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This book is unlikely to be a best-seller yet it is packed full of
interesting information and draws on the memoirs of several early
BACSA members, who came from planter families in the area. The
author's thesis is that not only a country, and its peoples, can be
'colonised' by a foreign power, but that the very vegetation of the
country can be too. If this sounds bizarre, then consider for a moment
the frenzy for indigo in the late eighteenth century, when every lady of
fashion had to have a blue-dyed gown. This was orchestrated by the
East India Company, anxious to make a profit for its Court of Directors
in London. The history of tobacco in India began earlier when
European explorers to the Americas introduced the plant and there are
accounts from the beginning of 1600 of it being smoked in the sub-continent.
Smoking is not the only thing one can do with tobacco, of
course, as the author points out. It can also be chewed, or inhaled as
snuff.
The topic of why India and the Middle East adopted the hookah, where
smoke is passed over scented water, while the West preferred pipes,
cigars and cigarettes, could have been explored more fully. But there is
plenty of fascinating detail here - the difference between desi (local)
and vilayati (export quality) tobacco grown in Bihar ; how the loss of
Britain 's American colonies at the end of the eighteenth century
incentivised the East India Company to begin tobacco planting in India,
and why cash crops are not necessarily a good thing. Land that could
have been used for growing food grains and vegetables to feed local
people, was instead given over to crops that made money for the East
India Company; for the British Government in India, and for European
planters. One has to weigh up the benefits for economic growth against
the fact that local people simply didn't have enough to eat. Amitav
Ghosh's splendid book Sea of Poppies (which is not referenced here)
relates in heartbreaking detail how villagers around Ghazipur suddenly
found their landscape transformed with the planting of opium poppies
by East India Company staff.
This is a rich book. The author has consulted a huge number of sources
and she draws her examples from a wide and eclectic range of
published material. One senses that English is not her native language
but the occasional infelicity really only adds to the charm of this book.
There are a number of black and white photographs, some taken by the
author herself, others from relevant publications. Recommended.
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