Frozen modernity: the US-India ice trade and the cultures of colonialism

Abstract

This article examines the history of the ice trade between the United States and India that operated from the early-to-mid 19th century. I argue that the ice trade reinforced cultures of colonialism, with its ideas about nature, race, and disease. As a commodity, ice demarcated colonial from colonized space, the tropics from the temperate, and the European from the Indian body. In particular, this article focuses on three central ways in which the U.S.-India ice trade aided in the production of Calcutta’s colonial landscape. First, U.S. ice capital illuminates the commodification of nature and the creation of exchange value that was instilled through a series of movements across space, from New England’s ponds and ports, to the ship, and finally, into Calcutta’s marketplace. Once in Calcutta, American ice dislodged local ice and the established practices associated with the production of the cold. Second, the ice trade promoted discourses of modern colonizing civilization that shaped the landscapes and practices of Calcutta. Conceptions of freshness and purity proliferated through the ice trade, from the object itself, to the perishable commodities that landed in Calcutta frozen in ice. Third, I illuminate how ice was used in Calcutta, especially its promotion in colonial medicine. More than an item of luxury, ice was held to be an indispensable article in the preservation of the colonial body. Ice contained the promise of racial durability in the tropics and the very health of colonial authority. Across these three cultural elements of the ice trade, this article contributes to new geographies of global history, the mobility of race through trade, and cryopolitics.