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India and Central Europe
Perceptions, Perspectives, Prospects
Edited by
Rajendra K. Jain
India and Central Europe
Rajendra K. Jain
Editor
India and Central

Europe
Perceptions, Perspectives, Prospects
Editor
Rajendra K. Jain
Centre for European Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
ISBN 978-981-16-2849-8 ISBN 978-981-16-2850-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
Dedicated to
Sunita, Ruchika, Anekant and Jigyasa
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Rajendra K. Jain
2 India and Central Europe: From the Margins
to the Centre in Three Stages 13
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
3 Indian Perceptions of Central Europe 29
Rajendra K. Jain
4 India and the Czech Republic 79
Rajendra K. Jain
5 India and Hungary 137
Rajendra K. Jain
6 India and Poland 181
Rajendra K. Jain
7 India and Slovakia 235
Rajendra K. Jain
8 India’s Trade and Economic Relations with the V4
Countries 267
Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel
vii
viii CONTENTS
9 Indian Foreign Direct Investment in Central Europe 285

Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel
10 Indian Diaspora in Central Europe 307
Patryk Kugiel and Konrad P˛edziwiatr
11 India and Central Europe: A Road More Travelled? 333
Patryk Kugiel
Appendix A: India-Czechoslovakia Visits, 1947–1992 343

Appendix B: India-Czech Republic Visits, 1993–2020 353
Appendix C: India-Czechoslovakia Agreements,
1949–1991 369
Appendix D: India-Czech Republic Agreements,
1993–2018 375
Appendix E: India-Hungary Visits, 1948–2021 379
Appendix F: India-Hungary Agreements, 1949–2019 401
Appendix G: India-Poland Visits, 1951–2020 409
Appendix H: India-Poland Agreements, 1949–2019 429
Appendix I: India-Slovakia Visits, 1992–2020 435
Appendix J: India-Slovakia Agreements, 1993–2019 443
Appendix K: India-Central Europe Agreements,
Comparative Chart 447
Appendix L: Foreign Direct Investment in India, April
2000–March 2020 449
Index 451
Notes on Contributors
Rajendra K. Jain was formerly Professor and Chairperson at the Centre

for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has
been Director, Europe Area Studies Programme, JNU, and the first
Jean Monnet Chair in India (2010–2015). He has also been Adjunct
Research Professor, Monash European and EU Studies Centre, Monash
University, Melbourne (2010–2015). He was formerly Visiting Professor,
Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya (2010), and Visiting Inter-
national Fellow, Monash Europe and EU Centre, Melbourne (2009).
He was Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow at the University
of Constance (1992–1993, 1994) and Visiting Fellow at the School of
Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London (1993) and the
Foundation for Science and Politics (1995), Ebenhausen, Germany. He
has been Visiting Humboldt Foundation Professor at Freiburg, Leipzig
and Tuebingen universities and at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme,
Paris (2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2013). He has also been Visiting
Professor at the universities of Sofia, Warsaw and UPFM Barcelona. He
was Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) Professor of Contempo-
rary India, Leuven University (2015). He is the author/editor of over 35
books and has written over 150 articles/book chapters. He has travelled
extensively in Asia, Europe and North America and has lived in the United
States (5 years) and Germany (3 years). He has most recently edited
Changing Indian Images of the European Union: Perception and Misper-
ception (Palgrave, 2019), India and the European Union in a Turbulent
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
World (Palgrave, 2020) and India, Europe and Asia: Convergence and
Divergence (Palgrave, 2021).
Karina J˛edrzejowska is Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and
Global Studies, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies,
University of Warsaw. She is a graduate of the University of Manch-
ester (M.Sc. Globalization and Development, 2008), Warsaw School of
Economics (M.A. in Finance and Banking, 2007), and an M.A. in Inter-
national Relations from the Institute of International Relations, Warsaw
University 2005. Since April 2017, she is a Governing Board Member and
Treasurer of the World International Studies Committee (WISC). She is
co-editor of The Future of Global Economic Governance: Challenges and
Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty (2020).
Patryk Kugiel is the Head of the International Economic Relations and
Global Issues Programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs
(PISM), Warsaw. He is a specialist on South Asia and international devel-
opment cooperation. His research in PISM focuses on the foreign policy
of India and Pakistan, the security situation in South Asia, United States
and EU policies towards the region, implications of India’s rise on the
global order as well as the development cooperation policy of Poland and
the EU. He is the co-editor of India-Poland Relations in the 21st Century:
Vistas for Future Cooperation (Vij Books, 2014) and India’s Soft Power:
A New Foreign Policy Strategy (Routledge, 2017).
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is a Distinguished Fellow and Head, Strategic
Affairs at Ananta Aspen Centre and the Foreign Editor of the Hindustan
Times. He writes on political, security and economic issues. He was a
member of National Security Advisory Board of the Government of India
(2011–2015) and is a member of the Asia Society Global Council and the
Aspen Institute Italia, the International Institute of Strategic Studies and
the Mont Pelerin Society.
Konrad P˛edziwiatr is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Advanced
Studies of Population and Religion at the Cracow University of
Economics and in the Centre for Migration Research at the University
of Warsaw. His publications include Transformation of Islamism in Egypt
and Tunisia in the Shadow of the Arab Spring (2019), Polish Migration
Policy—In Search of New Model (2015), The New Muslim Elites in Euro-
pean Cities (2010) and From Islam of Immigrants to Islam of Citizens
(2007).
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi
Anna Wróbel is Assistant Professor, Department of Regional and Global

Studies, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Univer-
sity of Warsaw. She holds a Ph.D. on the policy of liberalization of
international trade in services. A Member of the Polish Association of
International Studies, she is also the co-editor of The Dragon and the
(Evening) Stars: Essays on the Determinants of EU-China Relations (in
Polish) (2013) and The Future of Global Economic Governance: Challenges
and Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty (2020).
Abbreviations
AAI Airports Authority of India

AI Artificial Intelligence
AJT Advance Jet Trainer
ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations
BBC British Broadcast Corporation
BEML Bharat Earth Movers Ltd. (BEML)
BHEL Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL)
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BPO Business Process Outsourcing
BRI Belt and Road Initiative
CBI Central Bureau of Investigation
CEECs Central and East European countries
CEIF Central Europe India Forum
CFE Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
CIH Central Institute of Hindi
CII Confederation of Indian Industry
CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
COP Conference of Parties
CPI Communist Party of India (CPI)
CPI-M Communist Party of India-Marxist
CTBT Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
DRDO Defence Research and Development Organization
EU European Union
FDI Foreign Direct Investment
FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
FOCs Foreign Office Consultations
xiii
xiv ABBREVIATIONS
FRY Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

FTA Free Trade Agreement
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GSQR General Staff Qualitative Requirements
HICC Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre
HZDS Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
ICCR Indian Council for Cultural Relations
ICEBF India-Central Europe Business Forum
ICSC International Commissions of Supervision and Control
ICT Information and Communication Technology
ICWA Indian Council of World Affairs
IDEB International Defence Exhibition Bratislava
INF Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
INSTC International North-South Transport Corridor
ISIS Indian School of International Studies
ITEC Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation
JDC Joint Defence Committee
JEC Joint Economic Committee
JNU Jawaharlal Nehru University
JWG Joint Working Group
LSD Lok Sabha Debates
MEA Ministry of External Affairs
MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MOA Memorandum of Association
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
MP Member of Parliament
MTCR Missile Technology Control Regime
MW Mega Watt
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty
NRI Non-Resident Indian
NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group
OCI Overseas Citizenship of India
OECD Organisation of Cooperation and Development
OEM Original Equipment Manufacturer
PIO Persons of Indian Origin
PNE Peaceful Nuclear Explosion
PPP Purchasing Power Parity
PSP Praja Socialist Party
SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
ABBREVIATIONS xv
SMEs Small and Medium Enterprises

SS Second Series
SWJN Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru
TCS Tata Consultancy Services
TOI Times of India
TSI Three Seas Initiative
UN United Nations
UNCTAD United Nations Conference of Trade and Development
V4 Visegrad 4
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
WTO World Trade Organization
List of Figures
Graph 9.1 Outward Indian FDI in V4 Countries, 2006–2018 294

Graph 9.2 V4 FDI in India, 2006–2018 298
Graph 10.1 Indian Citizens residing legally in V4 countries,
2010–2018 312
Graph 10.2 Foreigners Residing Legally in Poland with Valid
Residence Permits, 2010–2018 314
Graph 10.3 Growth of the Indian Community in Poland,
2010–2019 315
Graph 10.4 Immigrants in Czechia, 2009–2019 319
Graph 10.5 Citizens of India Residing in the Czech Republic,
2008–2018 319
Graph 10.6 Foreign Citizens Residing in Hungary (without asylum
seekers), 2009–2019 322
Graph 10.7 Number of Valid Residence Permits for Third Country
Nationals in Slovakia, 2009–2019 324
Graph 10.8 Indian Citizens in Slovakia, 2009–2019 324
Map 10.1 Indian Citizens in Poland in 2014 (Green) and 2019

