ipl-logo

Indigo Dye Research Paper

918 Words4 Pages

“In 1775, more than a million pounds of indigo was exported from South Carolina to England” (Indigo’s Political, Economic, Cultural History 1). This massive amount of dye being traded was due to many factors that made it nearly the perfect trade commodity. The process of indigo dye being made by slaves in South Carolina in the 1700s is shown very well in the book Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill. The production of this indigo dye has an extensive history of being extremely arduous to produce naturally, but results in a compact substance that will last a long period of time and be very valuable. Indigo farming and dye creation in the 1700s was a long, tiring process often done by slaves. The slaves had to do all the work themselves, which …show more content…

First, the slaves cut the indigo plants and brought the cuttings to three large vats that descended in the order for which the process is completed. They put the cuttings into the highest vat which is filled with water. An enzyme called indimulsin, which occurs naturally in the indigo plant, breaks down indican in the plant into indoxyl and glucose. Over the course of about 14-18 hours, the indigo plant ferments and the water turns yellow because of the carbon dioxide released due to the indican being broken down. This liquid is then drained into the second tank which is the next step lower than the first. This liquid is mixed using large paddles to mix air into the mixture and oxidize it. When the indoxyl is oxidized, it turns into indigotin. Indigotin is denser than the rest of the liquid, so it settles to the bottom of the vat. This pigment is then sent to the third and lowest vat. To prevent the pigment from fermenting, it is heated in the vat. The rest of the liquid from the second vat is first siphoned away, however. To remove impurities, the pigment is then filtered. Finally, it is dried to a paste and is now ready to be packaged and shipped to England (Indigo 1). It is interesting that this entire rather complicated process was done by uneducated slaves. It is commonly thought that slaves were only good for unskilled labor yet many people today would …show more content…

It was not only a dye, but it was an idea of wealth that millions of people craved. They craved that dye so bad that they were willing to take random people 's lives away from them and reduce them to nothing more than machines created to produce dye. There is not another substance so utterly pointless that has caused so much despair and death to so many innocent

Show More
Related

  • Fanny Kemble's Journal Essay

    511 Words  | 3 Pages

    At that time the value of this was very expensive because a lot of clothes were able to create. Black woman, man, old or young were suppose to go in the fields and collect the cotton from the plants. At the end of the day, the master would evaluate each individual and see if there is progression in the amount of cotton collected from each person. When one was not able to accumulate a big quantity he or she was to get whipped. For example, in the movie ' '12 Years of Slave ' ' the main character Solomon, a violinist is captured as a slave where in reality he is a freeman.

    Read More

  • Gilded Age: The Most Important Cause Of The Civil War

    918 Words  | 4 Pages

    In order to meet the growing demands of sugar and cotton, slavery was the best means for the Southern agricultural owners. Slavery was a cheap and fast way to produce raw materials that could be transported to England. The only expenses of the slaves were meager meals that were necessary to

    Read More

  • Procion Red Dye Lab Report

    1454 Words  | 6 Pages

    For this lab, zeolite and magnetized zeolite were synthesized and compared with charcoal to find out with would be the most effective in the sequestering of Procion Red dye. Finding the concentration and absorbance of each zeolite, magnetized zeolite, and charcoal, along with a calibration curve, the best adsorbent is determined. Charcoal was the overall best sequestration of the Procion Red dye, since the adsorbent was highest compared to the others. Introduction Pollution has increased in the environment over the years, so the purpose of this experiment is to find the best adsorbent of chemicals to reduce the pollution.

    Read More

  • How Geography Impacted Sectional Differences

    358 Words  | 2 Pages

    The cotton gin help the slaves separated the cotton from the seeds. They had factories in the North and plantations in the south. The factories allowed for trading with forgeign countries. . A telegraph is how they communicated back then..

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Southern Middle Colonies And New England Colonies

    358 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analyze the differences and similarities between the societies and economies of the southern, middle and New England Colonies. Southern, Middle, and New Egeland colonies had lots of differences in society and economic ways. For example, in the Southern Colonies they would grow rice and tobacco sugar cane, and indigo. They lived in a warm weather and was plenty of rain for the crops to grow which they used the slaves to work in the fields long hours of the day from dawn to dark.

