I. History of Darjeeling tea

A. Besky: emergence of production landscape through interaction of cultural, environmental, economic, and geopolitical processes
B. British East India Company, founded in 1600

1. Hill stations and health
2. Wars with Nepal (1814-16) and Burma (1824-26 and 1852): lands in the Himalayas come under the East India Company
3. Darjeeling comes from Dorje-ling monastery (thunderbolt place in Tibetan)
4. 1835: East India Company annexes small area to become hill station: uninhabited "wasteland"

C. Nepal, late 18th, early 19th c.

1. Gorkha rulers gave status to high caste Hindus
2. Eastern Nepalis displaced into the mountains, conscripted into kingdom's army
3. British respected the skills of "Gurkhas," soldiers against whom they fought

D. After 1814-1816, British annex Darjeeling
E. 1820s: East India Company recruits landless Nepalis for Gurkha regiments (wage labor)
F. British tea consumption increases

1. Problem of reliance on China
2. Intensive and extensive cultivation would "improve" Asian populations and land
3. Show off glory of empire through production and consumption

G. Darjeeling production

1. Research: "As part of 'improvement,' colonial governments needed to understand the florae, faunae, and geologies of these new colonies so that they could be integrated into commercial use" (49-50).
2. Assam, to the east, is not as similar in climate to Southwest China as Darjeeling
3. Commercial planting + on-site processing technology --> plantation system and economy of scale
4. Tea cultivation grows

a. 1866: 39 "gardens," 10,000 acres, annual production of 433,000 pounds
b. 1870: 56 gardens, 11,000 acres, 8000 Nepali workers, 1,708,000 pounds
c. 1873: Machinery introduced
d. 1874: 113 gardens, 20,000 laborers
e. Late 1800s: 64,000 laborers (1/3 of population of district), 96% were Nepali
f. 1940: 142 gardens, 63,059 acres, 23,721,500 pounds

H. Land: leases to "improve"
I. Labor

1. British saw Gurkha as hardworking, industrious, and loyal
2. Nepali recruiters
3. Today, most tea plantation workers are descendants of Nepali migrant laborers

 

II. Plantation versus Garden

A. Plantation system (kaman): peasant, sharecropping, and industrial

1. No open labor market
2. Workers form lifelong relationships, bound to land
3. Ethic of care for land
4. Wages in kind: land, housing, food rations, medical facilities, schooling, firewood
5. Small villages of 50-150 people
6. Mostly women, harvest and prune by hand
7. Work six days a week, 7am-4pm
8. Wages just over a dollar per day in 2010
9. On site processing done by men, but other men do odd jobs, high male unemployment
10. Nuclear families

B. Why women's work?

1. Paternalistic colonial system recruited through networks, brought extended families from the same area in eastern Nepal to Darjeeling
2. Tea work wasn't gendered during colonial era
3. Provision of facilities: dispensaries with medicine, spaces for rituals
4. 1940s: men recruited for army, women took over tea work
5. Post-war (1945) and post-independence (1947): men return

a. Labor union movement
b. Unemployment
c. Rise of communist party

C. Decline of tea

1. Plantations Labour Act (1951): codifies provision of services
2. British owners begin selling to Indian owners
3. Tea market declines, USSR becomes key buyer
4. Capital leaves region, number of cultivated acres declines
5. Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (1973): plantations must be Indian owned
6. Plantations become smaller, workforce reduced to reduce costs
7. Planters buy off unions

D. Women workers continue to see plantation work as humane, jobs passed from generation to generation
E. Tourists, officials, planters: tea gardens
F. Tripartite moral economy: workers, managers, and agro-environment

1. Industri

a. Planters: ensured workers' welfare through facilities, invested capital in land and workers
b. Workers took care of agro-environment
c. Agro-environment actively demanded nurture, shaped relationship

2. Bisnis

a. Extractive: most money from resources
b. Degrade environment, destabilize plantation life

G. Fair Trade: revitalized market, but promotes bisnis
H. Garden visions

1. Tourism: http://www.happytrips.com/darjeeling/travel-guide/darjeelings-most-charming-tea-estates/gs35784398.cms
2. Tea marketing: https://happyearthtea.com/blogs/blog/14945005-darjeeling-tea-gardens

 

III. Geographical Indication and the Construction of Darjeeling Tea

A. Tea Board of India: Darjeeling tea "just happens" (Besky 2014:89)
B. Geographical Indication status

1. Darjeeling tea, 1999
2. World Trade Organization regulated
3. Garden image on tea box: "Up in the mist-covered Himalayan Highlands lies Darjeeling, a sacred tea town. We pay respect by blending Darjeeling teas from only the best gardens for an extraordinary tea." "Ingredients: 100% hand-picked Darjeeling tea"
4. Locate products in place as rare, premium price
5. Besky: GI creates "a market in which the consumption of tea is linked to fetishized experiences of place and of labor" (91).
6. Presumed tradition, authenticity of production techniques
7. Terroir: taste of place AND intellectual property
8. Cultural performances and values of time-honored craft--> irony of tea's history of colonial, plantation production

C. Tripartite moral economy

1. Workers: mothers who nurture plants, care = work
2. GI: workers nurture plants, but aesthetic vision: care = idealized natural beauty of landscape and people
3. Darjeeling tea becomes rooted in place and patrimony of nation
4. Producers are made directly relatable to consumers (removed from tripartite moral economy)
5. Plantations = heritage sites

D. GI erases colonial heritage, replaces it with aesthetics

1. How to drink tea (Besky 2014: 97)
2. Women naturalized aesthetically as of the earth
3. Workers' care is timeless, sacred
4. "Third World agrarian imaginary in which low-paid workers are recast as 'natural' guardians of the landscape" (99)
5. No coolies, migrant workers, low-wage laborers

E. Intellectual property

1. Legal protections for 87 gardens in specific area
2. "Others" Nepali tea as imitation
3. Case against Republic of Tea for "Darjeeling nouveau"
4. Permeable borders become fixed
5. Place-based tourism in search of authenticity

F. Erasure of role of plantation management

1. Fetishizes relationship between workers and plants
2. What about social context for labor?
3. Empty relationship: "Increasingly, workers are asked to participate, not in a reciprocal relationship to land and management, but in a performative relationship to consumers" (112).