Introduction
Colonialism is one of history’s most contentious and emotive issues. A person or nation that founded a colony in another nation is known as a colonizer. The term “colonized” refers to people residing in regions under foreign control (Zahra et al., 2023, p. 127). There are four types of colonialism: internal, surrogate, exploitation, and settler colonialism (Zahra et al., 2023). Each entails acts in which an external political entity gains territorial authority over an area through exploitation, extensive expansion, and ongoing maintenance of that region (Bernstein, 2021).
Notably, as a result of trade restrictions and long hours of forced labor, the local people suffer at the hands of the oppressors. The desire to colonize new territories was made possible by the development of sea transportation. By the fifteenth century, the three groups capable of long-distance sea travel were the Arabs, the Chinese, and the Europeans (Newson, 1996). The British Empire was among the primary colonizers, and one of its targets was India, where the British controlled trade by influencing markets for tea and cotton, thereby affecting India’s further development.
Trade is at the center of a nation’s economic progress. It is the means through which a nation establishes itself in the international sphere. Indian trade has been shaped, to a large extent, by British colonization. Through a strategy of divide and conquer, the British skillfully created divisions among the Indian princes in the years after 1757 as they gradually consolidated their power (Tharoor, 2017). Divide et impera was the ancient Roman maxim that Lord Elphinstone, the British administrator of Bombay at the time, suggested London should adopt in 1859 (Tharoor, 2017). The result was the control of a region whose agricultural products would define colonial trade.
The fact that colonial powers established colonies to strip them of their resources is a foregone conclusion. The prioritization of trade between the colonies and the imperial powers was a characteristic shared by a majority of European colonists (Bonfatti & Brey, 2023). The colonies developed a pattern of specialization in which they bought manufactured goods and exported primary products (Bonfatti & Brey, 2023).
The imperial powers promoted this specialization because it benefited investors in colonial plantations and mines, manufacturers, and consumers of primary goods (Bonfatti & Brey, 2023). Against this backdrop, the impact of colonization on Indian trade is examined. The focus is directed towards two key products, namely tea and cotton, that defined trade in the colonial era and left an indelible mark on India’s economic sphere.
India’s Tea Trade
For billions of people around the world, tea, or chai as it is called in India, is a daily essential. India produced 1.26 million metric tons and drank 1.09 billion kg of tea in 2021 alone (Arora, 2022). In fact, most Indians consume tea multiple times a day. Chai is a symbol of hospitality and is subsequently consumed at train stations, offices, and with family members (Arora, 2022). Today, the majority of Indians consider chai to be an indispensable staple in their lives.
One of the products that defined early and contemporary India was tea. India’s West Bengal was under the authority of the British East India Company (EIC) in 1757 (Akhtar et al., 2021). Following its takeover of certain regions of India in 1834, the British East India Company (EIC) experimented with growing tea plants in its colonies (Akhtar et al., 2021). The colonists noted with concern that the opium the firm used to pay for the Chinese tea, grown in West Bengal, was fueling Chinese addiction to the product and precipitating conflict (Akhtar et al., 2021). Opium was a vital commodity in early British trade.
The British sought to colonize India in hopes of cultivating tea to come closer to the thriving opium industry. The principal British factories in India and other regions of Asia were connected by ships operated by private trading companies (Trocki, 1999). The runs between Bombay and Canton, as well as between Calcutta and Canton, were crucial to the opium trade (Trocki, 1999).
Consequently, China’s developing opium addiction led to the Opium Wars between 1839 and 1842, and 1856 and 1860 (Akhtar et al., 2021). As a result, the British recognized they needed to locate a place within their Empire to cultivate tea plants, as they feared losing their supply of black tea from China (Akhtar et al., 2021). Therefore, the EIC began searching for locations to cultivate tea at a commercial level throughout the Indian subcontinent.
The cultivation of tea in India was considered urgent, given the potential economic ramifications of losing supply to China. The East India Company appointed Lord William Bentinck in January 1834 to head a team to investigate and recommend the best locations for growing tea (Akhtar et al., 2021). In his assessment, Lord William Bentinck discussed the possibility of cultivating tea, the issue of importing plants and seeds from China, and the best places to plant them (Akhtar et al., 2021).
The Tea Committee decided to dispatch Secretary G. J. Gordon to China to procure tea seeds, tea-making equipment, and specialists versed in the cultivation of tea plants. Upon his return, he brought approximately 80,000 Bohea tea seeds destined for Indian plantations (Akhtar et al., 2021). Dr. Nathaniel Wallich oversaw the transfer of the seeds from the source to the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta, where they were allowed to germinate (Akhtar et al., 2021). The British Empire was well on its way towards fortifying trade within the Indian subcontinent.
