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00:00The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, this year celebrating a 250th anniversary, are best
00:13known as the favourite picnic spot to the west of London.
00:18Famous for the pagoda, and the iconic palm house, and also famous of course for their
00:24stupendous collection of plants of all different shapes and sizes.
00:34I wanted to do some digging around, to hunt to the archives, and do a little detective
00:40work to see what lies behind these lawns and immaculate flower beds.
00:442,000 plants are discovered every year still, and what I found was not altogether what you
00:51might expect.
00:52My goodness here, look at this.
00:55It's a story of passion, politics, and bloody battles that made this garden central to a
01:02struggle for world domination.
01:05You might never see Kew in quite the same way again.
01:22For a historian, Kew is a goldmine, not just a collection of plants, Kew also has an extraordinary
01:32archive.
01:33This is a herbal that dates from 1633, and a general history of plants, a wonderful document.
01:44And here are letters from Charles Darwin, written, this one, when he was aboard the
01:48Beagle, dated 1833, and it's signed down there, Charles Darwin, and a wonderful collection
01:55of photographs and prints.
01:57This one is sensational, it's a very early photograph, showing a palm house under construction,
02:04must date from the late 1840s.
02:12Not a hotbed of political intrigue at first glance, no obvious signs of a battle for world
02:17domination.
02:20But I'm intrigued by a line written by William Thistleton Dyer, a former director of the
02:25gardens.
02:31He wrote, we at Kew feel the weight of empire more than they do in Downing Street.
02:38He tried to claim the weight, the might, the fate of empire, resting here, at Kew.
02:55I've arranged to meet Carolyn Fry, an author and journalist.
03:02She's been doing some of her own research into Kew's mysterious links with empire.
03:06So was Thistleton Dyer overstating the case?
03:09Not at all.
03:10Towards the end of the 19th century, Kew was acting as a hub, corresponding with some 30
03:15or so gardens around the world, with the idea that they would support the British Empire
03:20by growing plants that could be of economic value in the places where the climate was
03:24most suitable.
03:25Tell me about the scale of the operation.
03:27Well, the scale was immense.
03:29I mean, if you think that when the British Empire was at its greatest extent, it was
03:33holding sway over a quarter of the world's population.
03:36So Kew's operation was immense.
03:37The beginning of the 19th century, much of the world was untouched and its plants unknown.
03:42By the end of the 19th century, it had been pretty well ransacked.
03:45So the people at Kew must have worked very closely with government.
03:48This was like a power base, really.
03:49Yes, very much so.
03:50It was very much at the heart of empire.
03:52Its directors were in the heart of government, really, and able to offer advice on plants,
03:57and so were really in the thick of things.
04:02I think this is fascinating.
04:04Kew, a place of picnics and day trips, turns out to have been a world of big money and
04:10high politics.
04:18I want to know how Kew came to be tied up with government and empire.
04:22To discover how these gardens came to have the expertise, the technology, and the sheer
04:27imagination to pull off projects that influenced the lives of millions of people all over the
04:33world.
04:39This is going to require some digging into the earliest days of the garden, right back
04:44into the origin of Kew.
04:55The fields that reach down to the Thames have been laid out as gardens since the 17th century.
05:01But it was not until 1759, 250 years ago, that Kew began to emerge as an international
05:08collection, when Princess Augusta aspired to create a garden containing all the plants
05:14known on earth.
05:16There's not much left today that Princess Augusta would recognise.
05:22A few follies, such as a pagoda, and this wonderful building behind me, built in the
05:27early 17th century, now known as Kew Palace.
05:31Although all has changed tremendously, the gardens were still very impressive.
05:50One contemporary writer described it as, the paradise of our world, where all plants are
05:56found, that money or interest can procure.
06:08There are a few slender links with Augusta's garden.
06:11This tree is one of them.
06:13There are in fact five ancient trees in Kew, they're now called the old lions.
06:20This particular, wonderful Nile specimen is a black locust, planted for Princess Augusta
06:27in 1762.
06:33The garden was not just a royal collection, it was also a playground for Augusta's children,
06:41including the prince destined to be King George III.
06:47It's tempting to think of the young George, sitting here, beneath his actual tree, contemplating
06:55the world, or indeed, recovering here from one of those bouts of mental illness that
07:01haunted his later life.
07:13When George inherited the garden, he wanted to turn it into a bold statement, a symbol
07:21of his power and influence.
07:24He wanted plants displayed from the farthest reaches of his empire.
07:34On the 12th of July, 1771, HMS Endeavour arrived back from a three-year voyage of exploration
07:41around the world.
07:44Tales of Captain Cook's adventures swept through London.
07:48On the journey with Cook was a young man, a botanist, called Joseph Banks.
07:54The king, always intrigued by new botanical discoveries, summoned Banks to Kew.
08:00The young man turned out to be a very able and enthusiastic scientist, and more to the
08:05point, a very good storyteller.
