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After the Great Smash: Tea Mania, Overseas Capital, and Labor Intensification in Assam

Andrew B. Liu

in Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India

This chapter describes how, in the late nineteenth century, Indian tea initially thrived not because of its adherence to the ideals of civilization and freedom but precisely due to its reliance on an ... More

This chapter describes how, in the late nineteenth century, Indian tea initially thrived not because of its adherence to the ideals of civilization and freedom but precisely due to its reliance on an exceptional system of labor indenture. Behind the curtain of marketing campaigns focused on flavor and hygiene, British planters themselves attributed the rise of Indian tea to lower production costs from indenture. Starting in 1865, officials in India devised a system of regulated labor recruitment and penal contract employment for the Assam tea industry. It featured the restriction of worker movement, constant surveillance, and wages fixed by law rather than by the market. Penal contract laws provided planters both a subordinated migrant workforce and the legal impunity to intensify the production process. By the turn of the century, Indian tea exports had surpassed those of their Chinese rivals, and the industry had become the leader in world production. The chapter thus challenges historiography that has argued capitalist production must, by definition, rely upon free labor and technological innovations. Instead, it resituates the mechanization of Indian tea production within the social dynamics of escalating labor productivity. The chapter then draws out key similarities between the work regimes of Chinese and Indian tea.Less

Fractured Ties: The Business of Development in Kenyan Fair Trade Tea

Catherine S. Dolan

in Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies

This chapter examines fair trade within the context of development, with particular emphasis on how “moral” exchange is managed, legitimated, and circumscribed by the prevailing development orthodoxy ... More

This chapter examines fair trade within the context of development, with particular emphasis on how “moral” exchange is managed, legitimated, and circumscribed by the prevailing development orthodoxy of market-based solutions. It begins with an overview of Kenya's tea industry and the paradigmatic shift toward market-friendly approaches to development in the 1990s before turning to a discussion of shifting alignments in the fair trade movement. It then assesses the fair trade tea industry, the issue of fair price, the relationship of fair trade to participation and democracy, and the politicization of fair trade. It also explores the extent to which the key principles of the fair trade system—empowerment, partnership, and democratic participation—are realized among tea producers in Aruka. Finally, it analyzes the consequences of the privatization of development and the sociotechnical arrangements it entails. It notes the disparity between fair trade's rhetorical endorsement of gender equity and its inability to accomplish these goals in practice and argues that fair trade tea growers in Kenya enjoy little discretion over the ways in which social premiums are invested.Less

Shipping and Trade, Cargo Trades

David M. Williams and Andrew P. White

in A Select Bibliography of British and Irish University Theses about Maritime History, 1792-1990

A bibliography of post-graduate theses concerning the Cargo Trade of Coal; Grain; Guano; Opium; Salt; Sugar; Tea; Timber; Tobacco; Wine and Spirits; Wool, and more.