¹ In this article, the term “West” is used to denote Europe (including the Mediterranean littoral and Russia west of the Urals), the Americas, the Atlantic islands, and Africa west of the Cape of Good Hope.

² See, for example, Barker, Randolph, Herdt, Robert W., with Rose, Beth, The Rice Economy of Asia, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1985), 1: 186–87Google Scholar; Latham, A.J.H. and Neal, Larry, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat, 1868–1914”, Economic History Review, 2d ser., 36 (1983): 260–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Owen, Norman G., “The Rice Economy of Mainland Southeast Asia 1850—1914”, Journal of the Siam Society 59 (1971): 75–143Google Scholar.

Most national studies accept this basic story as well, albeit with certain qualifications. In her study on Burma, for example, Cheng Siok-Hwa acknowledges the fact that Burma exported rice in large quantities prior to the opening of the Suez Canal; she fails, however, to connect the development of Burma's export trade to earlier developments in South and Southeast Asia. This distinguishes her approach from that of Latham and Neal, who are aware of Bengal's prominence as a rice exporter in the 1860s, but fail to explain this prominence or its relationship to developments in Southeast Asia. Cheng, See, The Rice Industry of Burma 1852–1940 (Kuala Lumpur and Singapore: Malaya University Press, 1968), pp. 1–15Google Scholar; Latham and Neal, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat”.

The standard historical accounts of the Siamese and Cochinchinese rice industries make only brief mention of the early export trade before moving on to post-1870 developments. See Ingram, James C., Economic Change in Thailand 1850–1970 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), pp. 37–43Google Scholar; Coquerel, Albert, Paddys et Riz de Cochinchine (Lyons: Imprimerie A. Rey, 1911), pp. 203–224 especiallyGoogle Scholar.

³ See Barker, et al. , The Rice Economy of Asia, 1: 186–87Google Scholar; Robertson, C.J., “The Rice Export from Burma, Siam and French Indo-China”, Pacific Affairs 9 (1936): 243–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Cheng, , The Rice Industry of Burma, p. 239Google Scholar; Barker, et al. , The Rice Economy of Asia, 1: 187Google Scholar. The data in Barker et al. are derived from material collected by Norman Owen. See Owen, “The Rice Industry of Mainland Southeast Asia”, Table II-A. Note that I will be employing various units of measurement in this essay when discussing rice exports. Data limitations rendered it impossible to convert all figures found in primary sources to one standard measurement unit. For this reason, I have generally employed the measurement unit used in the sources themselves, unless I had reason to convert with confidence.

⁵ This “stylized” argument is developed in much more detail in Coclanis, Peter A., “Distant Thunder: The Creation of a World Market in Rice and the Transformations It Wrought”, American Historical Review 98, No. 4 (10 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See Coclanis, , “Distant Thunder”; Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 133–38 especiallyGoogle Scholar.

⁷ These figures were calculated from data in U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics, Rice Crop of the United States, 1712–1911 by George K. Holmes, Circular 34 (Washington, D.C.: US. Government Printing Office, 1912), pp. 7–9, and from the sources cited in Tables 1 and 2Google Scholar.

⁸ Coclanis, “Distant Thunder”. On the demand for rice for Western-controlled plantations (and mines) in Southeast Asia, see, for example, Latham, A.J.H., The International Economy and the Undeveloped World 1865–1914 (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 75–94Google Scholar. On early imports into Java and Madura of rice, “not in the husk” — which rice, according to W.L. Korthals Altes, was intended almost exclusively for the indigenous population — see Altes, W.L. Korthals, Changing Economy in Indonesia, Volume 12a: General Trade Statistics 1822–1940 (Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1991), Table 5A, pp. 104–112Google Scholar. For an idea of the scale of Ceylon's rice imports by the middle of the nineteenth century, see [Singapore] Straits Times, 9 Jul. 1850.

