Shifting Narratives of Soil in Scientific Discourses of Colonial Assam Tea Plantations
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20179774 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Namrata Borkotoky (0000-0003-1932-1106, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 129-145 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Indian Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0376-9836 • E-ISSN: 0975-5977 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/03769836231173254 |
| OpenAlex | W4382395810 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
With the establishment of tea plantations in Assam in the first half of the nineteenth century, colonial tea planters and scientists began to examine ways to profitably produce tea for a growing global market. Apart from the visible landscape alterations through mass deforestation, tea monocultures also surreptitiously effected considerable transformation on its immediate physical environment, particularly on the soil. This paper highlights how the question of soil came under the purview of the colonial tea scientists when over the years, consequently and inevitably, these plantations showed a decline in the quality and quantity of tea produced. As a result, the initial conviction in the fertility of Assam’s soil within the tea discourse began to be replaced with discussions that revealed how plantation cultivation of tea itself was at the root of these problems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Agroforestry · Agronomy · Archaeology · Biology · Colonialism · Conviction · Geography · Monoculture · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Soil fertility · Soil water · Tea garden · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · Ecology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |