A History of Imperialism in Five Plants

Forgive the continued break from writing about Religion and the Bible for more straightforward history, I moved over the weekend and my religious books are still tucked away, which has me going back into my drafts.

Empire is a complicated concept. Throughout human history empires have risen and fallen, taking slightly different shapes each time. Generally speaking, an empire consists of an Imperial core, and then constructs an apparatus to move important stuff (goods, resources, people, cash) from other places to the core. The Roman Empire acquired continuous territory and set up trade routes designed to move these things toward Rome. Many iterations of the Chinese Empire exacted these goods in the form of tribute from various tributaries. In the last four hundred years, European nations sent people from their own country to settle in what they considered to be underdeveloped territory (Settler-Colonialism) and also conquered distant lands and established governments to oversee resource extraction (well, regular, colonialism).

What struck me recently as I wandered through the Como Conservatory in St. Paul was how much wave of European Imperialism that defines so much of the world we now live in was shaped by demand for plants. Plants make for an interesting kind of resource. Like other kinds of resources, demand is created because you have to get…