The soybean first came to western notice in the form of soy sauce, which was brought by Dutch traders from Japan to India during that century (the Japanese obtained soy-sauce-making technology from China, but the names for soybean in all European languages are derived from the Japanese word for soy sauce, shoyu). In the early nineteenth century, the plant itself arrived in Europe, but only as a horticultural curiosity in a few botanical gardens. Later, from the early twentieth century onwards, it was grown as a crop in the west – mainly for oil and animal feed, as it still is today.
