Abstract
Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1600–1830 by Jonathan Eacott, a new addition to the integrative and comparative global history genre, is of special interest to students of Indian and American history. The detailed and meticulously researched work delineates the interconnections between Britain, America, India and Africa and the ways in which ideas of colonisation in America impacted colonisation in India and vice versa.
Eacott argues that Britons sold the idea regarding the viability and profitability of the empire in America by using notions about India and its valuable products, which could be replicated in the Atlantic for the benefit of the home country and the colonists. Indian goods, especially cotton textiles which were in great demand worldwide, were shipped, sold and used to extend and integrate the British Empire in the West and East and added to imperial strength and culture. The re-export trade, in addition, expanded British naval power globally.
The book consists of eight chapters apart from the introduction and conclusion. Eacott looks at the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Empires as a whole and not as the first and second empires of Britain. Important parallels are drawn between colonisation of India and America as trade, conquest and revenue were British aims in the West and East. The East India Company used force and territorial acquisition following the European patterns in America. India was thus, ‘… something akin to the Atlantic colonies’, if not a ‘twin’ then a ‘sibling’ (p. 164). British commercial and military power was used to gain markets, producers and revenues—both in America and India.
The work is a fascinating account of the long-drawn relationship which America and India had by way of circulation of commodities, ideas, capital and people between the four continents spanning more than two centuries. The author argues that Britain created and weaved an empire through ideas of cultivation, production, consumption and trade of Indian goods in America. The British Indian Empire, in turn, enabled America to remain within the ambit of British imperial sphere after the War of Independence.
Eacott argues that consumption of Indian goods shaped fashion and aesthetics and was related to the development of consumer society and culture in Britain and the Atlantic from the seventeenth century. This also provided justification for imperial rule. Simulation of Indian goods through industrialisation in Britain and America led to increased production and standardisation of such goods.
Diverse contemporary opinions shaped and went into the making of the Empires in East and West. Variable and ambivalent notions of empire, colonisation and India ranged from augmentation of wealth, profits, employment, honour, fame and strength to fears of tyranny, despotism, corruption, debasement of morals, falling prey to luxury and avarice, feminisation, indolence and monopoly. English colonisation was seen as a counter to Catholic and Muslim power and tyranny in the world. Contemporary plays and paintings have been used as interesting references to ideas of India in England. Eacott, however, does not attempt to relate these notions of India to the emerging discourse on Orientalism.
The Navigation Acts are seen as ‘encoded … new system of global regulation …’ of English trade in the Atlantic which aimed to create ‘a national monopoly over the empire’s imports and exports’, with important exemptions given to the Asian trade of the East India Company (pp. 46, 54). Eacott does mention the ‘brutal labour regime’, and the sufferers of this global integration and empire building, but does not expound on them (p. 53).
Information is provided on movement of Indian cotton fabrics, banyans, cashmere shawls, arrack, curry recipes, cane, furniture, carpets, hookahs, umbrellas, birds, elephants and rhinos to Britain. The Atlantic colonies were also connected with ‘English engagements with India’s commodities and fashions’ (p. 65). Initially, Indian goods such as cotton, silk, indigo and spices were sought to be cultivated in the Atlantic colonies for the colonists and Britain. Ideas of Atlantic colonies and plantations were also sought to be imposed on the Indian Ocean. However, British American colonies were producing different commodities and consuming Indian goods like England at the end of the seventeenth century.
The shift was due to the passing of the two Calico Acts which sought to create an imperial compromise and balance the ‘empire’s competing interests’ (p. 76). The home market was reserved for the British woollen and silk weavers, and the American market was provided to Indian cottons shipped by the East India Company through London. The American market was lost to British woollen textiles, and America did not produce raw cotton for Britain. Thus, much before the Tea Act the British Parliament had decided that American consumers would support the East India Company in the interest of the metropole.
Women were attacked verbally and physically by weavers in Britain for their preference for Indian cottons and were seen as morally depraved, anti-King and anti- England. Indian calico, muslin and silk formed part of imperial aesthetics in America. Similar attacks were made against Indian cottons and women in America at the end of the eighteenth century. Arrack was a major import and used to make ‘punch’ (five) by mixing alcohol with sugar and fruits—a process adopted from India. Later, rum was adapted for making punch indicating a shift that localised an imperial fashion (p. 139).
Cultural markers and local symbols of authority such as the umbrella, hookah and the palanquin were adopted and adapted successfully to European sensibilities and tastes. Cut-glass hookah bottoms made in England, and palanquins—transformed with British designs and materials—were consumed by Indians and British in India and in Britain. These developments led to the creation and consumption of ‘metropolitan style’ Indian commodities (p. 306). Indian pepper, spices, mangoes, umbrellas and hookahs were consumed in America.
Eacott’s major contribution lies in drawing attention to hitherto unexplored connections between America and India. The Sugar Act was accompanied with reduction of drawbacks on re-exported white calicos and muslin by one-third. Parallels and comparisons were drawn by contemporaries between the American and Indian empires. Eacott juxtaposes the Regulating Act of 1773 in India with the Tea Act of 1774 in America. The British Parliament attempted to tax and regulate India and America and colonial commerce for Britain’s benefit.
Ideas or ‘fears’ about India impacted and stimulated the American War of Independence. ‘Debates over taxation and its constitutionality connected India and America …’ (p. 195). There were fears of being treated as a British colony at par with India with replication of the East India Company’s misrule associated with exploitation, tyranny, plunder, corruption and monopoly—as a new model of imperial rule and consequent loss of liberties. Anxieties over the trial of Warren Hastings impacted the American constitutional debates.
Post 1783–84, America continued to consume Indian goods. Private British traders used American ships to transfer capital and goods out of India, and American ships carried bullion to India. British evangelicals got support of many Americans ‘by using the promise of conversions in India’ (p. 392). America thus gained ‘co-dependent independence’ and could not break its ties completely with Britain (pp. 274, 384). The renewal of East India Company monopoly in 1793 was linked to the Jay Treaty of 1794 which allowed Americans to trade directly with India at the same duty rates as the British. Company and American ships and seamen were used by Britain during the French wars.
British factory made cotton cloth was ‘… essentially a direct simulation of cotton cloth made by Indian artisans’. (p. 419). There were ‘concerns’ in America and India about British cotton imports in the early nineteenth century. However, Eacott does not relate them to deindustrialisation in colonial India. The War of 1812 aimed at protection against British and Indian cotton cloth imports and underlined the need to cut American dependence. The ending of the East India Company monopoly in India was related not just to the needs of industrialisation, free trade and larger market but to ensuring greater supplies of Indian raw cotton for the British cotton industry as American supplies were blocked due to the War of 1812.
Eacott expounds upon a series of related conversions in the early nineteenth century with important implications for Britain, America and India. There was conversion of the East India Company to a state; of trade from monopoly to free; of Britain from an importer to the leading producer and exporter of cotton fabrics; of India from a major producer and exporter of cotton textiles to an importer of British manufactured textiles and exporter of raw materials; and of America from a market for Indian textiles to that of British manufactured cloth and supplier of raw cotton to Britain.
‘Britain had made itself into an India’ (p. 437). It had adapted many Indian fashions and had become the world’s most efficient producer and exporter of India’s fabrics with successful simulation. There was a reversal of roles for America and India in their relationship with Britain. Instead of colonial rule in America and trade with India, there was colonial rule in India and trade with America. Both India and America served as economic colonies of Britain. The so-called first empire of Britain gained fruition in the early nineteenth century, when America became a supplier of raw cotton and a market for British-made textiles. The recurring theme of Eacott’s work is consumption and its relationship with empire building.