    Read More

  • Factors Influencing Cotton Production From 1800 To 1860

    557 Words  | 3 Pages

    So, the more cotton that was produced, the more clothes would be made which would make more business for stores. Lastly, the British demanded cotton from America. This was very important for the Americans to give cotton to the British because the British had the most power out of all countries. If the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of New England Bound By Wendy Warren

    1260 Words  | 6 Pages

    Wendy Warren, a historian who focuses on Colonial time, goes into depth about how the slave trade erupted in New England in her book New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. She explains how African Americans were brought to America and how they were treated once they arrived. One recurring theme that circled around the Africans was economics. The slave trade market took off when companies wanted to invest in the Africans and the New World. Stock companies would be competitive towards who had the rights to certain slave groups as if it was a gigantic game of Monopoly.

    Read More

  • Slave Labor Force In Colonial America

    522 Words  | 3 Pages

    By 1775, over a million pounds of indigo was being extracted from this colony alone. This increase of production caused the slave labor force to increase drastically also. Southern plantation owners sought wealth and demanded more cropped to be produced, so they invested in slaves, a workforce that had to devote their lives to their

    Read More

  • Eli Whitney's Abolition Of Slavery In The United States

    1049 Words  | 5 Pages

    The American Revolution, was an inspiration to black people and they’d hoped the words and rules of the Patriots go for them as well. But that wasn’t the case. When all of the Armies had gone away from the land, we were a country of farmers founded by notions of freedom. We had over 700,000 slaves working in the US at its birth.

    Read More

  • American Farming In The 1800s

    627 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the early 1800s, the south—and most of the north, for that matter—used a subsistence economy, where crops and goods were made locally by families for themselves and their communities. Family farms were basically forced to use a subsistence economy, simply because the lack of fast transportation. If they attempted to ship their crops to other ports and towns where it was needed, the crops would rot well before they ever made it. In the south, cotton was made using slave labor, but the harvests weren’t as large as they could be. The process of harvesting was slow—as it was with many crops across the north and south—and the wield was decent.

    Read More

  • Slavery: The Rise Of The Triangular Trade

    1069 Words  | 5 Pages

    We are very thankful that it was traded. “Sugar was often in liquid form, from the Caribbean it was traded to Europe where it was distilled into rum. The profits from the sale of sugar were used to purchase manufactured goods, which were then shipped to West Africa, where they were bartered for slaves” (Triangular trade). Another supply that impact us today is cotton.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl

    2053 Words  | 9 Pages

    The beginning of the 17th Century marked the practice of slavery which continued till next 250 years by the colonies and states in America. Slaves, mostly from Africa, worked in the production of tobacco and cotton crops. Later , they were employed or ‘enslaved’ by the whites as for the job of care takers of their houses. The practice of slavery also led the beginning of racism among the people of America. The blacks were restricted for all the basic and legally privileged rights.

    Read More

  • Regional And Economic Growth In The 1800's

    1430 Words  | 6 Pages

    That is why the invention of the “cotton gin” was very important for the South, as it helped them get out seeds faster than a slave could. Ten years after the invention of the “cotton gin”, cotton became the South’s most important

    Read More

  • Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin

    1467 Words  | 6 Pages

    In only sixty minutes, the cotton gin was able to manufacture as much cotton as one-hundred slaves could in a day. The profit of raw cotton increased by twice as much every decade after 1800, which was around the time Eli Whitney patented his invention (Farrow 9). During this cotton gin period, cotton demand accelerated so rapidly, tobacco value dropped, exports of rice remained constant, and sugar prospered only in Louisiana (Farrow 10). Numerous plantation owners switched their crop to cotton because it rapidly became immensely profitable (Farrow 7). When the slaves and demand for cotton accelerated, consequently, the need for larger plantations increased.

    Read More

  • How Did The Telegraph And The Cotton Gin Influence The Present?

    553 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before its invention it took hours to get the seeds out of just a few pounds of cotton. However, in 1794 Eli Whitney created the hand cranked gin which could clean the seeds out of 50 pounds of cotton each day. This newfound technology allowed plantation owners to sell more cotton faster. Because of this huge plantations began popping up all throughout the South and each plantation needed more slaves to harvest the cotton. In the period after the gin’s invention until Congress abolished the importing of slaves it is estimated that Southern states brought in around 100,000 slaves from Africa.

    Read More

More about Indigo Dye Research Paper

Open Document