The Envelope of Global Trade

During the second half of the nineteenth century, peasant smallholders in the Bengal delta - an alluvial tract formed out of the silt deposits of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna river-systems - expanded their cultivation of jute, a fibrous plant that was the world's primary packaging material. Jute fibres were spun and woven into course cloths used to pack the world's commodities - its grains, sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, and so forth - in their journey from farms and plantations to urban and industrial centres of consumption. The fibre connected the Bengal delta and its peasant smallholders to the vicissitudes of global commodity markets. This dissertation examines connections between the delta and international commodity markets from the 1850s to the 1950s - it is a local history of global capital.