The impact of the British Empire’s foray into the growth and production of tea on Indian trade was immense. To speed up the shipment of tea leaves, British tea associations built a new rail route in the 1880s (Arora, 2022). The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway connected Darjeeling and Calcutta, where tea auctions were held, as tea traders exported their products to Europe and to Tibet (Arora, 2022).
It is worth noting that the construction of the railway line enhanced British control over the tea industry and improved the efficiency of the later stages of the tea production process. The fact that the railway made travel easier enabled the British to sell tea to Tibetans, who mostly obtained their tea from China (Arora, 2022). The aforementioned advancements, along with other infrastructure innovations such as road paving and tea-processing machinery, enabled the British-controlled Indian tea trade to flourish.
India’s Cotton Trade
Cotton has played a critical role in Indian trade since British colonization. Throughout the nineteenth century, the United States and India accounted for the majority of global cotton exports (Rönnbäck & Theodoridis, 2022). During a significant portion of that time, India supplied nearly 30% of the cotton traded on the global market, making it the second-largest exporter of the crop (Rönnbäck & Theodoridis, 2022).
From the early eighteenth century, the British government made multiple attempts to increase cotton production in India as part of a broader initiative to expand British trade. This resulted in the establishment of the Indian Agricultural and Horticultural Society (AHSI) in Calcutta in 1820 (Rönnbäck & Theodoridis, 2022). With the help of American cotton planters, the British East India Company established experimental farms throughout the EIC-controlled region of India by the 1830s (Rönnbäck & Theodoridis, 2022). The objective was to test the cultivation of several cotton varieties and implement a wide array of American agricultural techniques.
British colonial strategies in India focused on the extraction of raw materials, which halted the development of local industries. The situation was similar to the suppression of economic advancement in Africa through the exploitation of human resources and commodities (M’baye, 2006). The strategy massively hindered Africa’s ability to transition to a proper, viable entrepreneurial economy; hence, there is a strong parallel with India’s struggle to industrialize.
The British Empire’s focus on cotton did not bolster trade in the Indian subcontinent. India’s 1.26 million-tonne cotton textile export to Britain in 1814 fell to 300,000 tonnes in 1835 (Zhao, 2023). India shifted its export profile from finished goods to raw materials. Even though European-made goods were often better and more affordable, Indian goods were becoming less common in Bangladesh, even though they were more durable than foreign-imported products (Zhao, 2023).
Weavers in the Paranas district were essentially forced to transition from their traditional occupation to farming (Zhao, 2023). An estimated 8 million acres of land were dedicated to cotton cultivation in India in 1850, with the majority of that land in the country’s western region (Zhao, 2023). It should be noted that in the final ten years of the 19th century, cotton farming grew to 17 million acres thanks to the development of the Indian railway network (Zhao, 2023). The aforementioned developments notwithstanding, the Indian cotton trade suffered immeasurably.
The failure of cotton as a trading commodity has continued in contemporary Indian society. The recent increase in the cultivation of the commodity was largely due to its being marketed as the solution to every issue facing India’s rural communities (Kannuri & Jadhav, 2021). People were led to believe that cotton growing could improve their lives, given the State’s legitimization of the industry and the aggressive marketing tactics of global seed companies (Kannuri & Jadhav, 2021).
Communities that chose to become farmers saw cotton as a way of elevating their economic and social standing. However, cotton has been an obstacle for most small farmers by exacerbating their social hardship and that of their families (Kannuri & Jadhav, 2021). Some large farmers who could survive the challenges associated with production and pricing have prospered in the long run (Kannuri & Jadhav, 2021). The overall picture, however, is that of a nation starved of the cotton trade.
Conclusion
The colonization of India had significant ramifications for the nation’s trade. Two key problems arose from the colonies’ perspective regarding the invasion by foreign powers. Firstly, colonial commerce stopped the colonies from becoming more industrialized and developing their trade.
Secondly, by forcing them to rely on trade with the imperial power, European colonists kept the colonized regions under control. The preceding discussion demonstrates how the British were able to solidify their hold on power in India through their restrictive administrative and economic strategies. They received enormous sums of money in return for keeping the impoverished farmers under control.
With the cultivation of numerous cash crops, such as tea and cotton, and the supply of raw materials to British industry, they forced the commercialization of agriculture on the people. The British were able to monopolize trade with India, thereby negatively impacting the nation’s economic well-being. The evaluation of tea and cotton demonstrates the divergent trajectories each product has taken since their heavy commercialization during colonization.
Tea has become an integral part of Indian trade, judging by its performance in the international market. Cotton was the bane of Indian trade due to the misery it caused its people. The low returns and poor quality of the final product have led to limited international interest.
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