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Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

author:One product is prosperous

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, cotton was one of the most important industrial inputs. Its production stimulated economic activity and institutional change of great historical significance.

There is some disagreement about the comparative advantages of cotton plantations developed in the United States in the nineteenth century.

Slavery provided American planters with a cheap and resilient supply of labor, which provided a key competitive advantage for the growth of cotton exports in the southern United States.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Southern United States cotton

The competitive advantage of slave labor is not self-evident, and slave labor on American plantations is actually more expensive than other forms of labor in other parts of the world, such as India.

America's comparative advantage is rooted in factors other than forced labor. Once the slave trade was banned, the supply of labor in the southern part of cotton could be rather inelastic.

A study of land and labor productivity in U.S. cotton cultivation found that comparisons with other regions, especially India, lacked information about the actual productivity of land and labor in cotton cultivation.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Slave market

For most of the nineteenth century, agricultural production also tended to stagnate or even decline. Labor costs in India are much lower than in the United States, but so are labor productivity. As a result, India's labor costs per unit of output are about twice as high as those of the United States over the same period.

Previous research

In the nineteenth century, India and the United States dominated world cotton exports. The United States was a major exporter, providing more than 70% of world market transactions in the early nineteenth century.

Despite a brief break during the American Civil War, by 1870 the United States had regained its status as a major exporter, supplying more than 60 percent of the world market.

India is the second largest exporter of cotton, and for most of this period, supply accounted for nearly 30% of the world market's trading volume.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

U.S. cotton production

Egypt, the third-largest exporter, will also supply more and more world market share this century, with cotton being one of India's main exports.

Since the early nineteenth century, the British government has made several attempts to expand cotton cultivation in India as part of a larger effort to diversify British trade.

In 1820 the Indian Society of Agriculture and Horticulture was founded in Calcutta. By the 1830s, the British East India Company, with the assistance of American cotton growers, had established experimental farms throughout controlled India. The aim is to present a complete set of U.S. cultivation practices and test the cultivation of different varieties of cotton.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

British East India Company

However, these attempts were generally not very successful, due to the inability of growers to adapt foreign cotton varieties to India's climate and soil. Expectations that foreign breeds can be easily adapted to Indian conditions can be excessive.

It is often found that the yield of foreign varieties is lower than that of local cotton varieties, which partly reflects the difference between the opening and closing of the US and Indian resource frontiers.

Fertile land in the United States was mined, i.e. planted and abandoned, but this was not possible in most of India at the time because it had a much longer history of cotton cultivation.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Soil for growing cotton

The incompatibility of foreign cotton varieties with the livelihoods of local Indian farmers, foreign varieties maturing in Indian soils for relatively long periods of time, and this prolonged land occupation disrupts subsistence farming practices.

It was not until the early twentieth century that the yield of foreign cotton varieties in India was increased thanks to investments in irrigation. As a result, native cheesecloth varieties continued to be widely cultivated throughout the nineteenth century.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Cotton cultivation in India

Indian cotton varieties were not initially the first choice for the British textile industry, as their characteristic staple fibres were not suitable for machines used primarily in the UK.

However, the cotton famine in the United States during the American Civil War led to drastic changes. As U.S. cotton exports dried up between 1861 and 1865, the British textile industry began looking for alternative suppliers of raw cotton.

Despite quality problems, there was no choice but to use agricultural products from the colonies, especially Indian cotton, and rising prices led to a significant increase in the area under cultivation of Indian cotton in subsequent years.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

The British textile industry in the nineteenth century

In the longer term, the cotton famine also triggered a series of ambitious but in many cases futile government interventions.

These measures range from infrastructure investment to changes in the legal framework governing cotton production, on the other hand, the cotton famine has also led to innovation in the textile industry, making Indian cotton more competitive in the long term.

