The Envelope of Global Trade: The Political Economy and Intellectual History of Jute in the Bengal Delta, 1850s to 1950s The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Ali, Tariq Omar. 2012. The Envelope of Global Trade: The Political Economy and Intellectual History of Jute in the Bengal Delta, 1850s to 1950s. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10364584 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2012 – Tariq Omar Ali All rights reserved. Professor Sugata Bose Tariq Omar Ali The Envelope of Global Trade: The Political Economy and Intellectual History of Jute in the Bengal Delta, 1850s to 1950s Abstract During the second half of the nineteenth century, peasant smallholders in the Bengal delta – an alluvial tract formed out of the silt deposits of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna river-systems – expanded their cultivation of jute, a fibrous plant that was the world’s primary packaging material. Jute fibres were spun and woven into course cloths used to pack the world’s commodities – its grains, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, and so forth – in their journey from farms and plantations to urban and industrial centres of consumption. The fibre connected the Bengal delta and its peasant smallholders to the vicissitudes of global commodity markets. This dissertation examines connections between the delta and international commodity markets from the 1850s to the 1950s – it is a local history of global capital. I explore how the commodity shaped the delta’s economic, political and intellectual history, how economic lives, social and cultural formations, and political processes in eastern Bengal were informed and influenced by the cultivation and trade of jute fibres. First, I look at how commodity production changed peasant households’ economic lives, particularly intensifying peasant interactions with markets. I focus on peasant households’ market-based consumption, and argue that consumption informed peasant politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Second, I look at how the circulation of the commodity transformed the iii physical and ecological landscape of the delta. I focus on the emergence of jute- specialized market towns along the delta’s rivers and railways, where jute was bulked, assorted and packaged before being dispatched to metropolitan Calcutta. Third, I look at how the commodity emerged as a political and intellectual concept, as imperialists, anti-colonial nationalists, post-colonial statesmen, intellectuals and poets imbued fibre with meaning – relating jute to ideas of poverty and prosperity, religious ethics and practice, economic development and modernization and territorial nationalism. iv Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Politics of Peasant Consumption 21 Jute Cultivation in the Bengal Delta, 1853 to 1917 Chapter 2: The Metropolis, the Hinterland, and the Mofussil 75 The Spatial Formations of Jute, 1853 to 1918 Chapter 3: The Poetry of Jute 122 Mofussil Muslim Politics of Agrarian Immiseration, 1919 to 1936 Chapter 4: The Politics of Jute Prices 177 The State, Commodity Markets, and the Bengal Famine, 1930 to 1944 Chapter 5: Sovereignty and Fibre 234 Post-partition Pakistan and Jute, 1947 to 1954 Conclusion 286 v Acknowledgements To Sugata Bose, the perfect adviser, who represents the perfect balance of guidance and intellectual freedom. Professor Bose directed me to sources, including providing archival materials from his own research and my conversations with him helped me shape and refine my arguments. At the same time, he was very permissive, and always encouraged me to strike out on my own path, to develop my own intellectual interests and style. To Walter Johnson and Emma Rothschild who provided valuable feedback on drafts of chapters. To Sven Beckert, Alison Frank, and Maya Jasanoff who were generous with their time, and provided guidance and inspiration. To my fellow graduate students at Harvard, who provided an intellectual and social community that fostered the creative process and kept life interesting and fun. Especially to Mikhail Akulov, Kuba Kabala, Stefan Link, Hassan Malik, Johan Mathew, Julie Stephens, Gitanjali Surendran, Michael Tworek, and Jeremy Yellen – I would not have enjoyed writing this dissertation as much without them. Also, to Rohit De and Pallavi Raghavan, with whom I spent much time in archives and libraries in Dhaka, Delhi, and London. To Antara Datta, Subir Datta, Supriya Datta, and Ishwarda who hosted me in Kolkata, with great generousity. I have many fond memories of wonderful food and conversation in their Ballygunge home. To Ania Loomba, Suvir Kaul and Tariq Thachil who allowed me to stay in their New Delhi apartment. To S.A. Hafiz, Burt Caesar, Salman Azim, and Fanar Haddad who provided wonderful hospitality and company in London and – briefly – Dundee. To my brother, Zain Ali, who moved