Remarkable Lives

A company made by men and its actions, The East India Company members achieved remarkable footprints.

Robert Fortune

Robert fortune was a botanist working for The Royal Horticultural Society, who had spent much time in China.  Fortune made many excursions to the northern provinces in China and encountered many harrowing adventures along the way.  From angry mobs caught up in a xenophobic frenzy, to killer storms in the Yellow Sea, to pirates on the Yangtze River, he managed to survive them all.

He eventfully became proficient enough in speaking Mandarin that he was able wear local dress and move among the populous unnoticed. By shaving his head and adopting a ponytail, this rather stern Scotsman was able to blend in.  So well in fact, that he was able to enter the forbidden city of Souchow (now Wuhsien) unchallenged. 

Because of Fortune’s past experience in China, the East India Company sent Dr John Forbes to the gardens at Chiswick to talk with Fortune about their plan to export both the tea plants and growing techniques of China to India.  Fortune was enlisted by The Company to go to China and bring back as many quality tea plants and seeds as he could; Fortune would also learn as much as he could about tea production from the Chinese.  At the time China was the world power in tea production and guarded its secrets jealousy.

Fortunes efforts resulted in the shipment of well over 20,000 plants and seedlings, in Wardian cases, to the Himalayas.  Thus was established the tea industry in Darjeeling and how India started its journey to be the tea super power it is today.

Elihu Yale

Elihu Yale was an official of The East India Company, and benefactor of Yale University.  Born in Massachusetts Elihu Yale was taken to London at the age of three and never returned to America. 

In 1671 Yale began working for The East India Company and arrived the following year in Madras.  From a fairly low-ranking position he worked his way up by 1687 to become governor of Fort Saint George, The East India Company’s installation at Madras.  He was eventually removed on the account of self-aggrandisement at company expense, but Elihu Yale still returned with a sizable fortune to England.  In London he entered the diamond trade, but he devoted a good deal of his time and money to philanthropy.

Yale made his first gift (a donation of 32 books) to the institution in 1713, when it was known as the Collegiate School at Saybrook.  Later, in 1718, Cotton Mather wrote to Yale, hinting broadly that the Saybrook school—which had recently moved to New Haven—could be renamed in Yale’s honour in gratitude for another sizable gift. 

Yale responded with a gift of more books, a portrait of George I, and a variety of textiles from The East Indies.  The gifts were sold in Boston for some £800, and the money was used to construct a building called Yale College in New Haven.  By its charter of 1745, the entire institution was named Yale University.  Yale was buried at Wrexham in North Wales. On April 5, 1999, the university recognised the 350th anniversary of his birthday.