Political Economy of Indigo in India, 1580-1930

Ghulam A. Nadri, PhD (2007), Leiden University, is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University. He has published a monograph Eighteenth-Century Gujarat: The Dynamics of Its Political Economy, 1750-1800 (Brill, 2009) and many journal articles and book chapters on early modern Gujarat and India.

"The book’s unique merit lies in shedding light on the early modern history of indigo that scholars have thus far passed over. There are a number of assertions on the history of indigo production on the Indian subcontinent going back to antiquity, but not until this book has there been any systematic study of this history in any era other than the modern, except in broader studies of oceanic trade by economic historians of the previous generation. Nadri has to be commended for dwelling on an uncharted chronology of the history of indigo on the subcontinent. His detailed consultation of Dutch archives and of scattered Persian archives in this regard is praiseworthy. [...] Nadri’s book entices other scholars to follow the lead he has provided." - Prakash Kumar, Pennsylvania State University, in: Economic History Review, 70, 2 (2017)"[...] Nadri’s relentless comparative commodity chain framework conceptual approach represents an important contribution to the growing corpus of new scholarship at the intersection of tradition and modernity, state and economy, and the local and global in South Asia. The chapters on the making of the world market and the political economy of indigo in particular are required reading for anyone interested in early modern and colonial India in the contexts of modernization, colonial capitalism, and globalization (or rather ‘glocalization’)." - Markus Vink, The State University of New York at Fredonia, in:The Mariner's Mirror, 103:3, pp. 353-354

• General Editor’s Foreword ... viiAcknowledgements ... xList of Illustrations ... xiiList of Abbreviations and Short Titles ... xivCurrency, Weights, and Measures ... xviGlossary ... xviiIntroduction ... 11 The Making of Indigo: Cultivation and Manufacture ... 122 From Manufactory to Market: Logistics and Commerce ... 613 The Indigo Trade: Local and Global Demand ... 854 The Making of the World Market: Indigo Commodity Chains ... 1245 The Political Economy of Indigo: States, Merchants, and Producers ... 154Conclusions ... 192Appendices1 Annual Volumes (in Dutch pounds) and Values (in guilders) of the voc’s Indigo Exports from Surat, 1619–1742 ... 1972 Quantities and Values of Annual Indigo Sales by the voc, 1642–1765 ... 2003 Indigo Sale Prices (stivers/pound) in Amsterdam, 1695–1760 ... 2064 Quantities (in lb.) of Indigo Exported by the eic from Surat/Bombay, 1615–1729 ... 2085 Values (in rupees) of Annual Indigo Exports from India, 1795/96–1933/34 ... 2116 Quantities (in Dutch pounds) and Values (in guilders) of voc’s Exports of Java Indigo to the Dutch Republic, 1704–1781 ... 2167 Values (in guilder) and Volumes (in kilogram) of Indigo Exports from Java, 1824–1873 ... 2178 Indigo Prices (rupees per man and stivers per Dutch pound) in India, 1609–1757 ... 2199 Indigo Prices in Calcutta (rupees/factory man) and London (pence/lb.), 1843–1921 ... 221Bibliography ... 223Index ... 240