Baptists, Bengalis, and the Construction of Agricultural and ...

"Tavolacci is a discerning scholar who explores Baptist moral frontier, the distinctions between garden and field, and the attachment of Indian knowledges with horticulture to illustrate changes in the project of “improvement” in early colonial India. Not until now has there been such an incisive analysis of improvement, emphasizing a local colonial divide between the visions of Baptist missionaries, zamindars, and malis or yearning for flowers, fruits, and vegetables versus agricultural exports."

– Prakash Kumar, Pennsylvania State University

The Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India was founded in 1820 by an English Baptist missionary, William Carey. He was part of a network of missionaries centered at Srirampur (Serampore), the Danish settlement close to Calcutta. This book explores the ways that these missionaries included plants in their project of proselytization to better understand the origins of this scientific society. It includes an investigation of the farms and gardens at each mission station, the missionaries’ work with indigo plantations, and different scientific projects leading up to the creation of the agricultural society. In all this work, plants became an important target and sign of moral improvement, marking a sort of “moral frontier” which reiterated racial hierarchies. Nevertheless, various entanglements with Bengali converts, gardeners (malis), and the elite bhadralok class also impacted the missionary vision. In the initial years of the scientific organization, missionaries and their interlocutors upheld a romantic and hierarchical vision of agrarian society that mixed gardening with large-scale agriculture. But an economic depression in 1833 followed shortly by William Carey’s death in 1834 ended this composite vision. The Society began to focus on the production of more remunerative agricultural cash crops, like sugar and cotton, over horticultural crops like vegetables and fruit trees.

Laura Tavolacci is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Historical Sciences at the University of Chile. Previously, she studied at the University of California, Davis, in the USA.