West Indies technologies in the East Indies: Imperial preference and sugar business in Bihar, 1800–1850s

Abstract

Today India is among the major sugar producers and sugar-making has a long tradition, yet the adoption of modern sugar technologies was delayed. Which factors underpinned this? This article examines the attempts of European sugar entrepreneurs to adopt new sugar technologies in 1830s-1840s Bihar. Its findings correspond with recent literature on Indian economic development which emphasises the role of declining agricultural productivity in economic stagnation in the colonial period. This article supports the conclusions that low agricultural productivity was the outcome of inadequate investment on the part of the British Empire. It also highlights that in the case of commercial crops -such as sugar -investment into new technologies with potential for increasing productivity was hindered by British trade policies. As British imperial policies gave preference to the welfare of the British consumer, lacked consideration for colonial manufacturing, they did not create a beneficial environment for long-run investment projects.By the nineteenth century the Indian peninsula had a centuries-long tradition of sugar making. Yet the production of European-type white sugar, manufactured for export, failed. Moreover, by the late nineteenth century production of Indian-type sugar was no longer sufficient to meet domestic consumption. Sugar started to be imported from Java and even from Europe. 1 The essential question to ask is which factors underpinned this failure. Can we consider this a management failure, a technological failure, or were the policies of the British Empire to blame? This article studies the efforts of English sugar manufacturers to transfer West Indies sugar technologies to Bihar in India, and adapt them to the local physical and socio-economic environment. The article takes a micro-approach and through a case study of two factories -the Jummoah factory and the Dhobah East India Company -shows the challenges faced by sugar manufacturers with respect to technologies, management, transport, and changes in British policies towards sugar duties.This article is motivated by the following debates, particularly by Broadberry and Gupta's reassessment of nineteenth-century Indian economic development that places agricultural productivity at the heart of the development debate about economic stagnation in the colonial period. 2 Broadberry et al. showed that a decline in GDP per capita had already started in the seventeenth century and continued during the eighteenth century before GDP per