Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T20:55:53.082Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nightsoil and the ‘Great Divergence’: human waste, the urban economy, and economic productivity, 1500–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2014

Dean T. Ferguson
Dean T. Ferguson*
Affiliation:
MSC 165, Department of History, Political Science, and Philosophy, Texas A&M University–Kingsville, Kingsville, TX 78363, USA E-mail: kfdtf00@tamuk.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use of nightsoil, a Victorian euphemism for human faeces and urine, has for some time been recognized as an important feature of Chinese and Japanese agricultural practice. The importance of the work of nightsoil men and women in early modern and modern cities in other parts of the world has not been the subject of much attention, however, nor has the significance of the differential use of human waste. This article explores the varied ways in which nightsoil men and women organized their work in cities around the world in the period from 1500 to 1900. It also examines the ways in which East Asian and South Asian conservancy systems and the consequent development of markets in human manure contributed materially to Asian advantages in agriculture, sanitation, and textile production. European urban authorities, reformers, and scientists initially responded to this challenge with similar efforts to conserve human waste and use it in farming, but these efforts remained small-scale, and in the nineteenth century Europeans turned to chemically synthesized fertilizers.

Keywords

conservationfertilizerhuman wastenightsoilsanitation
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , November 2014 , pp. 379 - 402
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Pomeranz, Kenneth, ‘Social history and world history: from daily life to patterns of change’, Journal of World History, 18,1, 2007, pp. 69–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid.

3 Frank, Andre Gunder, ReOrient: global economy in the Asian age, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, p. 318Google Scholar.

4 Taxile Delord, Arnould Frémy, and Edmond Texier, ‘Paris-gagne-petit’, in Les petits Paris (nos. 6–10), p. 41, cited in Perrot, Philippe, Fashioning the bourgeoisie: a history of clothing in the nineteenth century, tr. Richard Bienvenu, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994Google Scholar, p. 211, n. 47.

5 Reid, Donald, Paris sewers and sewermen: realities and representations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 55Google Scholar.

6 Bernard, Leon, The emerging city: Paris in the age of Louis XIV, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1970, p. 203Google Scholar.

7 Boudriot, Pierre-Denis, ‘Essai sur l'ordure en milieu urbain à l’époque pré-industrielle’, Histoire, économie et société, 5, 1986, pp. 518–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Bernard, , The emerging city, p. 207Google Scholar.

9 Boudriot, , ‘Essai sur l'ordure’, p. 522Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., pp. 515–520.

11 Ibid., pp. 517, 520. See also here Reid, Paris sewers, pp. 10–11.

12 Halliday, Stephen, The great stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the cleansing of the Victorian metropolis, Stroud: Sutton, 1999, p. 119Google Scholar, quoted in Johnson, Steven, The ghost map: the story of London's most terrifying epidemic – and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world, New York: Riverhead Books, 2006, p. 9Google Scholar.

13 The account books of the parish of St. Bartholomew exchange in the city of London, 1596–1698, ed. Edwin Freshfield, London: Rixon and Arnold, 1895, pp. 14, 21.

14 Maidment, Brian, Dusty Bob: a cultural history of dustmen, 1780–1870, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007, p. 15Google Scholar.

15 Busby, T. L., Costume of the lower orders of London, London: Baldwin, Craddock, and Joy, 1820Google Scholar, quoted in Maidment, Dusty Bob, pp. 16–17.

16 Maidment, , Dusty Bob, p. 15Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 24.

18 del Castillo, Bernal Diaz, The memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, written by himself, containing a true and full account of the discovery and conquest of Mexico and New Spain, vol. 1, tr. John Ingram Lockhart, London: J. Hatch and Son, 1844, p. 236Google Scholar.

19 Porte, Dominique La, History of shit, tr. Nadia Benabid and Rudolphe el-Khoury, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, pp. 32–33Google Scholar.

20 Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and capitalism, vol. 1: the structures of everyday life: the limits of the possible, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992Google Scholar (first published in French, 1979), p. 116.

21 Liger, François, Dictionnaire historique et pratique de la voierie, de la construction des fosses d'aisance, latrines, urinoirs, et vidanges, Paris: J. Baudry, Libraire-Editeur, 1875, pp. 88–90Google Scholar.

