Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
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Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
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Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#2I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the Magna Carta in a show about WWI.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#3And 1400 years later my grandfather farmed silkworms a few hundred kilometers from Constantinople.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#4During the 19th century there was an attempt to establish a silk industry in New England. The industry failed, but the White Mulberry (morus alba), imported to serve as the food source for the silkworms, is thriving in North America. It's invasive in many areas and has displaced the native mulberry, morus rubra.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#5Super cool article, thank you. These 2 guys significantly changed the world and we don't know who they are.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#6I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links:
Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp...
Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings them to British India in 1848: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-british-tea...
Someone (maybe you!) should write a book about this!
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#7I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the Magna Carta in a show about WWI.
This event lead to the Byzantines having a silk monopoly in Europe. It follows that the Venetians didn’t have the means to produce silk. They may have therefore tried to acquire said means. The show apparently depicts that attempt, with inspiration from the story in TFA.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#8I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links: Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings…
>“Foreigners seemed to prefer having a mixture of Prussian blue and gypsum with their tea, to make it look uniform and pretty, and as these ingredients were cheap enough, the Chinese [have] no objection to [supplying] them as such teas always fetch . . . a higher price!”
This quote and the preceding paragraph about the distrust of the Chinese tea manufacturers are quite something. I hadn't considered the "made in China" stereotype for quality had been around for centuries.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#9I'm curious, is there a list somewhere of these world-changing industrial espionage incidents? Here's two more I remember off the top of my head. Not sure why the top results are the Smithsonian Magazine but here are some links: Samuel Slater brings cotton mill technology to America in 1789: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... Robert Fortune learns Chinese tea production methods and brings…
Theres the smuggling of wild rubber tree seeds, which eventually got to Malaysia.
https://geography.name/how-rubber-moved-to-asia/
> The Brazilian monopoly suffered a fatal blow in 1876. In that year the English explorer Sir Henry Wickham (1800–67) gathered about 70,000 seeds from wild rubber trees in the forest close to the city of Santarem, in the state of Para. Wickham smuggled the seeds out of Brazil and took them to Kew Gardens, London, where they were sown. Many of them germinated, and 3,000 seedlings were sent from London to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In 1877, 22 rubber plants were sent from Ceylon to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The trees were growing there when in 1888 Sir Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855–1956) arrived as the gardens' first scientific director. Ridley spent years studying the trees, and in 1895 he discovered a technique for tapping the latex without seriously harming the tree. That made it practicable to cultivate the trees commercially. In 1890 Ridley exhibited the first cultivated rubber trees, and in 1896 the first rubber plantations were established in Malaysia. Most of the trees were grown from Ridley's seeds. Growers went on to produce hardier, disease-resistant varieties, and large rubber plantations were developed in Ceylon and Singapore as well as Malaysia.
Re: Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire
#10I like how easily television puts the event into a show set seven centuries later. That'd be like including the signing of the Magna Carta in a show about WWI.
This event lead to the Byzantines having a silk monopoly in Europe. It follows that the Venetians didn’t have the means to produce silk. They may have therefore tried to acquire said means. The show apparently depicts that attempt, with inspiration from the story in TFA.
I'd also add that holy men smuggling out the means to break monopolies in their walking sticks is a popular theme, to the point of being a trope.