BOOK REVIEW

An Indigo Story
John Mathew

n intriguing and detailed story

awaits the reader in Prakash
Kumars Indigo Plantations and
Science in Colonial India. As a narrative,
the major thread to follow is that the production of indigo, Indigoferum tinctorium
(today Indigofera tinctoria), in colonial
Bengal (the predominant locus of discussion) is not to be considered as either
derived solely from earlier practices in
the country, be they from the west, north
or south of the country, or as an experimental transplant from the West Indies,
but as the result of complex interactions
between colonial policies (including imitation with inflection among European
potentates) and local practice.
Quoting from Blair Klings The Blue
Mutiny: The Indigo Disturbances in Bengal
(1966), he places the point in relief,
From the 17th to the 20th centuries indigo
was a fugitive among industries, wandering
from Gujarat in western India to the West
Indies and then back to Bengal in eastern
India (p 4, repeated on p 56).

The author uses an important tract by

the French Dominican preacher and
writer, Jean Baptiste Labat as a significant
Economic & Political Weekly

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june 28, 2014

Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India

by Prakash Kumar (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press),
2013; pp 334, Rs 995.

point of entry into the cultivation of

Caribbean indigo plantations in Martinique in 1722 (duly taken up by Phillip
Millers Gardeners Dictionary in 1731,
and thereby, rendered in English) to
find resonance in practice in Bengal.
The development of synthetic indigo
would sound the death knell for the
natural product in 1897, even if it was
maintained for another couple of decades through the implacable efforts
of planters and the exigencies of the
first world war. Kumars effort provides
a significant and laudable addition to
the literature of what was one of the
most important agricultural crops in
colonial India.
Indigo Cultivation
The narrative takes the following lineaments across six chapters. In the first,
The World of Indigo Plantations,
the connection between the Caribbean
(extended to South Carolina in the

vol xlIX nos 26 & 27

United States) and India is made explicit for the crop. This is done in ways
that are redolent (if not necessarily
symmetrical) of efforts by Richard
Grove for physiocratic improvement of
plants taken from French efforts in the
botanical garden at Pamplemousses in
Mauritius and brought to Bengal (particularly through the efforts of Robert
Kyd in founding the Calcutta Botanical
Garden in 1787) in Green Imperialism:
Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens
and the Origins of Environmentalism,
1600-1860 (1995). This is also similar to
comparisons of medical practices linking
the colonial and the local in Pratik
Chakrabartis Materials and Medicine:
Trade, Conquest and Therapeutics in the
Eighteenth Century (2011) in both Jamaica
and India. In the latter, however, the
vector is not from one region to the other,
but both are directed towards the
metropole that is London.
We are also introduced to the role of
particular workers. A tract called The
Complete Indigo-Maker (1769) by Elias
Monnereau in San Domingue (Haiti)
published in England has considerable
influence on James Prinsep and Claude
Martin, both major indigo manufacturers (among other exploits) in India.
A local alternative from the genus Nerium is championed on the other hand
by the superintendent of the Calcutta
41

BOOK REVIEW

Botanical Garden, William Roxburgh

who affords the allegedly new species
the specific epithet tinctorium (mirroring
that for Indigo, p 69).
Colonial Bengal Agriculture
Chapter 2, The Course of Colonial
Modernity: Negotiating the Landscape
in Bengal is partially devoted to the history of agriculture in Colonial Bengal,
where the role of peasant-cultivated
plots is brought to the fore in Bengal and
Tirhut in Bihar with detailed discussions
of consequent indigo practice and culture. The chapter does, however, take
tangential if fascinating turns from its
original ambit with discussions of the rise
of organic chemistry in France, particularly at Pariss Museum dHistoire
Naturelle and its application through the
work of Michel Eugene Chevreul. The
latter was a student of Louis-Nicolas
Vauquelin, himself an acolyte of the
renowned if unfortunate Antoine Lavoisier (a victim of the guillotine during the
Terror). Equal attention is paid to developments in agriculture in Germany,
largely credited to the doyen of organic

chemistry there, Justus von Liebig. His

ideas are adopted by the cosmopolite,
Eugene Schrottky of Dresden, who in
1876, published The Principles of Rational
Agriculture Applied to India and Its
Staple Products. This book, in essence,
advocates the replenishment of a depleted
topsoil, even as its author takes an exception to the effort of nationalists focusing
on the drain of wealth from the colony,
suggesting that the emphasis should be
on the improvement of agriculture locally
instead. Approximately a decade later, a
rapprochement between practice and
the new chemistry is sought by the
British chemist John Augustus Voelcker,
in proposing the protection of nitrogen
in the soil.
Threat from Germany
Colony and the External Arena: Seeking
Validation in the Market is the title and
focus of the third chapter, where the optimisation of the production of agricultural
indigo is pitted against the arrival of an
upstart, synthetic indigo, emergent from
Germany. With the discovery of aniline,
an alkaline oil in coal tar similar to that

in indigo by a German student of Liebig,

though based in London, August Wilhelm
Hofmann in 1843, research in subsequent
decades unveiled a host of aniline colours
beginning with mauve (1856), aniline red
(1859) and violet and black (both in
1863). Snatching back the initiative, the
German team of Carl Graebe and Carl
Liebermann in 1869 invents alizarin, a
red colour thereunto derived from the
plant madder. Synthesis of alizarin on an
industrial scale was taken up by the company Badische Anilin and Soda Fabrik
(BASF), ushering in a dominant position
for Germany in the field.
One of the key points of Kumars thesis
resides here that the threat to indigo
emerges from outside the colonial sphere
inasmuch as its centre is in Germany. By
the end of the 19th century, it is only
indigo that stands, like the Moorish
Alhambra, holding out against the incursions of the synthetic forms inexorable
advance. The repercussions are massive,
including efforts to reinvigorate planting
techniques, diversify crops through
rotation with sugar and rhea and introduce new varieties of indigo.

