Agricultural History Review, Volume 64 Part 1 (2016), p. 128

Opening the Journal of Global History special issue on Commodities of Empire in 2009, Hazareesingh and Curry-Machado declared, ‘Commodities are back in the news’ (p. 1). From the 1990s onwards, studies of ‘world-changing’ commodities, particularly those that are plant-based, have proliferated, their socioeconomic and environmental histories often linked to the imperial endeavours of the European nations. The Commodities of Empire research network, of which the editors Hazareesingh and Maat are active members, has built up an impressive online resource (www.commodityhistories.org), illustrated research stories and working papers together emphasizing that, ‘Historically, commodities had multiple social lives, partaking both in imperial endeavours and in local resistance to them’ (Hazareesingh and Curry-Machado in the Journal of Global History 4 (2009), p.2).

Part of the Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series, this edited collection further explores those ‘multiple social lives’ by documenting local responses to colonial pressure to produce commodities. The concept of the ‘anti-commodity’ has its origins in a paper by anthropologist Paul Richards and colleagues presented to a workshop of the Commodities of Empire network (subsequently published in that project’s already mentioned working paper series and a version of which appears as chapter 1 of this volume). The concept was further explored within the Commodities and Anticommodities collaborative research project (2009–13), and the nine substantive chapters in this book are based on papers delivered at a 2012 project workshop. The ‘anti-commodity’ is defined, ‘as an enduring form of production and action in opposition either to actual commodities and their existing functions, or to wider social processes of commodification, rather than simply a momentary form of protest or reaction’ (p. 6). The relationship between ‘commodity’ and ‘anti-commodity’ can be and is often complementary and mutually dependent. Chapters thus deal with the familiar and popular plant-based commodities of rice (the subject of three chapters), cotton (two chapters), tobacco and sugar, but in unfamiliar and non-traditional ways, and some in new geographical settings. The plantation crops are joined by contributions on transport infrastructure (David Hyde’s chapter on ‘East African Railways and Harbours’) and organic ‘waste’ (Lauren Minsky’s chapter manure in the Punjab), the collection thus addressing a full commodity lifecycle. At a practical level each chapter has a helpful and comprehensive notes section detailing supporting literature and archival materials for what are inherently complicated histories.

Importantly, as Maat has argued elsewhere, ‘Anti-commodity thus refers to production processes in the shadow of commodity production and for those reasons these processes rarely have a prominent place in official records and statistics’ (in Francesca Bray et al. (eds), Rice: Global networks and new histories (2015), p. 337). The book thus outlines what might be done to bring these processes into view, demonstrating how the stories can be told and highlighting the available research materials available. It will appeal particularly to those working on agrarian history in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean but the legacy of much commodity policy as it affected both peoples and environments means that much of the research also has contemporary relevance.

As the editors themselves acknowledge, the chapter authors apply the ‘anti-commodity’ term in a variety of ways, even when exploring the same crop: Richards sees red and white rice in Sierra Leone as contrasting commodities of the slave trade and emancipation respectively; Maat considers the competing commodities of upland and lowland rice in the Netherlands Indies; and Gilbert deals with the Swahili coast as a place where rice has never been treated as a commodity, and instead is consumed because of its links to identity. Although this approach serves to emphasize the importance of context, the danger is that it leaves the reader without a clear sense of how the term ‘anti-commodity’ might be most usefully applied.

Research and experiment emerges as an important theme in a number of the chapters that explore government sponsored ‘improvement’; the dynamism of seed technology; the complexity of varieties, and genetics and hybrids (something I certainly found difficult to get to grips with in my own work on cinchona). Specifically, Sinha-Kerkhoff provides insight into the tobacco research of the Pusa Institute, Eastern India, where Albert Howard’s recognition of the connections between healthy soil and healthy crops, livestock and populations later helped to establish him as a pioneer of the organic farming movement. Hazareesingh’s case study of cotton in Dharwar, Western India also emphasizes recognition of indigenous methods of cultivation and climate knowledge. Though all are social histories, environment and ecology also loom large, demonstrating the ‘intimate entanglements’ that exist ‘between the natural and human worlds’ (p. 5), with the importance of very particular geographies and local stories highlighted. Given my current research interests in the weather, I particularly enjoyed Hazareesingh’s section on unseasonable seasons and ‘wind blight’.

Maravanyika’s chapter uncovers the role of traditional religion and religious leaders in shaping response to colonial policy on the cultivation of cotton in Gokwe, north-west Zimbabwe, a story again with a legacy that remains evident today. Minsky’s exploration of the productive value of organic waste in South Asia is one that makes an important contribution to contemporary studies of sanitation. In Hyde’s account of the East African Railways and Harbours, 1945–60, labour power becomes the anti-commodity. There is a link here to Curry-Machado’s chapter through the differential rates, and the methods and users of railways and roads in the very particular geography of sugar-cane cultivation in the Remedios region of Cuba.

As ‘the success of these ventures still depended on knowledge of, as well as attitudes towards, the encountered local cultural and natural worlds’ (p. 2), misunderstandings of both people and environments resulted in histories that are full of constant change, modification, and of ever shifting categories. Binaries and opposites are prominent, but not static, and it is interesting to read about how two (or more) very similar products come to be assigned very different values (not just economic) on the basis of consumer taste, or connections with local identity. For me, colour also popped out as a cross-cutting theme that might be further explored: red and white rice, yellow and black tobacco, red and black soils.