(Red) 317
xvii
List of Tables
Table 3.1 India’s Trade with Central Europe 39

Table 4.1 Export of Czech military equipment to India, 2003–2017 103
Table 5.1 Hungarian export of arms and military equipment
to India, 1992–2018 155
Table 6.1 Export of Polish military equipment to India, 2008–2017 208
Table 7.1 India–Slovakia Trade, 2000–2019 247
Table 7.2 Export of military material by Slovakia to India,
2004–2017 252
Table 8.1 India–V4 trade in Goods: Exports, 1996–1997
to 2018–2019 274
Table 8.2 India–V4 Trade in Goods: Imports, 1996–1997
to 2018–2019 275
Table 8.3 India–V4 Trade in Services: Exports, 1996–2017 279
Table 8.4 India–V4 Trade in Services: Imports, 1996–2017 279
Table 9.1 Outward Indian FDI in V4 countries, 2006–2018
(in million US dollars) 293
Table 9.2 V4 FDI in India, 2006–2018 299
xix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Rajendra K. Jain
From the mid-1950s till the end of the Cold War, India’s relations with
the Central and East European Countries (CEECs) were an adjunct of
Indo-Soviet relations. Having been let down by the West, India turned
to the Soviet Union in 1955 as a partner in economic and industrial
cooperation. The CEECs followed suit after Moscow offered economic,
financial and technical assistance for large public sector projects. There
was no serious conflict of interest and almost identical views on most
international issues. The CEECs also did not have any colonial hangovers
and were indifferent to some of the issues that troubled West European
lobbies when dealing with India such as human rights, Kashmir, treatment
of minorities and so on (Sibal, 2019: 78).
Central Europe figured in parliamentary debates only on critical issues
which received wide publicity. During the relatively well-informed debates
on the Hungarian uprising (1956) and the Czechoslovak crisis (1968),
the Nehru and Indira Gandhi’s government faced substantial criticism.
No debates on Central Europe took place subsequently in the Indian
Parliament though references to individual countries did resurface peri-
odically. The West usually gave no credit either to the Indian Parliament
R. K. Jain (B)
Centre for European Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. K. Jain (ed.), India and Central Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4_1
2 R. K. JAIN
or to Indian leaders for ‘speaking plainly, though in guarded language, on

Hungary or Czechoslovakia. The restraint was dictated by the need to be
helpful’, but it was not ‘appreciated by either side’ (Damodaran, 2000:
114–115).
In the post-Cold War era, India and the CEECs viewed each other
from opposite directions: the Visegrad 4 looked towards the European
Union and India focused on its key partners in Western Europe. As
Central Europeans aligned their foreign policy with those of the EU,
India and the CEECs began to have divergent worldviews and differences
on how they perceived the world and the challenges that confronted it.
There was little that brought them together. Indian foreign policy took
time to adjust to the changing realities in Central and Eastern Europe.
Mutual indifference led to slim political interaction and meagre people-
to-people ties. For nearly a decade-and-a-half (1990–2004), Central
European countries concentrated on gaining admission in the European
Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Their preoccupation
with a ‘return to Europe’ and transatlantic relations left them little time
or interest in India. New Delhi too showed little economic and strategic
interest in the region given the radical transformation of the socio-
economic and geopolitical milieu in Central Europe. Mutual neglect for
nearly two decades led to a sharp decline in political contacts as well as
people-to-people ties. The communist glue had withered away though
some observers felt that clichés about post-communist societies in the
older generation still persisted in India.
The CEECs began to rediscover India after they gained membership of
the European Union in 2004 and more consciously after the 2008 finan-
cial crisis. India also took time to recalibrate its policies. Today, India
and Central Europe have a convergence of views on issues like terrorism,
reform of the United Nations and non-proliferation. There were however
differences over Western interventions in Iraq (2003), Libya (2011),
crises in Syria and Ukraine in which India had no geopolitical interest
or stake.
Outline of Chapters
India’s postwar relationship with Central Europe, argues Pramit Pal
Chaudhuri in the second chapter, has undergone three distinct phases.
The first phase, during the communist period, was a subset of India’s
relations with the Soviet Union. The collapse of communism left New
1 INTRODUCTION 3
Delhi with almost no points of engagement with the newly democratic

Central Europe. This was compounded by the fact both India and Central
Europe began a process of reforming their socialist-oriented economies
that continued through the 1990s. The early 2000s saw the beginnings
of a new economic relationship with a few Indian firms beginning to
invest in countries like Poland. Today, Indian firms and their European
subsidiaries are both large investors and have a footprint in almost all
Central European states. The combination of Brexit, the rise of China
and India’s expanding geoeconomic interests have led the Narendra Modi
government to contemplate relations with Central Europe through a
more strategic lens though New Delhi is doing what it can in terms of its
capabilities.
Chapter 3 examines Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s interwar and
postwar perceptions of Central Europe. It describes how the geographical
scope of the Central Europe Division of the Ministry of External Affairs
gradually expanded to comprise thirty countries at present. It goes on
to examine Indian perceptions of Central Europe in the early 1990s and
discusses how Central Europe figured in parliamentary debates. It assesses
the changing perspectives of the region by India’s two leading corporate
chambers. The chapter provides a succinct overview of Indian scholarly
literature on economic and political relations as well as the evolution
and current state of teaching of contemporary Central Europe at Indian
universities. In conclusion, the chapter examines New Delhi’s proactive
re-engagement with Central Europe with greater vigour and the Indian
commentariat’s perceptions of Chinese inroads in Central Europe.
Chapter 4 discusses political relations between India and Czechoslo-
vakia from 1947 to 1992. It outlines how the Czech Republic’s
preoccupation with securing membership of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and the European Union left it with little time or polit-
ical interest for nearly a decade in cultivating relations with India.
It goes on to examine renewed efforts by the Czech Republic to
reach out to Asia in order to enhance trade and foreign direct invest-
ment and the broad contours of the relationship in the 2000s. It
discusses how Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic figured in Lok Sabha)
debates/questions from 1947 to 2019 since the agitated debates over
the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After making a detailed examina-
tion of defence cooperation, the chapter discusses how Czechoslovakia
has been perceived by Indian scholars and the commentariat, Czech
4 R. K. JAIN
perceptions of India as well as cultural relations between the two coun-

tries.
Chapter 5 examines the vicissitudes of political and economic relations
between India and Hungary during the Cold War. It critically assesses
the changes in the relationship since the early 1990s and the upswing in
relations with Hungary’s ‘Eastern Opening Strategy’ (2011). It examines
parliamentary (Lok Sabha) debates since Independence and highlights
how Hungary figured in parliamentary questions and debates over the
years. It discusses Indian perceptions of Hungary in one of the leading
English national dailies as well as Indian scholarly literature. It makes a
detailed study of defence cooperation as well as cultural relations between
India and Hungary. In conclusion, the chapter assesses prospects for the
future.
The next chapter examines the initial Indian perceptions of Poland
during the 1930s and the 1950s and goes on to discuss the vicissitudes
of political relations during the Cold War and the perceptions of Poland
in Indian scholarly literature. The chapter assesses the transformation of
the relationship in the post-Cold War era. It discusses Polish efforts to
reach out to Asia at the turn of the millennium and the motivations and
impact of the Polish Strategy towards Non-European Developing Countries
(2004). It goes on to examine the relationship in the 2000s and how
Poland figured in the Modi government’s renewed re-engagement with
Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter examines Lok Sabha debates
from 1947 to 2019 to highlight how Poland figured in parliamentary
questions and debates since the Polish uprising of 1956. It critically exam-
ines the nature, problems and prospects of defence cooperation between
India and Poland. After evaluating Polish and Indian perceptions of each
other, the chapter discusses prospects for the future.
Chapter 7 examines Indian perceptions of the Velvet Divorce, which
led to the establishment of two separate states of the Czech Republic
and Slovakia. Politically, Slovakia has remained largely peripheral to Indian
foreign policy concerns because of its small size, low volumes of trade with
visits being confined to Deputy Ministers. It discusses the slow evolution
of the relationship in the 2000s and during the Modi years (2014–2020)
and presents a brief overview of economic and trade relations as well as
FDI whose high point is a £1 billion investment by the Tata Group’s UK
subsidiary in the ‘Detroit’ of the region. It examines Lok Sabha debates
1 INTRODUCTION 5
to illustrate now marginally Slovakia figured in the parliamentary delib-

