Below; Summary of a Shimosan's paper which was published in a
Japanese academic journal : Journal of Market History (Shijoushi Kennkyu ), vol.9, June, 1991, pp.29-48.
Daniel Defoe wrote in 1728 ; "All the kings and parliaments that
have been or shall be cannot govern our fancies --- Two things
Among us are too ungovernable, viz, our passions and our fashions
--- " (Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce).
Since a half-century before his age, a zeal for Indian exotica
(Indian Craze) had been sweeping European society. The sixteenth
century was the era of Ship of Fools and Vanity Fair (see Bunyan's
The Pilgrim's Progress). The Craze, in a sense was an "indigo craze," for to obtain
the brilliant blue dye, European countries began to set up indigo
plantations in their colonies. Part One of this paper examines
the Indigo Revolution in the New World in relation to this Craze,
and to the sugar, tobacco and rice revolutions. Racial Slavery
and the dynamics of economic networks in the Atlantic world are
also discussed in this part.
In Part Two the contrast between the glory of a member of the
colonial gentry, Eliza Lucas, and the wretched circumstances of
black slaves is considered. An object of this study is also to
investigate cultivation techniques of the indigo plant, and the
production of its dye. This paper indicates that indigo, nicknamed
a "devil's" dye by hostile woad growers, was indeed a devil's
dye, because it was introduced to the New World by slaveholders
and again transplanted back to India by ruthless plantation owners
after England lost access to its American colonies when they declared
indipendence. |
