A Local History of Global Capital: Jute and Peasant Life in the Bengal Delta (Histories of Economic Life)

In the middle of World War II, with all eyes focused on Europe and the Pacific, between 2 and 4 million peasants died of hunger in what is now Bangladesh. This book shows--through raw data, quotations from local contemporary sources and a critical use of the secondary literature--how this famine came about. In the process we learn how the global market seduced and abandoned a marginal peasant society. The story told here is going on now in any part of the world given over to providing raw materials for our global consumerist societiesThe Ganges delta--muddy, marshy, subject to flooding--is perfect for growing jute (the plants thrive 1/3 under water). Jute fibers were used to make burlap bags and gunny sacks to package and transport goods and as world commerce took off in the second half of the 19th century demand for jute skyrocketed. Peasants who grew rice for subsistence and jute for a little extra cash gradually switched to less rice and more jute. This created an apparent prosperity--peasant roofs changed from thatch to corrugated metal, women bought cheap Manchester cloth for their saris, children got cheap german toys;the peasants were not only producers for the global market but became enthusiastic consumers as well. Temporary shortfalls in rice production were made up by borrowing (at high interest) and buying rice on the market. An area of rice production now required rice importsThis arrangement lasted through several business cycles until World War I, when longer-term disruption in world trade started a steady decline, worsened by racist and disastrous ecologic policies (railroads with high embakments were built across the natural drainage pattern of the area creating stagnant water perfect for malaria and kala azar). By the mid-40's peasants could not adapt to scarcity by bringing more land under cultivation (every bit of land was plowed), increasing population led to farms being parcelled out into smalled and smaller plots, not adequate even for bassic subsistence crops, and in a final blow the last recourse of borrowing at exorbitant interest disappeared. Farmers had nothing to eat and nowhere to go. They starved.This is a story begging for a novelist or playwright (a Zola or Brecht). It is an economic history so it's slow going and demands close reading. The balanced and objective tone lets the data itself speak powerfully. You will not be entertained, but you will be apalled, surprised, and informed.Highly recommended

Tariq Omar Ali's first book, 'A Local History of Global Capital' is a fantastically researched and brilliantly written inquiry into the Jute industry of the Bengal Delta during the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The book follows the connections between the local cultivation and production Jute in the Bengal Delta to its demand and consumption in far corners of the world. Though this book is a tour de force of academic work, it is accessible to to the non-academic reader as well as being a page-turner. Highly recommend !

Great narration and the details make this period of history come alive. I also learned a lot!

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