erations since 1993. It discusses defence cooperation as well as cultural
relations between India and Slovakia.
After a brief historical review of economic relations between India and
Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna
Wróbel examine the legal framework for current cooperation and assess
the salient features of their economic and trade relations over the past
decade. The lack of a more coherent Indian strategy, they argue, has
enabled China to surpass India in the region. In conclusion, the chapter
identifies potential areas for enhanced trade.
Given its population of over 60 million, highly developed human
capital with relatively cheap cost of labour, and its strategic location,
Central Europe presents itself as an attractive location for Asian invest-
ments. In Chapter 9, Karina J˛edrzejowska and Anna Wróbel provide an
overview of Indian foreign direct investment in the four Central Euro-
pean countries as well as Central European FDI India. It discusses the
rationale for Indian economic engagement in the region and identifies
the key challenges faced by Indian investors and looks at prospects for
the future.
Based on the analysis of the secondary sources as well as new statis-
tical information, big data and qualitative research (including partici-
pant observations, in-depth interviews and a survey), Patryk Kugiel and
Konrad P˛edziwiatr analyse the origins and growth of Indian communities
in Central Europe and provide a detailed overview of the key features of
the Indian diaspora in each of the Visegrad 4 countries. They explore their
role in their new ‘homes’, assess their impact on India-Central Europe
relations and look at future trends and significance in India’s relations
with the region.
In the concluding chapter, Patryk Kugiel makes a case for greater
Visegrad 4-India engagement. As India’s global ambitions grow, he
argues, it requires more trusted partners in Europe to promote its
interests in relation to the European Union, the United States or in
multilateral fora like the United Nations Security Council or the Nuclear
Suppliers Group. Unlike many developed Western nations, the V4, he
adds, have similar views to those of India on a number of interna-
tional challenges from climate change to terrorism. New Delhi, Patryk
argues, should take greater cognizance of the fact that the V4 send 106
MEPs (out of a total of 751) to the European Parliament as well as
one non-permanent member to the UN Security Council. With growing
6 R. K. JAIN
recognition of India’s importance by the EU and the V4’s desire to

develop a more balanced approach towards Asia, he maintains, prospects
for improved India-Central Europe relations have improved.
The chapters are followed by a dozen appendices, which have been
painstakingly collected from diverse sources. These would be of immense
value to scholars, students and policy-makers as a ready reference. The
lists of bilateral visits (cultural, economic, political and military) as well as
agreements owe their present form to a determined scouring of diverse
sources, including periodicals, newspapers, official publications, journals
of India and the Central European countries as well as reports and publi-
cations of governmental ministries, Departments and agencies concerned.
I have sought to ensure the correctness of the details by cross-checking
them carefully with those appearing in official sources and have retained
only those that I have found reasonably accurate.
Economic Engagement
The low levels of trade and investment present an opportunity for both
India and the Visegrad Four to widen and deepen economic ties. The
V4 tend to be viewed by many Indian companies as a bridgehead for
investments in the much larger West European economies. Indian IT soft-
ware majors have been ramping up their operations in the region to tap
the intellectual calibre and language skill-sets of the engineering talent of
the region to tap West European markets. Indian entrepreneurs tend to
look to bigger markets in Western Europe and recognize that there are
structural limits to what is possible in Central Europe. As the storehouse
of niche technologies, Central European technologies are more attuned
to Indian conditions. As repositories of frontier technologies and exper-
tise in clean technology, skill development and education, the Visegrad 4
are complementary partners for many flagship programmes of the Modi
government. To a certain extent, the challenge is of overcoming lack of
information and simply making the connection.
The first India-Central Europe Business Forum (ICEBF) (now India-
Europe29) has not led to a structured business dialogue and continues
to face the perennial problem of lack of adequate follow-up. While the
idea is inherently good, it is too large a body bringing together 30 coun-
tries under the geographical scope of the Ministry of External Affairs’
Central Europe Division with diverse interests from very different regions
and with different expertise.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
Civil Society Linkages

Since the early 1990s, historical narratives have ceased to be relevant in
India-Central Europe relations because for modern young Indians, the
Cold War is largely forgotten. Traditional postwar linkages between India
and the Visegrad Four have long withered away; traditional sensitivi-
ties of history with India are no longer evident. The problem of direct
connectivity between V4 and India has been overcome to a certain extent
with the introduction of direct LOT Warsaw-Delhi flights in September
2019. Greater civil society linkages will contribute to removing traditional
clichés and stereotypes of post-communist societies of Central Europe and
foster positive images of a rapidly growing region.
Bollywood is being actively wooed. ‘All it needs is one film and that can
change the dynamics’ as the film ‘Kick’ did in the case of Poland. Some
years ago, one Central European embassy even had ‘a three-page rate
card’ for technical experts, camera hire, etc.1 A further fillip to tourism
can be expected since Bollywood films have now been shot in all V4
countries.
India-V4+ Engagement
Central Europe has not figured prominently in Indian foreign policy
priorities for decades even though it has become politically stable and
economically prosperous due to mutual indifference and neglect. As a
political grouping, the Visegrad countries have lost their earlier distinc-
tiveness and failed to get enough political attention in the capital. All of
them except perhaps Poland are political lightweights within the Euro-
pean Union. New Delhi tends to perceive them as having little impact
on EU foreign policy and of being of marginal importance in India-EU
relations since they tend to get submerged in EU structures. Observers
caution that the shared direction of the V4 within the EU is not ‘stable
or permanent’ and that ‘separate interests and issues disrupt the coher-
ence of the group and weaken it in terms of unified promotion of these
interests in the EU’ (Bauerova, 2018: 134).
The Slovak Presidency of the Visegrad Group in 2014 proposed a new
V4+1 format for India’s engagement with the region. This led to the first-
ever engagement at the Joint Secretary level with the V4 in Bratislava
1 Conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

8 R. K. JAIN
on 25 February 2015. This interaction was envisaged as a supplemen-

tary feature of bilateral and India-EU interactions. From the outset, it
was obvious that the periodicity of such an interaction was not likely
to be institutionalized, though there were many areas of mutual benefit
(Chhabra, 2015: 7). This format was not in response to the 16+1 (later
17+1) promoted by the Chinese. The two were ‘independent processes’,
with India seeking to do what it could in terms of its capabilities.2 The
initial V4+1 meeting was followed up in 2015 when the Minister of State
for External Affairs V.K. Singh met the V4 Foreign Ministers on the
sidelines of the eleventh GLOBESEC Security Forum in April 2016. No
meetings in the V4+ India format have been held thereafter.
A Prime Ministerial Visit

Central Europeans have often referred to the deficit in reciprocal visits
from New Delhi. A long-standing, genuine complaint of the CEECs
has been that there has not been a prime ministerial visit to the region
for 33 years, i.e. ever since Rajiv Gandhi visited Hungary in 1988.
Prime ministerial visits abroad are undoubtedly of much consequence
for the projection of foreign policy. High-level visits do make a differ-
ence and create much momentum in focusing attention on a country
and/or region. They also create institutional pressures to line up deliv-
erables for the visit. In the past, a prime ministerial visit to the region
was constantly pushed back apparently because of the inherent lack of
substantial economic linkages and the absence of any political imperatives.
A prime ministerial visit, MEA mandarins generally argued, generally takes
place when a relationship has reached ‘a particular level; one has to wait
for it to mature’. In fact, a prime ministerial visit is ‘the culmination of a
relationship; a PM does not go there to merely cut the ribbon’.3
The Ministry of External Affairs has only recently taken cognizance
of Central Europe as ‘a strong voice’ and the Visegrad Group as ‘a
robust force’ within the European Union (India, MEA 2020a: 25; 2021:
20). There is growing realization in New Delhi that a prime ministerial
visit to the region is long overdue. There was considerable expectation
that a prime ministerial visit to Central Europe would take place in the
2 Private conversation with a former Joint Secretary (Central Europe), MEA.

1 INTRODUCTION 9
second half of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed it to

late 2021 or even later. Alternately, a prime ministerial meeting with
V4 counterparts can also take place on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly in the near future though a visit to the region would send
across a better message. A V4+ India summit at the prime ministerial level
would undoubtedly give the relationship a special focus and highlight the
region’s importance.
Towards a Strategic Partnership?

India does not presently have a strategic partnership with any Central
European country. After the conclusion of a strategic partnership with
China (December 2011), Poland had proposed a strategic partnership
with India. The MEA however felt that relations ‘had not yet reached
that level’. After all, a strategic partnership is ‘the last mile’, which is
often ‘the most difficult’.4 There was the problem of justifying a strategic
partnership to higher authorities as it usually gave rise to questions of
prioritization, human resource constraints, bureaucratic overload and the
quantum of trade.
For the first time, India recently concluded the fifth strategic partner-
ship in Europe with Denmark. Called a ‘Green Strategic Partnership’, it
has been described as ‘a mutually beneficial arrangement to advance polit-
ical cooperation, expand economic relations and green growth, create jobs
and strengthen cooperation on addressing global challenges and oppor-
tunities’ (India, MEA 2020b). This functional strategic partnership, with
an Action Plan yet to be worked out, envisages cooperation through rele-
vant Ministries, institutions and stakeholders is illustrative of New Delhi’s
efforts to make strategic partnerships more result-oriented.
India has also begun recently to explore new geographical spaces
and configurations. The MEA and the Confederation of Indian Industry
recently organized the first India-Nordic-Baltic Conclave (5 November
2020) with ministerial participation from Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
Iceland and Latvia on renewable energy and clean technologies and the
factories of the future, on Artificial Intelligence and blockchain-led trans-
formation, on supply chain and logistics, on fintech (Jaishankar, 2020).
This innovative engagement tends to improve prospects of a strategic

