INDIGO CULTIVATION IN INDIA UNDER BRITISH RULE

Hello friends.
In this topic we are going to learn about how indigo was being cultivated under British rule in India.

An Indigo plant.

Lets start with very basic questions i.e what is indigo and what are its uses?

Indigo is basically a plant of tropic region* which produces rich  blue color and this blue color is used in dying clothes.For example- blue jeans.
Earlier in the 19th century it was being used in MORRIS prints* in Britain.

INDIAN INDIGO AND WORLD:

Tropical region of earth was the ultimate king of Indigo cultivation in earlier centuries and India was at the top of it. By the 13th century Indian Indigo was being used by the cloth manufacturers of Italy,France and Britain but due to the huge distance only small amount of indigo reached European countries which also increased its transportation cost resulting into high cost of Indian Indigo.

European countries discovered an alternative plant to Indian Indigo and that was WOAD*.
The cloth manufacturers of European countries used woad to make violet and blue dyes and since it is a plant of temperate zone* it was easily available to European countries.Its cultivation started in northern Italy,southern France and in some parts of Germany and Britain.

A WOAD plant in it's second year of cultivation.

• WOAD VS  INDIGO :- 

1. Woad producers started worrying by the increasing demand of  indigo in Europe and hence they pressurized their governments to ban the imports of  indigo.
2. But this ban did not lasted long as the dye manufactured from woad plant was pale and dull in comparison to indigo which was rich in color.
3. As a result indigo ousted woad and French started cultivating it in St. Domingue ,Portuguese started its cultivation in Brazil,English in Jamaica and the Spanish in Venezuela.