British Imperialism and its Legacies: Economic Botany
- Comments
-
Glasgow Museums has a collection of plants that reflect the role of economic botany in European nations’ economies which reached peak importance during the days of global exploration and colonisation, notably during the 1700s and 1800s. Many of today’s familiar plants and derived products come from this period, including tea, coffee, cocoa, rubber, tropical hardwoods, sugar, cotton and many herbs and spices.
Voyages of discovery revealed new plants and associated products that soon became highly desirable commodities in Europe. Many of these plants were used by the indigenous people of these newly explored lands, and European powers were quick to see the commercial benefits of exploiting them. As well as bringing benefits to consumers, immense wealth was created for certain individuals and companies, contrasting with the negative impact on indigenous people’s lives. This resulted in some of the darkest and cruellest exploitations of the colonial period.
The spice trade was a key driver of global expansion with devastating consequences for indigenous people and natural habitats. Species familiar today, such as ginger, turmeric, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom, were rare and desirable and Arab traders kept their sources carefully guarded secrets. However, following the earliest voyages of discovery, European powers, notably the British and the Dutch, were quick to take control of these markets, which became very profitable enterprises.
Following early trading with China, the British Empire, in the guise of the East India Company, was keen to develop its own source of tea, now a desirable and fashionable commodity, and thus evade the cost of importing from China. One serious consequence of this was the Opium Wars, which forced China to accept unfavourable trading conditions and led to serious opium addiction for many Chinese people. The plant in our collection (NHB.1882.31.cqm) is linked to the experimental gardens set up in northern India in the 1830s. Samples of native tea species were bred and subsequently used to establish commercial plantations, where wealthy owners exploited local labourers in often very poor work conditions. Additionally, large tracts of land were seized from indigenous peoples, resulting in the loss of natural habitats.
In the New World the cultivation of sugarcane, and later cotton, was a major driving force behind the transatlantic slave trade. Plantations in the Caribbean and southern US states exploited enslaved people from Africa. Even after emancipation, formerly enslaved people had to endure poor working conditions and financial hardship. Today agricultural working conditions remain harsh for many people across the globe.The exploitation of rubber in the early 1800s had a devastating impact on thousands of indigenous people in the Amazon region. Later that century, to meet growing demands in western markets, rubber plants were taken from South America to grow in southern Asia, notably Malaysia, where large colonial-owned estates were planted and local labour exploited, or desperate people brought in from other lands. Large areas of natural habitat were lost.
- Broader term
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Exploitation of nature
- Narrower term
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Apluda communis collected by Robert Wight
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Cinchona sp. (Quinine)
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Corchorus spp. (Jute)
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Cotton (Gossypium sp.)
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Eucalyptus sp. (Gum tree)
British Imperialism and its Legacies: Saccharum sp. (Sugarcane)