10 R. K. JAIN
partnership currently under discussion with the Czech Republic and

possibly Poland provided the right synergies and mutual benefits can be
identified with Warsaw.
Modi’s Re-engagement
India’s re-engagement of Central Europe by the Narendra Modi govern-
ment in recent years reflects how the region is slowly being gradually
recognized as a region of promise and potential. In view of a proactive
Chinese overdrive around the world, New Delhi has sought to show its
flag in a kind of competitive diplomatic engagement in consonance with
its resources and capabilities to reach out to various countries where few
ministers or senior officials had travelled for decades. Between 2014 and
2020, there nearly a dozen visits by senior Indian dignitaries, including
the President and the Vice-President, to Central and Eastern Europe took
place. These were not merely goodwill/ceremonial visits. They required
a certain degree of preparation and led to tangible results. The robust
engagement with the region could also have possibly been the result of
the fact that for the first time since Independence, S. Jaishankar is the first
Foreign Secretary/Foreign Minister to have spent two cycles in Central
and Eastern Europe—in Budapest (1990–1993) and as Ambassador to
Prague (2001–2004).
Central Europe is an important constituency for the reform of the
United Nations Security Council and support of the Indian candidature.
With the Visegrad 4 being members of all four export control regimes,
their support has been crucial to secure membership since decisions in
them are by consensus and a single negative vote can stop any move in
favour of India. While the V4 do not often form a unified bloc or vote
in unision in the EU or other global forums, they can be of interest in
raising India’s profile (Kugiel & Upadhyay, 2018: 138).
In the future, the primary focus will continue to be on economy and
trade. Different Visegrad Group countries will develop their relationships
with India at different speeds, with varying levels of engagement and
commitment, and with different trajectories and results.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Further Research
For decades, India-Central Europe relations has been an under-researched
and neglected area of research. There are many gaps in existing schol-
arly research. There is a glaring lack of archival research on India-Central
Europe relations. The National Archives of India contain recently declas-
sified MEA documents, which primarily comprise monthly reports from
Indian Embassies, diplomatic cables, transcript of conversations involving
foreign leaders or interlocuters as well as policy memoranda by officials
based in Delhi and overseas embassies. No research has yet been done on
the archives of the Ministry of External Affairs, which have been recently
digitized, but access continues to be problematic. Similarly, archives of
the Central European countries have yet to be fully explored to provide
insights into V4 perceptions and approaches towards India.
Secondly, there is hardly any research on the making of India’s foreign
policy towards Central Europe and vice versa, including the role of various
ministries as well as the dynamics and constraints of inter-ministerial
interaction and coordination.
Thirdly, apart from a few studies of Indian perceptions of Poland
(Kugiel, 2019), there are no meaningful studies of how mainstream
Indian newspapers, electronic media and elites perceive Central Europe
and vice versa.
Fourthly, scholars continue to be seriously hampered by the lack of
primary source material on the subject. A comprehensive documentary
study on India-Central Europe relations would undeniably encourage
further research.
The editor and the contributors hope that this pioneering volume
would foster greater scholarly research of India’s relations with Central
Europe, which has been an orphaned subject for far too long.
References
Bauerova, H. (2018). The V4 and European integration. Politics in Central
Europe, 14(2), 121–139.
Chhabra, R. (2015, March 3). Keynote Address by Joint Secretary (Central
Europe), Ministry of External Affairs, at a seminar on ‘India and Central
Europe’ organized by the Centre for European Studies, School of Interna-
tional Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Damodaran, A. K. (2000). Beyond autonomy, India’s foreign policy. Somaiya
Publications.
India, MEA. (2020a). Annual report 2019–2020. New Delhi.
12 R. K. JAIN
India, MEA. (2020b, September 28). Joint statement for India-Denmark green
strategic partnership. Retrieved 12 May 2021 from https://mea.gov.in/bilate
ral-documents.htm?dtl/33069/joint+statement+for+indiadenmark+green+str
ategic+partnership.
India, MEA. (2021). Annual report 2020–2021. New Delhi.
Jaishankar, S. (2020, November 5). Remarks by foreign Minister at the India-
Nordic-Baltic CII Enclave. Retrieved 12 May 2021 from https://mea.gov.
in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/33165/eams+remarks+at+the+india++nor
dic++baltic+cii+conclave.
Kugiel, P. (2019). Indian perceptions of Poland. In R. K. Jain (Ed.), Changing
Indian images of the European Union: Perception and misperception (pp. 151–
154). Palgrave Macmillan.
Kugiel, P., & Upadhyay, D. K. (2018). India and Central Europe: Post-cold war
engagement. International Studies, 54(1–4), 127–143.
Sibal, K. (2019). India and the European Union: Perceptions and mispercep-
tions. In R. K. Jain (Ed.), Changing Indian images of the European Union:
Perception and misperception (pp. 61–78). Palgrave Macmillan.
CHAPTER 2
India and Central Europe: From the Margins

to the Centre in Three Stages
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri
Independent India’s relationship with Central Europe has undergone

three distinct phases. The first phase, during the communist period, was
a subset of India’s relations with the Soviet Union. The second phase
was a political and economic vacuum. It followed the collapse of the
Soviet bloc. New Delhi had almost no engagement with the newly demo-
cratic Central European states. Both India and Central Europe began a
process of reforming their socialist-oriented economies at this point that
continued through the 1990s but gave them minimal ability to engage
with each other. The early 2000s saw the beginnings of a third phase
centred around a new economic relationship with a few Indian firms
investing in countries like Poland. Today, Indian firms and their Euro-
pean subsidiaries are both large investors and have a footprint in almost
all the major Central European states. The combination of Brexit, the
P. Pal Chaudhuri (B)

Head, Strategic Affairs at Ananta Aspen Centre, New Delhi, India
Foreign Editor, New Delhi, India
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
R. K. Jain (ed.), India and Central Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2850-4_2
14 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
rise of China and India’s expanding geo-economic interests in Europe are

leading the Narendra Modi government to contemplate relations with
Central Europe through a more strategic lens. If these fructify, it could
mark a fourth phase in India-Central European relations.
The Soviet Era, 1947–1989

India’s Central European policy under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, was strongly coloured by his perspective of the Soviet Union.
For a number years, Nehru also looked to the Yugoslav ruler, Josip Broz
Tito, for insights on the region (Dixit, 1998: 324). In his first decade in
office, Nehru had a relatively benign view of communism and a suspicion
of the United States which skewed his understanding of the nature of
Soviet control over the Central European states. All of these contributed
to his weak response to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. His daughter
and later prime minister, Indira Gandhi, responded equally ambivalently
to the crushing of the Prague Spring of 1968 but by then the geopolit-
ical bond between New Delhi and Moscow had become much stronger
and overrode any other consideration. Overall, however, Central Europe
barely figured in India’s foreign policy calculations while the communist
governments of the region expressed much rhetorical support for India
as an echo of what was being said by their superiors in the Kremlin.
Nehru’s Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and letters all indi-
cate that he saw the Russian Revolution of 1917 that led to communist
rule as a point in a spectrum that went back to the French Revolution. In
one letter, he wrote that the popular demand for freedom in the French
and Russian Revolutions were an inspiration for India’s own slogan of
‘Inqilab zindabad!’ (Long live the revolution!) against British colonial
rule. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, he often expressed his admi-
ration for communist ideology and theory of history, though over time
he began to separate this from the practice of Soviet communism per
se. Nehru was to become increasingly concerned about the fault lines
that kept erupting within the international communist system and their
impact on the Indian communist movement and the political stability of
India as a whole. But his theoretical admiration for communism meant he
was initially unconcerned about the Soviet occupation of Central Europe
and did not see it as an example of the colonialism that he had spent his
life opposing. After all, he argued, other countries recognized the Central
2 INDIA AND CENTRAL EUROPE: FROM THE MARGINS … 15
European communist regimes and small countries being dominated by a

larger power was common in other parts of the world (Nayudu, 2018).
Hungarian Uprising of 1956

Nehru’s uncertainty about the nature of Soviet rule in Central Europe
was reflected in his response to the popular revolt in Hungary against
Soviet occupation. This was the high watermark of nonalignment and
Nehru, if anything, still seeing much of the world in terms of the colo-
nial era and hence wary of Western views and actions. When the uprising
began, Nehru declined to support any initiative taken by the United States
making India the only democratic government not to criticize the Soviet
Union’s brutal suppression of the uprising. US President Dwight D.
Eisenhower privately said Nehru was ‘falling for the Moscow line—buying
their entire bill of good’ (Nayudu, 2015).
The Indian prime minister was hampered by the illness of Ambassador
K. P. S. Menon, who was based in Moscow and concurrently accred-
ited to Budapest, and delays in the arrival of Embassy reports about
what was taking place. Nehru expressed concerns that the uprising repre-
sented ‘fascistic elements’, worried that Moscow was being internationally
isolated, and corresponded mostly with Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin
and Yugoslavia’s President Tito. Bulganin obviously gave the Soviet line
on what was happening. The United States fretted that Nehru was so
much under the premier’s influence that they referred to the Indian prime
minister’s ‘Bulganinisation’. Having kept his country out of the Warsaw
Pact and free of Soviet control, Tito initially expressed support for the
Hungarians but later worried the unrest would spread and undermine his
own one-party system (Nayudu, 2017).
As Nehru became more familiar with what was happening in Hungary,
his position shifted. New Delhi became more critical of the Soviet Union
but declined to align directly with the statements and actions of the
United States. Thanks in part to telegrams from the Indian embassy sent
by the Charge d’Affaires M. M. Rahman, Nehru came to accept that the
Hungarian protestors were ‘nationalists’ rather than reactionaries. Indian
diplomats were allowed to join the international chorus demanding that
the United Nations be allowed to send observer teams to Hungary, along
with humanitarian supplies. But Nehru decided that nonalignment meant
he should avoid condemnation of the Soviet Union. India would be best
served by ‘leaving the door open’ to Moscow even while taking a prin-
cipled stand. It could be said that India’s response to the 1956 uprising
was to provide a template for Indian foreign policy reactions to other
16 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Cold War eruptions in the decades to come (Nayudu, 2019). But the
aftermath of the Hungarian uprising did make Nehru more sceptical of
the Soviet Union.
Prague Spring of 1968

