Mappila Labourers and the Plantations of Malabar: A Colonial Experience

Abstract

Plantations were a product of colonialism. Commercialization of agriculture gave way for the emergence of plantations all over the world. In the agrarian sector introduction of plantation and commercial agriculture created demand for agricultural labourers who would be relatively free from the feudal obligations of wetland agriculture mediated by the traditional relations of production.1The earliest foreign investment in the region had been in spice plantations begun by Murdoch Brown in Anjarakandy near Tellicherry.  After defeating Pazhassi Raja, Wayanad came under the control of British rule. In Wayanad, Coffee plantations were started first then followed by tea plantation. In the late nineteenth century investments were made in the cool, well watered Western Ghats, which had easy access to ocean transport. This region was highly suitable for tea and rubber plantations. Permanent supply of labour was an integral part of plantation industry. Mappila labourers were an integral part of plantations of Malabar. This paper tries to locate the mappilas as labourers and also as rebels in the plantations of Malabar during the colonial period. Mappila Muslims of Malabar was a community that arose as a result of the interactions and engagements between the Islamic Arab traders and coastal communities of western coast of India.2 Before the arrival of European trade on the western coast of India in 1490 muslim merchants had stimulated a brisk trade with the local princes in the Malabar coast and also with a network of traders from the Middle East and the eastern coast of Africa.3 The fragmented character of a Malabar polity with a large number of principalities enabled the Portuguese to establish a control  in the coastal regions and impose their system of maritime control. The political and economic interests of the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast brought several concerns to both the ruler Zamorin and Mappila merchants of Calicut. Mappilas considered them as a threat to their political, economic, and commercial interests in the region.4The early decades of the sixteenth century witnessed the conflict between the Portuguese and Muslims, that resulted in the economic marginalization and gradual withdrawal of the latter into the interior of Malabar.5