GLOBAL ENTOMOLOGIES: INSECTS, EMPIRES - Amherst College

38 Pages·2013·0.25 MB·English

GLOBALENTOMOLOGIES:INSECTS,
EMPIRES,ANDTHE‘SYNTHETICAGE’
INWORLDHISTORY*
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1StuartNicholson,EllaFitzgerald:ABiographyoftheFirstLadyofJazz,newedn , 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2
(NewYork,1995),81.EmmettEiland,OrientalRugsToday:AGuidetotheBestNew 0101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101
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CarpetsfromtheEast,2ndedn(Berkeley,2003),80;formoreontheHerekeImperial
CarpetManufacture,seeAyt¸eFazly´odluandOktayAslanapa,TheLastLoopofthe
Knot:OttomanPalaceCarpets(Istanbul, 2006).Onthedifferentmaterials usedin
dyeing officers’ coats and those of lower-ranking soldiers in the British army, see
ScottHughesMyerly,BritishMilitarySpectacle:FromtheNapoleonicWarsthroughthe
Crimea(Cambridge,Mass.,1996),68.
PastandPresent(2013) (cid:2)ThePastandPresentSociety,Oxford,2013
doi:10.1093/pastj/gtt026
2of38 PASTANDPRESENT
capacity of domesticated insects. The brittle shellac of Ella
Fitzgerald’s 78-rpm record, the gossamer threads woven into
the sultan’s silk carpets, and the crimson cochineal used to dye
thebrigadier-general’sjacketenteredthecircuitsofglobalcom-
merce assecretions fromthebodies oftinyarthropods. Women
and men in places as far flung as north-eastern India, the
Ottoman Bosporus and Mexico painstakingly raised the lac
bugs (Kerria lacca), silkworms (Bombyx mori) and cochineal
insects (Dactylopius coccus) that exuded the raw materials for
these products. Although the histories of shellac, silk and coch-
inealhavebeenconsideredinfragmentedandepisodicaccounts,
theyhaveneverbeenlookedatconcurrently.2
Starting fromaconstellation ofthesethree commodities,this
article documents a series of long-standing productive relation-
ships between humans and insects. Following the metamorph-
oses of shellac, silk and cochineal from locally produced goods
into commodities circulating throughout the capitalist world
system, this article offers two conclusions. First, Europeans
existed on the knowledge periphery of insect commodity produc-
tion,incredulousthatindigenousknow-howbeyondthebound-
aries of the Occident could be so central to global commerce.3
Historians have cogently demonstrated the symbolic and eco-
nomicstrengthsthatEuropeanempiresacquiredbydominating
colonial environments, but we are only just beginning to hear
aboutthefailuresofsuchprojects.4
2Arthropodaisthemostnumerousphylumamonglivingorganismsandincludes
insects,arachnidsandcrustaceans,aswellasotherinvertebrates.Allarthropodshave
exoskeletons,segmentedbodiesandjointedappendages.Insectspossesschitinous
exoskeletons,tripartitebodies(head,thoraxandabdomen),twoantennae,compound
eyesandthreepairsofjointedlegs.
3Referring to such culturally generated epistemological gaps, historians Londa
SchiebingerandRobertProctorhavecoinedtheterm‘agnotology’.SeeRobertN.
Proctor and Londa Schiebinger (eds.), Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of
Ignorance(Stanford,2008).
4For examples of the scientific justifications and environmental outcomes of
European imperial endeavours from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, see
DanielaBleichmaretal.(eds.),ScienceintheSpanishandPortugueseEmpires,1500–
1800(Stanford,2009);HarroMaat,ScienceCultivatingPractice:AHistoryofAgricultural
ScienceintheNetherlandsanditsColonies,1863–1986(Dordrecht,2001);RichardH.
Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the
World(NewHaven,2000);RichardH.Grove,GreenImperialism:ColonialExpansion,
Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge,
1995);LucileH.Brockway,ScienceandColonialExpansion:TheRoleoftheBritishRoyal
BotanicGardens(NewYork,1979).
GLOBALENTOMOLOGIES 3of38
Second, the long-term histories of shellac, silk and cochineal
offeracounter-narrativetoconventionalaccountsofmodernity.