08:08Indeed, so impressed was the king with the young botanist that he invited Banks to take
08:14charge of the royal garden.
08:31It was perhaps the most significant appointment in the history of Kew Gardens.
08:36Joseph Banks was a man who knew how to use his powerful connections to make things happen.
08:44In later life, he was to become the longest-serving president of the royal society.
08:50It's here that I've come to meet Neil Chambers, the man who knows Banks better than anyone
08:57alive, having spent the last eight years editing over 4,000 of his letters.
09:02What sort of man was Joseph Banks?
09:06He was wealthy, a member of the landed elite, but also, I think, a very determined man.
09:14But I suppose he was someone who would say, he's not what you know, he's who you know.
09:17Yes, Banks is a great fixer, he's an organiser, and he organises people and projects in much
09:25the way he organised and arranged plants, really.
09:29This is very much a strong part of his character, so you have to see Banks making connections
09:35between the king, who was his great patron at Kew, and also between government ministers
09:40and others with whom he meets, and he sells the idea of science being useful to the business
09:47of empire.
09:48The thing to remember here is that there is no civil service at this stage, no part of
09:52it that would concentrate on exploration, voyages and discovery.
09:56So in the absence of people like that, Banks, as a private individual, steps in and fulfils
10:01that role.
10:04Before Banks, the random acquisition of exotic plants in Kew's collection had come as gifts
10:10from other botanic gardens, or brought home by travellers on state business.
10:20Banks was to usher in a new era.
10:23Plant hunters sponsored by the king.
10:54The first full-time hunter in Kew's history was Francis Masson.
11:00And here it is, one of Masson's discoveries from his first journey to the Cape of Good
11:07Hope.
11:08It's called Enceladus Altensteinii, and this isn't a descendant of the plant, this is the
11:17actual plant itself.
11:19Incredible.
11:20It's well over 200 years old.
11:24Now known as the oldest pot plant in the world.
11:30This plant was growing when the Declaration of Independence was signed.
11:35This plant older than the United States of America.
11:40And this old chap keeps a secret.
11:43Europe in the 18th century was riven with duplicity, mistrust and deceit, as nations
11:49competed to expand their empires.
11:55When Francis Masson was on the Cape collecting plants, it was natural that he would learn
12:00about the people and the geography he encountered.
12:03This information would later prove most interesting to the British government when it came to
12:08seize the plant.
12:10It was in this fierce heat of intense international rivalry that Banks put an idea to the king.
12:17He wanted to move an entire species halfway around the world.
12:23It was a proposal that was controversial, but it was the right thing to do.
12:28It was the right thing to do, and it was the right thing to do, and it was the right thing
12:32to do, and it was the right thing to do.
12:35Banks wanted to move an entire species halfway around the world.
12:40It was a proposal that was complex, difficult and, many thought, doomed to failure.
12:54Banks's plan was revolutionary.
12:56I've come to Brixton Market in South London in search of the unlikely plant that inspired
13:03such an extraordinary scheme.
13:15Hello.
13:17Do you have any breadfruit?
13:19Yeah, I have breadfruit over here.
13:21Over here?
13:23Yeah.
13:25Here, please.
13:27Good heavens.
13:29This is breadfruit.
13:31So how much is it?
13:33It's £1.49.
13:35Quite a weight, I suppose.
13:37£1.49?
13:39That's £4.10, sir.
13:41Oh, it's quite expensive.
13:45I'm sure it tastes good if it has.
13:49£4.10?
14:05Joseph Banks had first encountered breadfruit on the Endeavour voyage to the tiny Pacific
14:09island of Tahiti.
14:11There he'd seen whole families living from the fruit of a single tree.
14:16Hello.
14:18Hello, sir.
14:20I've been told you can cook my breadfruit for me.
14:22Oh, yeah, breadfruit.
14:24Sure I can cook your breadfruit for you?
14:26You can do it, yes.
14:28Wonderful.
14:30I mean, how do you cook it?
14:32Do you bake it, boil it?
14:34Breadfruit is good for roasting, actually.
14:36The traditional way is to do it on a wood fire,
14:38but put it in the oven.
14:40It's good to go just like that.
14:42OK.
14:44Thank you very much indeed.
14:46Thank you, sir.
14:53In the 18th century, the British islands in the West Indies were crucial to the
14:57Empire, growing valuable sugar cane for export.
15:07It was an economy dependent on slavery.
15:10But following American independence, the slave owners had a problem.
15:17The supply of American wheat to make bread to feed their slaves faltered,
15:21and as a result, the West Indies sugar trade was threatened with collapse.
15:29Banks suggested the crisis could be solved by replacing bread with a
15:33plentiful supply of breadfruit, translocated over 10,000 miles from
15:39Tahiti to the West Indies.
15:44Is it ready?
15:46Yes, the breadfruit is ready.
15:48I've never had one before, you see, so it's all very exciting.
15:50Definitely like this.
15:52I mean, do you tend to eat it just by itself?
15:54Yeah, you can eat by itself with a bit of salt.
