Rajani Sudan, 2004, Mud, mortar and other
technologies of empire - Eighteenth century: Theory and interpretation. http://sarasvati2.googlepages.com/rajanisudan.htm
Rajani explodes the fraudulent myth of
Macaulay
This is a remarkable piece of research work by Rajani Sudan which belies the
fraudulent claim, a myth, of Macaulay in his notes on education of the 'natives'
asserting that they were superstitious and could not match the superiority
of European knowledge. Rajani Sudan explodes this Macaulay myth by reviewing
archives of the British Library, directly related to the imperialist regime
which started with east India trade. Macaulay had nothing but contempt for
the vernaculars of the 'natives': "All parties seem to be agreed on one
point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of
India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover,
so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it
will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be
admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes
of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present
be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them. "
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/rraley/research/english/macaulay.html
This does not jibe with what the merchants of East India Company wrote in
their notes to the imperialists back home in Britain.
Ethnocentric myth of European superior knowledge and endowed with 'will' of
Supreme Being
This remarkable essay begins with a conversation
recorded in Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759) on the self-image of Europeans
as powerful people with superior 'knowledge' governed by the 'will' of the
Supreme Being. Aha, Biblical God had identified the chosen people to colonise
the rest of the world:
Midway through Samuel Johnson's Rasselas (1759),
the protagonist asks of his teacher, Imlac: "By what means are the Europeans
thus powerful? or why, since they can easily visit Asia and Africa for trade
and conquest, cannot the Asiatics and Africans invade their coasts, plant
colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same
wind that carries them back would bring us thither?" Imlac replies with
an object lesson in ideology: "They are more powerful than we because
they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance ... but why
their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but
the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being." (Samuel Johnson, Samuel
Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Frank Brady and W. K. Wimsatt (Berkeley,
1977), 91)
Rajani Sudan goes on to demolish the European
ethnocentric myths of Europeans as endowed with 'reason' and 'divine will'.
She demonstrates, using results of research in archives of rare manuscripts
in the British Library - in particular, Philosophical Transactions between
1680 to 1790 -- and other perceptive comments by scholars related to the colonial
regime, that 'progressive values claimed as products of the European enlightenment'
had genealogies and origins elsewhere - in Asiatic and African nations, to
be precise: substances such as cinnabar, mortar, plaster, surgical glue, ice.
European colonial forays were to acquire substances
and information on processes
Rajani notes: "Contrary to most (European)
estimations of the limitless capacities for their trade with Asiatic and African
nations, Western Europe had very little to offer in the way of commodities.
Especially in terms of manufactured goods, Europe and England had little effect
on Asian markets and on the fashion sensibility of their courts. By comparison,
Asian goods had a profound influence on European markets, shaping the consumerist
practices and tastes at a very rapid rate. (Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence:
Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000),
156-159)… If there was no need on the part of African and Asiatic nations
to exchange their materials and technologies with the British, for whom African
and Asiatic material and techne were crucial to national and cultural survival,
then the only means for the British to secure supply routes was through conquest.
(Note: As Pomeranz points out, Asian merchants competed very successfully
with European merchants as long as the Europeans did not use force.)"
Rajani recounts the 'technologies' the British
East India Company operatives discovered throughout a century: "Throughout
the eighteenth century, several members of the British East India Company
stationed in India reported their discoveries of native scientific and technological
practices to the Royal Society. Their representations of these practices almost
always focused on the miraculous or marvelous nature of technological discoveries.
Several reports describe their encounters with exotic substances. Isaac Pyke,
Governor of St. Helena, writes on the manufacture of mortar in Madras, composed
of "sand and lime mixed with jaggery, gram, and myrabulens waters,"
that when "beaten and mixed together" lay every brick "very
well," unlike "the common English mortar." Plaster, made up
of "one gallon of Toddy, a pint of butter-milk, so much fine Chinam,"
forms a "stucco-work" that surpasses any known European composition,
particularly "Plaister of Paris ... in smoothness and beauty," as
durable as "marble." (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
Vol. 65: 231-32, British Library. Interestingly, this mortar from Madras,
containing "Chinam" or lime, was also famous for its startling whiteness.
Carl Nightingale makes an intriguing claim about the relationship between
architecture and color designation in his unpublished manuscript, "Madras,
New York, and the Urban and Global Origins of Color Lines, 1690-1750."