Indira Gandhi was prime minister at the time of the Soviet Union’s mili-
tary intervention against the reformist Alexander Dubcek Government
in Czechoslovakia. The prime minister was public in her criticism of the
intervention at home, declaring in the lower house of parliament, ‘The
right of nations to live peacefully and without outside interference should
not be denied in the name of religion or ideology’. At the UN and
diplomatically, however, India held back from attacking the Soviet Union,
abstaining from a UN vote against the military action.
Indira Gandhi was influenced by a number of factors. Unlike Nehru’s
confusion about events in Hungary, she does not seem to have any
doubts as to the nature of Moscow’s actions. Indira Gandhi was more
influenced by hard-nosed interests. One, India had a five-year defence
cooperation agreement with the Soviet Union to develop the country’s
military capacity following the defeat of the 1962 border war with China.
Two, Washington was mired in its war in Vietnam and signalled a broad
disengagement from South Asia by allowing Moscow to take the lead
in mediating the 1966 Tashkent Agreement between India and Pakistan.
Three, Indira Gandhi had shifted the country leftward both politically
and economically. She increasingly saw the Indian left parties as political
allies—though not all Indian communists were necessarily supportive of
the suppression of the Prague Spring (Nayudu, 2017).
In the coming decades, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989,
India’s foreign and military closeness to Moscow only increased. This, in
turn, meant New Delhi came to see its Central European policy as little
more than a subset of its relationship with the Soviet Union. Economic
relations with the Soviet-led Council of Mutual Economic Assistance,
better known as COMECON, were frugal with minimal trade and negli-
gible investment, especially if the Soviet component was removed. As
COMECON members set artificial government-determined export and
import targets rather than basing their trade on demand and compet-
itiveness and payments were done through rupee-rouble exchange, the
economic engagement was wholly driven by government diktats. An
example of this was East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, getting
involved in the promotion of trade with India (Tatke, 2017). The collapse
of the Soviet bloc wiped out the rupee-rouble payments system and took
the entire state-driven economic relationship between India and Central
Europe with it.
Reform Era, 1989–2001

The breaking of the Berlin Wall, subsequent end of the Soviet-backed
regimes in Central Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union
also ended India’s engagement with Central Europe. When Yugoslavia
came apart at the seams from 1989 to 1992, New Delhi was only further
isolated from the region. Having had little in the way of people-to-people
relations or economic ties with this region, India would have to rediscover
and rebuild relations with the swathe of countries ranging from Latvia to
Bulgaria almost from scratch.
But India and Central Europe shared a common economic experi-
ence during this time. Namely, they both began the painful and difficult
process of shedding the socialist economic policies they had followed since
the 1950s and 1960s and sought to become more externally oriented
and market driven. However, this meant the two sides had even less
capacity to invest in a set of relationships that were not seen as central to
the wrenching economic and diplomatic efforts being undertaken. The
former members of the Soviet bloc were single-mindedly driven by a
desire to join Western organizations like North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO), the European Union and a plethora of new bodies created
to ease the post-Soviet transition of Europe. The government of Prime
Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao was consumed by the need to open up the
crisis-ridden Indian economy and find a new foreign policy path with the
end of the Cold War. Central Europe was not seen as contributory to
either of these goals.
Prime Minister Rao’s foreign policy had two pillars. One was to attract
foreign investors to put a bet on the struggling Indian economy. The
other was to find interlocutors who could help India to foster a new, post-
Cold War relationship with the United States. The first goal led him to
visit Germany, his first overseas trip as prime minister, and then later shift
to Southeast Asia and South Korea in what was to become labelled India’s
Act East policy. The second goal led him to upgrade India’s relationship
with Israel, a country he believed would be best suited to facilitate the
development of a new post-Cold War relationship with the United States.
18 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
‘Prime Minister Rao realised that the road to Washington DC ran through
Tel Aviv’, writes his biographer (Sitapati, 2015). Israeli diplomats say he
was also interested in Israel as an alternative source of weapons as Russia
slipped into disarray.1 Central Europe was simply not part of this world-
view. India was quick to recognize the newly democratized regimes of
the Central European countries but had no vision beyond this. Rao even
visited two Central Asian countries en route to Russia for a state visit
to kick-off a new era of relations with these ex-Soviet republics but gave
Moscow’s European satellite countries a miss.
Central Europe, for its part, was in the throes of its own economic
restructuring as it sought to purge itself of Soviet era planning and state
dominance. Most of the former Soviet satellites were completely focussed
on bringing their economies, security arrangements and political systems
in line with the standards set by the EU under the Charter of Paris for a
New Europe, membership in the Organization of Security and Cooper-
ation in Europe and the requirements for adopting the Euro (European
Commission, 2014). India and much of the world barely registered in
all this. The economic restructuring that many of these countries had to
undergo—the term ‘shock therapy’ was used to describe some of the more
drastic versions—was far more painful than the dislocation India endured
from its own economic reforms (see Blanchard, 1991). The collapse
of Yugoslavia and the ethnic wars that followed were another distrac-
tion. Much of the Central European membership, including many of the
spinoff nations born out of the former Yugoslavia, left the Nonaligned
Movement to join NATO. It says something about how distracted India
was that this barely registered.
Normal diplomatic relations began to be restored from about 1992
onwards. Indian diplomats who served or dealt with Central Europe
say there was minimal ill-will over New Delhi’s support for Moscow. It
was largely understood India had been a marginal player in that part of
the world. When Lech Walesa, leader of the Solidarity movement which
helped overthrow Poland’s communist regime, came to India in 1994 on
a five-day presidential visit he bluntly asked the then Minister of State
for External Affairs, K. Natwar Singh, ‘Tell me where was India all these
10 years?’ Singh responded by saying, ‘I want to talk to you about the
future, not the past’. Singh admitted India no longer had any contacts in
1 Private conversation with senior Israeli diplomat, New Delhi, December 2006.
the region and had been caught unawares by what happened (Rasgotra,
1998: 154). However, Walesa made it a point to visit Jodhpur to see
the palace murals in Umaid Bhavan painted by Stefan Norblin, a Polish
artist who fled to India during the Second World War and stayed there
for a number of years rather than live under Stalinist rule (Marek, 2017;
Hamilton, 2019).
Similar acts of support by individual Indians are still remembered.
For example, M. N. Rahman, the Indian Charge d’Affaires during the
Hungarian uprising took the initiative to intervene with Moscow to save
the life of one of the participants of the uprising, the intellectual Arpad
Goncz. Goncz was imprisoned for six years, but survived and later served
as Hungary’s president from 1990 to 2000. Goncz later expressed the
view he was saved by India’s diplomatic intervention and made it a point
to have a delegation to India personally meet Rahman, by then retired
(Mohan, 2013). Similarly, H. P. Singh, a second secretary at the Indian
Embassy in Prague resigned in protest against the weakness of Indira
Gandhi’s response to the Soviet repression and achieved minor folk hero
status.2
Investment Era, 2001 to the Present

