he notion of Brazilian tea may sound like something of an anomaly-or impossibility-given the predominance of Brazilian coffee in our cultural imagination.We may be surprised, then, to learn that King João VI of Portugal and Brazil (1767-1826) pursued a project for the importation, acclimatization, and planting of tea from China in his royal botanic garden in Rio de Janeiro.A curious episode in the annals of colonial botany, the cultivation of a tea plantation in Rio has a short but significant history, especially when read through the lens of Maria Graham's Journal of a Voyage to Brazil (1824).Graham's descriptions of the tea garden in this text are brief, but they amplify her thorough-going enthusiasm for the biodiversity and botanical innovation she encounteredand contributed to-in South America.Such enthusiasm for the imperial tea garden echoes Graham's support for Brazilian independence, and indeed, bolsters it.In 1821 Graham came to Brazil aboard HMS Doris, captained by her husband Thomas, who was charged with protecting Britain's considerable mercantile interests in the region.As a British naval captain's wife, she was obliged to uphold Britain's official policy of strict neutrality.Despite these circumstances, her Journal conveys a pro-independence stance that is legible in her frequent rhapsodies over Brazil's stunning flora and fauna.By situating Rio's tea plantation within the global context of imperial botany, we may appreciate Graham's testimony to a practice of transnational plant exchange that effectively makes her an agent of empire even in a locale where Britain had no territorial aspirations.Having left Bahia in northern Brazil, the Doris arrived in Rio's spectacular Guanabara Bay on December 15, 1821.Graham's Journal entry for this day foregrounds the harbor's exceptional beauty: "Rio de Janeiro, Saturday, December 15th, 1821.-Nothing that I have ever seen is comparable in beauty to this bay.Naples, the Firth of Forth, Bombay harbour, and Trincomalee, each of which I thought perfect in their beauty, all must yield to this, which surpasses each in its different way." 1 Graham's allusions to ports previously visited in Italy, Scotland (her homeland), India, and Ceylon serve to emphasize her wonder before this new scene.Indeed, by the time the Journal saw publication-the same year as her other South American text, Journal of a Residence in Chile (1824)-readers would recognize her as the author of several other travelogues, including Journal of a Residence in India (1812), Letters on India, with Etchings and a Map (1814), and Three Months Passed in the Mountains East of Rome (1820).Her use of hyperbole to describe Rio's superior bay typifies travel literature and echoes her own previous hyperbolic statements (of a town near the capital of Pernambuco, in northern Brazil, she writes on August 24, "Nothing can be prettier of its kind than the fresh green landscape" [37].)The Brazil Journal abounds with similar meditations on its natural beauty, both in close-up (botanical) and distanced (landscape) imagery.
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Nicolle Jordan (2020) studied this question.
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