Tastes of the Indian Ocean: Indigenous Knowledge Transfers in Colonial Singapore
In the 1848 publication of Hugh Low’s travel book, Sarawak: Its Inhabitants and Productions, Being Notes During a Residence in that Country with His Excellency Mr. Brooke , the author recorded the growing, harvesting and production techniques of sago palms and other food by Dayak tribes in Borneo, Sarawak, and other Malay islands. Botanical collectors, such as Hugh Low, focused on sago palm production since the processed food meal was a staple in Southeast Asia and China, as well as a luxury export to Europe. Botanists focused on the minute details of processing palms to encourage European colonists to enter the trade and develop plantations in the region to displace tribal farming. By creating plantations, botanists argued that British men could organize and profit from fertile land, unlike the tribes who grew only what they needed for export. This blog post tracks this transfer of knowledge and the attempts by botanists to supplant indigenous growers with European style plantations a...