15:56And maybe butter or something?
15:58Yes, salt, pepper, butter.
16:00So this is my first taste of this historic dish.
16:02Oh! It's very chewy.
16:04I mean, I like it.
16:06The consistency is very dense.
16:08Subtle taste, very interesting.
16:12Mmm.
16:14It's really good.
16:16It's another bit, do you think?
16:18Yeah.
16:20One could only imagine what the king made of a scheme to move a fruit
16:23he'd never heard of from an island he'd never seen to a country
16:26he could scarcely imagine.
16:28But this king liked a challenge.
16:38On the 23rd of December, 1787,
16:41Captain William Bly set sail on HMS Bounty for Tahiti.
16:48It was to become one of the most famous voyages ever to take place
16:51on the high seas.
16:54Banks had planned everything in meticulous detail.
16:59He rethought the design of the Bounty,
17:01reasoning that the young breadfruit plants
17:03would need maximum effort to survive.
17:05He rethought the design of the Bounty,
17:07reasoning that the young breadfruit plants
17:09would need maximum exposure to light
17:11and minimum exposure to salt water.
17:13There was only one place on the ship that would do.
17:16The great cabin with its long windows,
17:19normally the private quarters of the captain.
17:25These drawings of the Bounty are fascinating.
17:28They show that the great cabin was extended
17:31so it occupied virtually a third of the length of the ship,
17:35so it could accommodate the maximum number of breadfruit.
17:39This was good for the mission,
17:41allowing the Bounty to carry the maximum number of pots of breadfruit,
17:45but not good for the captain.
17:47Not good for his comfort, not good for his authority.
17:50He had to mess in with the crew.
17:53This, of course, was a recipe for disaster.
18:05The journey took ten months,
18:07reaching Tahiti on 26th October 1788.
18:11Five months later,
18:131,015 potted specimens were ready to be loaded onto the Bounty
18:17for the journey to the West Indies.
18:22Anyone who's spent time in a tropical paradise
18:26will be familiar with a little voice saying,
18:30what if I never went back?
18:33So, four blithe men, five months in paradise,
18:37convinced them they didn't want to return
18:40to the disciplined life of the Royal Navy.
18:43They got used to Tahitian ways, to Tahitian women.
18:47And one man, the master's mason acting lieutenant,
18:52had married an Islander.
18:55His name was Fletcher Christian.
18:58Leaving Tahiti for the open sea was, for Bly's crew,
19:02like leaving paradise for hell.
19:07After just three weeks at sea, on 28th April 1789,
19:12Captain Bly awoke at first light to discover the worst.
19:21The mutiny on the Bounty had begun.
19:26Some of the crew, led by Fletcher Christian,
19:29had taken control of the ship.
19:37Captain Bly was abandoned in the middle of the Pacific
19:41and was left with a handful of men to take his chances
19:45navigating 4,000 miles of ocean back to safety.
19:49Banks had staked his reputation on Bly's expedition,
19:53so when he heard of the mutiny, he was not about to admit defeat.
20:04A year later, exonerated by a court-martial,
20:08Bly repeated the expedition with a new ship,
20:11again masterminded by Banks.
20:14And this time everything went to plan.
20:17Over 600 breadfruit trees were delivered
20:21to the slave owners of St Vincent and Jamaica.
20:27What's more, Bly had filled the ship for the return voyage
20:31and back in Britain presented Banks with the biggest collection
20:35of new species Kew had ever received.
20:39Ah, here it is, buried in the Kew record book,
20:43a list of plants brought home in HMS Providence by Captain Bly
20:48in 1793.
20:51There are well over 1,000 plants listed,
20:55including many plants not seen in Britain before.
20:59There are yam, bananas, a mango,
21:03and here, right at the top, listed under plants gathered in a Tahiti,
21:08a breadfruit.
21:10Four plants.
21:12This, of course, was an acquisition that was to make history at Kew.
21:18Now, it seems, there was to be no limit
21:21to the boldness of Banks's ambition.
21:24He imagined that breadfruit was only the start.
21:29Kew could, he argued,
21:31become a great botanical exchange house for the empire.
21:35It could collect seasoned plants from wherever they were growing,
21:39nurture them, and transfer them to wherever they were needed
21:43in the interests of empire.
21:46Key to Banks's plan was the establishment of satellite gardens
21:50throughout the British territories,
21:52receiving and looking after these new plants as necessary.
22:01Banks was always keen to promote and encourage
22:04the development of new gardens,
22:06and in 1786 played an instrumental role
22:10in the creation of what's been described
22:14as the greatest of all colonial botanical gardens.
22:25Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, India.
22:31Today, Calcutta is the second largest city in India.
22:36Bustling, vibrant and colourful.
22:44But everywhere you look,
22:46there are reminders of its colonial past.
22:51In the 1780s, Calcutta was under the rule
22:54of the British East India Company
22:56and was an increasingly important part of the British empire.
23:03When a botanic garden was proposed for Calcutta,
23:06the company turned to Banks for guidance.