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The fourth chapter, Local Science:

Agricultural Institutions in the Age of
Nationalism, takes for its remit the
development of laboratory techniques
for the improvement of indigo production. The underlying rationale is that
natural indigo will dye longer and more
deeply than any synthetic competitor.
To this end, planters rally behind new
agricultural stations at Dalingserai
(founded at the behest of the Indigo
Improvement Syndicate IIS), Peeprah
(a brainchild of the Bihar Indigo Planters
Association BIPA) and Pusa (formed
after the amalgamation of BIPA and IIS
in 1901), adducing evidence for government support for agriculture in both the
United States of America and in Dutch
Java, despite evidence that synthetic
indigo was seen to be far cheaper.
Science and Rationalisation
If anything, the role of Mendelian genetics
and selection, consequent to its independent rediscovery in 1900 a feature of Chapter 5, The Last Stand in Science and
Rationalization, redoubles efforts to
maximise yield in the field, particularly
with improvement through biological
selection. An irony resides in the fact
that two men who ostensibly should
be working in tandem (and even make initial overtures in this regard), William
Bloxham, a chemist at Dalingserai who returns to London to continue research in
optimising the yield of colour and Cyril
Bergtheil, a colonial bacteriologist seconded to studying indigo at the laboratory at
Sirsiah, develop a strong personal rivalry
that will map on to considerations between metropole and periphery. Bloxhams
emphasis is on the estimation of colour,
Bergtheils more on the cultivation and
manufacturing. Nonetheless the latter is
also concerned with the colour-question
and resents Bloxhams appropriation of
credit and priority on the subject. The matter of percentages of colour, however, has
exceeded the patience of planters themselves, where the emphasis of difference is
clearly somewhere else. An apposite quotation reflects the temper.
There is no such thing as artificial indigo.
Whats meant is synthetic indigotin produced from the derivatives of coal tar, a very
different thing. Natural indigo is an organic
Economic & Political Weekly

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june 28, 2014

compound body which contains several other ingredients and colours besides indigotin,
and it is the combination of these that gives
natural indigo preeminence over all other
blue colours. One might as well call albumen
an egg or starch a potato as to call synthetic
indigotin indigo (quoted on pp 239-40).

The planters objections notwithstanding, the writing is on the wall and even
the likes of Bergtheil are wise to it. The
introduction of a new strain from Java,
which promises and initially delivers
better yield, will suffer from the effects
of wilt to which there appears no swift
anodyne. Things look decidedly bleak by
the summer of the 1913, when the Sirsiah
laboratory is closed. Ironically, a new
lease of life for the beleaguered natural
form will be vouchsafed from the unlikeliest of sources a world war.
The outbreak of hostilities (underlying
Chapter 6, A Lasting Definition of Improvement in the Era of World War)
among western powers has grave implications for the dissemination of synthetic
indigo from Germany. Attenuation in supply
generates a renewed demand for natural
indigo. At the same time, indigo from
Zululand appears to hold promise against
wilt and is promptly imported to India.
Besides, seeing as the Indian troops have
stayed loyal to Britain, it stands to reason
that the empire should stand with its jewel
in the crown and support its interests,
which in turn buttress those of the empire. Experiments continue at full swing.
A new indigo research chemist, W A Davis,
is despatched to Pusa, where indigo paste
making is undertaken in full swing. With
developments in paste production and
efforts made to resist wilt, it appears as
though indigo will have a fighting chance.
Yet the cessation of hostilities in 1918,
coupled with horrendous climatic conditions that result in poor yield that force
indigo prices up, put paid to this short-term
resurgence. Practicalities of trade prospects (including poaching German technology) as well as annoyance with continuing labour insurgency in Bihar, ultimately force the British governments hand
and natural indigo as a significant agricultural crop for the region is put to pasture.
Conclusions
As the foregoing discussion suggests, we
have a rich and cogent description of the

vol xlIX nos 26 & 27

story of indigo in north-eastern India, in

particular Bengal and Bihar. Yet, there is
an impulse early in the book that points
to a tension. Kumar writes that the
study of science in south Asian historiography has so far evolved along two parallel tracks works that cover colonial science and works that cover the social history in colonial south Asia (p 9). He
contends that the south Asian historians
studying science tend to fall into one
camp or the other. Clearly his own effort
seeks a reconciliation between these
groups and the aim is immediately to be
congratulated. As to whether he succeeds
is perhaps more open to question.
The historiography of the social milieu
in which agriculture develops in the
country, not least for indigo (though a
comparison with other crops in the region
under question, even if briefly would have
been welcome), is extensive. Rather than
pay it cursory heed, it might have been
worthwhile acknowledging the vast bibliography. We learn little of the restiveness
of agriculturists in Bengal that occasions
the move to Bihar (only passing reference, for instance, is made to Dinabandhu Mitras seminal play of the mid-19th
century, Nil Darpan (The Indigo Revolt),
which deals with the plight of peasant indigo farmers in Bengal), save for throwaway sections.
There is also significant repetition of
ideas, sometimes of entire quotations,
suggesting that the editors pen was not
perhaps as insistent as it might have been.
These shortcomings apart, Indigo Plantations and Science in Colonial India is a work
of painstaking, comprehensive research
and adds incalculably to our knowledge
of the crop in its local and global spheres
as well as its deployment as an object and
subject both of circulation and of conflict.
John Mathew (jm387@duke.edu) is a visiting
assistant professor at the Department of
History, Duke University, the US.

available at

S Thanu Pillai
T.C.28/481, Kaithamukku
Thiruvananthapuram 24
Kerala
Ph: 2471943
43