22 Ibid.

23 Sakuta, Tsubame, Shimogoe (Nightsoil), Tokyo: Yûrindô Shoten, 1914, p. 8Google Scholar, cited in Tajima, Kajo, ‘The marketing of urban human waste in the Edo/Tokyo metropolitan area: 1600–1935’, PhD thesis, Tufts University, 2005, p. 91Google Scholar.

24 Xue, Yong, ‘ “Treasure nightsoil as if it were gold”: economic and ecological links between urban and rural areas in late imperial Jiangnan’, Late Imperial China, 26, 1, 2005, p. 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Xue, Yong, ‘A “fertilizer revolution”? A critical response to Pomeranz's theory of “geographic luck” ’, Modern China, 33, 2, 2007, pp. 195–229Google Scholar.

25 Xue, , ‘Treasure nightsoil’, p. 50Google Scholar.

26 Xu, Yamin, ‘Policing civility on the streets: encounters with litterbugs, “nightsoil lords”, and street corner urinators in republican Beijing’, Twentieth-century China, 30, 2, 2005, pp. 40–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Morache, Georges Auguste, Pékin et ses habitants: étude d'hygiène, Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1869, p. 31Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., pp. 41–3. The Chinese tael was valued at between 5 shillings and 10 pence and 7 shillings. The dollar value of the tael was fixed at US$1.48 from 1789 to 1870. See Dennys, Nicholas Belfield, Mayers, William Frederick, and King, Charles, The treaty ports of China and Japan: a complete guide to the open ports of those countries, together with Peking, Yedo, Hong Kong, and Macao, London: Trübner and Co., 1867, pp. 333–340Google Scholar; ‘Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury in relation to the value of the tael of China’, 1 April 1870, in Executive documents printed by order of the House of Representatives during the second session of the forty-first Congress, 1869–1870, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1870, Executive Document no. 229.

29 Hanley, Susan B., ‘Urban sanitation in preindustrial Japan’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18, 1, 1987, pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Walthall, Anne, ‘Village networks, sodai and the sale of Edo nightsoil’, Monumenta Nipponica, 43, 3, 1988, pp. 294–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Tajima, Kajo, ‘The marketing’, p. 72Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., pp. 43–49.

33 Watanabe, Zenjirô, Toshi nō nosen no aida: toshi kinkō nōgyōshi-ron (Between urban and rural: a history of urban agriculture in suburban areas), Tokyo: Ronshōsha, 1983, p. 282Google Scholar, cited in Tajima, Kajo, ‘The marketing’, p. 70Google Scholar.

34 Ibid.

35 Walthall, , ‘Village networks’, pp. 294–296Google Scholar.

36 Hanley, , ‘Urban sanitation’, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. Two ryo amounted to the equivalent in grain crops of two years of an adult's sustenance.

37 Tajima, Kajo, ‘The marketing’, pp. 72–73Google Scholar.

38 Walthall, , ‘Village networks’, pp. 294–296Google Scholar.

39 Groemer, Gerald, ‘The creation of the Edo outcaste order’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 27, 2, 2001, pp. 287–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ferguson, Dean T., ‘Neither master nor laborer: the identity of the unincorporated worker in early modern Lyon’, PhD thesis, Purdue University, 1997, p. 151Google Scholar.

41 Peter Mundy, The travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667, vol. 2: 1628–1634, ed. Sir Richard Carnac Temple, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, Ltd., 1967 (reprint of London: Hakluyt Society, 1914), p. 310.

42 Srivastava, B. N., Manual scavenging in India: a disgrace to the country, New Delhi: Ashok Kumar Mital Concept Publishing Company, 1997, pp. 19–20Google Scholar; see also Sharma, Rama, Bhangi, scavenger in Indian society: marginality, identity and politicization of the community, New Delhi: M. D. Publications, Ltd., 1995, pp. 4–10Google Scholar.

43 Prashad, Vijay, Untouchable freedom: a social history of a Dalit community, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000Google Scholar, pp. xvi–xix.

44 Ibid., pp. 4–6.

45 Ibid. This practice paralleled that followed in villages across India. Denzil Ibbetson, for example, observed that scavengers in Punjabi villages were paid a customary wage consisting of a fixed share of the village's fields: Ibbetson, Denzil, Panjab castes: being a reprint of the chapter on “The races, castes, and tribes of the Panjab”, in The Report on the census of the Panjab published in 1883 by the late Sir Denzil Ibbetson, K.C.S.I., Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916, pp. 270–271Google Scholar. A similar system of payment in grain and money operated in South India: see Hjejle, Benedict, ‘Slavery and agricultural bondage in South India in the nineteenth century’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 25, 1–2, 1967, p. 79Google Scholar.

