Seeds of Wealth is a collection of elegant essays focusing on the economic and cultural consequences of the exploitation of timber, tobacco, rubber, and the wine grape. These cash crops have had, for the past three centuries, a profound effect on our world. In this intriguing account, Hobhouse illustrates how timber deficiency sparked an industrial revolution, tobacco lead to a wealthy and young nation, the rubber tree created nations, and wine provided the head, heart, and pocketbook with wealth.

This book offers proof of how the seemingly irrelevant can have widespread unintended consequences. In presenting global history from his own perspective, Henry Hobhouse offers an overview of how nature has unwittingly contributed to the creation of human wealth and economic growth.