Duringthenineteenthandtwentiethcenturies,industrialengin-
eers chemically synthesized and aggressively promoted surro-
gates for all three arthropod secretions — vinyl for shellac,
nylon for silk and aniline dyes for cochineal. Yet the recent
re-emergenceofshellac,silkandcochinealasextensivelytraded
globalcommoditiesdemonstratesanenduringrelianceuponthe
secretions of domesticated insects. An awareness of the persist-
ence of seemingly pre-modern means of production exposes
cracksinthesmoothedificeoftechnologicalmodernity.Thedur-
abilityofsuchprocessesdestabilizesthehighmodernistassump-
tion that human beings are inexorably marching towards a
‘synthetic planet’ on which the artificial will ultimately replace
thenatural.5
Two factors have driven the recent resurgence of the shellac,
silk and cochineal trades. The first is the rise of environmental
toxicology.Fromthe1960sonwards,practitionersofthisnewly
constituted scientific discipline began to expose the poisonous
and carcinogenic effects of numerous synthetic chemicals
released into the environment by design — such as pesticides
and food additives — or by accident as industrial by-products.
As a result, consumer demand for alternatives has stimulated a
resurgenceoforganicallyproducedingredientsthroughmuchof
the world. In numerous cases, manufacturers have abandoned
syntheticsubstitutesinfavourofnaturalsubstances,suchasshel-
lacandcochineal.6
The second factor is the more recent discovery that, despite
enormous strides in polymer synthesis, industrial chemists
remain unable to manufacture inexpensive or structurally ad-
equatealternativestoavastarrayofnaturallyproducedmaterials.
Silk, like many similar products, has proved too complex to be
5Ihaveborrowedthenotionofa‘syntheticplanet’fromMonicaJ.Casper(ed.),
SyntheticPlanet:ChemicalPoliticsandtheHazardsofModernLife(NewYork,2003).
Conceptually,IdrawuponBrunoLatour’sargumentthatmodernityisparadoxical.
Ontheonehanditisaclaimthat‘nature’and‘society’arepureanddistinctrealms,yet
itsimultaneouslydependsuponhybridsofhumanandnon-humannaturesthatdefy
these strict separations. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans.
CatherinePorter(Cambridge,Mass.,1993).
6For more on public attitudes towards natural versus synthetic chemicals, see
RichardFirn,Nature’sChemicals:TheNaturalProductsThatShapedourWorld,revised
edn(Oxford,2010),127–39.
4of38 PASTANDPRESENT
efficiently engineered and profitably mass-produced. In an era
dominatedbythepromiseof‘BetterLivingthroughChemistry’,
manyorganismsstill operateasinimitable laboratories ofmeta-
morphosis. As a result of surging demand for shellac, silk and
cochineal, women and men throughout the world continue to
relyuponinsectsecretionsasameansofsecuringtheirlivelihoods
inanageofhi-techglobalization.7
Global environmental history offers a powerful analytical
framework for relating these interspecies associations to larger
socialandecologicalshifts.Formillennia,peopleandecosystems
ingeographicallydistinctregionsoftheworldhaveinteractedin
far-reaching ways. The challenge now facing practitioners of
global environmental history is to transcend approaches based
solely on local or national comparisons and move towards
modelsthatemphasizetransnationalconnections.Amorecom-
pleteunderstandingofprocessesasdiverseastheexpansionsand
contractionsofimperialknowledge,thelimitsofsyntheticchem-
istry, and the shifting aspects of interspecies relations requires
suchexpansionsofscopeandscale.Althoughthisarticlepursues
comparisons among three insect secretions, the emphasis here is
primarily on connections — and the antagonisms that these
encountersgenerate—amongproducersandconsumersacross
spaceandtime.8
7‘BetterLivingthroughChemistry’wastheshortenedversionofDuPont’stagline
‘BetterThingsforBetterLiving...throughChemistry’,whichthechemicalcompany
adoptedin1935.Itremainedtheirsloganuntil1982.SeeWilliamL.BirdJr,‘Better
Living’:Advertising,MediaandtheNewVocabularyofBusinessLeadership,1935–1955
(Evanston, 1999), 23. In the 1970s, Monsanto employed a similar catchphrase,
‘Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible’. See David Noble, ‘The
ChemistryofRisk:SynthesizingtheCorporateIdeologyofthe1980s’,SevenDays,
5June1979,24.
