Indigo Plantation

Before the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans in India, traded with India there was extensive trading for centuries by the Arabs between the west coast of India and southern Europe. The Indigo plant or dye was one of the items of trade.

These dyes - brilliant purple and reds - were very expensive and only the Roman Emperors and the very wealthy could afford them hence the term "the royal purple". The range from deep red to purple to deep blue can be obtained by adjusting the pH (acidity - alkanility) of the solution. It was the Portuguese who gave the dye or plant the name "Indigo" meaning "from the indies". The Arabs called the dye "a-nil" meaning "the blue" - they just used the adjective and left out the noun. "Nil" is blue in Sanskrit as in the Nilgiri Hills in Southern India which translated means the "Blue Hills" as they look blue from the plains due to the combination of mist and heavy rain forest.

In the late 1800's the Germans - and later the British - synthesized these indigo dyes chemically and used the original arab or Sanskrit name in calling them "anilin dyes" which is the term used in chemistry books. Unfortunately the chemical synthesis of these dyes by the Europeans effectively destroyed the indigo industry in India. During World War II in India we couldn't get the synthetic dyes or fabric from England; instead we used Indian fabrics dyed with the Indian indigo dyes.

FIBIS Resources

• Index of Indigo Planters in Bihar taken from History of Behar Indigo Factories; Reminiscences of Bihar; Tirhoot and its inhabitants of the past. History of Behar Light Horse Volunteers by Minden Wilson 1908. (Fibis Database) For online copy of text see External links below.
• FibisPodcast 'The lure of Indigo - and how the Hills family of East Bengal won three VCs' FIBIS podcast by Miles McNair.
• "Adam Maxwell of Cawnpore-Indigo and Intrigue" by Judith Vandenburgh Green FIBIS Journal Number 25 (Spring 2011), pages 25-33
• Review by Peter Bailey of the book Indigo and Opium: Two Remarkable Families and Fortunes Won and Lost by Miles Macnair (2013). The review is in FIBIS Journal Number 32 (Autumn 2014), pages 50-51. For details of how to access the review, see FIBIS Journals.

Also see

• Biographical Records (IOR O series)

External links

Historical books online

• "List of Members of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India at 31 December 1854" Contain a number of indigo planters and their location. Archive.org. (This list is located at the back of the book file for A residence among the Chinese 
inland, on the coast, and at sea. Being a narrative of scenes and adventures during a third visit to China, from 1853 to 1856 by Robert Fortune 1857 Archive.org)
  • Also see Scientific books online for other edition of the Journal of the Agricultural & Horticultural Society of India which may contain earlier membership lists
• "Among the Indigo-Planters" Chapter III, page 39 Thirty Years of Shikar by Sir Edward Braddon 1895 Archive.org. A Biography indicates that in 1850 or 1851 Edward Braddon managed a number of indigo factories near Krishnagar, (Kishnaghur) where he worked for about five years. adb.anu.edu.au
• "Indigo and Indigo Planting" page 180 The Calcutta Review Vol. XXX January-June 1858 Google Books.
• Papers relating to the cultivation of indigo in the Presidency of Bengal 1860 Google Books
• Selections from the Records of the Government of Bengal No 33 part 2: Papers relating to indigo cultivation in Bengal, Volume 2 1860 Google Books
• ‪The Experiences of a Landholder and Indigo Planter in Eastern Bengal‬ by G Lamb 1860 Google Books
• East India: Indigo Commission Volume 11, Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons Session 5 February-6 August 1861 Google Books
• Minute by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal [Sir J.P. Grant] on the Report of the Indigo Commission ... of 1860 1861 Google Books. Possibly may be included in the previous Parliamentary Papers.
• “Letter VIII: Mulnath Indigo Factory” from Rural life in Bengal: illustrative of Anglo-Indian suburban life, the habits of the rural classes, the varied produce of the soil and seasons, and the culture and manufacture of indigo : letters from an artist in India to his sisters in England by Colesworthy Grant 1866 illustrated with one hundred and sixty six engravings.
• Tent Life in Tigerland with which is incorporated Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier : being twelve years' sporting reminiscences of a pioneer (indigo) planter in an indian frontier district by James Inglis 1892. Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier was first published 1878 and commences page 369 Archive.org
• The culture and manufacture of indigo; with a description of a planter's life and resources by Walter Maclagan Reid 1887 Archive.org
• Report on the Cultivation and Manufacture of Indigo in Bengal 1899 Archive.org
• "Indigo Planting in India" by M N MacDonald pages 321-326 Pearson’s Magazine [Vol. 10, No 58] October 1900. Hathi Trust Digital Library. Alternative pdf version, apparently from a different printing of the same book, pages 387-392. cs.arizona.edu
• “Indigo” from A History of Murshidabad District (Bengal) : with biographies of some of its noted families by John Henry Tull Walsh 1902 Archive.org
• History of Behar Indigo Factories ; Reminiscences of Behar ; Tirhoot and its inhabitants of the past ; History of Behar Light Horse Volunteers by Minden Wilson 1908 Archive.org
• Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa: their history, people, commerce and industrial resources by Somerset Playne and J W Bond 1917 on the Archive.org website has a chapter on "Indigo in Behar" and "The Behar Planters Association, Ltd"
• An Ignorant in India by R E Venede 1911 Archive.org The author was visiting a friend who was a Collector in an indigo region in Bengal

Other

• Photograph: Indigo Vats 1850s by Captain R. B. Hill Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. Probably Richard Barton Hill 1835-1873, who joined the Bengal Army in 1853.
• The Planting & Manufacture of Indigo in India. 29 Photographic views by Oscar Mallitte [1877] (but fewer online). J Paul Getty Museum.

YouTube video, same images. Oscar Jean-Baptiste Mallitte

• Model of an Indian indigo factory bbc.co.uk. "Living Clay" by Soumitra Das June 8 , 2008 The Telegraph, Calcutta, now an archived webpage.
• Indigo: History from Plant Cultures Kew Gardens, now an archived website
• Decline of Indigo business in India from Merchant Networks, now an archived website.
• "An Indigo Plantation In Bengal" Transcription of an article from The Field 1885. "Moss Valley". Retrieved 28 August 2014.
• Digital Archive of Documents Related to Indigo cs.arizona.edu
• "Indian Dyes and Dyeing Industry during 18th-19th Century" by H C Bhardwaj and Kamal K Jain Indian Journal of History of Science 17(1) 1982 pages 70-81. Includes information about indigo.
• An India List post advises that the word 'mookarrarie' which appears in History of Behar Indigo Factories means 'a permanent tenure'.
• Early Sugar Industry of Bihar. sites.google.com. Some indigo plantations also grew sugar cane.