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Bengal indigo dye
In the 1580s, indigo dye made from Indigofera tinctoria grown in the Bengal delta was shipped via the Hooghly River and Surat to Persian, Ottoman, an…
Timeline
- c. 1581–1584Around Dhaka · BengalIndigo plants were grown on the alluvial plains of the Bengal delta; farmers sowed in the rainy season and harvested leaves in the dry season, while local landlords and put-up merchants controlled production in the growing areas through advance payments.
- c. 1584–1587Hooghly · West BengalLeaves were soaked and fermented in indigo workshops, aerated and oxidized to precipitate the pigment, then pressed into indigo cakes, weighed, and packed; workshops along the Hooghly River handled this centrally.
- c. 1587–1590Surat · GujaratBengal indigo cakes were carried down the Hooghly River to the port of Surat, loaded onto ships together with cotton cloth for the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, then transshipped to Ottoman and European textile workshops.
Sources
- The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present — Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik (1999)