8Fordiscussionsoftheanalyticalpossibilitiesthatemergefromanemphasison
transnationalconnections,seeEdwardD.Melillo,‘TheFirstGreenRevolution:Debt
Peonage and the Makingof the NitrogenFertilizer Trade, 1840–1930’, American
Historical Review, cxvii (2012); Micol Seigel, ‘Beyond Compare: Comparative
Methodafter theTransnationalTurn’,RadicalHistoryReview,xci(Winter2005);
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the
ModernWorldEconomy(Princeton,2000),3–27.Overthepastthreedecades,scholars
havetakenarangeofapproachestoglobalenvironmentalhistory.Forseveralrecent
examples, see Anthony N. Penna, The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental
History(Oxford,2009);I.G.Simmons,GlobalEnvironmentalHistory:10,000BCto
AD2000(EdinburghandChicago,2008);JoachimRadkau,NatureandPower:AGlobal
HistoryoftheEnvironment,trans.ThomasDunlap(CambridgeandWashington,DC,
2008);JohnF.Richards,TheUnendingFrontier:AnEnvironmentalHistoryoftheEarly
ModernWorld(Berkeley,2003).
GLOBALENTOMOLOGIES 5of38
Environmentalhistoriansarealsouniquelypositionedtorevise
ourunderstandingoftherolesthatorganismshaveplayedinour
culturalandtechnologicalsystems.InaninversionofLeoMarx’s
now-familiarmetaphorof‘themachineinthegarden’,historian
EdmundRussellhascontendedthatthehistoryofbiotechnology
mightinsteadbeseenasthe‘gardeninthemachine’,ortheinter-
playofevolutionandtechnicalchangetoproduce‘biologicalarti-
factsshapedbyhumanstoservehumanends’.9Yetinsectsarenot
merelytherelicsofanthropogenicmanipulations.Beyondbotan-
icalandmechanicalmetaphorsliesanappreciationofthewaysin
whichthesecreatureshavealtered—andcontinuetoshape—the
frameworksofourexistence.10Asthisarticleconcludes,insects
areasintegraltotherealitiesofourearthlysurvivalastheyhave
beentoourvisionsofotherworldlyapocalypse.11
Millennia of environmental adaptations and cultural accom-
modations have underwritten human relationships to insects.
Throughout history, these intrepid creatures have populated
our folk tales, pollinated our flowering plants and plagued our
fields. They have served as culinary cornerstones, even as they
dinedonourarchitecturalfoundations.Civilizationshavefeared
them as vectors of disease, revered them as sacred objects, and
ceaselessly manipulated them as models for genetic experimen-
tation.12 Rather than explore productive relations between
9LeoMarx,TheMachineintheGarden:TechnologyandthePastoralIdealinAmerica
(New York, 1964); EdmundRussell, ‘Introduction: The Garden in the Machine.
TowardanEvolutionaryHistoryofTechnology’,inPhilipScrantonandSusanR.
Schrepfer(eds.),IndustrializingOrganisms:IntroducingEvolutionaryHistory(London,
2003),1.
10DonnaHaraway’sworkontheproductivepossibilitiesofexperiencingtheworld
throughinteractionswithnon-humanbeingshasbeeninfluentialhere.SeeDonnaJ.
Haraway,WhenSpeciesMeet(Minneapolis,2008).
11ScholarshavegenerallyframedtheSyntheticAgeasaphenomenonfollowingthe
SecondWorldWar.Forexamples,seeSarahA.Vogel,‘From‘‘TheDoseMakesthe
Poison’’to‘‘TheTimingMakesthePoison’’:ConceptualizingRiskintheSynthetic
Age’, Environmental History, xiii (2008), 667–73; John Bellamy Foster, ‘The
Vulnerable Planet’, in Leslie King and Deborah McCarthy (eds.), Environmental
Sociology:FromAnalysistoAction(Lanham,2005).
12Between396and407millionyearsagoinsectsevolvedonearth.SeeMichaelS.
