Arianna Tozzi
White Gold - How colonialism shaped India's agrarian ecologies
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2024 / 2025
Arianna is an environmental human geographer researching the intersecting impacts of climate change and processes of agrarian transformation in rainfed drylands of India. Her current work traces the history of cotton cultivation in Vidarbha, a region in central India, and explores how women-led agroecology groups may provide a way out of the present crisis of agrarian livelihood in the region.
Arianna’s project delves into these issues by asking how the development of environmental sciences around cotton shaped the emergence of extractive agrarian landscapes in colonial India. Cotton monocultures - imposed during colonial rule to supply raw material for British textile industries – are in fact identified as the driver of India’s rural distress, characterised by spiralling debts, precarious livelihoods, and environmental degradation. Yet, while these symptoms are understood, a deeper historical analysis of the emergence of extractive cotton landscapes and the scientific knowledge that underpinned this process is missing.
To address this gap, Arianna’s project will focus on the history of cotton experiments in 18th and 19th century India, symbolised by efforts to introduce ‘improved’ foreign varieties to meet the needs of Lancashire textile machines. Its key sources include pamphlets reporting outcomes of experimental farms, agricultural reports, scientific publications on agriculture and botany, parliamentary papers on the conditions of cotton cultivation in India and records of Lancastrian manufacturers trading in the subcontinent.
Aside from a critical reading of historical material, Arianna is interested to work alongside communities who have been impacted by the legacies of cotton colonialism in India and elsewhere to co-develop reparative research processes and practices.
You can reach Arianna at arianna.tozzi@manchester.ac.uk or @Ari_Toz