India’s minimal trade relationship with the communist governments of
Central Europe more or less collapsed with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The end of the rupee-rouble trade was the primary reason as well as the
economic disruption experienced by all the countries concerned at the
time. Local political upheavals such as the breakup of Czechoslovakia,
India’s main trading partner in the region during the Soviet era, and the
disintegration of Yugoslavia added to the economic malaise.
In the early 2000s, two companies with Indian connections arrived
in Poland with investments on their mind. One was ArcelorMittal, the
largest European steel maker but with an indirect Indian link through
the Calcutta origins of its owner, Lakshmi Mittal. ArcelorMittal bought
the newly privatized Polskie Huty Stali steel company in 2004 and today
owns about 70% of the country’s entire steel sector. The other firm was
Infosys, one of the largest Indian software firms, which set up a business
process outsourcing and information technology outsourcing centre in
2 Interview with Ronen Sen, former Indian ambassador to Russia and the United States,
who happened to be in Prague during the crisis, New Delhi, 2 August 2020.
20 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Lodz in 2007. By the time it celebrated its first decade in Poland, Infosys
had 2,700 employees and was being praised by Lodz business leaders for
having established their city’s reputation as a centre for business services
(infosysbm.com, 2017). The two firms served as trailblazers for the third
and most recent phase in India’s relationship with Central Europe, one
that revolves around investment.
In the decade before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subse-
quent global financial crisis, there was a surge in Indian overseas corporate
investment. Indian firms, buoyed by double-digit growth at home and
hefty profits, began expanding overseas. The EU, India’s single largest
trading partner, was an obvious point of interest. Indian manufacturing
industries and information technology service companies, looking to
invest in countries that gave them access to the EU market but also
offered low taxes and low labour costs, began looking at Central Europe
(Pradhan, 2008).
The Czech Republic was the largest investment hub for India in
Central Europe, in part because of corporate relationships that went back
to the communist era and when Czechoslovakia existed. One well-known
Czech firm, the shoe firm Bata, has had a commercial presence in India
since the British Raj. Czech strength in machinery, engineering and auto-
mobile components and its close integration with German industry have
been major attractions for Indian firms. Indian investment to the Czech
Republic largely reflect this competitive edge and now include a number
of major Indian heavy industrial manufacturers. Today, Indian firms like
Motherson Sumi Systems, Lloyd Electric and Engineering, and Ashok
Leyland have plants there. Indian FDI totalled $4.1 billion in 2017, up
from $1.67 billion in 2012 (UNCTAD, 2020; India, Embassy in Czech
Republic, 2020).
In Poland, thanks perhaps to Infosys’s success there, has seen a more
diversified portfolio of investment with a substantial portion in the
service sector including other IT service firms like Wipro. In manufac-
turing, Indian investment includes firms like Videocon, Escorts, Strides
Arcolab, Reliance Industries, Essel Propack, Zensar Technologies and
Berger Paints. Indian FDI into Poland is in the region of $3 billion (India,
Embassy in Poland, 2020a).
The second chapter in the investment story was the spread of Indian
firms into Hungary, Slovakia and to a lesser extent Romania, Bulgaria
and Croatia. Hungary has been a remarkable investment story for Indian
firms with Indian FDI rising from $9 million in 2012 to $1.5 billion in
2018. In 2014, India was the largest greenfield investor in the country.
Hungary has seen the entry of a large number of Indian IT service compa-
nies and specialized industrial acquisitions by Indian firms. Indian IT firms
who have set up in Hungary include Tata Consultancy Services (TCS),
Tech Mahindra, Genpact and Cognizant. The industrial investors include
Crompton Greaves, Apollo Tyres, SRF and Bakony Wipers. There have
been other, smaller stories of success including Indian small-scale agri-
cultural investments in Bulgaria and two-way pharmaceutical investments
with Croatia (India, Embassy in Hungary, 2020; Business Standard, 2019;
India, Embassy in Slovakia, 2020).
One set of Indian firms that have developed a footprint throughout
Central Europe were the pharmaceutical companies, many of which had
a presence dating back to the Soviet era. All of the major Central
European countries have Indian pharmaceutical investments with Sun
Pharma/Ranbaxy and Glenmark Pharmaceuticals having the largest pres-
ence.
The most recent accelerator for Indian investment has been the Brexit
referendum, the 2016 vote by the British public in favour of having their
country leave the EU. Britain has traditionally been overwhelmingly the
favourite destination of Indian corporate investment to Europe. Before
the Brexit referendum, Indian firms invested more in Britain than they
invested in the rest of Europe combined. This was despite trade relations
between India and Britain being relatively weak. Indian firms used Britain
as their gateway to the rest of the EU, a role threatened by the Brexit vote
and the uncertainty about the future trade relationship between Britain
and the EU. Many new Indian investors began to consider relocating to
the European continent. At the very least, the larger Indian firms began
adopting a ‘Britain plus one’ strategy: even if they retained their offices
or factories in Britain they would set up alternative centres of economic
activity in another EU member-state. The most prominent consequence
has been the decision of Jaguar Land Rover to build its newest factory in
Slovakia, reflecting the country’s emergence as a major automobile manu-
facturing hub. The $1.6 billion factory opened up in Slovakia in 2018. As
it is carried out by the British firm, the investment is tabulated as British
FDI into Slovakia even though Jaguar Land Rover is a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Tata Motors (Deutsche Welle, 2019).
There has been some Central European investment in India as well,
albeit on a smaller scale than the flow of investments in the other direc-
tion. Much of this has been by Czech firms, reflecting its advanced
22 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
industrial sector. Skoda Auto and Skoda Power have high brand recog-
nition in India. Vitkovice Machinery Group, ZKL Bearings, Bonatrans
and Tatra are among the other prominent Czech firms that have invested
in India. A variety of Polish firms, representing about $600 million in
investment, operate in India (India, Embassy in Poland, 2020b).
Two decades after the communist era, Central European govern-
ments now see India primarily as a major source of investment and, to
a lesser extent, trade in their countries. The larger more advanced coun-
tries of the region, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia,
have become aggressive about wooing Indian companies and developing
people-to-people exchanges. The largest Indian chambers of commerce
have released studies about the potential of business in Central Europe
(FICCI, 2015; Deloitte-CII, 2014).
Indian students, businessmen and tourists are actively wooed and a
number of airlines now have direct flights between Central Europe and
India. Ambassadors from countries like Poland and Hungary which have
seen the rise of nativist, right-wing governments privately stress that none
of the anti-immigrant sentiment in their countries has ever been directed
against Indians. Some of these countries have also seen a minor resur-
gence in the study of Indian culture and language, an echo of the strong
academic tradition of Indology that has existed in Central Europe for
centuries.
Strategic Era?
Indian foreign policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made a
deliberate attempt to reach out to parts of the world that have tradition-
ally received little attention from the Indian Government. This outreach
has included part of the Indian Ocean littoral region, the Pacific islands,
segments of Africa and the smaller countries of continental Europe. This
reflected the Modi government’s view that India’s interests had reached
the point the country needed to engage beyond the same 20 or so
countries that dominated New Delhi’s worldview.
The Brexit vote and Britain’s imminent departure from the EU has
also led to a re-evaluation of India’s overall European policy. Until the
Brexit vote, India was satisfied in having Britain serve as its primary inter-
locutor in Europe with subsidiary relationships with France and Germany.
London having removed itself from the picture, New Delhi began to
contemplate a European policy in which it maintained several points of
engagement. Modi signalled as much, and India officials confirmed that

this was the intent, when he visited France, Germany, Spain and Brussels
during his first major European tour.3 He also held a Nordic summit that
incorporated the three Scandinavian countries, Finland and Iceland.
The evidence points to Modi planning a similar regional outreach for
Central Europe, probably built around the four Visegrad countries plus
a few other Southeast European countries. India had started moving up
the diplomatic escalator towards that goal with simultaneous state visits
by Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in 2018 to Bulgaria and the Czech
Republic and Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu to Serbia and Romania,
followed by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar visiting Hungary and Poland
in August 2019 (Roy Chaudhury, 2018).
The joint communique issued after Jaishankar’s visit to Poland stated
that ‘he conveyed India’s readiness to engage more actively in the region
of Central Europe, which should have a positive impact on the overall
EU-India cooperation. He also expressed India’s desire to engage with
Poland in the Visegrad format’ (India, Ministry of External Affairs, 2019).
The COVID-19 pandemic that broke out in early 2020 put a hold on
any further movement in this direction and it remains to be seen whether
the pandemic’s economic and political consequences will allow the Modi
government to pick up the baton again.
There has been considerable commentary on Indian interest in coun-
tering China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Balkans and Central
Europe in general. While the Modi government has been active in
opposing the BRI and other Chinese strategic moves in the economic
and technological space, India has preferred to concentrate on providing
alternatives to BRI projects in the Indian Ocean and parts of the Maritime
Silk Road, the seaborne element of the BRI. It has announced plans for
joint infrastructure projects with Japan, for example, in the Bay of Bengal
area, Africa and the Indian Ocean island states. But India has treated the
BRI in Central Asia and Europe as beyond its scope of activity and best
left to other countries to handle. India may eventually carry out invest-
ments that thwart the ability of China to expand its influence in Central
Europe and the Balkans, but this will be a secondary goal of any such
activity in that region (Jaishankar, 2018; Roy Chaudhury, 2018).
3 Private conversations with senior Indian diplomats, New Delhi, June 2017.
24 P. PAL CHAUDHURI
Any Indian interest in working with a Visegrad plus formula in Central