EngelandDavidA.Grimaldi,‘NewLightShedontheOldestInsect’,Nature,12Feb.
2004,627–30.Forexamplesofthevariousrolesinsectshaveplayedinhumansociety,
seeCristopherHollingsworth,PoeticsoftheHive:TheInsectMetaphor inLiterature
(IowaCity,2001);MayR.Berenbaum,BugsintheSystem:InsectsandtheirImpact
on Human Affairs (Reading, Mass., 1995); Robert E. Kohler, Lords of the Fly:
Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago, 1994); J. L. Cloudsley-
Thompson,InsectsandHistory(London,1976).
6of38 PASTANDPRESENT
humans and insects, most historians have — quite understand-
ably—concentratedonthedestructiveimpactsofinsects,suchas
disease transmission, crop damage or structural decay. Indeed,
formidable battles against arthropod ‘pests’ have preoccupied
humansformillennia.Frompre-modernbiblicalplaguestocon-
temporaryhorrorfilms,thespectreofinsectinvasionhashaunted
humanity.13
Thelivesofinsectsoffermanyparadoxes.Thesecreaturescan
be microscopically unobtrusive, yet they display devastating
power in a swarm; it takes only one swat to destroy them, but
they epitomize evolutionary resilience on earth; they are the
vectors of devastating diseases such as malaria and dengue
fever,yettheycarryoutsomeoftheworld’smostcrucialservices
andproducesomeofitsmostdurableproducts.14
II
SHELLAC
Onesuchcommodity,shellac,hasbeentradedfor thousandsof
years. Among the earliest references to shellac is a passage in
the ancient Indian Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata (c.300–400
CE). In the story, Duryodhana, the leader of one of two feuding
royal factions, attempts to murder his cousins, the Pandvas, by
trappingtheminaflammablehousebuiltofshellac(La¯ksagrha).
13Recentexamplesofthisgenreinclude:J.R.McNeill,MosquitoEmpires:Ecology
andWarintheGreaterCaribbean,1620–1914(NewYork,2010);GordonPatterson,
TheMosquitoCrusades:AHistoryoftheAmericanAnti-MosquitoMovementfromtheReed
CommissiontotheFirstEarthDay(NewBrunswick,NJ,2009);JamesE.McWilliams,
AmericanPests:TheLosingWaronInsectsfromColonialTimestoDDT(NewYork,2008);
Paul S. Sutter, ‘Nature’s Agents or Agents of Empire? Entomological Workers
and Environmental Change during the Construction of the Panama Canal’, Isis,
xcviii (2007); Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious
Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier (New York, 2004);
JoshuaBluBuhs,TheFireAntWars:Nature,Science,andPublicPolicyinTwentieth-
CenturyAmerica(Chicago,2004).InmoviessuchasTarantula(1955),TheFly(1958),
Killer Bees (1974), The Empire of the Ants (1977), Swarm (1978), Arachnophobia
(1990), Eight Legged Freaks (2002), Black Swarm (2007) and The Hive (2008),
Hollywoodcaststhesecreaturesas‘evilarthropods’,whichwreakhavoconhuman-
kind.Formoreonthistrend,seeWilliamM.Tsutsui,‘LookingStraightatThem!
UnderstandingtheBigBugMoviesofthe1950s’,EnvironmentalHistory,xii(2007).
14Such ambiguities surface in the periodic appearance of fictional insects and
arachnidsassympatheticproto-humans.ExamplesincludePinocchio’scompanion
JiminyCricket,CharlottethebarnspiderinE.B.White’sCharlotte’sWeb(NewYork,
1952) and the hookah-puffing caterpillar in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland(London,1865).
