Mission Devastating Emily

Mission Devastating Emily

The story
In 1869 a previously unidentified fungus struck the coffee plantations of Ceylon, one of the great coffee-origin lands of the 19th Century. In a very few years the blight known by colonial English planters as “Devastating Emily”, and later its scientific name Himileia Vastatrix, destroyed the coffee economy of the Island. Ceylon’s coffee never recovered, and in time it was replaced by planting tea.

But though coffee became a commercial and personal financial disaster, tea was already being grown successfully by the pioneer James Taylor. As there was a plantation system in existence, it was relatively straightforward for the remaining coffee planters to make the switch to tea, and the rest is history.

The mission
This mission is part of the Inventors & Adventurers campaign. I converted my Ceylon: Devastating Emily map into a mission.

Typical features:
Industries are dynamic: new industries open regularly, and sometimes they change or close.
New supply chains and industries: coffee, tea, cinnamon, rubber, coconut oil, gold
Padda boats: flat-bottomed, punt-shaped barges called Padda boats were the prime method of transportation in 19th century Ceylon.
Elephants
Typical music (Creative Commons Attribution license)

About the map:
Large 1:2 map
Hand-painted map of the tea country near Kandy and the capital Colombo
2 large cities, 15 small villages
Lots of plantations, a port, and an auction house.
Plantation house 3D models, made by me.

Note: The campaign aims to portray key milestones in the history of transportation as vividly as possible in their historical context. They also deal with dark chapters in the world’s events, whereby the corresponding episodes are never supposed to be downplayed, and the victims within them are never ridiculed. After all, it shouldn’t be left by the wayside that the history of transportation was often and still is a story of conflicts, oppression, and sometimes great suffering. Accordingly, the value judgements conveyed in the individual missions do not reflect the developer’s own values.

Required items:
Campaign Inventors & Adventurers