⁹ On the uses of rice in Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, see Glen, James, A Description of South Carolina … (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1761), p. 91Google Scholar; Baudeau, Nicolas, … Commerce …, 3 vols. (Paris: Panckouke, 1783–1784), 3: 588–89Google Scholar; Court of Directors to Governor General and Council at William, Fort, 5 04 1793, in Indian Records Series: Fort William-India House Correspondence … (Public Series), 21 vols. (Delhi: Published for the National Archives of India by the Controller of Publications, Government of India, 1949–1985), vol. XII: 1793–95, p. 55Google Scholar; Encyclopaedia, Britannica, 3d ed., 20 vols. (Edinburgh: Printed for A. Bell and C. MacFarquhar, 1797–1801), Supplement II (vol. 20), p. 462Google Scholar; [Great, Britain] House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, Reports and Papers, vol. 131: George III, Food Supply, Fisheries 1799–1800 and 1800, ed. by Sheila, Lambert (Wilmington, Dela.: Scholarly Resources, 1975), pp. 65–68, 353–58, 367–73, 445–65, 519–22Google Scholar; [London] The Times, 9 Nov. 1811. Also see Fernand, Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century, 3 vols., trans. Siân, Reynolds (New York: Harper & Rowrl, 1981–1984), 1: 109–114, 145–58Google Scholar. Europeans consumed rice both in boiled form and after converting it into flour.

¹⁰ Coclanis, , “Bitter Harvest: The South Carolina Low Country in Historical Perspective”, Journal of Economic History 45 (1985): 251–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coclanis, , The Shadow of a Dream, pp. 133–35, 277–79Google Scholar; Nash, R.C., “South Carolina and the Atlantic Economy in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, Economic History Review, 2d ser., 45 (1992): 677–702CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ Coclanis, , The Shadow of a Dream, pp. 133–35Google Scholar; Faccini, Luigi, L'economia risicola lombarda dagli inizi del XVIII secolo all' Unita (Milan: SugarCo., 1976), pp. 23–26 and passimGoogle Scholar.

¹² On Great Britain's economic penetration of Bengal in the eighteenth century, see, for example, Marshall, P.J., East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976)Google Scholar. On the incorporation of the Indian indigo industry into the world market, see Alden, Dauril, “The Growth and Decline of Indigo Production in Colonial Brazil: A Study in Comparative Economic History”, Journal of Economic History 25 (1965): 35–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marshall, , East Indian Fortunes, pp. 153–54Google Scholar. On rice, see infra.

On eastern India's rice trade prior to British penetration, see Arasaratnam, S., “The Rice Trade in Eastern India 1650–1740”, Modern Asian Studies 22 (1988): 531–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ The figures appearing in the text were derived from data in Customs 17, Customs Office Records, Public Record Office, London, England. For a complete statistical account of British rice imports in the 1790s and in the 1801–1808 period, see Coclanis, , “Distant Thunder”, Table 1. David MacPherson's quote is from his Annals of Commerce …, 4 vols. (London: Nichols and Son, 1805), 4: 362Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Phipps, John, A Guide to the Commerce of Bengal … (Calcutta: 1823), pp. 211, 223–24Google Scholar; [Britain, Great] House of Lords, Sessional Papers, Session 1842, vol. X, pp. 312–13Google Scholar; House of Lords, Sessional Papers, Session 1854–1855, vol. X, pp. 97–99. For additional data on East Indian rice imports into England during this period, see [Britain, Great] House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1828, vol. XVIII: 379–86Google Scholar; Martin, Robert Montgomery, History of the Colonies of the British Empire… (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1843), pp. 352–54Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See Coclanis, “Distant Thunder”.

¹⁶ See Whitten, David O., “American Rice Cultivation, 1680–1980: A Tercentenary Critique”, Southern Studies 21 (1982): 5–26Google Scholar; Coclanis, , The Shadow of a Dream, pp. 133–58Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Glazier, Ira A., Il commercio estero del regno Lombardo-Veneto del 1815 al 1865 (Rome: 1966), pp. 30–45 and passimGoogle Scholar; Zappi, Elda Gentili, If Eight Hours Seem Too Few: Mobilization of Women in the Italian Rice Fields (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 1–7Google Scholar. Also see Tempany, H.A., “The Italian Rice Industry”, Malayan Agricultural Journal 20 (1932): 274–92Google Scholar.

