The Quest for Camellia sinensis: Joseph Banks, the State & EIC | Jordan Goodman & Josepha Richard

Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, 1778 to 1820, made friends easily, but when it came to his dealings with the East India Company, the going was tough. No subject provoked as much acrimony as the idea of transferring the tea plant, Camellia sinensis, from China to the Company’s possessions in India. Charles Jenkinson, the President of the Board of Trade, first brought his concerns to Banks’s attention in 1788, when he wrote to him pointing out that the supply of tea, all of it from China, was a drain on the country’s silver reserves and since the level of consumption could not be controlled, the only solution was for Britain to grow the plant itself. He asked Banks to give his opinion on the practicality of the idea, given that the Western presence in China was severely restricted. Banks told him what he knew (and did not know) about tea, and gave him his opinion on the practicalities of a tea transfer, which was then shared with the East India Company. This paper explores what Banks knew about tea; the range of his sources - textual, representational and oral - from which he assembled his facts; his opinions on a tea transfer; and especially his difficult relationship, covering a period of three decades, with the East India Company over what to do about tea. Jordan Goodman is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London. He has published widely in the fields of economic history, the history of science, medicine and technology, and cultural history. His latest articles appeared in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (2017); Journal for Maritime Research (2019); and Revista Scientia Insularum (2020). His book, Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors – An Adventurous History of Botany, was published in 2020 (paperback 2021) by William Collins/HarperCollins. Josepha Richard was an Oak Spring Garden Foundation Stacy Lloyd III fellow in 2020, and is currently Assistant Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art and an Honorary Research fellow in History at the University of Bristol. As an historian and art historian of the China Trade, she specialises on landscape paintings and gardens in Guangzhou during the Canton System (1757-1842), and has been focusing on 18-19th century Sino-Western botanical exchanges as part of her ongoing work for the Blake Project at Oak Spring Garden Foundation. About the conference: This international meeting addressed natural, cultural and social histories of tea between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Arguably the first truly modern globalised commodity, the process by which tea attained such pre-eminence depended not just upon the commercial efforts of merchants, but also upon a cultural framework of knowledge and practice constructed primarily in China, Britain, Europe, and India. Among other topics, the meeting explored natural histories of the tea plant; the mobility of Chinese tea and porcelain; European attempts to cultivate tea; imaginaries of tea in literature and art; tea and material culture; tea, identity, and the formation of the British Empire. This meeting was co-sponsored by the Linnean Society of London, Syracuse University (USA), and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (USA). The conference organisers would also like to thank Todd B. Rubin for his generous support. Hosted by the Linnean Society of London and organised by Richard Coulton (QMUL), Jordan Goodman (UCL), and Romita Ray (Syracuse University). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Linnean Society works to inform, involve and inspire people of all ages about nature and its wider interactions through our collections, programmes and publications. Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). https://www.linnean.org Follow us on social media:   / linneansociety     / linneansociety     / linneansociety