Manufacture at the Colonial Frontier Iron and Salt Production Experiments in the East Indies, 1765 – 1858
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Manufacture at the Colonial Frontier Iron and Salt Production Experiments in the East Indies, 1765 – 1858 Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Yogesh Ram Mishra Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Imperial College London Imperial College London PhD Dissertation 2012 1 Declaration of Originality I certify that all the intellectual contents of this thesis are of my own, unless otherwise stated. London, November 2011 Yogesh Ram Mishra 2 Acknowledgement Many people lent their support, both intellectual and otherwise, during the field and archival research for this work. For allowing me to consult and use their archives, I thank the archivists and librarians of the following institutions: Indian Council for Social Science Research (Calcutta), Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta), West Bengal State Archives (Calcutta), Bihar State Archives (Patna), the District Records Room (Birbhum), Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (London), Asian and African Studies, British Library (London), Institution of Civil Engineers (London), Imperial College London, and the Science Museum (London). For many insightful sessions of discussion at the CHoSTM, Imperial College, I am indebted to Bruno Cordavil, David Edgerton, Hermione Giffard, Andrew Mendelsohn, Aparajith Ramnath, Jaume Sastre, Jaume Valentines, and Waqar S. Zaidi. For comments on the drafts at various stages, I thank William Burns, Ralph Desmairas, Neil Torrant and Michael Weatherburn. For their generous hospitality and inspiring conversations, I thank the following in India: Professor Arun Bandyopadhyay (Calcutta University), Paramita Goswami (Bangiya Sahitya Parishat), Somendra Chandra Nandi (Kassimbazar Raj), Dr Manish Jain (DM, Burdwan), Md. Abdul Momin Midda (Burdwan University Library), Nirod Baran Sarkar (Burdwan), Sukumar Singh (Birbhum), Gopal Chakrabarty (Birbhum), Professor Kishori Ranjan Das (Birbhum), Naba Kishore Salui (Birbhum), Professor Ch. K. Deo (Rohini Zemindari, Deoghar), Prasanna Kumar Choudhari (Deoghar), Durlabh Mishra (Deoghar), Mohananand Mishra, D.Lit. (Deoghar), Rajesh Sharma (Munger), Srinarayan Singh (Munger), Mukul Kumar Sinha (Munger), Professor Panchanan Mishra (Bhagalpur University), Professor Surendra Gopal (Patna University), Professor Hetukar Jha, Professor (late) Vijay Kumar Thakur, and Professor Rateneshwar Mishra (Darbhanga University). Some of the ideas in this thesis were presented in a preliminary form at the International Workshop "Pre-colonial and Colonial Perspectives on Science and Technology in South Asia", organised by the Karl Jaspers Centre at the University of Heidelberg. I have benefitted from the questions and views expressed by the workshop participants. I thank in particular Amelia Bonea, Paul Fletcher, Prabhat Kumar, Eleonar Marcussen, Soumen Mukherji, all from the Heidelberg University; Sandamalee Wijenayake and Anuththaradevi Widyalankara (Colombo), Charu Singh and Medha Saxena (the JNU), and Margo Liptsin (Harvard). Professor Dhruv Raina and Dr. Roland Wenzlhuemer also gave many useful comments on that occasion. 3 The research carried out for the purpose of the thesis was supported by the Hans Rausing Endowment. I offer my sincere thanks to its Chair and member trustees. During the writing stage, the Imperial College Hardship Fund, Institute of Historical Research, and the Churches Together UK partially supported my stay in London. I thank them all. For introducing historian’s craft to me, I remain grateful to Professor Kamal P. Malla, (late) Nayaraj Panta, Dr. Mahesh Raj Panta, Professor Dinesh Raj Panta, and Professor Prayag Raj Sharma. Dr. Pratyoush Onta, Ramapati Raj Sharma, Vinod Raj Sharma, and Professor Purushottam Lochan Shrestha constantly encouraged my pursuit. For making the short visiting fellowship at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies in Kyoto University very much productive, I am thankful to Dr. Diwakar Acharya, Associate Professor Tatsuro Fujikara, Bhaskar Gautam, and Professor Akio Tanabe. Lastly, my supervisors Professor Andrew Warwick and Dr. Abigail Woods have helped shape the arguments developed in this work in many ways. I am deeply grateful to both for skilfully steering the research project, and for helping me bring together many disparate thoughts. Working under their keen supervision has really been a pleasurable and enlightening exercise. Yogesh R Mishra 4 Abstract This thesis discusses the fate of British East India Company’s attempts to industrialise iron and salt production in India in 1765-1858. Standard histories of these early manufacturing ventures tell stories either of decline in a flourishing