Europe would be primarily driven by its desire to develop new points
of influence in Europe and within the EU. The Polish Foreign Minister,
Jacek Czaputowicz, made this implicit in the 2019 joint communique
where he ‘affirmed Poland‘s commitment to actively shape the EU-
India agenda to the benefit of both parties’ (India, Ministry of External
Affairs,2019). A secondary interest would be to garner support for some
of its multilateral goals including a permanent seat in the UN Secu-
rity Council and expanding its climate-oriented programmes like the
International Solar Alliance and the ‘One Sun, One World, One Grid’
proposal.
The Modi government’s strongest advocate for a more strategic
approach to Central Europe is believed to be Foreign Minister Jaishankar,
a person who began his diplomatic career in Hungary and Czechoslo-
vakia, is fluent in Russian and has a working knowledge of Hungarian.
India will also remain unwilling to adjust its strong, if waning, relation-
ship with Russia because of Central European concerns. New Delhi’s
response to the Russian occupation of Crimea4 had echoes of its response
to the Hungarian uprising. Nonetheless, the Modi government represents
the first attempt by New Delhi to conceive of a larger relationship with
Central Europe that treats the region as an autonomous element within
India’s foreign policy rather than a footnote of its relations with other
great powers.
References
Blanchard, O. et al. (1991). Reform in Eastern Europe MIT Press.
Business Standard. (2019, 27 August). ANI, Hungary seeks more investments
from India. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://www.business-standard.
4 Without explicitly invoking non-alignment, Prime Minister Modi had taken an iden-
tical position on the problem of Crimea, an erstwhile Russian-majority province of Ukraine
that broke away and declared its intention to join Russia in early 2014. Modi has said
that India’s effort will be ‘to sit together and talk, and to resolve problems in an ongoing
process’. Indeed, Modi has also referred to nations who ‘want to give advice’ and has
obliquely said, ‘they too have sinned in some way’. The remarkable parallel with 1956
is Nehru’s utter disdain for the West’s censure of Russia because Britain and France had
simultaneously attacked Egypt in what came to be known as the Suez Canal Crisis. In
both cases then, and now again vis-à-vis Crimea, India has made it amply clear that her
position on any issue was rooted in her assessment of the issue, and was independent of
Western or American thinking.
com/article/news-ani/hungary-seeks-more-investments-from-india-119082
701518_1.html.
Deloitte-CII. (2014, February). Trade and investment relations between
India and Central Europe: A study of opportunities. Retrieved July
20, 2020 from https://www2.deloitte.com/in/en/pages/tax/articles/trade-
and-invest.ment-relations-between-india-and-centraleurope.html.
Deutsche Welle. (2019, 30 April). Jaguar Land Rover Defender assembly moved
from UK to Slovakia. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://www.dw.com/
en/jaguar-land-rover-defender-assembly-moved-from-uk-to-slovakia/a-485
52552.
Dixit, J. N. (1998). Across borders: Fifty years of India’s foreign policy. Picus
Books.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation.
(2014). 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain: The State of inte-
gration of East and West in the European Union. European Commission,
2014. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://ec.europa.eu/research/social-
sciences/pdf/policy_reviews/east-west_integration.pdfFICCI.
FICCI. (2015). India and Central Europe: Harnessing business complementaries.
October 2015, Retrieved July 20, 2020 from http://ficci.in/spdocument/
20704/India-&-Central-Europe-Harnessing-Business-Complementarities.pdf
Hamilton, B. (2019, January 8). The Maharaja of Jodhpur. The renaissance of
portrait. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from http://basiahamilton.blogspot.com/
2008/10/maharaja-of-jodhpur.html.
India, Embassy in Czech Republic. (2020, July). India-Czech Republic economic
relations. eoiprague.gov.in. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://www.eoi
prague.gov.in/docs/1594892647India-Czech%20Economic%20Relations%
20(1).pdf.
India, Embassy in Hungary. (2020). India-Hungary relations. eoibu-
dapest.gov.in. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://www.eoibudapest.gov.
in/page/india-hungary-relations/.
India, Embassy in Poland. (2020a). Indian Companies in Poland. Retrieved July
20, 2020 from https://www.indianembassywarsaw.gov.in/eoi.php?id=com_
india.
India, Embassy in Poland. (2020b). Polish Investment in India. Retrieved July
20, 2020 from https://www.indianembassywarsaw.gov.in/eoi.php?id=pol_inv
estment.
India, Embassy in Slovakia. (2020). India-Slovakia economic relations. Retrieved
July 20, 2020 from http://www.eoibratislava.gov.in/economic-relations.php.
India, Ministry of External Affairs. (2019, August 29). Joint statement of
the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of India and Poland. Retrieved July
20, 2020 https://mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/31777/joint+sta
tement+of+the+ministers+of+foreign+affairs+of+india+and+poland.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cotton
Kingdom, volume 2 (of 2)
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Title: The Cotton Kingdom, volume 2 (of 2)

A traveller's observations on cotton and slavery in the
American Slave States
Author: Frederick Law Olmsted
Release date: January 11, 2024 [eBook #72677]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Mason Brothers, 1861
Credits: Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

COTTON KINGDOM, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***
Transcriber’s Notes
Inconsistent hyphenation, capitalization, and spelling in
the original document have been preserved. Obvious
typographical errors have been corrected.
Quotes in dialect were not corrected.
The following are possible errors, but retained:
but I havn’t got through with you yet. (page 10)

venemous water-snakes, (page 24)
Barbecued rabits. (page 57)
Rasins (page 57)
prehaps you’ll never see a stage again; (page 66)
Page 76 and 77 (Numerous possible spelling
errors).
Your equaility is acknowledged (page 143)
As to the moralty of this question (page 234)
lagunes, and jungles (page 257)
a caldron which stood over the fire (page 316)
the moral physican (page 344)
Download Volume 1 at
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72676.
JOURNEYS AND
EXPLORATIONS
IN
THE COTTON KINGDOM OF

AMERICA.
THE
COTTON KINGDOM:
A TRAVELLER’S OBSERVATIONS ON COTTON AND SLAVERY IN THE

AMERICAN SLAVE STATES.
BASED UPON THREE FORMER VOLUMES OF JOURNEYS AND INVESTIGATIONS BY THE SAME
AUTHOR.
BY
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY MASON BROTHERS,
5 and 7 MERCER STREET.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO., 47 LUDGATE HILL.
1861.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
MASON BROTHERS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern
District of New York.
PRINTED BY
C. A. Alvord,
15 Vandewater-st.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
SOUTH-WESTERN LOUISIANA AND EASTERN 1
TEXAS
CHAPTER II.
A TRIP INTO NORTHERN MISSISSIPPI 55
CHAPTER III.
THE INTERIOR COTTON DISTRICTS—CENTRAL 84
MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA,
ETC.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EXCEPTIONAL LARGE PLANTERS 143
CHAPTER V.
SLAVERY IN ITS PROPERTY ASPECT.—MORAL AND 184
RELIGIOUS
INSTRUCTION OF THE SLAVES, ETC.
CHAPTER VI.
SLAVERY AS A POOR LAW SYSTEM 236
CHAPTER VII.
COTTON SUPPLY AND WHITE LABOUR IN THE 252
COTTON CLIMATE
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE 272
PRIVILEGED CLASSES
OF THE SOUTH
CHAPTER IX.
THE DANGER OF THE SOUTH 338
APPENDIX (A.)
THE CONDITION OF VIRGINIA.—STATISTICS 364
APPENDIX (B.)
THE SLAVE TRADE IN VIRGINIA 372
APPENDIX (C.)
COST OF LABOUR IN THE BORDER STATES 380
APPENDIX (D.)
STATISTICS OF THE GEORGIA SEABOARD 385
INDEX TO THE WORK 393

COTTON AND SLAVERY.
CHAPTER I.
SOUTH-WESTERN LOUISIANA AND EASTERN
TEXAS.
Nacogdoches.—In this town of 500 inhabitants, we found there was

no flour. At San Augustine we had inquired in vain at all the stores
for refined sugar. Not satisfied with some blankets that were shown
us, we were politely recommended by the shopkeeper to try other
stores. At each of the other stores we were told they had none: the
only blankets in town we should find at ——’s, naming the one we
had just quitted. The same thing occurred with several other articles.
Houston County.—This day’s ride and the next were through a very
poor country, clay or sand soil, bearing short oaks and black-jack.
We passed one small meadow, or prairie, covered with coarse grass.
Deserted plantations appeared again in greater numbers than the
occupied. One farm, near which we stopped, was worked by eight
field hands. The crop had been fifty bales; small, owing to a dry
season. The corn had been exceedingly poor. The hands, we
noticed, came in from the fields after eight o’clock.
The deserted houses, B. said, were built before the date of Texan
Independence. After Annexation the owners had moved on to better
lands in the West. One house he pointed out as having been the
residence of one of a band of pirates who occupied the country thirty
or forty years ago. They had all been gradually killed.
During the day we met two men on horseback, one upon wheels,
and passed one emigrant family. This was all the motion upon the
principal road of the district.
The second day’s camp was a few miles beyond the town of
Crockett, the shire-town of Houston County. Not being able to find
corn for our horses, we returned to the village for it.
We obtained what we wanted for a day’s rest, which we proposed for
Sunday, the following day, and loaded it into our emptied hampers.
We then looked about the town for current provisions for ourselves.
We were rejoiced to find a German baker, but damped by finding he
had only molasses-cakes and candies for sale. There was no flour in
the town, except the little of which he made his cakes. He was from
Hamburgh, and though he found a tolerable sale, to emigrants
principally, he was very tired of Crockett, and intended to move to
San Antonio among his countrymen. He offered us coffee, and said
he had had beer, but on Christmas-day a mass of people called on
him; he had “treated” them all, and they had finished his supply.
We inquired at seven stores, and at the two inns for butter, flour, or
wheat-bread, and fresh meat. There was none in town. One
innkeeper offered us salt beef, the only meat, except pork, in town.
At the stores we found crackers, worth in New York 6 cents a pound,
sold here at 20 cents; poor raisins, 30 cents; Manilla rope, half-inch,
30 cents a pound. When butter was to be had it came in firkins from
New York, although an excellent grazing country is near the town.
Trinity Bottom.—On landing on the west side of the Trinity, we

