Page:Nil Durpan.djvu/259

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the reign of Queen Elizabeth its use was permitted along with woad. Curiously enough this mixing of woad with indigo survives to the present day, and to meet this demand a small amount of the woad is grown here and there over Europe, and even in England. The opposition to indigo was however so strong that it was again on the pretext of being poisonous, prohibited, and in 1660 Charles II had to procure dyers from Belgium to once more teach the English the art of using the dye." "...The effect of the persistent export of the dye from India, conducted by the East India Company, had the effect of stimulating the Spanish, French, Portuguese and English colonists to make strenuous efforts to produce the dye in many countries outside India. And so successful were they that for a time they ruined the ancient Indian traffic. But Macpherson (Hist. Europ. Comm. Ind. 1812, 200) speaks of the East India Company having voluntarily given up the importation of indigo into England in order to avoid a competiton with the British colonists in the West Indies and the southern provinces of North America. About the year 1747 most of the planters in the West Indies, particularly in Jamaica, gave up the cultivation of indigo in consequence of the high duty imposed upon it"; "the planters of Carolina and Georgia were never able to bring their indigo to a quality equal to that of Guatimala or St. Domingo." But political differences occurred with America and France, and at the same time sugar and coffee had proved even more profitable in the West Indies than indigo. The impetus was thus given for a re-establishment of the Indian traffic, and as one of the many surprises of the industry, the province of Bengal was selected for this revival. It had no sooner been organized however than troubles next arose in Bengal itself through misunderstandings between the planters, their cuitivators, and the Government which may be said to have culminated in Lord Macaulay's Memorandum of 1837. This led to another migration of the industry from Lower and Eastern Bengal to Tirhut and the United Provinces.

237