Optimism

Abstract Despite the incessant threat of famine in Bengal and Madras, the 1780s and 1790s saw several Company officials rise to prominence through their trust in botany and agricultural experimentation to provide not only abundant food supplies to the sub-continent, but requiring little financial investment from either the Company or the British government. At the same time, the Board of Agriculture combed its membership and its correspondence for solutions and ideas that it could bring to public attention (at low cost) which might produce substantial increases in the island’s food supply. Focusing on optimism both in Britain and in British India, this chapter explores the positive solutions and approaches that were suggested and implemented in the empire, sometimes in the face of worsening crises and famine. One key strategy adopted by the Board of Agriculture during this period was to attempt the creation of a network of local societies through which it could communicate its expertise (and, in the future, perhaps dictate agricultural methods and even the choice of crops at local levels amongst its members). However, as I show in the concluding section of this chapter, the wildly differing theories and ideas of soil fertility and soil exhaustion—the most important factors facing any effort to increase the production of cereals in Britain—revealed that directly beneath the uniform approaches and philosophies espoused by leading figures in the Board was a bewildering array of ideas, approaches, and accounts of the basic functions of agriculture.