Baptists, Bengalis, and the Construction of Agricultural and Horticultural Science in India, 1793–1840

“Tavolacci is a discerning scholar who explores the Baptist moral frontier, the distinctions between garden and field, and the connection between Indian knowledge and horticulture, to illustrate changes in projects of ‘improvement’ in early colonial India. Until now, there has been no such analysis, which emphasises a local colonial divide between the visions of Baptist missionaries, zamindars, and malis, and the yearning for flowers, fruits, and vegetables, versus agricultural exports.”

—Prakash Kumar, Associate Professor of History, 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 centred at Srirampur (Serampore), the Danish settlement close to Calcutta. This book explores the ways that missionaries included plants in their projects 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. Amidst all of this, 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 organisation, 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 instead 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.