In transcribing the following paragraphs from the Internet Archive online version of The Imperial Gazetteer’s entry on British India — modern South Asia — I have expanded the divided the long entry into separate documents, expanded abbreviations for easier reading, and added paragraphing and links to material in the Victorian Web. The charts are in the original. This discussion of British India has particular importance because it immediately precedes the 1857 Mutiny and the subsequent major shift in its status as it came under the direct control of the British government rather than that of the East India Company, a private company.— George P. Landow]
Left: Seated male spice or salt vendor holding a balance. 121 x 88 mm. Right: Seated female salt merchant in red sari. 134 x 100 mm. Both Watercolor gouache on mica, 1780-1858, from the Collection New York Public Library Digital Collections nos. b13976376 and 134 x 100 mm. Click on images to enlarge them.
Salt
Salt is a Government monopoly, and the source of a considerable revenue; it is made in large quantities in Cuttack. The quantity disposed of at the Government sales, in 1844-45, was 4,644,046 bazaar maunds, or 3,405,288 hundredweights; and, in the year 1848-49, the Indian Government realized £2,488,567 from the sale of this article, considerably more than half of which revenue was derived from the Bengal pre sidency.
Nitre and nitrate of soda
Nitre and nitrate of soda effloresce on the soil, over large tracts in Bahar, and in other parts of the country; and, in 1849, 286,746 hundredweights of saltpetre were imported from British India into Great Britain, being rather more than half the total supply to the United Kingdom. In Assam, a considerable extent of the yellow soil which characterizes some of the tea districts in China, has been found to exist, and the tea-plant flourishes there spontaneously, as also in the province Ku- maon, in the Himalayas. Tobacco of superior quality, teak- timber, from the Malabar coast and Tenasserim provinces; cardamoms, cocoa-nuts, chank and pearl shells, chiefly from the south; drugs, dyes, gum-lac, linseed, sesamum, safflower, turmeric, ginger, skins and hides, borax, ivory, cassia, and other spices, are amongst the great variety of articles of the Indian export trade.
Diamonds, Gold, Silver, Lead, Mercury, Antimony, and other Metals
Diamonds are found in Bundelcund and in the Deccan. Copper is plentiful in the Himalaya, but at present the ore is all but useless, from deficient means of transport. Gold, silver, lead, mercury, antimony, and other metals, are found in different districts; they do not appear, however, as essential sources of commercial wealth.
Bibliography
Blackie, Walker Graham. The Imperial Gazetteer: A General Dictionary of Geography, Physical, Political, Statistical and Descriptive. 4 vols. London: Blackie & Son, 1856. Internet Archive. Inline version of a copy in the University of California Library. Web. 7 November 2018.
Last modified 5 December 2018