Another Taste Of Vanilla
The accidental discovery by a slave boy, Edmond, of an artificial method to pollinate flowers of the vanilla orchid not only broke the Spanish monopoly on the spice but enabled the remote Indian Ocean island of Réunion to become the global leader in its production. Between 1860 and 1890 the island had tripled its vanilla production but with success came problems.
The increased levels of production stoked an increase in demand, exacerbated by the opening up of a huge new market, the United States, whose citizens quickly took to vanilla-based soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, introduced in 1886, and ice-cream cones, invented in New York in1896, which led to land and labour costs rising. To meet the demand the Réunion vanilla producers looked to the nearby French colony of Madagascar as an alternative site for growing their crops.
Vanilla vines took to the humid north-east coast of the island like ducks to water and it was not long before Madagascar to surpass Réunion as the world’s centre of vanilla production, a position it has held since the early 20th century. Today, some 80% of the world’s vanilla is grown there, although most of the products that we consume claiming to have the flavour of vanilla use a laboratory-made artificial flavouring, vanillin, based on vanilla’s main flavour component, first identified in 1858 by the French scientist, Nicolas-Théodore Gobley.
As for Edmond, shortly after his discovery he was paraded around the island by his master, offering demonstrations of his pollination techniques. There are several streets and schools that bear his name to this day and in Sainte-Suzanne, where he grew up, there are two memorials commemorating his contribution to botanical history. Nothing remains of the original plantation, nothing survives save a rudimentary monument by the roadside.
However, Edmond’s personal story was the stuff of tragedy. He never benefited financially from his discovery and although emancipated at the age of nineteen and taking the name of Edmond Albius, he struggled to find employment, finally working in the home of a navy captain for fifteen francs a month and ten pints of rice a week. On August 19, 1851 he was arrested, confessing to stealing “a pair of silver bracelets out of a Chinese casket, a small wallet and a silver chain” from his employer and was sentenced to five years’ hard labour and ordered to pay the costs of the trial.
Bellier-Beaumont did plead for clemency on Edmond’s behalf, pointing out that “the country is indebted to him for a new branch of industry”, but only succeeded in having the sentence reduced to three years.
After his release, Edmond moved back to Sainte-Suzanne drifting in and out of jobs, turning his hand at agriculture, although never with vanilla, working as a stonemason and a cook. In 1871 he married, although within five years he was widowed, and died alone in 1880 at the age of fifty-one. The main Réunion newspaper did mark his death, noting in a perfunctory obituary that “the very man who, at great profit to this colony, discovered how to pollinate vanilla flowers has died in the public hospital at Sainte-Suzanne. It was a destitute and miserable end”.
Next time you taste vanilla, whether real or artificial, remember Edmond.
