With Kim Walker, Tinde van Andel, Lucy Inglis, Aurora Prehn and Anushka Tay
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
With Kim Walker, Tinde van Andel, Lucy Inglis, Aurora Prehn and Anushka Tay
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
With Kim Walker, Tinde van Andel, Lucy Inglis, Aurora Prehn and Anushka Tay
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
With Kim Walker, Tinde van Andel, Lucy Inglis, Aurora Prehn and Anushka Tay
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk
Many plants have been employed as conduits acting on behalf of human desire, complicit in a myriad of atrocities fulfilling political agenda, acting as assassins or weapons of war, whilst also saving lives and revolutionizing our standard of living. Here we explore some of the ways that plants have changed the course of history.
The bark of various species of CINCHONA contain antimalarial alkaloids, the most famous being quinine. After it was discovered to be the only known treatment for malaria in Europe in the early 1600s, use of the ‘Fever Tree’ expanded as empires grew. Quinine has been called a ‘tool of imperialism’, the need
for governments to keep military personnel and workers healthy in newly colonised tropical areas drove the tree to be cultivated on a mass scale. By 1860, the Dutch, in Indonesia, and British, in India, had smuggled plants out under the justification that it was a ‘service to humanity’ to establish plantations and provide
medicines for the world. While there is no doubt that quinine saved many lives, the impacts it had on the world are multi-layered.
Kim Walker is a medical herblalist and author of many books, including Just The Tonic, Kew Publishing, 2019.
→ kimwalkerresearch.com
Suriname Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped into the rainforest, grow hundreds of rice varieties. Most of these are Asian RICE (Oryza sativa) and a few are African rice (O. glaberrima), but they differ substantially from modern, commercial cultivars. During the late 17th and 18th century, the
Dutch imported rice from South Carolina to feed their captives. After the abolishment of slavery, contract laborers from India and Indonesia were recruited to work on the abandoned plantations. According to Maroon oral history, however, their female ancestors smuggled rice seeds in their hair when they left Africa, and collected leftover grains from the slave ships. They secretly planted these in provision gardens behind the plantations, and quickly braided them in the hair before escaping into the forest. Some runaways encountered rice fields during their flight to freedom, and took these grains along. Maroons still grow rice varieties that are named after these women: Sapali, Milly, and Paanza. Modern molecular techniques can reveal the geographical origin of these rice types, and connect Maroon oral history with the DNA of their rice.
Tinde van Andel is a Special Professor Ethnobotany at Wageningen University and Senior Researcher at Naturalis → naturalis.nl
The Opium Wars in the middle of the nineteenth century helped lay the foundations of Hong Kong, and of modern China. The drug has played a key role in conflicts from the American Civil War, to Vietnam and to Afghanistan, where Camp Bastion was a pioneering field hospital in the middle of the world’s largest illicit POPPY plantations. Scientifically, opium and its many derivatives lie at the heart of the surgical and pharmaceutical industries. Socially, the drug is both a tremendous force for good and an indescribable evil. It gives comfort to millions daily as part of a lucrative healthcare system, yet it creates addictions that fuel the worst kinds of degradation and exploitation, and plays a major role in all layers of worldwide crime. Our relationship with opium is a deep-seated part of our human history, and a critical part of our future.
Courtesy of the author, Lucy Inglis Milk of Paradise:A History of Opium. Pan Macmillan, 2018 → @lucyinglis
TEA, the beverage and plant of Camellia sinensis, has changed the course of history throughout its diaspora. Spreading from its biocultural origin in the mountains and forests of what today is Northeast India, Northern Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Southwest China, tea, humans and earth have intimately coevolved over the past 5,000 years. Tea’s consumption and cultivation diaspora sped up with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century who carried leaves via ship around the world. By the 19th century, their demands exceeded their supply from China resulting in the transporting of Chinese seeds,
and newly found Indian tea by the British to existing colonies, to control the market. Around 50 years after the first sale of Indian grown tea in London in 1839 did India exceed China in tea exports ending the latter’s monopoly and top exporter status till the 21st century. The commercial use of the assamica variety began a new chapter in our relationship with tea and landscapes across India, Sri Lanka and numerous others, which today supply the majority of the black
tea market. Today, tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide after water.
Aurora Prehn is currently researching the tea and teaware objects in the Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
→ auroraprehn.com
On the Indian subcontinent, a woman deftly pleats a long length of bright COTTON into her sari, pulls the end of the cloth over her shoulder, veils her face with its gauzy edge. Oceans away, Black hands reach towards a fluffy white sphere. Cruel days beneath a hot sun with freedom a dream and a fight away. From our
most intimate moments through our most vulnerable, cotton plays a steadfast role. The plant’s fibre is breathable, absorbent, and takes dye brilliantly. It can be laundered at high temperatures, keeping it hygienic. Find it knitted up into a baby’s first swaddling cloths and in a roll of plain-weave bandages. Plantation
to sweatshop: cloth and its profits drove the mechanical innovations of the Industrial Revolution: Desire for bright, colourful printed cotton cloth from India was wildly popular in 19th-century England, and motivated European colonial mercantile expansion across the globe. Cotton threads wound faster and cheaper, and spun us towards the present.
Anushka Tay is a designer and researcher, intrigued by the connections between cloth, culture and migration.
→ anushkatay.co.uk