Colonising Plants in Bihar (1760-1950)
Subtitle: Tobacco Betwixt Indigo and Sugarcane
By: Kathinka Sinha Kerkhoff
Publisher: Partridge Publishing; PartridgeIndia
Published: 2014
Place of publication: India]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 464
ISBN-13: 9781482839111
Copyright date: 2014
Subjects: Tobacco industry; History; Indigo industry; Sugarcane industry
Description: "This unique study contributes to three important research fields: the history of commodities, the history of the colonial developmental state, and the agrarian history of South Asia. First, it demonstrates the dynamism of cash-crop production systems and how these systems influenced each other. Second, it explores how colonial state policy came to stimulate research-based agronomic interventions, often with unintended consequences. And finally, it shows how cash cropping entangled South Asians and Europeans in new forms of struggle and cooperation. This meticulous and illuminating study deserves a wide readership"-- [back cover].
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-334).
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: British interest in tobacco trade and improvement in Bengal; title: Away from Bengal proper: colonial gaze drawn to Bihar; title: Changing hierarchy of tobacco tastes and colonial demands; title: Taking in the private capitalist: European planters in Tirhut; title: Colonisation of plants through British scientists; title: Cigarette tobacco in Bihar till the early 1920's; title: End of cigarette tobacco cultivation in Bihar; title: New ventures in sugar cane and tobacco improvement in Bihar; title: Afterword; title: Glossary; title: Selected works consulted; title: Endnotes.