Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon, by Angela McCarthy and T. M. Devine, Manchester University Press, £25

Review by Trevor Royle

EVERY so often a book comes along which makes you sit up and take notice, not just because the story is so compelling but also because it offers an entirely fresh approach based either on virgin evidence or on a new way of addressing the subject. Angela McCarthy and Tom Devine’s account of the life and career of James Taylor is just such an enterprise and very good it is too. On first inspection, it seems to be the familiar tale of a lad of parts, in his case from Auchenblae in the Mearns, who makes good by working hard, taking his chances and then leaving his native land in 1851 to find fame and fortune in what was Ceylon and later became Sri Lanka.

So far so normal – the authors point out that Scots were “master builders par excellence” of the island’s economy in the late 19th century – but young James Taylor offers a somewhat different experience. Although he was single-handedly responsible for creating a new industry in the production of tea in Sri Lanka where his name is still revered, his story has been largely forgotten in the land of his birth. Most people will have heard of his fellow Scot the swashbuckling Thomas Lipton who became a millionaire largely from his exploitation of Ceylon tea and his aggressive marketing techniques but the name of James Taylor was little more than a historical footnote other than in specialist or scientific publications.

There are many reasons why this should have been the outcome for a life of general decency and solid industry. One is that Taylor was not particularly old when he died in May 1892 at the youngish age of 57; another is that he spent most of his life abroad and did not get the chance to return to Scotland to enjoy the fruits of his labours. A more pressing explanation is that his death was shrouded in some mystery and for all the authors’ efforts they have failed to shed much light on what happened, other than a tantalising supposition that his association with a local Tamil girl may have told against him. All that is known is that Taylor was suddenly sacked by the management of the Loolecondera estate for no apparent reason and died six months later, the most probable cause being dysentery, although at the time of his demise a “broken heart” was also posited as a cause.

Fortunately for posterity and for Taylor’s future reputation he was an avid correspondent and his letters home to his family in Auchenblae, especially those to his father, provide authentic evidence of his life as a tea planter in the heyday of the British Empire. Together with his equally graphic photograph albums they are the mainstay of the authors’ research and have helped to transform the biography from a “shilling life” into a work of real historical importance. With ample reason Professors McCarthy and Devine claim that “these collective sources are by far the richest archive we have come across for a 19th century migrant of humble origin from Scotland.”

They have certainly been used to advantageous effect, helping to build up a realistic picture of what life was like for a young man from a modest but comfortable rural background who left home and family to seek out a new life in an exotic neck of the woods. Do not expect too many tales of derring-do or romantic scenes of the high noon of empire, although both are present in some of his letters. Instead, Taylor looked at life around him as he found it and not through the prism of false sentimentality. While he was censorious about the events of the mutiny which broke out in neighbouring India in 1857 he was agreeably interested in the ethnic diversity of his adopted home and he was fascinated by its flora and fauna. It was perhaps this attraction that led him in the 1860s to turn his attention to the possibilities of tea cultivation, a radical proposition given that the island’s principal crop was coffee. In true pioneering spirit necessity was the mother of invention: at the height of the island’s prosperity the coffee crop was threatened by a leaf disease known as “coffee rust” and slowly but surely the industry was being demolished.

That the plague did not wipe out the island’s economy was entirely due to Taylor who had begun his career cultivating coffee. As an experiment and following a visit to India he began to experiment with tea, planting 19 acres with no specialist equipment and relying on his expertise and the help of his labourers who rolled the tea-leaves by hand on his veranda and dried them in clay ovens over charcoal fires. For a small-scale operation, it was successful and Taylor never looked back. In 1872 he created a proper teahouse with Ceylon’s first rolling machine which was built to his own design. Within three years there were 1,100 acres given over to tea and by 1890, there were 220,000 acres.

All this was progress and for the European planters who constituted less than one per cent of the population it was hugely profitable. But poor Taylor garnered no reward and went to his grave unsung. It is to the authors’ credit that they have rescued him from unnecessary oblivion in this hugely enjoyable and expressive account of a life well lived.