GLOBALENTOMOLOGIES 7of38
The Pandvas foil his plot and escape to safety through a secret
passage.15
Duryodhana’s combustible shellac, or simply lac, was a resin
secretedbythescaleinsectKerria(orLaccifer)lacca.Historically,
smallholders in India and other regions across South East Asia
haveraisedlacinsects.Indianlaccultivatorsusethreemajorhost
trees — kusum (Scheleichera oleosa), palas (Butea monosperma)
and ber (Zizyphus mauritiana) — to cultivate two strains of lac
insect,knowncolloquiallyas‘Kusmi’and‘Rangeeni’.Lacbugs,
whichgrowtothesizeofappleseeds,colonizethegreentwigsof
thesefigandacaciatrees,feedonthesapoftheirhostplants,and
secrete lac resin as they mature. By scraping the encrusted lac
fromtreebranchesduringtwoannualharvests,cultivatorscollect
the valuable product, known as scraped lac or sticklac. They
then crush the sticklac into grains and filter, wash and dry
these pellets. At this point, the seedlac is ready to be melted,
filteredonceagain,andstretchedintosheetsthatcanbesoldas
shellac.Shellacqualitydependsuponthevarietyoflacinsect,the
species of host tree, the regional climate and the harvester’s
techniques.16
15JamesG.Lochtefeld,TheIllustratedEncyclopediaofHinduism:A–M(NewYork,
2002),211.Verylittlehasbeenwrittenonthehistoryofshellac.Foradatedbutstill
usefulbibliography,seeRajendraKumarVarshney,LacLiterature:ABibliographyof
LacInsects&Shellac(Calcutta,1970).
16J.Mohanta,D.G.DeyandN.Mohanty,‘PerformanceofLacInsect,Kerrialacca
KerrinConventionalandNon-ConventionalCultivationaroundSimilipalBiosphere
Reserve, Odisha, India’, The Bioscan, vii (2012); K. Buch et al., ‘Investigation of
Various Shellac Grades: Additional Analysis for Identity’, Drug Development and
IndustrialPharmacy,xxxv(2009);B.MukhopadhyayandM.S.Muthana(eds.),A
Monograph on Lac (Ranchi, 1962). Shellac cultivation also occurs in Cambodia,
Indonesia,Myanmar,Thailand,VietnamandChina.Forexample,theHaniethnic
groupinYunnanprovincehaslongraisedlacinsects.SeeClaudeSaint-PierreandOu
Bingrong,‘LacHost-TreesandtheBalanceofAgroecosystemsinSouthYunnan,
China’,EconomicBotany,xlvi(1994).Theterm‘lac’mayderivefromtheSanskrit
wordLaksha,whichmeans‘ahundredthousand’.SeeCol.HenryYuleandA.C.
Burnell,Hobson-Jobson:AGlossaryofColloquialAnglo-IndianWordsandPhrases,andof
KindredTerms,Etymological,Historical,GeographicalandDiscursive,ed.W.Crooke,
newedn(London,1903),499–500.Otherinsectcommoditiesthatrelyupondomes-
ticatedhostplantsincludethemagueyworm(Aegialehesperiaris),grownonAgave
tequilanaleavesforthetequilaindustry.SeeJohnE.Staller,‘EthnohistoricSourceson
Foodways, Feasts, andFestivals inMesoamerica’, in JohnE. StallerandMichael
Carrasco (eds.), Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food,
Culture,andMarketsinAncientMesoamerica(NewYork,2009),39–40.Anotherex-
ampleisthewasp-inducedtreegallusedtoproducethetannicacidsthatprovidedink
during the Elizabethan Age. For more on gall ink, see David N. Carvalho, Forty
CenturiesofInk(NewYork,1904),97–101.
