Kathinka SInha-Kerkhoff's recent publication Colonising Plants in Bihar : Tobacco betwixt Indigo and Sugar Cane (1760-1900) stems from the IISH Research Project Plants, People and Work.
Endowed with rich agro-climatic attributes such as fertile soils, rainfall and ample sunshine, India, the world's second largest producer of tobacco, produces various types of tobacco serving different purposes such as smoking, chewing and snuff. In Colonising Plants in Bihar, Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff traces the extraordinary odyssey of tobacco cultivation and consumption within the vast land of eastern India.
This study contributes to three important research fields: the history of commodities, the history of the colonial developmental state, and the agrarian history of South Asia. First, it demonstrates the dynamism of cash-crop production systems and how these systems influenced each other. Second, it explores how colonial state policy came to stimulate research-based agronomic interventions, often with unintended consequences. And finally, it shows how cash cropping entangled South Asians and Europeans in new forms of struggle and cooperation.
Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff is the South Asia Regional Representative for the International Institute of Social History (IISH). Based at Ranchi (India), she has been involved in various research projects and published widely.
Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, Colonising Plants in Bihar : Tobacco betwixt Indigo and Sugar Cane (1760-1900) Partridge India (2014), 486 pages
ISBN-10: 1482839121 ISBN-13: 978-1482839128