23:09He gave the project his whole heart in support,
23:12giving advice on what might be grown there.
23:22And they planted these.
23:24This is a mahogany tree,
23:26and these were brought here from Honduras in 1793,
23:30though I must say the oldest tree now is about a hundred years old.
23:34This is very valuable wood, this mahogany.
23:36Very important for the cabinet-making industry.
23:39And these trees were taken throughout India and grown,
23:42and the wood used throughout the British empire.
23:45After this period, the gardens are becoming very important
23:49as an experimental centre,
23:51with plants being brought from throughout the tropics
23:54and into the country.
23:56And this is a very valuable wood, this mahogany.
23:59Very important for the cabinet-making industry.
24:03These trees were brought from throughout the tropics,
24:06and here they were tested and developed and utilised
24:09for their commercial potential.
24:16Today, the garden is popular with walkers
24:19and those just happy to watch the world go by.
24:23But you don't have to look far to find the ghosts of empire.
24:33This is one of the first places to store plant records
24:36from right across the subcontinent,
24:38in the heyday of the Botanic Garden.
24:46This is sensational here.
24:48So evocative and amazing.
24:52This is a wonderful piece of Victorian fireproof construction.
24:57Iron and brick arches, and wonderful here.
25:00These cabinets were displaying specimens of plants, books,
25:04paintings, all objects related to the collection.
25:09This really is one of the most striking
25:1219th-century interiors I've ever seen.
25:16Cast iron, beautiful decorated galleries,
25:19columns and a spiral staircase.
25:22And here, objects abandoned.
25:24There's letters and books, and my goodness here,
25:27this fantastic 19th-century publication
25:31showing different plants devoured by insects,
25:34damp through the monsoons.
25:37Glass photographs, negatives.
25:39I'll have a look, but it does seem to me
25:42that the weather has destroyed these.
25:44The chemicals have melted.
25:48Now, let's see, oh dear.
25:50It's very hard to see what this image shows,
25:54a landscape, trees, a view in Bengal somewhere,
25:58maybe the Botanic Gardens.
26:01What this does tell me, this building, of course,
26:04is that it's state-of-the-art construction,
26:07beautifully detailed, beautifully built.
26:09It does really confirm just how important
26:12the Calcutta Botanic Gardens were.
26:18By the end of Banks's life,
26:20she was central to an imperial network of gardens.
26:24It was the principal advisor to king and government
26:27on all matters botanical,
26:29and was firmly in control of botanical activities
26:32throughout the British Empire.
26:38But suddenly, in 1820,
26:40Kew suffered a double loss
26:42that was to put its very future in jeopardy.
26:49At the end of January, King George III,
26:52the great patron, died.
26:56In less than six months, Banks, Kew's great visionary,
26:59was dead too.
27:02For the first time in nearly half a century,
27:05Kew had neither purpose nor direction.
27:09Many of Banks's scientific principles were abandoned,
27:12and the gardens fell into disrepair.
27:16In 1837, the government put the royal finances under scrutiny,
27:21and the gardens at Kew were seen as one area
27:24where costs might be cut.
27:27With Kew in decline, some proposed that gardens should close.
27:32A report was commissioned from Dr John Lindley
27:35of the Royal Horticultural Society.
27:39This is what Lindley wrote, and he was very bold indeed.
27:43If the botanical garden at Kew is relinquished by the Queen,
27:48it should either be at once taken for public purposes,
27:53or it should be abandoned.
27:59Lindley was clear on what Kew's public purposes should be
28:02if it were to survive.
28:05It needed to explore and exploit all the ways the plants of the world
28:09might benefit the people of Britain
28:11and her dependencies,
28:13by orchestrating a never-ending flow of plants
28:16that would best serve the empire's economy.
28:21It was a formal acknowledgement of Banks's vision
28:24that would underpin the thinking of the next three directors
28:28of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
28:32Perhaps the greatest impact of the report
28:34was the appointment of William Hooker
28:36as Kew's first official director.
28:39Hooker, a botanist and a collector, would transform Kew.
28:49Hooker, a botanist and a collector,
28:51would transform Kew.
28:55Hooker, a botanist and a collector,
28:57would transform Kew.
28:59Hooker launched two of the most ambitious building projects
29:02in the history of Kew, the Herbarium,
29:05and this, the Palm House.
29:20Now, the curious public had a magnificent temple to plants,
29:24the closest many Victorians would ever get to a real temple.
29:29It was a rainforest.
29:37This is one of the most exciting, pioneering
29:40and important buildings of Victorian Britain.
29:43It exactly captures the spirit of the age.
29:55The design is also fit for its purpose.
29:58It's designed to accommodate exotic plants
30:01to grow and flourish and look spectacular.
30:08If the Palm House was how Hooker publicly displayed
30:11the flow of plants from around the world,
30:14then the Herbarium was how he privately turned that flow back
30:17into a world-class scientific resource.