¹⁸ On rice prices, see Coclanis, “Distant Thunder”; Latham and Neal, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat”, pp. 276–77 especially. On the price differentials between “Carolina” rice and East Indian rice in the first half of the nineteenth century, see the collection of “Prices Current” from Liverpool and Rotterdam in the Enoch Silsby Collection, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C.

¹⁹ On the Preanger System and the Cultivation System, see, for example, Furnivall, J.S., Netherlands India: A Study of Plural Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), pp. 115–47Google Scholar. A considerable body of literature on these systems exists, and in the last two decades a group of so-called revisionists, centred in the Netherlands, has rejuvenated research on the latter system. For perhaps the best recent survey on the Cultivation System see Fasseur, Cornelis, The Politics of Colonial Exploitation: Java, the Dutch, and the Cultivation System, trans. R.E. Elson and Ary Kraal, ed. Elson, R.E. (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁰ See Bruijn Kops, G.F. de, Statistiek van Den Handel en de Scheepvaart op Java en Madura Sedert 1825, 2 vols. (Batavia: Lange & Co., 1857–1859), 2: 176–80Google Scholar; U.S. Senate Executive Documents, 2d Session, 25th Congress, 1837–1838, No. 318; U.S. Senate Executive Documents, 3d Session, 25th Congress, 1838–1839, No. 342. On Java's rice exports between 1831 and 1840, also see Singapore Free Press, 17 Jun. 1841. According to de Bruijn Kops, Javanese rice exports to Northern Europe averaged 293,442 pikuls annually between 1837 and 1839. Upon conversion to Western measures, this means that Java exported, on average, over 39.9 million pounds of (partially milled, cargo) rice annually to this area during this three-year period. Data available in the Senate Executive Documents reveal that the United States exported about 25.7 million pounds of clean rice equivalents annually to Northern Europe in 1837 and 1838, with another 1 million pounds annually going to Southern Europe. Under the conservative assumption that 1 pound of cargo rice at the time equaled 0.8 pounds of U.S. clean rice, we find that Java was already exporting more rice to Northern Europe than the United States was sending to Europe as a whole.

On the inclusion of rice in the Cultivation System, see Fasseur, , The Politics of Colonial Exploitation, pp. 73–78Google Scholar.

²¹ See Altes, Korthals, Changing Economy in Indonesia, Vol. 12a, Table 6A, pp. 142–47 especiallyGoogle Scholar; Hugenholtz, W.R., “Famine and Food Supply in Java 1830–1914”, in Bayly, C.A. and Kolff, D.H.A., eds., Two Colonial Empires: Essays on the History of India and Indonesia in the Nineteenth Century (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), pp. 155–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² For information on the early rice trade from these areas, see, for example, Singapore Chronicle, 25 Apr. 1833; Singapore Free Press, 16 Feb. 1837.

²³ Singapore Free Press, 14 Dec. 1837; 21 Oct. 1841; 19 Dec. 1844; 5 Mar. 1846.

²⁴ Singapore Free Press, 23 Oct. 1845; 6 Dec. 1849; Straits Times, 4 Dec. 1849; [Spearman, H.R.], British Burma Gazetteer, 2 vols. (Rangoon, 1880), 1: 460Google Scholar. The quotation in the text is from an essay appearing in the first source cited here. The essay originally appeared in [Calcutta] The Friend of India, 2 Oct. 1845.

²⁵ [Spearman, ], British Burma Gazetteer, 1: 462Google Scholar. For US. export figures, see United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics, Rice Crop of the United States 1712–1911, pp. 7–9Google Scholar.

²⁶ Singapore Chronicle, 25 Apr. 1833; 29 Mar. 1834; 19 Sep. 1835; 15 Jul. 1837; Singapore Free Press, 28 Jan. 1836; 17 Nov. 1836; 16 Feb. 1837; 9 Mar. 1837; 5 Oct. 1837.

²⁷ Singapore Free Press, 14 Dec. 1837. The figures on the value of Moulmein's rice exports appeared originally in the Moulmein Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1837.

²⁸ [Spearman, ], British Burma Gazetteer, 1: 461Google Scholar. According to Spearman, Moulmein shipped 18,058 bags of rice to Europe in 1850. A bag at the time contained about 164 pounds of rice. See Straits Times, 10 Jan. 1846.

