Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India

Abstract

Prakash Kumar documents the history of agricultural indigo, exploring the effects of nineteenth-century globalisation on this colonial industry. Charting the indigo culture from the early modern period to the twentieth century, Kumar discusses how knowledge of indigo culture thrived among peasant traditions on the Indian subcontinent in the early modern period and was then developed by Caribbean planters and French naturalists who codified this knowledge into widely disseminated texts. European planters who settled in Bengal with the establishment of British rule in the late eighteenth century drew on this information. From the nineteenth century, indigo culture became more modern, science-based and expert driven, and with the advent of a cheaper, purer synthetic indigo in 1897, indigo science crossed paths with the colonial state's effort to develop a science for agricultural development. Only at the end of the First World War, when the industrial use of synthetic indigo for textile dyeing and printing became almost universal, did the indigo industry's optimism fade away.

Indigo---the Crop that Created History and then Itself Became History

“…It was then that indigo planting became more and more commercially profitable because of the demand for blue dye in Europe. Indigo plantation was introduced in large parts of Burdwan, Bankura, Birbhum and Murshidabad districts in Bengal and later in Champaran and Kheda districts of Bihar (Kumar, 2012). The demand for indigo in the 19 th century is indicated by the fact that in 1897, the area under indigo was 7,000 km 2 producing 19,000 tons of indigo, mostly in India.…”

Beyond 'Tribal Breakout': Afghans in the History of Empire, ca. 1747–1818

“…98 Just as Bengal indigo was oriented towards markets across the Atlantic and Indian oceans (frequently described as 'global markets'), Punjab indigo serviced a separate set of terrestrial markets in the Eurasian interior. 99 Just as the expansion of Company power was pulling large parts of the Indian economy more deeply into new patterns of trans-oceanic trade, connections constituting what Bayly termed 'modern' or 'proto-globalisation', the Durrani imperium integrated western Punjab more deeply into the economy of Afghanistan and central Eurasia, that is, into the networks of 'archaic globalisation'. 100 This was part of a larger economic efflorescence in the continental interior that positively distinguishes the Durrani polity from other Indian successor states.…”

The History of Colonial Science and Medicine in British India: Centre-Periphery Perspective

“…There are several other scholars who also engage themselves with the diffusionist history of Western science and medicine and admit that scientific and medical knowledge cannot simply be transferred without the knowledge itself being changed in the journey (Arnold, 2000;Baber, 1998;Kumar, 2012;Prakash, 2000;Sivasundaram, 2005;2007A;2007B). In doing medical history, Mark Harrison argues that Western medicine in India has its own typical uniqueness and cannot be considered merely as an annotation to the history of Western medicine in general.…”

“…for instance, many Europeans engaged in medical enterprises in British India used their experience to challenge metropolitan orthodoxies. Therefore, colonial innovations by them are not only important, they also have formative influence upon the development of what is known as Western medicine (Harrison, 2001;2009A;2009B;2012). Harrison's works also depict that the relationship of colonial practitioners with their colleagues and professors at home was far from subservient.…”