Ceylon, circa 1880
by W. L. H. Skeen & Co

Tea cultivation was introduced to Ceylon (currently Sri Lanka) in 1866 by the Scotsman James Taylor and became the main cultivated crop of the country in the 1870s and 80s after a lethal fungus infected the island’s coffee trees. This photograph, one of a series of 30 taken by the firm W. L. H. Skeen documenting the flourishing new industry, shows a worker planting a young tea “bush” on one of the hundreds of small estates that switched from coffee to tea.