²⁹ [Spearman, ], British Burma Gazetteer, 1: 462Google Scholar.

³⁰ Adas, Michael, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974)Google Scholar. On the development of the Transbassac region, see, for example, Coquerel, Paddys et Riz de Cochinchine, pp. 107–130, 203–224, and tables following page 224 especially.

³¹ Singapore Chronicle, 31 Jan. 1833; 28 Aug. 1834; 17 Jan. 1835; 20 Jun. 1835; 15 Jul. 1837; Singapore Free Press, 8 Oct. 1835. Note that by 1846 official British trade statistics include a category for rice imported from the “Birman Empire”. See [Britain, Great] House of Lords, Sessional Papers, Session 1854–1855, Vol. X, pp. 97–99Google Scholar.

³² Yule, Captain Henry, A Narrative of the Mission…to the Court of Ava in 1855… (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1858), pp. 202–203, 362–63Google Scholar. For an account of Burmese cultivation techniques at the time, see Winter, Christopher T., Six Months in British Burmah: Or, India Beyond the Ganges in 1857 (London: Richard Bentley, 1858), pp. 103–104Google Scholar.

³³ Cotton, H.J.S., “The Rice Trade in Bengal”, The Calcutta Review 58 (1874): 171–88, especially p. 173Google Scholar; Cheng, , The Rice Industry of Burma, p. 237Google Scholar. For a slightly higher estimate of Burma's projected exports for 1857/58, see letter, ? [probably Mohr Brothers & Co.] to Messrs. Augustine Heard & Co., 28 Aug. 1857, Prices Current Collection, Box 14, Folder “Rice, General, 1857–1870”, Special Collections, Baker Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, Boston, Mass.

³⁴ Cotton, , “The Rice Trade of the World”, The Calcutta Review 58 (1874): 267–302, especially pp. 274–75Google Scholar.

³⁵ Cheng, , The Rice Industry of Burma, p. 239Google Scholar; Cotton, , “The Rice Trade of the World”, pp. 274–75Google Scholar.

³⁶ Owen, , “The Rice Industry of Mainland Southeast Asia”, p. 83Google Scholar.

³⁷ On Siamese and Cochinchinese export patterns, see Owen, , “The Rice Industry of Mainland Southeast Asia”, Table II-A, pp. 97–101Google Scholar; Table II-B, pp. 102–103; Barker, et al. , The Rice Economy of Asia, 1: 187Google Scholar.

³⁸ See the sources cited in note 37. Note that I am not arguing that Siam and Cochinchina were also latecomers to the Asian rice trade. Both Siam and Cochinchina were important sources of rice for deficit areas in Asia throughout the period covered in this essay. Note, too, that my argument here refers to direct exports from Siam and Cochinchina to the West; some rice from these places ended up in Europe even in the first half of the nineteenth century, having been reconsigned there from Singapore. On this matter, see Ingram, , Economic Change in Thailand, p. 42Google Scholar.

³⁹ See Latham and Neal, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat”; Latham, , “From Competition to Constraint: The International Rice Trade in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”, Business and Economic History, 2d ser., 17 (1988): 91–102Google Scholar; Robequain, Charles, The Economic Development of French Indo-China, trans. Ward, Isabel A. (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 305–343Google Scholar; Skinner, G. William, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 99–109Google Scholar; Lysa, Hong, Thailand in the Nineteenth Century: Evolution of the Economy and Society (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984), pp. 38–74, 149–52Google Scholar; Akira, Suehiro, Capital Accumulation in Thailand 1855–1985 (Tokyo: The Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1989), pp. 16–41, 46–51, 71–90Google Scholar.

As early as the 1850s John Bowring commented on the dominance of Chinese merchants in Siam. See Bowring, Sir John, The Kingdom and People of Siam …, 2 vols. (London: John W. Parker & Son, 1857), 1: 241–43Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Latham and Neal, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat”; Latham, “From Competition to Constraint”; Huff, W.G., “Bookkeeping Barter, Money, Credit, and Singapore's International Rice Trade, 1870–1939”, Explorations in Economic History 26 (1989): 161–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Latham and Neal, “The International Trade in Rice and Wheat”; Latham, “From Competition to Constraint”.

