Of Water and Sky
Blue: the Rarest Colour in the Natural World
The world’s oldest trade route is the Silk Road: a perilous network of paths through the Himalayas, connecting India and China, allowing easier access to the spices and silks sought worldwide. Traveling on them was not easy, though; even in the modern era, it is sometimes much too icy to traverse safely. Yet traders 2,000 years ago made this very trek to deliver to the world the riches of kind they carried, which contained the rarest dye in all the world: Indigo.
Indigo: even the sound of the word has a mystical note. In the traditional VIBGYOR taught in preschool, indigo was the colour nobody knew of. And it certainly captivated the generations before us in a powerful manner. It has left its mark in the human story as the most sought-after colour in history.
Long before the present day, blue used to be a rare colour. This is because there are very few naturally blue dyes in nature; most blue is achieved through the refraction of light rather than any pigment. Why this is the case is unknown to science, but the fact remains that only a handful of invertebrates and just two vertebrates actually have blue dye in them. Because of this rarity, most people in the old ages could only point to one thing that was blue: the sky.
Because of this rarity, many civilizations didn’t develop words that referred to blue in their languages. Some scientists even propose that early humans were colourblind, incapable of seeing blue or green. This certainly explains weird descriptions such as Homer calling the sea wine red in Odyssey.
One of the first civilizations to develop a blue pigment was the Egyptian civilization, who achieved a light sky blue using a complex process involving blast heating minerals like azurite in a furnace. This time-consuming process gave a weak hue at the end, and the finished product was exceedingly expensive. True blue was found in lapis lazuli, which the Egyptians made into jewellery because they couldn’t turn it into a dye.
Lapis lazuli was the fixation of several ancient civilizations: its rich colour unparalleled in the natural world, it quickly became a symbol of status and wealth. The Indus Valley civilization made lapis lazuli pendants and necklaces, while the Babylonians used it for seals. Early Christians regarded it as the stone of the Virgin Mary, giving it religious value. Each tried their hand at making a lapis lazuli dye. After several centuries of failed attempts, there was a breakthrough: someone finally made a Lapis pigment that preserved its rich blue hue. This paint was given the name Ultramarine.
Ultramarine was every Renaissance painter’s dream: a blue that felt satisfying to paint onto a canvas, adding a depth to the picture unknown until then. Blue was reserved only for the highest of clients; the Church deemed it holy to the Virgin Mary, calling it the colour of purity. The paint itself was equivalent to gold in value. Johannes Vermeer, the painter of Girl with a Pearl Earring, apparently drove his family to bankruptcy buying ultramarine. It has been suggested that Michelangelo left his painting The Entombment unfinished because he couldn’t afford enough Ultramarine to finish it.
At this point, the history of blue turns from being the crown of royalty to being a little more accessible to the general public at each step. First came cobalt blue paint, then artificial ultramarine and indigo dye. All three served to reduce the cost of blue to more and more affordable levels. However, at this very point, the biggest bloodstain in the history of blue takes place, all orchestrated by one corporation: the East India Company.
The East India Company landed in the Indian subcontinent with the purpose to trade. They created a scheme where indigo farmers, who were primarily in Bengal due to the favorable climate conditions there, would get a buyer in them for their indigo crop. On the surface, this system appears fine: if anything, it seems like the EIC actually cared about the indigo farmers. However, the devil lies in the details, and they are grim indeed.
The first problem was that most of the contracted farmers were tenant workers to big planters. These planters, who were mostly British, loaned land to the peasants to work on and charged them rent for it. All the risk of farming fell on the peasant. If the crop yield was unsuccessful for even just one year, the farmer was sure to go into severe debt as they would be unable to pay the exorbitant rent on the borrowed land.
The second was of supply: with so much indigo being produced, prices dropped significantly. This meant that farmers could barely earn enough to keep themselves alive, forget paying rent. Debt cycles never ended. Farmers were routinely threatened with violence and property destruction by gangs hired by the planters. When things reached the breaking point in 1859, the peasants rose up and revolted en masse in a movement known as Nil Bidroha, literally Indigo Revolt. British authorities’ actions were swift: thousands would be maimed and killed for standing up against the empire. However, the uprising left its mark: several indigo planters were killed, indigo depots were burned down, fear was struck in the hearts of the complacent colonizers. Nil Bidroha was a promise of retribution: it showed the steel of the farmers and what they would do if the injustice ever became too much to bear. In the aftermath of the uprising, an official noted that ‘not a chest of Indigo arrived in England without being stained with human blood.’
The indigo farming industry finally lost momentum in the late nineteenth century upon the discovery of synthetic indigo, which was much cheaper and easier to produce. India was also gaining independence, and colonies were breaking down everywhere, with the colonizing powers returning to their home countries. It was a fitting end to a dark era in human history.
This brings us to the present day, where blue is no longer anything special; it is just another colour on our million-hue display screens. After a history fit for royalty, blue has settled down as a wallflower, a sideshow, not noticed or worth noticing.
Or is it?
While nowhere near the peak it once was, blue is still associated with quality (that is why 1st-place ribbons are blue). It represents hope and calmness and takes up space in our collective consciousness. Some of the biggest brands use blue in their logo to symbolize friendship and approachability. Just like the sky and the ocean, this beautiful colour has depth.