Over the next few decades, the cultivation of raw cotton will also continue to increase as prices rise further and transportation costs fall.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth-century British cotton famine

Much is known about agricultural production in India after 1891, and official statistics collect data on the yields of a large number of different crops grown in colonial India.

While yields per acre declined for many crops during this time, cotton yields increased substantially, from about 70 pounds of clean cotton per acre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to just over 10 pounds per acre in the 1940s.

Official statistics may have underestimated India's absolute cotton production in the range of 8 to 20 per cent, but it is not clear whether this is due to low yield estimates or low cultivation area data.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

An estimate of lint production in British India in the nineteenth century

The author argues that the yield per acre of cotton increased in the nineteenth century, and land productivity generally stagnated or declined in much of India from at least the 1870s.

Cotton yield estimates

Western and northwestern India had long been the country's cotton production base, and the region was also the focus of the East India Company's experiments with cotton cultivation from the early nineteenth century.

The importance of these regions as major cotton-growing areas in terms of yields is also reflected in contemporary maps of the nineteenth century.

In the 1860s and 1870s, the Bombay Bailiwick accounted for between one-half and three-quarters of total cotton production in all regions.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Cotton was grown in India in 1859, with shaded areas representing native cotton growing areas

Cotton wool yield data for cotton farms in India from 1835 to 1882, with the three districts of the Rashtrapati having the most comprehensive series of data, has varied greatly over the years.

Yields appear to have declined over the period of the data, from about 90 pounds per acre to about 60 pounds per acre and from 40 pounds per acre to about 25 pounds per acre.

On the other hand, production may have increased over time, from an average of about 50 pounds per acre in the 1830s and 1840s to about 100 pounds per acre in the 1870s and early 1880s.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Raw cotton production in three constituencies in the Bombay Bailiwick from 1835–1882

All 13 constituencies in the Mumbai precinct were observed from at least three different eras, and these districts appear to have experienced very different trends during the period under study.

In addition to two regions, data from four other regions also show that production there has declined during the time we have data.

The other three regions showed clear fluctuations between these years, without any clear trend. Finally, there are three other regions where production may have improved.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Cotton wool production in the Borough of Bombay from 1835 to 1882, by regional and ten-year average

The type of cotton grown was crucial to the textile industry where cotton was purchased, and American varieties with long cotton fibers were particularly popular, so attempts were made to introduce these varieties to India.

Exotic cotton varieties yield much less per acre than native varieties, and native types of cotton generally offer much higher yields per acre than New Orleans types.

Only in one area with disaggregated data, such as Belgaum, can farmers get the same yield per acre from New Orleans varieties of cotton as native varieties.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Ratio of New Orleans type cotton production to indigenous type cotton production in six areas of the Bombay Prefecture, weighted average, different years from 1842 to 1880.

The authors believe that a yield of about 80 pounds per acre would constitute a "good" or even "very good" year. In an "extraordinary" year, a person may reach a yield of 120 pounds per acre. When the same informant providers were asked about their own production last season, the figure was just 39 pounds per acre.

Labor productivity estimates

Some summary data on cotton production and labour input picked in Coimbatore during the January 1840 and February 1841 crop seasons, more detailed data for the March 1842 crop season are available.

The March 1842 data report the number of unskilled workers employed per unit per unit in the Coimbatore experimental plantation, as well as their remuneration.

This made it possible to calculate the total number of working days per month for these experimental farms during the crop season. Most of the labor was used to clear new land, as the land had not been cultivated for a long time, and the various fields of the plantation began to be sown around August or September.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Monthly payments of rupees to coolies on the experimental cotton plantation Coimbatore from June to December 1842

In addition to experimental cotton farms in Coimbatore and Tamil Nadu, there are less detailed data in sources of information on production and the amount of money paid to workers picking cotton, including some daily wages paid to laborers.

Several other attempts at growing cotton in different parts of India in different years were made in Gujarat, 1818, Orissa, 1825, Maharashtra, 1831, Fort St. George, 1837 and Tamil Nadu, 1844-1845.