30:23Dr David Maberley is the latest in a long line
30:27of the keepers of a Kew Herbarium.
30:30So, what is an Herbarium exactly?
30:33Well, it's a kind of library of plant specimens,
30:36specimens which have been collected from all over the world.
30:39They're collected, dried, mounted on cards,
30:43just like these here, for example.
30:46Here's one which was collected by no less a person
30:49than Charles Darwin in the Galapagos.
30:52And as you can see, they last in perfect conditions
30:55and some of them have survived for up to 500 years.
30:58Darwin's, of course, were collected in 1835 in the Galapagos.
31:01Absolutely amazing. Are you still receiving specimens?
31:04Oh, yes, good heavens.
31:07We are still getting material in from all over the place
31:10because we are a collection which is worldwide.
31:13We have something over 7 million specimens.
31:16And because of increasing collections,
31:19we are actually building a new wing here at Kew.
31:22These specimens are our crown jewels.
31:25These are specimens which we call type specimens.
31:28If you describe a new species, you have to designate
31:31a particular specimen as the type specimen.
31:34This was new to science when this one was filed away here.
31:37So, what do we have?
31:40This one was collected in Borneo in the 1950s
31:43and is a major timber tree from that part of the world.
31:46And this specimen is the kind of reference point, if you like,
31:50of the British Empire.
31:53And, of course, knowledge is power.
31:56These are full of information, these cards.
31:59Is economic importance of this?
32:02Of course. Initially, when people were collecting these things,
32:05they were documenting the resources, the riches,
32:08the things that could be exploited from different parts of the world.
32:11And Kew had a role in that, in that it was a kind of
32:14entrepot for information as well as specimens
32:17through time, so that if it's changing, for example,
32:20with things like climate change,
32:23these things actually do represent permanent records.
32:26Yes, yes.
32:29In the early 19th century,
32:32transporting dried specimens was one thing.
32:35Transporting valuable live plants was quite another.
32:38Here they are. At least 2,000 of these pieces of plant
32:41are described as new each year
32:44What the Mutiny on the Bounty had taught Hooker
32:47was that surrendering living quarters to plants
32:50was not a good thing.
32:53But how else could live plants be saved from saltwater
32:56while exposed to sunlight?
33:07Strangely enough,
33:10within this ancient file
33:14is a clue to the solution.
33:18It's not the specimen inside
33:21nor the writing
33:24but the blackened state
33:27of the paper, the dirt.
33:30This is genuine 19th-century London smog.
33:33And this led a man
33:36to contact Hooker
33:39with an idea that would eventually
33:42change the course of the history of the gardens.
33:48Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward
33:51was a plant collector living in the east end of London.
33:54And he had a problem.
33:57The ferns in his garden were being poisoned
34:00by gassy air pollution
34:03that was spewing out of countless chimneys across the city.
34:07Inside the house
34:10Dr Ward kept cocoons of moths
34:13in sealed glass bottles.
34:16And he noticed that fern spores
34:19were germinating and growing keenly
34:22in the bottoms of those bottles.
34:25Dr Ward ordered a carpenter
34:28to make him a glazed wooden case
34:31as airtight as possible.
34:34And this is a sealed glass bottle.
34:39Ah yes, this appears to be an early case.
34:42Take the lid off like this.
34:45Ward found that plants grown
34:48in such cases
34:51did better than plants grown outside
34:54in the polluted air.
34:57Essentially, he discovered that plants
35:00in sealed glass top cases
35:03could not be watered regularly
35:06but would survive through transpiration.
35:09That is a natural process of water recycling
35:12that took place within the case.
35:18With fewer plants lost on long sea journeys
35:21Dr Ward's case turned the trickle of living plants
35:24arriving at Kew into a torrent.
35:29Now Kew had a reliable method
35:33and a network of gardens to transfer them to.
35:38But it wasn't until 1857
35:41and a series of events taking place
35:44nearly 5,000 miles away
35:47that Kew really got the chance
35:50to put its skill to the test.
36:03In the 19th century
36:06large parts of the Indian subcontinent
36:09were run by the British East India Company.
36:14The company relied on an army
36:17composed largely of native soldiers
36:20to impose British rule on an Indian population
36:23of hundreds of millions.
36:26All that was about to be challenged.
36:29By the 1850s most Indians wanted rid of the British
36:32and rumours of a collapse in British rule were rife.
36:38On March 29th 1857
36:41on the parade ground right here in Barrett Paw
36:44the first substantial outbreak
36:47of mutinous violence took place.
36:5729-year-old Mangal Pandey
37:00of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry
37:03decided to rebel
37:06shooting at a British lieutenant
37:09before attacking him with a sword.
37:12Pandey was court-martialed, found guilty
37:15and hanged from this ancient banyan tree
37:18that stands next to the old parade ground
37:21of Barrett Paw.
37:24It wasn't just Pandey who was found guilty
37:28it was the British officers
37:31and they were stripped of their uniforms
37:34and dishonourably disbanded.