to Cambridge during my finishing year and provided brilliant company and distraction when needed. To my grandfather, S.A. Azim, a truly remarkable man whose wide-ranging intellectual curiousity, abilities, and discipline has always been an inspiration. Above all, to my parents, Firdous Azim and Bashirul Haq. I have no words to express my gratitude to them. They have supported me in every way imaginable; without their encouragement, nothing would have been possible. I dedicate this dissertation to them as a token of gratitude for the unstinting and unconditional love and support that I have always received from them. vi Abbreviations NAI National Archives India NAB National Archives Bangladesh DUA Dundee University Archives IOR India Office Library and Records BLC Bengal Legislative Council BLA Bengal Legislative Assembly EBLA East Bengal Legislative Assembly EPA East Pakistan Assembly SSR Survey and Settlement Report BPBEC Bengal Provincial Banking Enquiry Commission RCA Royal Commission on Agriculture FIC The Famine Inquiry Commission MAS Modern Asian Studies IESHR Indian Economic and Social History Review IJMA Indian Jute Mills Association BNCC Bengal National Chamber of Commerce BCC Bengal Chamber of Commerce KPP Krishak Praja Party vii List of Tables Table 1.1 25 Acreage of jute in major jute-districts of the Bengal delta, 1872 to 1910 Table 2.1 82 Arrivals of Jute into Calcutta, 1876 to 1890 Table 3.1 128 Average landholdings in Jute-growing districts, 1929-30 Table 3.2 131 Index of prices in Bengal, 1917-1939 Table 3.3 151 Circulation of Local Newspapers in Eastern Bengal Table 4.1 179 Peasant Families’ Sales of Land, April 1943 to April 1944 viii Introduction From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, jute fabrics – gunnies, hessians, burlap – were the premier packaging material in world trade. Jute sacks were used to pack the world’s grains, cotton, sugar, coffee, guano, cement, and even bacon, as these commodities made their journey from farms and mines to centres of consumption. While the fabric circulated globally, the production of fibre was concentrated in a small corner of the world – the Bengal delta, an alluvial tract formed out of the silt deposits of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river- systems. Peasant smallholders in the delta cultivated jute on small lots of land, using a combination of household and hired labour and stored and borrowed capital. Peasant produce journeyed westwards from the peasant homestead, along the delta’s waterways and railways, through river-ports and railway towns, to Calcutta. From Calcutta, part of the crop went north, to the jute mills along the banks of the Hooghly and the rest was exported overseas, to jute mills in Britain, continental Europe and North America. The mills spun and wove the fibres into fabrics that were dispatched to the world’s farms, plantations, and mines. From there, wrapped around a multitude of primary products, jute sacks traveled the globe. The sack connected the delta’s jute tracts to circuits of global capital, to the rhythms and vicissitudes of global commodity markets. My dissertation focuses on the transformations wrought by the cultivation and circulation of fibre on the Bengal delta. I examine how fibre shaped the delta’s economic, political and intellectual history from the 1850s to the 1950s, exploring how economic lives, social and cultural formations, and political processes in eastern Bengal were informed and 1 influenced by the region’s connections to global circuits of capital forged by jute. The emergence of jute cultivation in the Bengal delta should not be seen as a moment in the region’s transitions to capitalism, a one-off event with a less capitalist before and a more capitalist after.1 The relationship between commodity-producing region and global commodity markets was continuous – repeated and reiterated and sometimes reshaped and reoriented each time Bengal’s cultivators sowed their lands with jute and bought fibres to sale into global markets. I examine the relationship between commodity-producing region and global commodity markets during the hundred years spanning the Crimean War (1853-56) and the Korean War (1950-53). The Crimean War interrupted Britain’s supplies of Russian flax and hemp leading textile mills in Dundee, Scotland, to switch en masse to jute. Though initially concentrated in Dundee, jute mills were established in continental Europe, the USA and in western Bengal during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By 1910, about half of the world’s jute manufacturing capacity was located along the banks of the Hooghly, to the north of Calcutta.2 Bengal’s peasant smallholders responded to the sharp rise in global manufacturing 1 Dipesh Chakrabarty’s critique of transitions to capitalism ,and the consignment of nations and societies to the “waiting room of history,” awaiting this transition, is apt.