The Alchemy of Empire

In this book, Rajani Sudan invites us think about materials that are not usually prominent in histories of Britain’s empire—mud, pus and ice, among others. Sudan organises her account around matter that can be described as abject but which was transformed by Indian technique into substances with great potency and material value. Take mortar, for example. Eighteenth-century visitors to Madras remarked upon the beauty and strength of the materials that built the town, describing the plaster as so flawless and white that it resembled marble. That Indian craftsmen had produced mortar and plaster of superior quality to any European equivalent was noted by Isaac Pyke, Governor of St Helena, who wrote that it could ‘vastly exceed any sort of Stucco-work, or plaister of Paris; and I have seen a room done with this sort of terrass-mortar that has fully come up to the best sort of wainscot-work in Smoothness and beauty’. The key ingredient of the mortar and plaster which was used to make the houses of Madras was oyster shells, or chinam, roasted, pounded and made into mortar and plaster by local Indian artisans

Alchemy · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Empire · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine