Reviewed by: Colonialism, Chemical Technology, and Industry in Southern India, 1880–1937* Tara Sethia (bio) Colonialism, Chemical Technology, and Industry in Southern India, 1880–1937. By Nasir Tyabji. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp. viii+242; figures, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $28. Nasir Tyabji sees the nature of industrial development in Madras, in general, as a part of the larger pattern of industrialization in colonial India. This pattern emerged from the British policy of using India to balance “Britain’s trade deficit with continental Europe and North America with its own exports of primary products to those countries” (p. 3). Hence the British promoted the production of cash crops in India. Like Bombay and Bengal, Madras relied primarily on a cash-crop-oriented export economy. Just as cotton and cotton textiles from Bombay played a crucial role in Britain’s triangular trade with China, and jute and jute products from Bengal were critically significant in balancing Britain’s trade with the United States, so also the production of oilseeds in Madras was aimed at balancing trade with Britain’s “continental creditors,” France and Germany. [End Page 673] Consequently, Indian industrialization proceeded slowly, and industrial consciousness among Indian merchants lagged. Despite the similarity of British industrial policy in the Madras, Bombay, and Bengal Presidencies, industrial development in Madras, argues Tyabji, was backward compared to industrialization in Bombay and Calcutta. He attempts to illustrate this point with a case study of chemical-technology-based industries, especially those supported by Madras’s primary cash crops, the oilseeds: groundnut and coconut. The focus on oilseeds is significant, as they represented not only one of the major commercial crops and items of export from Madras but, more important, they could have been a base for the application of chemical technology in the process of industrial production. Nevertheless, the process of extracting oil from seeds continued to depend on an existing mechanical process using village ghanis or Chekkus, rather than new chemical technology. Tyabji concludes that industrialization in Madras suffered not only because the British authorities supported industrial effort there only to the extent that it allowed them to increase the export of oilseeds from Madras but also because such limited support failed to incorporate new chemical technology and, therefore, led to slow industrial growth. Tyabji’s conclusion about the relative industrial backwardness of Madras is further supported by his analysis of the Madras textile industry. He points out that the cotton textile industry grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in Coimbatoore, but that it suffered from underdevelopment as the technical conditions in the mills there remained low. This was partly due to “a low degree of evolution of a specifically industrial social consciousness amongst the industrialists and partly the result of the objective conditions of extreme competition. Success was achieved by cutting corners, by lowering overheads through replacing mechanized process by manual ones and concurrently keeping the workforce on a semi permanent basis, at best” (p. 115). But a large part of this analysis is applicable to the jute mills in Calcutta as well. The case of the jute industry in Calcutta is a telling tale of the rapid growth of jute mills in India, which occurred only with the support of a labor-intensive process of production that relied on backward technologies. Such growth of jute mills in Calcutta was driven by the philosophy of mercantilism rather than imbued with a spirit of modernization and technologically supported industrialization. (See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working Class History: Bengal, 1890–1990 [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990]). Tyabji further contends that Madras also lagged behind the key Princely States in south central India. This, according to him, was due to the nature of the British relationship with these states, which was based mainly on the loyalty and trust of the princes. Thus, these states expected a greater degree of freedom and autonomy in pursuing economic growth and development. Moreover, in Princely States such as Hyderabad the [End Page 674] local Sahukars, or businessmen, were becoming increasingly aware of changing economic realities and beginning to articulate their long-term economic interests. They were not happy with a “purely trading role” (p. 10) and aspired to...
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Dec 15, 2014
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