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Ale's avatar

Very fascinating story! Good to remember the lives of those that have made the trade possible in the first place. Their skills were in high demand one day and completely disregarded few years later.

The modus operandi of the British seems to emerge as a quite unethical pattern of behaviour already seen with tea plantations in Asia. The victim in that case was China's millennial experience with tea cultivation, that British stole and copied to create enormous productions in India.

Would be great to know more about the orchids and if there was any trade related stories around those. Kew Gardens still has a wide collection of orchids to these days!

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Vince Hancock's avatar

You should credit one of your major sources for the first section about the demand for rubber, Brazil, and Henry Wickham's ruse:

pp. 88-89, Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano, Serpent's Tail, 2009 (first published in English in 1973)

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