He argues, Madras had become the first place in world history to designate
separate sections of the town by color, renaming "Gentue Town" or
"Malabar Town" as "Black Town," and its "Christian
Town" as "White Town." (unpublished mss., 1) Hence, the value
of Madrasi mortar may also be in its effectiveness to convey notions of racial
difference.) Helenus Scott, a doctor, suggests, "You will think the paper
for replacing noses on those who have lost them an extraordinary one. I hope
to send you by the later ships some of the Indian cement [caute] for uniting
animal parts." (British Library, Add. MSS 33979 (ff. 1-10). In a lengthy
letter to Joseph Banks, Scott in fact not only describes the substance itself
(which remains unanalyzed and somehow slips through the inventory records
of the ship on its voyage back to England) but, more importantly for my argument,
goes into graphic detail of the surgical process and methodology for this
operation. Popularized by native Sepoy surgeons, such operations were apparently
popular among those guards who crossed Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore.) Less dramatically,
he sends "a piece of cinnabar of this country which is made in masses
of 100 lb. weight," having "frequently tried to make cinnabar by
the methods recommended in Europe," but having "not been able to
procure any so far, as the Indian at one operation." (Philosophical Transactions
of the Royal Society, vol. 65: 256, British Library.)" Rajani goes on
to describe how Sir Robert Barker 'discovers' the process for manufacture
of ice from the 'natives' (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
vol. 65: 256, British Library.).
Natives' mysterious knowledge to dye cloth
Rajani cites the example of methods used by
'natives' to dye cloth. "Scott has been "for several years attentive
to the methods used by the natives of this country for dyeing their cotton
cloths," and thinks that he has "discovered the singular circumstance"
that gives "permanency to the colour which is so much admired [by Europeans]."
Yet he is "unable to give any theory of the operation of the chief Substance
they use" except to suggest that "a cloth is wetted with an infusion
of it [the mysterious substance] and a solution of alum," the result
of which renders "cloth and colouring ... ever afterwards inseparable....
If this appears to you a matter of consequence as the cotton manufactures
are now in so flourishing a condition in England I shall at some future period
communicate more particularly their method to you." Scott's query at
the conclusion of this letter is typical of his relationship to Joseph Banks
and the Royal Society in general: he wishes for their sanction, to be one
of the soldiers of England's scientific and epistemological fortune, and to
contribute to the continued success of English manufacture. Scott does, however,
make an implicit critique of the "flourishing" condition of English
cotton mills. The "chief Substance" that renders such "permanency"
of color to cloth is plainly absent from English methods of dyeing. The failure
to render a more particular communication of this method, in spite of his
well-trained empirical eye, speaks to a larger failure on the part of these
cartographic adventurers to comprehend what they were seeing. While the result
of the process was clearly evident--textiles saturated with brilliant and
fast color--the "chief Substance" remains mystified, perhaps because
Scott could not see or, more importantly, recognize the nature of this substance.
The failure of analytical reason to make this "chief Substance"
visible, therefore, made his secession to the authority of this Indian operation
necessary. (British Library, Rare European Manuscripts Collection, Add. MSS
35262, 14-15.)"
Natives' inventions of processes for iron
manufacture
The British learn the technologies for making
iron used in Bharatam for centuries. "Helenus Scott sent a long treatise
on a form of iron manufactured in the south of India called "wootz,"
whose properties were examined and tested by the Royal Society. The report
that found its way into the Philosophical Transactions concluded with a sound
endorsement that the British should start manufacturing this substance, using
the Indian methodology, in order to supplement their ironworks. Certainly
the letters East India Company merchants wrote back to the office in London
in the seventeenth century reflected their frustration with the disdain with
which Indian Moghuls and Portuguese rivals looked upon the goods these newly
arrived merchants brought to trade. Nicholas Downton, for example, writes
in November of 1614: It seemeth to me the ill sales of cloth in India put
Mr. Aldworthe into an extraordinary desire by Inquisition to seek out a better
place in regard of their cloths yet remaining on their hands, as for such
as he feared were to come by the next shipping, and the next after that, before
advice can be sent home to forbear.... (Nicholas Downton to the East India
Company, Nov. 20th, 1614, British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections,
Letters Received by tile East India Company from Its Servants in the East,
Vol. II (1613-1614), Document 181: 169.) Thomas Kerridge writes earlier that
year: "The Viceroy of Goa in a letter lately written to this King wrote
very basely of our nation, terming us thieves, disturbers of states and a
people not to be permitted in a commonwealth, and that if the king received
us they would never have peace with him...." (Thomas Kerridge to the
East India Company, Jan. 20, 1614 (Agamere), British Library, OIOC, Letters
Received by the East India Company from Its Servants in the East, Vol. II
(1613-1614), Document 235: 298.) But these were early British traders, unsure
of their footing with powerful sultans or powerful European rivals, willing
to accommodate what they perceived to be native desires and whims in order
to gain some small purchase in a potentially enormously lucrative market."
