Prof Nathalie Cooke
Supported by the Lind Foundation
Nathalie Cooke is professor of English at McGill University. From the platform of her earlier research and publications on the shaping of literary and culinary tastes in Canada, she has extended her inquiry to explore social food history in Britain and the Commonwealth. This project furthers study of the tea industry’s ties between South Asia and Canada, which figures in the conclusion of her forthcoming co-authored book, Canadian Literary Fare (McGill-Queen’s UP, spring 2023).
Nathalie has served as associate dean of Arts and associate provost of McGill University. She was associate dean of McGill University Library with oversight of its configuration of rare and special collections units (2016-2022). Nathalie was born in Chennai, raised in England and Vancouver Island, and now lives in Montreal.
My time at University of Glasgow will enable me to expand discussion of the tea industry in South India to include qualitative information about the experience of managers whose responsibilities included stewarding tea estates through India’s transition to independence, and the labour conditions and turbulence that necessitated the 1951 Labour Act.
Because of limited access to individual case histories, commentary to date has focused on the macro-historical level – corporate staffing and incentive strategies and shifts in national labour policy, for example. Exceptionally, some studies of Darjeeling have expanded focus to the micro-histories of particular workers left behind after the closure of tea estates. The 1996 publication of correspondence by the tragically-killed Frederick Gower Turnbull offers one glimpse of the managerial perspective in Darjeeling, but his from Jessop’s Steel Company, so outside the tea industry.
To date, it has been difficult to access a variety of micro-histories of tea estate managers because privacy provisions prevent access to those who are not directly family members until a window of time has passed after the employee’s death. Now, however, the case histories of managers in James Finlay and Company papers of the Scottish Business Archives, are largely available for those with access to the University of Glasgow Library and Archives.
The 1951 Labour Act in India, crafted to protect the rights of tea workers after India’s independence and quell significant labour unrest, has received significant scrutiny and commentary. Perhaps the most violent treatment of British colonials occurred in Darjeeling, a particularly well-known incident being the Margaret’s Hope Tea Garden
In my 2022 visit to the University of Glasgow archives, a brief look at one on the James Finlay and Company letterbooks, which record details of managers’ careers, turned up an instance of labour agitation at Vaguvurrai Estate in Kerala in 1951. The various layers of the narrative account were themselves intriguing to me as a literary scholar. The experience was relayed indirectly, summarizing the experience of an estate manager, but relayed through the account of a clinical counsellor in South India, and then transcribed by a staff member in Glasgow. In spite of such indirectness, and perhaps also because of this, such instances piqued my interest because they provides an additional point of entry into a discussion of the tea industry, one which has had a profound effect on the shaping of foodways and colonial relations between Britain and the Americas. Consequently, this particular archive provides new and original primary materials directly related to my area of foodways research.