37:41It was a spark that was needed
37:44to push the widespread feelings of discontent
37:47into open revolt.
37:53There were a scattering of similar incidents
37:56in the 1950s and 60s
37:59when the British and Indian rebels
38:02turned into a full-scale rebellion.
38:08Extraordinary barbarities were committed on both sides.
38:11The fight became bitter
38:14as the British sought both to regain control
38:17and exact vengeance.
38:20The desire to gain sympathy to the rebels
38:23was simply obliterated.
38:27For the British, this ruthless oppression worked
38:30and by July 1858 they regained control.
38:35The incompetent East India Company
38:38was deposed from power
38:41and India was ruled directly and formally
38:44by the British government.
38:48The brutal and ruthless conduct
38:51really was the worst moment
38:54in the history of the British Empire
38:57in many respects
39:00and its details remain too depressing,
39:03too dark, too alarming to contemplate.
39:12It was reckoned that tens of thousands more soldiers
39:15and their administrators
39:18would have to be sent out from Britain to India
39:21to keep order and maintain a new regime.
39:25Thousands of people who would, for the first time,
39:28be exposed to a new deadly terror...
39:31malaria.
39:34A solution had to be found.
39:39At early of the 17th century,
39:43there were tales of people who could fend off fevers
39:46with the bark of a local tree.
39:49That tree was cinchona
39:52and its bark contained cream
39:55found to be the first effective treatment for malaria.
40:03The British government was very keen
40:06to get its hands on its own supply
40:09and so it asked Hugh to send an expedition to the Andes.
40:13One of the collectors was Richard Spruce.
40:17Dr Mark Nesbitt keeps one of Hugh's strangest collections,
40:20over 90,000 artefacts
40:23from two centuries of plant hunting.
40:27All ranges of barks in the 18th century,
40:30onwards to seeds as well.
40:33Let's see what we've got here.
40:36Here's some of the bark collected
40:39in 1860 by Richard Spruce.
40:42This is Spruce?
40:45Yes, Ecuador, throughout Africa and Asia.
40:48Bruce arrived in Ecuador in 1859.
40:51He succeeded in raising over 600 plants
40:54in the mountains and rafted them down river
40:57hampered by the terrain,
41:00armed bandits, soldiers and revolutionaries.
41:04But he escaped with all his plants
41:07and 100,000 seeds.
41:10Here's some seeds.
41:14It's utterly amazing, isn't it?
41:17I'm holding in my hand seeds collected in the 1860s.
41:20That was part of a whole revolution, in a sense.
41:27These revolutionary cinchona seeds
41:30were sent out to India and across the empire.
41:33They were grown in large plantations
41:36to provide enough bark for all the anti-malarial powder
41:40that was needed.
41:43In guarding the health of its overseas subjects,
41:46the British government, through Kew,
41:49had achieved its aim for the cinchona transfer,
41:52securing India for the empire.
41:55But suddenly Kew found itself
41:58under an unprecedented attack.
42:03The new government had won the 1868 election
42:06on a platform of reducing public expenditure
42:09and Kew once again was targeted.
42:12The minister with a brief to save money
42:15was a gloriously named Acton Smee Ayrton.
42:18He wanted to remove Kew's expensive scientific functions
42:21and essentially turn it into a public park.
42:31Joseph Hooker, the son of William Hooker
42:34and director of Kew since 1865, was outraged
42:37and the scientific community was up in arms.
42:42Hooker's circle realised that science alone
42:45wouldn't sway the politicians.
42:48They turned instead to Kew's imperial role.
42:54Joseph Hooker appealed directly to the prime minister,
42:57arguing that Kew was an institution
43:00that for 30 years had endeavoured to benefit the colonies.
43:03To reinforce his argument, he referred to the success
43:07of the Cinchona relocation.
43:14No other organisation could have pulled it off.
43:17Coordinating experienced collectors, botanists
43:20and gardeners from across the globe,
43:23an achievement that promised health and wealth for generations.
43:29Joseph Hooker won the day.
43:32Kew was saved from a certain destruction.
43:37Acton Smee Ayrton was removed from his post
43:44and the following year lost his seat in the general election.
43:51By the late 1860s, Kew, a world-class scientific institution,
43:56was sending plant collectors all over the world.
44:00Over 8,000 plants were arriving at Kew
44:03and being dispatched to various colonies every year.
44:07But on the 14th of June, 1876,
44:10a consignment arrived at Kew all the way from the Amazon.
44:17This would inspire the garden's most successful enterprise.
44:28Dr Mark Nesbitt keeps the remnants of that precious shipment.
44:31Ah, here we are.
44:35Ooh.
44:37Amazing.
44:39Here it is.
44:41Part of the extraordinary consignment from the Amazon.
44:46It says here, Hevia Brassiliensis, 1876.
44:52The seeds of the rubber tree.
44:55Christopher Columbus and his party
44:58were the first Europeans to glimpse rubber in the late 15th century.