The scale of these attempts is very different, geographically they were conducted in eastern, western and southern India, but several are located in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Annual cotton production, picking costs, and harvesting rates on five experimental cotton plantations in British India, 1818–1845

According to the authors, the Coimbatore region is far from the most productive region in the Madras jurisdiction. However, land productivity in the region is around 50-70 pounds of cotton per acre, which is more or less on par with the average figure for the Mumbai precinct. Despite the average productivity of the land, the British East India Company chose the site to develop experimental cotton plantations.

Comparison with the United States

Land productivity in the Mumbai Bailiwick of India is in the form of a weighted average of all regions for which data are available in the source and land productivity in the United States, where raw cotton production is significantly higher than that of the Rashtrapati in Mumbai.

For most of the century, Mumbai's production of about 50 pounds of raw cotton per acre increased to about 70-80 pounds per acre in the last decade of the century.

With the exception of 1899, which was a particular year, U.S. production typically increased to well over 200 pounds per acre in the range of 150-200 pounds of raw cotton per acre during many of the last decades of this century.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Raw cotton production in the Borough of Bombay, India and the United States, 1830-1900

The daily cost of slave labor in the United States is at least 10 times higher than the cost of employing unskilled labor in India at the same time. From this perspective, slave labor in the United States was certainly not cheap.

Thus, despite relatively high labor costs, the United States could still become the world's leading exporter of cotton, reflecting the much higher overall productivity of cotton plantations in the South.

Therefore, when estimating labor costs per unit of output, the difference is not as large as a direct comparison of nominal wage levels suggests.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Labour costs per unit of cotton output in British India and the United States

The author argues that the harvest rate of U.S. cotton in the nineteenth century increased dramatically over time, so that by the 1840s, the average slave could pick about 100 pounds of cotton per day.

The range is large, from less than 25 pounds of cotton per day on some plantations to nearly 300 pounds of cotton picked per day on some others. After decomposition, the harvesting rate of the New South was significantly higher than that of the Old South, and the picking rate of male slaves was higher than that of female slaves, and higher during the peak season.

conclusion

Land and labor productivity of cotton cultivation in nineteenth-century India, on the development of Indian agriculture during colonial rule, and the study of the performance of the U.S. cotton plantation complex from a comparative perspective.

Cotton productivity varied greatly over time and space, and for most of the nineteenth century, cotton production in the Bombay jurisdiction averaged about 50 pounds of clean cotton per acre.

The British colonial authorities in India were unable to increase the yield of cotton cultivation for most of the nineteenth century, despite several attempts to do so.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Indian cotton

While slave labor is certainly cheaper than other ways of obtaining labor within the United States, such as hiring free labor, slave labor is not cheap if you look at the cost of acquiring labor in the United States in a global comparison.

The cost of hiring an unskilled worker in India is certainly an order of magnitude lower than the cost of hiring a slave in the United States.

However, the agricultural frontier is already much more developed in India than in the United States, and demographic pressures may have brought labor costs closer to subsistence needs.

Microtalk: A comparative look at cotton cultivation under Indian colonial rule in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth-century American slave laborers

The authors argue that the cost of acquiring labor is only part of the equation, and that the relative factor prices of labor in India and the United States largely reflect differences in productivity. In the southern United States, hired unskilled Indian laborers appear to exhibit much lower harvesting rates than slaves.

Thus, the cost of picking per unit of output ultimately did not differ much in India and the southern United States, and the productivity of slavery in cotton in the United States was relatively high enough to offset the high cost of acquiring slaves.

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Agriculture and "Improvement" in Early Colonial India: A Prehistory of Development", Journal of Agrarian Change, 2005.

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The Cotton Empire: A New History of Global Capitalism, 2015.

Slavery Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, 2016.

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The Impact of Market Integration During First Globalization: A Multi-Market Approach", European Review of Economic History, 2021.

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