Trading Empires and trade routes
Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China
In my last blog post, I mentioned Lord Macartney’s embassy to China in 1793. It was an aside to a post that was itself not much more than an aside, but, as so often happens around here, one story led me to another. A beautiful copy of the journal Macartney kept about his time in…
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From the Archives: Industrial Espionage
Reading Sarah Rose’s account of how British botanist Robert Fortune smuggled tea plants, and tea workers, out of China in the nineteenth century, made me think about another case of materials smuggled to end a Chinese monopoly. This first ran in 2012. The Chinese produced luxury silk fabrics for several thousand years before they began…
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For All the Tea in China
A decade or more ago, I picked up For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History by Sarah Rose from the free box that used to sit outside a used bookstore down the street from my office.* And then it sat on my shelf, unread. I will…
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