45:02Let me show you some of our rubber artefacts down here.
45:05Rubber section.
45:07From the earliest days,
45:09this strangely elastic waterproof substance
45:12proved an enticing novelty.
45:15Oh, that's surprising.
45:17It's a bottle.
45:19Do pick it up.
45:21It's a lovely bottle.
45:24It's hard, isn't it?
45:26So this is said to be the world's oldest dated rubber artefact.
45:29Oldest dated? Oh, gosh.
45:31What date is it, then?
45:331817.
45:35But this is hard because it's cold, I suppose.
45:38In the sun, would it become a little bit more flexible?
45:41Well, yes, of course, this is before vulcanisation.
45:44So what was the process of vulcanisation?
45:47It was this discovery by Charles Goodyear in 1839.
45:50If you heated rubber and sulphur,
45:52it completely changed the chemical properties.
45:55You can make it as flexible as you liked or as hard as you liked,
45:58and it would keep those properties.
46:00So having seen this local product,
46:02now we'll look at some things
46:04that come from the great Victorian age of manufacturing rubber.
46:07And they made everything.
46:09Have a look at this.
46:11What can this be of?
46:13Made by Charles Macintosh, the great pioneer of rubber.
46:16Macintosh? Oh, yes, yes. It's a breast pump.
46:19One of the things that rubber was really good for
46:22once vulcanisation had been developed was medical products.
46:25The Victorians, the great ones,
46:27were squeezing things in and out of their bodies.
46:30LAUGHTER
46:32Of course.
46:34You still take the words from my lips.
46:36So this was a really critical moment in the history of rubber.
46:39Vulcanisation made it a really useful material.
46:42It was the plastic of the 19th century.
46:49Before 1876,
46:51the entire supply of rubber
46:53came directly from the rainforests of Brazil.
46:56It was a supply that was erratic and infrequent,
46:59as the rubber trees were very hard to find,
47:02totted here and there throughout the forest.
47:11Ruthless rubber barons, malaria, parasites,
47:14and local tribesmen
47:17made tracking through the Amazon dangerous and difficult.
47:20Oh.
47:22Yes, I'm not copying a tree knife.
47:24Richard's found his tree, and I see it's a young tree.
47:27It hasn't been cut yet, so I suppose, therefore...
47:30Oh, he's cutting it now.
47:34Oh, look, my goodness me.
47:36It's coming up already straightaway.
47:38A tree full of life.
47:42Methods of rubber-tapping the late 19th century
47:45were very inefficient,
47:47often killing the trees soon after.
47:50The British government needed a more permanent and reliable supply,
47:54and once again turned to Kew.
47:58Kew knew one man prepared to risk his life
48:01for the chance of fame and fortune.
48:05Henry Wickham was a maverick character,
48:08a failed entrepreneur,
48:10a man dedicated to self-promotion,
48:14a great storyteller,
48:16and a self-styled explorer of the rainforest.
48:21Wickham managed to collect thousands of rubber seeds,
48:24but then had to get them all the way back to Kew.
48:38Wickham knew that previous shipments of rubber seed
48:41had died on the long journey to Kew.
48:44Speed was of the essence.
48:46So he got a steamship to carry the seeds to Britain,
48:49then a steam engine to carry the seeds to London,
48:53when in London, a handsome cab,
48:55the fastest vehicle in the city,
48:57to get the seeds to Kew.
49:04Wickham was offered £10 for each thousand rubber tree seeds
49:07he delivered back to Kew.
49:09His cases were found to contain no less than 70,000 seeds.
49:15Get on!
49:16Forward!
49:17Get on!
49:20In the months following, a second collector, Robert Cross,
49:24added a further thousand seeds to Kew's rubber collection.
49:29Thank you very much.
49:33Behind the scenes, pots covering 300 square feet
49:37were planted with the precious seeds.
49:41Those that germinated into healthy plants
49:44were transferred to Wardian cases and sent overseas.
49:54Their destination was Sri Lanka,
49:56and this place, nearly 7,000 miles from Kew,
50:00the Botanic Gardens in Singapore.
50:17Dr Kiat Tan is the former head of these gardens.
50:22His predecessor from 1888 was Henry Ridley.
50:26A botanist and geologist,
50:28and the man charged with establishing rubber plantations
50:31on behalf of Kew and the government.
50:37This photograph shows him, Henry Ridley,
50:40and what was he actually doing?
50:42Actually, he's very proud of the progress he's made
50:45in devising this new mode of tapping the Parra rubber tree
50:49without killing it.
50:50So the tree will live for decades, basically?
50:53Decades, yes.
50:55So he began with this herringbone method,
50:58where he would just pair off some of the bark,
51:01severing some of the latex ducts.
51:03And as the latex starts to flow,
51:05this herringbone structure then accumulates.
51:08He looks very sort of wonderfully well-dressed
51:11and has a wonderful moustache.
51:13Is this a picture that was posed, do you think?
51:16What sort of character was he?