indigenous industry or of the governments’ failures to modernise traditional sectors of commodity production. However, these accounts present simplistic portrayals of the Company’s Indian organisation, the local manufacturing milieu, and of iron and salt production and processing technologies. Crucially, they downplay conflicts among various departments of the Company’s Indian edifice, and divisions within the local social organisation of manufacture. The fact that the fiscal policy of the Company governments significantly influenced both manufacturing and market structure in the period is also overlooked. This thesis, by contrast, decouples the actions of the Indian governments from London’s thoughts and prescriptions. It then analyses the implications of the fragmented and evolving colonial edifice for the local industries of iron and salt. Being sensitive to the social, political and geographical differentiation in the colonial landscape, this work focuses on the iron and salt production at the social and geographical ‘frontiers’. It argues that the Company arrived at workable production arrangements in India through experiments in technology and colonial governance, while also discovering effective ways to govern the local manufacturing population. The experiment-based understanding developed in this work will make the messy and unpredictable development of these large-scale iron and salt enterprises comprehensible. Simultaneously, it will cast light on the critical inputs of hitherto unexamined factors such as pre-colonial production relations and the technological uncertainties inherent in the development of various manufactories. These findings will revise our understanding of the ways in which colonial policy was linked to industrialising attempts on the one hand, and technological change on the other. 5 Sources and abbreviations BL British Library London BPRC Provincial Revenue Council at Burdwan Proceedings BRC Bengal Board of Revenue Consultations BRCSOC Board of Revenue Consultations (Separate) Salt Opium and Customs Proceedings CUP Cambridge University Press DCP Provincial Revenue Council at Dacca Proceedings IOR India Office Records JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OUP Oxford University Press PNIC Porto Novo Iron Company SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies London Table Table 1 Particulars of the Jumma of Tuppa Looney & the Iron Mehal rented & Khas from 1770 to 1777 Figures Figure 1 A filtering mound or a maidah Figure 2 The plan and elevation of a boiling house Figure 3 The interior of a boiling house Charts Chart 1 The East India Company’s Salt Organisation in Bengal in the 1780s Chart 2 Organisation of the Salt Agency circa 1780s 6 Table of Contents Abstract 5 Chapter 1 Rethinking Iron and Salt Manufacture in India, 1765-1858 9 Introduction - Reassessment of the Historiography of Iron and Salt in Colonial India – Subject Matter of the Thesis – Chapter Plan Chapter 2 Landscape: Birbhum Iron Works, 1774-1779 25 Introduction - Political Economy at a Colonial Frontier: Birbhum, Western Bengal in the 1770s - Iron Manufacture and Trade in the 1770s in Birbhum - Two Early Iron Projects in Birbhum - The Critical Role of the Chuar s Chapter 3 Organisation: Salt Manufacture in the Sundarbans, 1765-1780s 58 Introduction - Beginnings of the Salt Monopoly, 1765-1780 - The Salt Manufacturers’ Diverse Responses to the Agency System - Salt Monopoly as a Critique of the State- and Market-Centric Narratives Chapter 4 Organisation: The World of Illicit Salt, 1790s – 1810s 91 Introduction - The Emergence of the Notion of Illicit Salt - The Identity of Illicit and Licit Salt - The Diversity in the Illicit Salt Landscape - Problems in the Profit Argument - Illicit Manufacture as a Normal Activity Chapter 5 Experimentation: Porto Novo Iron Company, 1820s-1850s 121 Introduction - The Iron Monopoly for the ‘European Plan’, 1824-1831- Porto Novo Works as a form of Commercial Speculation, 1831-1851 - Responses to the Porto Novo 7 Monopoly - Unsettled Technology of Charcoal Iron Making - The Porto Novo Story and Historiography of Colonial Manufacture Chapter 6 Technology: George A. Prinsep's Salt Experiments, 1828-1839 155 Introduction - Ballyaghaut Experiments, 1828-1833 - Narrainpore Salt Works, 1835 – 1839 - Narrainpore Principles and the Future of Monopoly - Salt Experiments and Colonial State Chapter 7 Conclusion 183 A Summary of the Findings of the Thesis - Implications for the Existing Historiography of Colonial India - Large-scale Manufactures in Colonial India: Experiments at the Colonial Frontier Appendix A 191 References 195 8 Chapter 1 RETHINKING IRON AND SALT MANUFACTURE IN INDIA, 1765-1858 Introduction This thesis is about the British East India Company’s attempts to industrialise iron and salt production in India