46 Hanley, , ‘Urban sanitation’, pp. 3–5Google Scholar, 26.

47 Gamble, Sidney D., Peking: a social survey, New York: George H. Doran, 1921, pp. 120–122Google Scholar.

48 Prashad, Vijay, ‘The technology of sanitation in colonial Delhi’, Modern Asian Studies, 35, 1, 2001, p. 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Braudel, Fernand, Structures of everday life, p. 159Google Scholar.

50 Perkins, Dwight, Agricultural development in China, 1386–1968, Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969, p. 70Google Scholar.

51 Ibid.

52 Xue, , ‘Treasure nightsoil’, pp. 44–50Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., pp. 54–5.

54 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000Google Scholar, pp. 14, 216–17.

55 Ibid., pp. 303–6.

56 Ibid., pp. 98–9.

57 Pomeranz, Kenneth, ‘Beyond the East–West binary: resituating development paths in the eighteenth-century world’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61, 2, 2002, p. 584CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Ming-te Pan, ‘Rural credit market and the peasant economy (1600–1949)’, PhD thesis, University of California Irvine, 1994, pp. 36–8, 110–13, quoted in Pomeranz, , Great Divergence, p. 98Google Scholar.

59 Braudel, , Structures of everyday life, p. 157Google Scholar.

60 Raychaudhuri, Tapan, ‘The mid-eighteenth-century background’, in Dharma Kumar, ed., The Cambridge economic history of India, vol. 2: c. 1757–1970, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 16Google Scholar.

61 William Moore, ‘Sanitary progress in India’, Transactions of the Seventh International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, London, 10 August 1891, vol. 11: Indian hygiene and demography, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1892, p. 20.

62 Report on the sanitary administration of the Punjab for the year 1883, Lahore: Central Jail Press, 1884, pp. 90–1.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Johnson, George W., ‘On the agriculture of Hindostan’, Simmonds Colonial Magazine and Foreign Miscellany, 2, May–August 1844, pp. 231–232Google Scholar.

66 Hewlett, Thomas Gillham, cited in Report on measures adopted for sanitary improvements in India from June 1870 to June 1871, London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1871, p. 39Google Scholar.

67 Circular no. 30-3659, 10 September 1873, in The Punjab record or reference book for civil officers, vol. 13, London: W. E. Ball, 1873, p. 27.

68 Punjab record, p. 29; On the banias, see Cheesman, David, Landlord power and rural indebtedness in colonial Sind, 1865–1901, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997, pp. 163–164Google Scholar.

69 Punjab record, p. 29.

70 Blake, Stephen P., ‘The urban economy in premodern Muslim India: Shahjahanabad, 1639–1739’, Modern Asian Studies, 21, 3, 1987, p. 467CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Prashad, , ‘Technology of sanitation’, pp. 113–155Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., p. 137.

73 Bayly, C. A., Rulers, townsmen, and bazaars: north Indian society in the age of British expansion, 1770–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983Google Scholar; Prashad, , ‘Technology of sanitation’, pp. 43Google Scholar, 101.

74 Desai, Ashok V., ‘Population and living standards in Akbar's time’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 9, 1972, p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Ibid., p. 45.

76 Parthasarathi, Parsannan, ‘Rethinking wages and competitiveness in the eighteenth century: Britain and south India’, Past & Present, 158, 1998, pp. 102–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Smith, Adam, The wealth of nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, New York: The Modern Library, 1937, p. 206Google Scholar.

78 Ibid.

79 Parthasarathi, , ‘Rethinking wages’, pp. 101–102Google Scholar.

80 Marks, Robert B., The origins of the modern world: a global and ecological narrative from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, 2nd edition, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007, p. 97Google Scholar.

81 Pomeranz, , Great Divergence, pp. 216Google Scholar, 224–7; see also Brenner, Robert and Isett, Christopher, ‘England's divergence from China's Yangzi delta: property relations, microeconomics, and patterns of development’, Journal of Asian Studies, 61, 2, May 2002, pp. 613–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mokyr, Joel, The lever of riches: technological creativity and economic progress, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 138Google Scholar.

82 Johnson, George William, Cottage gardener and country gentleman's companion, vol. 2, London: William S. Orr and Company, 1849, pp. 63–64Google Scholar.

