Stroud Scarlet and Cochineal
Prologue
Cochineal: a sessile parasite
That lives on the moisture and nutrients of cacti,
That die when removed from the prickly pear,
To be dried for the resultant carmine dye.
Part the First
After the Conquistadores advanced northwards,
Destroying the Aztec civilisation,
So Spanish colonialism
Transformed carmine production
Into a capitalist industry,
Turning a free Mexican peasantry
Into the equivalent of wage-slaves,
Generating unheard of profits
For a new global capitalist economy,
That linked the Americas with Spain and England,
In an interlinked global trading network,
Simultaneously both riven and driven by war.
Part the Second
For example,
British colonial expansion
And seemingly endemic warfare
In that martial Eighteenth century,
Meant a consequent increased demand
For British army redcoat uniforms,
Which meant increased demand for Stroud scarlet …
Part the Third
And all that meant slash and burn in the Americas,
So as to cultivate the prickly pear,
So as to extract the carminic acid
From the female cochineal beetle
(About one fifth of the body weight),
By immersing the female cochineal
In hot water, steam, ovens or sunlight
In an exploitation of both fauna and flora:
One lb. of carmine dye needs 70,000 insects.
Part the Fourth
And so we see that Stroud scarlet broadcloth
Was not only part and parcel
Of British military success
In 18th century warfare,
And to the growth of the British Empire,
And to the controlling infrastructure
That maintained and supported enslavement
And the plantocracy in the West Indies,
But that some of its very raw materials
Were also embedded in a global economy,
And part of a process that was stuttering
Towards Ecocide, the Anthropocene
And the Capitalocene,
And towards the proletarianization of a Mexican peasantry.
Part the Fifth
Let’s think about that when we study and stare
At those pictures of proud Stroud scarlet
Stretched out on tenterhooks in Rodborough Fields.
Part the Sixth
A list of English and British Wars in the 18th Century
War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714
Great Northern War 1717-1720
War of the Austrian Succession 1740
Carnatic Wars 1744-1763
Seven Years War 1756-1763
Anglo-Mysore Wars 1766-1799
First Anglo-Maratha War 1775-1782
American Revolutionary War 1775-1783
French Revolutionary Wars 1792-1802
Ireland 1798
Which means that in addition to sometimes
being involved in different simultaneous conflicts,
This martial country was at peace
for only thirty years of that century.
Post-Script
‘We have abused and adulterated government ourselves, stretching our depredations and massacres not only to the Eastern, but Western world … the guilt of murder and robbery … now crying aloud for vengeance on the head of Great Britain.’
‘How melancholy is the consideration to the friends to this country that in the East and in the West, in Asia and America, the name of an Englishman is become a reproach’, and in ‘Europe we are not loved enough to have a single friend … from such a situation there is but a small step to hatred or contempt.’
(18th century criticisms of British foreign policy taken from
Jack P. Greene:
Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism
in Eighteenth-Century Britain)