Imperialist colonizers had little to offer
in exchange
Rajani underscores that British imperialist
traders had little to offer in exchange for the substances and processes (of
'ancient and mysterious knowledge') they discovered in the colonies: "Nicholas
Downton, for example, early in the seventeenth century exhorts the Home Office
to stop sending useless woolens to sell in Surat. William Edwards informs
the Company that the "small commodities" they have chosen to trade
with the Moghul courts on the Malabar coast have little use other than as
"presents," and urges them to take better care of gifts that were
much more valuable for his purposes because they marked a possible ingress
into a future market in other commodities. He writes: All the small commodities
which were sent in these ships, as looking-glasses, comb cases, knives, pictures,
fowling pieces, Muscovy hides, and such like, serve only for presents, but
will not sell for any price. Whereas: if it please you to send by your next
ships ... an English coach and coachman, to bring their horses to that labour,
it would be very acceptable with the king; and to send some curled water spaniel
of the greatest size, with a bloodhound or two, they would be very welcome,
for they will hardly be persuaded that they can be taught to fetch and find
things lost. The mastiffs that came along in these ships are all dead except
one, whereof we are very chary, for that I understand it will be very acceptable
with the king. (William Edwards to the East India Company by the Hope Dec.
2, 1615 (rec'd) Dec. 20th, 1614, Amadavar, BL, OIOC, Letters Received by the
East India Company from its Servants in the East, Vol. II (1613-1615), Document
177: 151.) Downton concurs with the value English fauna (whether real or representational)
and other trinkets have to the Indian Moghul, writing in his "Particulars
desired from next ships from England to Surat for Great Mojore" (1614):
crooked swords, all manner of toys for women, pictures in cloth, not in wood,
any figures of beasts, birds, or other similes made of glass, of hard plaster,
of silver, brass, wood, iron, stone, mastiffs, greyhounds, spaniels and little
dogs, three of each. He notes that "Figures of divers beasts and dogs
in stone and plaster I have seen come from Freinckford [Frankfurt]. I think
at Amsterdam may enough be had" and that "Dogs hard to be carried."
(Nicholas Downton to the East India Company, Nov. 20th, 1614, BL, OIOC, Letters
Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, Vol. II
(1613-1615), Document 183: 173-74.) Later letters exhort the Company directors
to take better care of the transport of live animals, noting that the death
of dogs could be easily prevented by making sure they were watered properly.
The wild calculations made by British merchants as to what constituted commodities
proper to Asian trade--woolen cloths, small trinkets--vastly underestimates
the economical, commercial and technological mastery wielded by Indian sultans
as well as their political power in the marketplaces of the Indian Ocean.
Far from commanding any kind of epistemological authority, merchants like
Downton and Williams discovered very quickly that they were in the awkward
position of procuring commodities that signified the existence of an English
(and European, if we take into account the figures of animals from Frankfurt
and Amsterdam) cultural landscape to vast and powerful courts of disbelievers.
At the very least, what these almost querulous requests suggest is that the
Company merchants were primarily at the mercy of the Indian and other European
rulers (Portuguese) alike, and it was in the East India Company's best interests
to reconceive the commodities that would serve their own power vis-a-vis their
rivals, who were not the English. English merchants could not sell anything
in India except gold, silver, and saltpeter (so the Moghuls could make gunpowder).
[See Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern
Britain (New Haven and London, 2000)]."
Exploitation of body and mind of the 'natives'
In a brilliant, concluding flourish, Rajan
notes how the British imperialist trader, masquerading as a product of the
Enlightenment was exploiting not only bodies but minds of the 'natives': "I'd
like to close with another argument. Not one of the writers I have read so
far as much as named a single Madra mortar-maker or ice-manufacturer, Bengali
alchemist or cloth-dyer. To the British, these forms of manufacture and practices
of science were as abstract and unreadable as the substances themselves. What
may also have been sublimated by the British, then, is the Indian physical
and intellectual labor that extracts, refines, and disseminates the properties
of the substances: what Barker names the "Asiatic study of the luxuries
of life," and what Scott named the "Indian practice." But what
Barker identifies as the "luxuries" of life seem primarily directed
toward the luxuries of a British life: a study that alleviates native discomfort
(though, to the natives, how would this have been read in the same way?).
The history of British imperial appropriation of Indian natives, therefore,
may not have simply been organized around the exploitation of bodies but also
of minds."
