BLUE INDIGO DYE PROFESSIONAL
BLUE INDIGO DYE SERIES

Indigo had no value to the early settlers of South Carolina except as a commodity for export. For South Carolinians, the foray into indigo production was a purely speculative venture. They did not plant indigo here as an extension of farming traditions back “home.” Textile merchants in eighteenth-century England were certainly familiar with indigo dye, but English farmers had no history of cultivating indigo as a crop. The cultivation of indigo in colonial South Carolina was but a cog in that macroeconomic wheel of fortune that revolved around the hub of London.Īs with tobacco in Virginia and sugar cane in the Caribbean, indigo was quite literally a foreign commodity to the early settlers of South Carolina. From a mercantile perspective, the entire purpose of the Carolina colony was to produce resources and wealth that would enhance the larger British economy and support the expansion of the British empire. This activity was one small part of a much larger mercantile economy. Why was indigo cultivated in South Carolina?Įarly South Carolina planters cultivated indigo to satisfy commercial demand for the dye product in the English (later British) textile industry. For this reason, the cultural memory of indigo is heightened among members of the African-American community along what is now called the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The cultivation and production of indigo also involved the labor of thousands-perhaps tens of thousands-of people in the South Carolina Lowcountry. During that period, indigo (or, more specifically, indigo dyestuff) was South Carolina’s second most valuable export, behind rice. Indigo formed a significant part of the South Carolina economy for approximately fifty years, from the late 1740s to the late 1790s.

Indigo was grown in early South Carolina to produce blue dye that was exported to England for use in the British textile industry.

What does indigo have to do with South Carolina history? As indigo production shifted to the New World colonies in the late sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, however, Europeans eventually discovered that indigo was cheaper and more colorfast than woad, and that traditional market declined. Since ancient times, Europeans had cultivated the woad plant ( Isatis tinctoria) to produce a very similar blue dye for textiles, and woad farmers and dyers wanted to protect their traditional trade.

BLUE INDIGO DYE PROFESSIONAL

Two thousand years ago, the Romans called this product indicum, and that name formed the root of the later English spellings, indico and indigo.Įarly trade routes like the Silk Road brought indicum to Medieval Europe, but professional trade guilds actively resisted the introduction of Indian indigo into Europe for many generations. The deep blue dye they extracted from its leaves was dried into a powder or small cakes and exported to the east and to the west. From the humble vestments of blue-collar laborers, to royal robes, to tapestries and other artistic expressions, indigo is deeply imbedded in the long history of human culture.īotanical historians believe that ancient people on the subcontinent of India were the first to domesticate a plant now identified by the scientific name Indigofera tinctoria. For many thousands of years, humans have used this dye to impart a lasting blue color to a wide variety of textiles.

Indigo is also the name of an organic blue dye extracted from the leaves a number of plants around the world.

Some species are native to subtropical climates, however, and flourish in places like the coastal regions of the American southeast. This genus encompasses many hundreds of species of indigo, most of which flourish in tropical areas like India, Africa, and Latin America. Indigo is the name of a large family of deciduous shrubs, identified in modern scientific nomenclature as part of the genus Indigofera.

BLUE INDIGO DYE SERIES

In an effort to help “grow” this colorful conversation, I’ve crafted a series of common questions and factual responses that address some of the most important points of indigo history that every Charlestonian should know. Although its memory flourishes today in conversations and artistic expressions, lingering misconceptions have distorted our general understanding about the real story of local indigo. Indigo-both as a plant and a dye-forms an important chapter in the early history of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Blue indigo dye