⁴² See, for example, North, Douglass C., “Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development 1750–1913”, Journal of Economic History 18 (1958): 537–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; North, “Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850”, Journal of Political Economy 76 (1968): 953–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Headrick, Daniel R., The Tentacles of Progress; Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 18–23 especiallyGoogle Scholar.

Maritime insurance rates for vessels departing Singapore fell over the course of the nineteenth century. One can trace this development and, in addition, see the increased sophistication of rate-setting procedures over time by comparing information on premia, which were published regularly in Singapore newspapers and directories. See, for example, Singapore Chronicle, 26 Mar. 1836; Singapore Free Press, 10 May 1838; 6 Sep. 1838; 7 Jan. 1841; 9 Mar. 1843; 10 Oct. 1844; Straits Times, 4 Feb. 1846; Singapore Free Press, 30 Apr. 1846; Straits Times, 10 Jul. 1849; Singapore Free Press, 1 Mar. 1850; Straits Times, 4 Feb. 1851; The Straits Calendar and Directory for the Year 1862… (Singapore: The Commercial Press, 1862), pp. 60–62Google Scholar; The Straits Calendar and Directory for the Year 1870… (Singapore: The Commercial Press, 1870), pp. 109–114Google Scholar; The Straits Calendar and Directory, (including Sarawak and Labuan) for the Year 1871 (Singapore: The Commercial Press, 1871), pp. 109–114Google Scholar.

⁴³ Singapore Free Press, 13 Feb. 1852; Straits Times, 11 Jan. 1853; Singapore Free Press, 17 Mar. 1854; 12 Apr. 1855; Straits Times, 24 Jan. 1863; Singapore Free Press, 5 Jan. 1865; The Straits Calendar and Directory, for the Year 1863… (Singapore: The Commercial Press, 1863), Appendix, pp. XXII-XXIIIGoogle Scholar; The Straits Calendar and Directory for the Year 1870, Appendix, “Revised Scale of charges for receiving, landing, or shipping goods…and for storage…” Also see Huff, “Bookkeeping Barter”.

⁴⁴ The Singapore Directory for the Straits Settlements 1877… (Singapore: The Straits Times, 1878), pp. 117–18Google Scholar. For evidence of further improvements to this system, see The Singapore and Straits Directory for 1882… (Singapore: Printed at the Singapore and Straits Printing Office, 1882), Appendix FGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ The Straits Times Almanack, Calendar and Directory for the Year 1846… (Singapore: The Straits Times Press, 1846), p. 104Google Scholar; Singapore Free Press, 6 Dec. 1849; Pearn, B.R., A History of Rangoon (Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press, 1939), pp. 133–37, 156–60, 207–214Google Scholar; Cheng, , The Rice Industry of Burma, pp. 77–78Google Scholar. The establishment in 1837 of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce is but one — relatively minor — example of the type of “networking” I have in mind.

⁴⁶ For example, in Singapore, the regional entrepôt, newspapers date from the 1820s and commercial directories from the 1840s.

⁴⁷ Ingram, , Economic Change in Thailand, p. 70Google Scholar. This mill, named the American Steam Mill Rice Company, was not very successful initially, changing ownership several times in its first few years of operation. For details on the mill's specifications, see Singapore Free Press, 22 Oct. 1863.

⁴⁸ Lewis, W. Arthur, Growth and Fluctuations 1870–1913 (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1978), pp. 201–202 especiallyGoogle Scholar. A number of other authorities, working in disciplines ranging from economics to anthropology, have also written on the relative efficiency of traditional rice cultivation in parts of tropical Asia. See, for example, Bray, Francesca, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986)Google Scholar. For the classic statement of the “efficient but poor” thesis regarding traditional agriculturalists in Asia and elsewhere, see Schultz, Theodore W., Transforming Traditional Agriculture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Komlos, John and Coclanis, Peter, “Time in the Paddies: A Comparison of Rice Production in the Southeastern United States and Lower Burma in the Nineteenth Century”, Social Science History 11 (1987): 343–54Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Lewis, , Growth and Fluctuations, pp. 201–202Google Scholar.