8of38 PASTANDPRESENT
ThroughoutIndianhistory,lachasfounditswayintoAyurvedic
medicine, cosmetics, textile dyes, jewellery and paints, often
withofficialsanction.In1590,anadministrativereportprepared
fortheMughalEmperorAkbarIspecifiedthenecessarypropor-
tionofshellactocertainpigmentswhenvarnishingthedoorsof
public buildings.17 During the same decade, Indian shellac
achieved widespread notoriety throughout Eurasia, both for its
resinous properties and for the deep red hues that its unfiltered
pigments could impart. In 1596, the Dutch chronicler of East
Indian trade routes, Jan HuyghenvanLinschoten, marvelled at
‘Desks,Targets,Tables,Cubbordes,Boxes,andathousandsuch
thinges,thatareallcoveredandwroughtwithLacofallcolours
andfashions;sothatitmakethmentowonderatthebeautieand
brightnessofthecolour,whichisaltogetherLac’.18Artisanscom-
binedshellacwithotherinsectsecretions.Aseventeenth-century
Venetian dyeing manual lists recipes ‘A tinger seta con gomma di
lacca’(todyesilkwithshellac).19
Bythe1600s,China,JapanandVenicewereimportingshellac
fromtheforestsofnorth-easternIndia.TheFrenchexplorerand
diamond trader Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited Assam in 1676,
notingtwokindsofshellac:
Thatformedontreesisofaredcolour,withittheydyetheircalicoesand
otherstuffs,andwhentheyhaveextractedtheredcolourtheyusethelac
tolacquercabinetsandotherobjectsofthatkind,andtomakeSpanish
wax.AlargequantityofitisexportedtoChinaandJapan,tobeusedinthe
manufactureofcabinets;itisthebestlacinthewholeofAsiaforthese
purposes.20
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, shellac was
amongthekeycommoditiesshippedfromIndia’seasterncoast-
linetomarketsontheArabianPeninsula,andbythenineteenth
Assamrankedamongtheworld’sleadinglacproductionregions.
17Forpre-modernusesoflac,seeK.N.Dave,LacandtheLac-InsectintheAthara-
Veda (Nagpur, 1950); P. C. Sarkar, ‘Applications of Lac — Past, Present and
EmergingTrends’,inK.K.Kumar,R.RamaniandK.K.Sharma(eds.), Recent
AdvancesinLacCulture(Ranchi,2002).OnAkbar’sspecifications,seeA.F.Suter,
‘TechnicalNotesonLac:APaperReadbyA.F.SuterbeforethePaintandVarnish
SocietyofLondon’,Paint,OilandDrugReview(Chicago),21June1911,36.
18JanHuyghenvanLinschoten,TheVoyageofJohnHuygenvanLinschotentotheEast
Indies: From the Old English Translation of 1598. The First Book, Containing his
Description of the East, ed. Arthur Coke Burnell and P. A. Tiele, 2 vols. (Hakluyt
Society,1stser.,lxxi,London,1885),ii,90.
19TimoteoRosselli,De’secretiuniversalidiDonTimoteoRosselli(Venice,1644),12.
20Jean-BaptisteTavernier,TravelsinIndia,trans.V.Ball,2ndedn,2vols.(London,
1925),ii,221.
GLOBALENTOMOLOGIES 9of38
Between1885and1899,Assam’saverageannuallacoutputwas
714,860kilograms.21
Lacwasaneconomicmainstayofpoorsmallholdersthrough-
out India. In 1908, the British colonial official and botanist Sir
GeorgeWattnoted,
Lacentersintotheagricultural,commercial,artistic,manufacturing,do-
mestic and sacred feelings and enterprises of the people of India to an
extenthardlyappreciatedbytheordinaryobserver.Theexistenceofthe
poorer communities, in the agricultural and forest tracts, is made the
more tolerable through the income derived from the collection of the
crudearticle.22
Whilelacwasamajorexportcommodity,India’sdomesticcraft-
workersalsoemployedlacresinasabindingagent,anornamental
element,avarnishandasealant.23
Among European and North American importers, confusion
about the origins of shellac abounded. In 1563, the Portuguese
doctorGarciadaOrtareportedthatlacwastheproductofflying
ants.24 Other sixteenth-century writers frequently confused lac
with red-dye woods, known in Burma by the common name
‘Lakka’.25 Shellac even experienced a bewildering multiplicity
of introductions into global markets. In his 1813 treatise on
dyeing,EdwardBancroftpresentedlacdyetoBritishreadersas
though the colonial commodity was a novelty, previously un-
known to Europeans.26 Likewise, as late as 1915, the author of
aNorthAmericanindustrialchemistrymanualinformedreaders:
Ithasbeenerroneously stated thatlacisthedriedexudationof atree,
causedbythestingofthelacinsect,andissimilartorosininitsorigin.Asa
matteroffact,itisthesecretionofthelacinsect,andisaproductofthe
21OntheshellactradebetweentheAndhracoastandtheArabianPeninsula,see
Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel
Coast,1650–1740(NewYork,1986),104.ForstatisticsonAssam’slacoutput,see
B.C.Basu,NoteontheLacIndustryofAssam(Shillong,1905),6.Duringthenine-
teenthcentury,theBritishEastIndiaCompanyexportedshellacfromIndia.SeeK.N.
