Hazareesingh Sandip - Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

General Editors: Megan Vaughan, Kings College, Cambridge, and Richard Drayton, Kings College London

This informative series covers the broad span of modern imperial history while also exploring the recent developments in former colonial states where residues of empire can still be found. The books provide in-depth examinations of empires as competing and complementary power structures encouraging the reader to reconsider their understanding of international and world history during recent centuries.

Titles include:

Miguel Bandeira Jernimo

THE CIVILISING MISSION OF PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM, 18701930

Miguel Bandeira Jernimo and Antnio Costa Pinto

THE ENDS OF EUROPEAN COLONIAL EMPIRES

Cases and Comparisons

Gregory A. Barton

INFORMAL EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF ONE WORLD CULTURE

Rachel Berger

AYURVEDA MADE MODERN

Political Histories of Indigenous Medicine in North India, 19001955

Ulbe Bosma and Anthony Webster

COMMODITIES, PORTS AND ASIAN MARITIME TRADE SINCE 1750

Rachel Bright

CHINESE LABOUR IN SOUTH AFRICA, 190210

Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle

Larry Butler and Sarah Stockwell

THE WIND OF CHANGE

Harold Macmillan and British Decolonization

Esme Cleall

MISSIONARY DISCOURSE

Negotiating Difference in the British Empire, c.184095

T. J. Cribb (editor)

IMAGINED COMMONWEALTH

Cambridge Essays on Commonwealth and International Literature in English

Bronwen Everill

ABOLITION AND EMPIRE IN SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA

Anna Greenwood and Harshad Topiwala

INDIAN DOCTORS IN KENYA, 18901940

Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Maat (editors)

LOCAL SUBVERSIONS OF COLONIAL CULTURES

Commodities and Anti-Commodities in Global History

Risn Healy and Enrico Dal Lago (editors)

THE SHADOW OF COLONIALISM IN EUROPES MODERN PAST

Leslie James

GEORGE PADMORE AND DECOLONIZATION FROM BELOW

Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and the End of Empire

Robin Jeffrey

POLITICS, WOMEN AND WELL-BEING

How Kerala Became a Model

Gerold Krozewski

MONEY AND THE END OF EMPIRE

British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 194758

Zo Laidlaw and Alan Lester (editors)

INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES AND SETTLER COLONIALISM

Land Holding, Loss and Survival in an Interconnected World

Sophus Reinert and Pernille Rge

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EMPIRE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Jonathan Saha

LAW, DISORDER AND THE COLONIAL STATE

Corruption in Burma c.1900

John Singleton and Paul Robertson

ECONOMIC RELATIONS BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AUSTRALASIA 19451970

Leonard Smith

INSANITY, RACE AND COLONIALISM

Managing Mental Disorder in the Post-Emancipation British Caribbean, 18381914

Alex Sutton

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF IMPERIAL RELATIONS

Britain, the Sterling Area, and Malaya 19451960

Miguel Surez Bosa

ATLANTIC PORTS AND THE FIRST GLOBALISATION c. 18501930

Jerome Teelucksingh

LABOUR AND THE DECOLONIZATION STRUGGLE IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Julia Tischler

LIGHT AND POWER FOR A MULTIRACIAL NATION

The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation

Erica Wald

VICE IN THE BARRACKS

Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 17801868

Anna Winterbottom

HYBRID KNOWLEDGE IN THE EARLY EAST INDIA COMPANY WORLD

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

Series Standing Order ISBN 9780333919088 (Hardback)

9780333919095 (Paperback)

(outside North America only)

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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures

Commodities and Anti-Commodities in Global History

Edited by

Sandip Hazareesingh

Research Fellow, The Open University, UK

and

Harro Maat

Lecturer, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Selection, introduction and editorial matter Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Maat 2016

Individual chapters Respective authors 2016

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2016 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 9781137381095

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hazareesingh, Sandip, author

Local subversions of colonial cultures : commodities and

anti-commodities in global history / Sandip Hazareesingh, Harro Maat.

pages cm

ISBN 9781137381095 (hardback)

1. AgricultureEconomic aspectsAfricaHistory. 2. AgricultureEconomic aspectsAsiaHistory. 3. AgricultureEconomic aspectsCaribbeanHistory. 4. Produce tradeAfricaHistory. 5. Produce tradeAsiaHistory. 6. Produce tradeCaribbean AreaHistory. 7. AfricaColoniesAdministrationHistory. 8. AsiaColoniesAdministrationHistory. 9. Caribbean AreaColoniesAdministrationHistory. I. Maat, Harro, author. II. Title.

HD2117.H39 2015

338.1dc23

2015021908

Contents

Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Maat

Paul Richards

Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff

Harro Maat

Jonathan Curry-Machado

Sandip Hazareesingh

Lauren Minsky

David Hyde

Erik Gilbert

Simeon Maravanyika

Illustrations

Tables

Figures

Acknowledgements

The origins of this book lie in the collaborative research project Commodities and Anti-Commodities: indigenous production as sustainable practice and resistance against agrarian commercial capitalism in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean during the colonial era funded by the Humanities division of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The project lasted from 2009 to 2013 and involved an institutional collaboration between the Technology and Agrarian Development group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands and the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University, UK. The Ferguson Centre jointly hosted the British Academy-funded Commodities of Empire research project with the Institute for the Study of the Americas at London Universitys School of Advanced Study. The Commodities and Anti-Commodities project drew in scholars from all these institutions and research groups who shared a commitment to explore the networks and processes through which primary commodities were produced historically, and to assess the differential impact of these processes on producers, consumers, regions and societies in both south and north. The project held two workshops, the first at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam in June 2010, and the second at Wageningen University in September 2012. The workshops brought together early career as well as established historians, anthropologists and development scholars to present and discuss state-of-the-art research on commodity histories. This volume presents a selection of the papers originally produced for the second workshop.