Serving the State: empire, expertise and the British hemp crisis, 1800-1801

Abstract

This article investigates a governmental committee set up in 1800 to address a long-standing problem faced by the British state: how to procure a reliable and cost-effective supply of hemp. This resource, on which the Royal Navy and mercantile marine relied, could be procured only from the Russian territories of northern Europe, a dependence that had proved precarious and increasingly unreliable in the latter decades of the eighteenth century. In 1800, amid a great European war, the supply of hemp was permanently stopped by the Russian tsar, and the British government formed a committee charged with finding new sources of this material, debating which regions should be invested in and encouraging future cultivation. The investigation that followed was truly global in its scope, focusing overwhelmingly on the resources of the British Empire, as botany, agriculture and the global acquisition of resources became issues of governmental concern. The investigation also forced the British state to look beyond its own departments, as numerous civilian, mercantile and agricultural experts were brought in to give evidence and offer suggestions. Studying this committee presents an opportunity to analyse how the state worked to solve problems and how it considered various (and often competing) notions of expertise and authority, as various individuals were called in to serve. Additionally, it demonstrates how people inside and outside government conceived of the broader utility and purpose of the British Empire at the turn of the nineteenth century.