Chaudhuri,‘India’sForeignTradeandtheCessationoftheEastIndiaCompany’s
TradingActivities,1828–40’,EconomicHistoryReview,2ndseries,xix(1966),347.
22SirGeorgeWatt,TheCommercialProductsofIndia:BeinganAbridgementof‘The
DictionaryoftheEconomicProductsofIndia’(London,1908),1063.
23GeorgeWatt,‘TheLacIndustryofIndia’,PharmaceuticalJournal(London),11
Nov.1905,650–2.
24GarciadaOrta,ColoquiosdossimplesedrogasdaIndia(1563),ed.AcademiaReal
dasCienciasdeLisboa,2vols.(Lisbon,1895),ii,40.
25Watt,‘LacIndustryofIndia’,646.
26JoKirby,MarikaSpringandCatherineHiggitt,‘TheTechnologyofEighteenth-
and Nineteenth-Century Red Lake Pigments’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin,
xxviii(2007),82.
10of38 PASTANDPRESENT
assimilationofthetreesapwhichtheinsectfeedsupon,justashoneyand
beeswaxareproducedbythemodificationofthenectarofflowersbythe
bee.27
Even the word lacquer caused misunderstandings. Nineteenth-
and twentieth-century European artisans used the term when
referring to shellac, but they also employed it when discussing
other varnishingsubstances,suchasthesapoftheRhusvernici-
flua,atreeendemictoChina.28
As the immediate predecessor to mouldable plastics, shellac
underwrote a vast array of material cultures. In eighteenth-
century New England, craftspeople frequently purchased the
raw precursor to shellac, Indian seedlac, for use in cabinetry
andfurniturefinishing.29Duringthenineteenthcentury,shellac
servedasthemainingredientinphotographiccases.In1837the
Frenchman Louis-Jacques-Mande´ Daguerre invented the first
commerciallysuccessfulphotographictechnique,thedaguerreo-
type process, which used a silvered copper plate to produce a
directpositiveimageinthecamera.Toprotectfragiledaguerreo-
typeplates—andthenextgenerationsofphotographsknownas
ambrotypes and tintypes — manufacturers fashioned ‘union
cases’fromamixtureofshellac,woodfibresandtintingagents.
These artful containers featured elaborate recessed motifs.
Shellac boxes became collectables in their own right and gave
delicatephotographicimagestheabilitytotravel.30
Shellac’susesexpandedin1896whentheclassicalmusicpro-
ducerFredGaisbergdiscoveredtheutilityoftheinsectsecretion
totherecordingindustry.Phonographmanufacturerssoonbegan
pressing their recordings into 10- and 12-inch, 78-rpm discs.
27A.C.Langmuir,‘Shellac’,inAllenRogers(ed.),IndustrialChemistry:AManual
fortheStudentandManufacturer,2ndedn(NewYork,1915),696.
28MarianneWebb,LacquerTechnologyandConservation:AComprehensiveGuideto
theTechnologyandConservationofBothAsianandEuropeanLacquer(Woburn,Mass.,
2000),xvii.PlanttaxonomistsalsorefertotheChineselacquertreeasToxicodendron
vernicifluum.
29GeorgeFrancisDow,TheArtsandCraftsofNewEngland,1704–1775:Gleanings
fromBostonNewspapersRelatingtoPainting,Engraving,Silversmiths,Pewterers,Clock-
makers, Furniture,Pottery,OldHouses,Costume,TradesandOccupations(Topsfield,
1927),238.
30BrianCoe,TheBirthofPhotography:TheStoryoftheFormativeYears,1800–1900
(London,1976).Inthe1850sSamuelPecksecuredUSpatent11758fortheunion
case,whichheproducedinpartnershipwithNewYorkCity’sScovillManufacturing
Company.Formoreondaguerreotypecases,seeCliffordKrainik,MicheleKrainick
andCarlWalvoord,UnionCases:ACollector’sGuidetotheArtofAmerica’sFirstPlastics
(Grantsburg,1988).