83 Morache, , Pékin et ses habitants, p. 31Google Scholar.

84 Liebig, Justus, Chemistry in its application to agriculture and physiology, ed. and tr. Lyon Playfair, 2nd edition, London: Taylor & Walton, 1842, pp. 194–195Google Scholar.

85 Ibid. p. 194, n. by Playfair, citing Davis, John Francis, The Chinese: a general description of the empire of China and its inhabitants, New York: Harper & Bros., 1836, p. 151Google Scholar.

86 Liebig, , Chemistry, p. 194Google Scholar, n. by Playfair, citing a personal communication from John Webster.

87 Ibid., p. 194, n. by Playfair.

88 Liebig, p. 195.

89 Annals of horticulture and year book of information on practical gardening, London: Charles Cox, 1848, pp. 493–4.

90 Crews, A. W., Manures: their respective merits, from an economical point of view, London: Horace Cox, 1880, p. 68Google Scholar.

91 Buck, John, Land utilization in China, Nanking: University of Nanking, 1937, p. 258Google Scholar, cited in Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural development in China, 1368–196, Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969, p. 71Google Scholar.

92 Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne, Les nuits de Paris or the nocturnal spectator: a selection, tr. Linda Asher and Ellen Fertig, New York: Random House, 1964, pp. 92–3.

93 Leroux, Pierre, La grève de Samarez, vol. 1, Paris: Librairie de E. Dentu, 1863, pp. 308–309Google Scholar, cited in Simmons, Dana, ‘Waste not, want not: excrement and economy in nineteenth-century France’, Representations, 96, 1, Autumn 2006, p. 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94 Hugo, Victor, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Jean Massin, Paris: Club Français du Livre, 1969, p. 873Google Scholar, quoted in Reid, , Paris sewers, p. 54Google Scholar.

95 Henry Mayhew, London labour and the London poor, quoted in Johnson, Ghost map, p. 116.

96 Bendickson, Jamie, The culture of flushing: a social and legal history of sewage, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007, p. 120Google Scholar.

97 Dejongh, Guy, ‘New estimates of land productivity in Belgium, 1750–1850’, Agricultural History Review, 47, 1, 1999, pp. 27–28Google Scholar. See also Rham, William H., The outlines of Flemish husbandry, London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1840, pp. 20–24Google Scholar.

98 van Zanden, J. L., ‘The first green revolution: the growth of production and productivity in European agriculture, 1870–1914’, Economic History Review, 44, 2, 1991, pp. 215–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

99 Chadwick, Edwin, Sewer manure: statement of the course of investigation and results of experiments as to the means of removing the refuse of towns in water, and applying it as manure, London: Reynell & Weight, 1849, p. 44Google Scholar. Chadwick reproduces Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, Économie rurale considérée dans ses rapports avec la chimie, la physique, et la météorologie, Paris: Bechet Jeune, 1843–44.

100 See Reid, , Paris sewers, pp. 53–70Google Scholar; Simmons, , ‘Waste not, want not’, pp. 73–98Google Scholar.

101 Rozier, François, Cours complet d'agriculture pratique, d’économie rurale et domestique, et de médecine vétérinaire, vol. 1, Paris: F. Buisson, 1809, pp. 545–547Google Scholar.

102 ‘Of land occupied by farmers in Scotland, from the General Report, recently published by the Board of Agriculture’, in The farmer's magazine: a periodical work exclusively devoted to agriculture and rural affairs, 16, Edinburgh, London: Archibald Constable & Co.; Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Browne, 1815, p. 193.

103 Gaylord, Willis, ‘Essay on the preparation and use of manures’, in Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society together with an Abstract of the Proceedings of the County Agricultural Societies for the Year 1842, vol. 2, Albany, NY: E. Mack, Printer for the Senate, 1843, pp. 78–80Google Scholar.

104 Karen Stupski, ‘Waste, wealth and public health: recycling human excrement in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, 1820–1900’, PhD thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 2001, pp. 71–9.

105 Zanden, Van, ‘First green revolution’, p. 216Google Scholar.

106 Wong, R. Bin, China transformed: historical change and the limits of European experience, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997, pp. 1–8Google Scholar.

107 McNeill, J. R. and McNeill, William H., The human web: a bird's-eye view of world history, New York: W. W. Norton, 2003, p. 266Google Scholar.