with a letter stating expectation of being able to send a further supply and to procure cultivators, who would join the ship in the 11th or 12th month.’
Also by this time, contemporary planters had concluded that “green” and “black” tea plants, and the Amoy/Bohea stock, were ‘varieties of the same species’; performance depended more on ‘site, altitude and husbandry’ than on a handful of ‘best’ varieties.
Myth 8: Fortune brought from China eight men who knew how to cultivate and process tea. They were the first of their kind in India.
Reality : Fortune did indeed travel with eight Chinese tea workers on his 1851 return to Calcutta (the Lady Mary Wood passenger list shows “Robert Fortune … and eight Chinese men”; he later brought additional cohorts). But they were not the first Chinese tea makers in India. Chinese “tea-planters/tea-makers” were already at work in Assam in 1836, recruited through George J. Gordon: a contemporary press note reported tea made at Sadiya by “Chinese tea-planters brought round by Mr Gordon,” and industry histories record Charles Bruce being “aided by Chinese workmen procured by Gordon.” Scholarly work on labour recruitment likewise traces Chinese workers arriving in 1834–39—well before Fortune’s trips.
Myth 9: Fortune was a master of Mandarin in flawless disguise – and therefore a kind of botanical spy‑hero.
Reality: Absolutely Yes! And who can resist this image? The Chinese dress, the shaved head, the pony tail, and partial disguise made for a great Victorian story. And it’s probably this that has made Robert Fortune a legend. How lovely to exhilarate in the annals of time with such a reputation. Thank goodness (I imagine him saying) I wrote those books of my travels. Thank goodness I disgused myself. Who knew it would be this this which carried me forward into magazines, museums, books and blogs for eternity. And it would be this which is recounted in the tea history tours put on by the owner of this website.
Certainly Fortune was a skilful, intrepid plant hunter, a lively writer, and a capable organiser. He did not single‑handedly ‘steal China’s tea’, nor did he conjure Indian tea from thin air. He added to a long, bureaucratic, and very public programme begun in 1834–35 by the East India Company Tea Committee – and he added less than the legend suggests. If anything the real tea thief is George J Gordon, and in my tea history tours now, ‘Empire in a Cup’, I will be talking about the real Tea Thief - George J Gordon. If only historical records had left a bit more information about him and even what he looked like!