51:18Well, let me show you one that's posed,
51:21that adds to the legend around him.
51:23Good heavens, a Merlin figure!
51:25Yeah, he is dressed as Noah at a fancy dress party.
51:29Oh, fancy dress, yes, it was an everyday.
51:32Indeed, a larger-than-life character.
51:35That's why he was called Matt Ridley.
51:37Matt Ridley, well, Rubber Ridley.
51:39Well, Rubber Ridley, too, because he was so insistent.
51:42He was obsessed.
51:43Once he found that rubber was going to be a major crop,
51:46and major crop's what it's all about with the tapping.
51:50He just pressed upon some of the main tea planters,
51:54the coffee planters, to say,
51:56hey, try this new crop, it's going to be the best thing.
52:00So the impact of Ridley and his passionate campaign for rubber
52:04was tremendous in the region.
52:06This is the best success story that Kew had.
52:09Ridley turned rubber into a history-making instrument
52:13for this whole region.
52:16Through Ridley's efforts,
52:18soon rubber was being grown in plantations across Malaya.
52:22But what made it profitable beyond anyone's wildest dreams
52:26was a brilliant invention in 1888.
52:29The inflatable tyre.
52:33The tyre was made of rubber.
52:35It was the most expensive material in the world.
52:38It was the most expensive material in the world.
52:41It was the most expensive material in the world.
52:44Rubber demand shot through the roof.
52:47Prices went sky-high, and plantations grew rapidly.
52:51By the early part of the 20th century,
52:54this region was supplying 50% of the world's rubber,
52:58and money was pouring in.
53:00Today, almost all the world's natural rubber comes from Asia.
53:06Kew had masterminded a mass production of rubber
53:11Kew had masterminded a multi-million pound industry
53:15that would underpin the British Empire
53:18and transform the lives of millions of people across the world.
53:24Which could be the end of the story,
53:27but there's a twist in the tale.
53:36Now, in the early years of the 21st century,
53:40the global search for plants goes on.
53:48Today, Kew's teams are still collecting seeds from all over the world.
54:03Once, collectors collected for the glory of the king.
54:07Then, for the profit of the empire.
54:10And now, in these very different times,
54:13they're concerned with the environment and species extinction.
54:22And here, in Kew's Wakehurst Place, a new collection has begun.
54:29This bomb-proof bunker, designed to stand for 1,000 years,
54:34is the first phase of the collection of the seeds
54:37of every species of plant on the planet.
54:42Dr Paul Smith is head of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank.
54:56How cold is it in here?
54:58It's minus 20, but with the wind from the fans,
55:01it's minus 40 degrees Celsius.
55:03Wow, you can feel it biting, can't you?
55:06How long can you stay in here when you're working here?
55:0930 minutes maximum.
55:11It slows your metabolism right down,
55:14and you need to be out of here before too long.
55:17So it slows down ageing, which is quite handy.
55:20It does indeed.
55:22Tell me about the aims of these cold rooms.
55:25There are over 23,000 plant species here,
55:28over 1.3 billion seeds stored here.
55:31By next year, we'll have 10% of all of the world's plant species represented,
55:35and by 2020, a quarter, 25%.
55:37That's absolutely astonishing.
55:39This is such an important space.
55:41You could really reseed the world to a degree from this room,
55:45if something awful happened.
55:47What we try to encourage people to do is not to think of these
55:50as a billion seeds, but to think of them as a billion plants,
55:53because that's what they have the potential to be.
55:56Good heavens, absolutely amazing.
55:59How will this repository of seeds be used in the future?
56:02That depends on our need.
56:04But the key thing here is that if we have the seeds,
56:07then we have options for their use.
56:09We might want to use one of these species in horticulture,
56:12or it might be a new food crop.
56:14It might be a forage species for wild animals and for livestock to eat.
56:18It gives us options.
56:20This really is such an important room in terms of Q's function globally.
56:25It's incredible, really, isn't it?
56:28We see this as the World Bank, if you like, the World Bank for seeds.
56:32And it's there for everyone to use.
56:39In these seeds are the answers to problems
56:42mankind has not yet begun to encounter.
56:50In a time of mass habitat destruction and shifting weather patterns...
56:58..this is the last-ditch safeguard against extinction of all plants
57:03for the benefit of the future of mankind and the planet.
57:17In 1819, when near death,
57:20Sir Joseph Banks came to Q for what would be his last meal.
57:25He came here to see this particular plant,
57:29Encephalites ultensteinii,
57:32one of the first plants brought back here by the first collector.
57:38And so a plant that launched Q to realise Banks' vision
57:43of creating a place that would one day change the world.
57:49And as I stand here now,
57:53I can't but help but think that the old man would not be displeased
57:58to see Q as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.
58:23MUSIC FADES
58:37Matt and Ellie head to Loch Lomond over on BBC One tomorrow
58:41in Countryfile at five to six.
58:43But next, this afternoon here on BBC HD, it's one man and his dog.
58:52MUSIC FADES