entered a rich bottom, even in winter, of an almost tropical aspect.
The road had been cut through a cane-brake, itself a sort of
Brobdignag grass. Immense trees, of a great variety of kinds,
interlaced their branches and reeled with their own rank growth.
Many vines, especially huge grape-vines, ran hanging from tree to
tree, adding to the luxuriant confusion. Spanish moss clung thick
everywhere, supplying the shadows of a winter foliage.
These bottom lands bordering the Trinity are among the richest of
rich Texas. They are not considered equal, in degree of fatness, to
some parts of the Brazos, Colorado, and Guadaloupe bottoms, but
are thought to have compensation in reliability for steady cropping.
We made our camp on the edge of the bottom, and for safety against
our dirty persecutors, the hogs, pitched our tent within a large hog-
yard, putting up the bars to exclude them. The trees within had been
sparingly cut, and we easily found tent-poles and fuel at hand.
The plantation on which we were thus intruding had just been sold,
we learned, at two dollars per acre. There were seven hundred
acres, and the buildings, with a new gin-house, worth nearly one
thousand dollars, were included in the price. With the land were sold
eight prime field-hands. A quarter of the land was probably subject to
overflow, and the limits extended over some unproductive upland.
When field-hands are sold in this way with the land, the family
servants, who have usually been selected from the field-hands, must
be detached to follow the fortunes of the seller. When, on the other
hand, the land is sold simply, the whole body of slaves move away,
leaving frequently wives and children on neighbouring plantations.
Such a cause of separation must be exceedingly common among
the restless, almost nomadic, small proprietors of the South.
But the very word “sale,” applied to a slave, implies this cruelty,
leaving, of course, the creature’s whole happiness to his owner’s
discretion and humanity.
As if to give the lie to our reflections, however, the rascals here
appeared to be particularly jolly, perhaps adopting Mark Tapley’s
good principles. They were astir half the night, talking, joking, and
singing loud and merrily.
This plantation had made this year seven bales to the hand. The
water for the house, we noticed, was brought upon heads a quarter
of a mile, from a rain-pool, in which an old negress was washing.
At an old Settler’s.—The room was fourteen feet square, with

battens of split boards tacked on between the broader openings of
the logs. Above, it was open to the rafters, and in many places the
sky could be seen between the shingles of the roof. A rough board
box, three feet square, with a shelf in it, contained the crockery-ware
of the establishment; another similar box held the store of meal,
coffee, sugar, and salt; a log crib at the horse-pen held the corn,
from which the meal was daily ground, and a log smoke or store-
house contained the store of pork. A canopy-bed filled one quarter of
the room; a cradle, four chairs seated with untanned deer-hide, a
table, a skillet or bake-kettle, a coffee-kettle, a frying-pan, and a rifle
laid across two wooden pegs on the chimney, with a string of
patches, powder-horn, pouch, and hunting-knife, completed the
furniture of the house. We all sat with hats and overcoats on, and the
woman cooked in bonnet and shawl. As I sat in the chimney-corner I
could put both my hands out, one laid on the other, between the
stones of the fire-place and the logs of the wall.
A pallet of quilts and blankets was spread for us in the lean-to, just
between the two doors. We slept in all our clothes, including
overcoats, hats, and boots, and covered entirely with blankets. At
seven in the morning, when we threw them off, the mercury in the
thermometer in our saddle-bags, which we had used for a pillow,
stood at 25° Fahrenheit.
We contrived to make cloaks and hoods from our blankets, and after
going through with the fry, coffee and pone again, and paying one
dollar each for the entertainment of ourselves and horses, we
continued our journey.
Caldwell.—Late in the same evening we reached a hamlet, the “seat

of justice” of Burleson County. We were obliged to leave our horses
in a stable, made up of a roof, in which was a loft for the storage of
provender, set upon posts, without side-boarding, so that the norther
met with no obstruction. It was filled with horses, and ours alone
were blanketed for the night. The mangers were very shallow and
narrow, and as the corn was fed on the cob, a considerable
proportion of it was thrown out by the horses in their efforts to detach
the edible portion. With laudable economy, our landlord had twenty-
five or thirty pigs running at large in the stable, to prevent this
overflow from being wasted.
The “hotel” was an unusually large and fine one; the principal room
had glass windows. Several panes of these were, however, broken,
and the outside door could not be closed from without; and when
closed, was generally pried open with a pocket-knife by those who
wished to go out. A great part of the time it was left open. Supper
was served in another room, in which there was no fire, and the
outside door was left open for the convenience of the servants in
passing to and from the kitchen, which, as usual here at large
houses, was in a detached building. Supper was, however, eaten
with such rapidity that nothing had time to freeze on the table.
There were six Texans, planters and herdsmen, who had made
harbour at the inn for the norther, two German shopkeepers and a
young lawyer, who were boarders, besides our party of three, who
had to be seated before the fire. We kept coats and hats on, and
gained as much warmth, from the friendly manner in which we drew
together, as possible. After ascertaining, by a not at all impertinent or
inconsiderate method of inquiry, where we were from, which way we
were going, what we thought of the country, what we thought of the
weather, and what were the capacities and the cost of our fire-arms,
we were considered as initiated members of the crowd, and “the
conversation became general.”
The matter of most interest came up in this wise: “The man made a
white boy, fourteen or fifteen years old, get up and go out in the
norther for wood, when there was a great, strong nigger fellow lying
on the floor doing nothing. God! I had an appetite to give him a
hundred, right there.”
“Why, you wouldn’t go out into the norther yourself, would you, if you
were not obliged to?” inquired one, laughingly.
“I wouldn’t have a nigger in my house that I was afraid to set to work,
at anything I wanted him to do, at any time. They’d hired him out to
go to a new place next Thursday, and they were afraid if they didn’t
treat him well, he’d run away. If I couldn’t break a nigger of running
away, I wouldn’t have him any how.”
“I can tell you how you can break a nigger of running away, certain,”
said another. “There was an old fellow I used to know in Georgia,
that always cured his so. If a nigger ran away, when he caught him,
he would bind his knee over a log, and fasten him so he couldn’t stir;
then he’d take a pair of pincers and pull one of his toe-nails out by
the roots; and tell him that if he ever run away again, he would pull
out two of them, and if he run away again after that, he told them
he’d pull out four of them, and so on, doubling each time. He never
had to do it more than twice—it always cured them.”
One of the company then said that he was at the present time in
pursuit of a negro. He had bought him of a relative in Mississippi,
and had been told that he was a great runaway. He had, in fact, run
away from his relative three times, and always when they caught him
he was trying to get back to Illinois;[1] that was the reason he sold
him. “He offered him to me cheap,” he continued, “and I bought him
because he was a first-rate nigger, and I thought perhaps I could
break him of running away by bringing him down to this new country.
I expect he’s making for Mexico now. I am a-most sure I saw his
tracks on the road about twelve miles back, where he was a-coming
on this way. Night before last I engaged with a man who’s got some
first-rate nigger dogs to meet me here to-night; but I suppose the
cold keeps him back.” He then asked us to look out for him as we
went on west, and gave us a minute description of him that we might
recognize him. He was “a real black nigger,” and carried off a
double-barrelled gun with him. Another man, who was going on by
another road westward, offered to look for him that way, and to
advertise him. Would he be likely to defend himself with the gun if he
should try to secure him? he asked. The owner said he had no doubt
he would. He was as humble a nigger when he was at work as ever
he had seen; but he was a mighty resolute nigger—there was no
man had more resolution. “Couldn’t I induce him to let me take the
gun by pretending I wanted to look at it, or something? I’d talk to him
simple; make as if I was a stranger, and ask him about the road, and
so on, and finally ask him what he had got for a gun, and to let me
look at it.” The owner didn’t believe he’d let go of the gun; he was a
“nigger of sense—as much sense as a white man; he was not one of
your kinkey-headed niggers.” The chances of catching him were
discussed. Some thought they were good, and some that the owner
might almost as well give it up, he’d got such a start. It was three
hundred miles to the Mexican frontier, and he’d have to make fires to
cook the game he would kill, and could travel only at night; but then
every nigger or Mexican he could find would help him, and if he had
so much sense, he’d manage to find out his way pretty straight, and
yet not have white folks see him.
We slept in a large upper room, in a company of five, with a broken
window at the head of our bed, and another at our side, offering a
short cut to the norther across our heads.
We were greatly amused to see one of our bed-room companions
gravely spit in the candle before jumping into bed, explaining to
some one who made a remark, that he always did so, it gave him
time to see what he was about before it went out.
The next morning the ground was covered with sleet, and the gale
still continued (a pretty steady close-reefing breeze) during the day.
We wished to have a horse shod. The blacksmith, who was a white
man, we found in his shop, cleaning a fowling-piece. It was too d——
d cold to work, he said, and he was going to shoot some geese; he,
at length, at our urgent request, consented to earn a dollar; but, after
getting on his apron, he found that we had lost a shoe, and took it off
again, refusing to make a shoe while this d——d norther lasted, for
any man. As he had no shoes ready made, he absolutely turned us
out of the shop, and obliged us to go seventy-five miles further, a
great part of the way over a pebbly road, by which the beast lost
three shoes before he could be shod.
This respect for the north wind is by no means singular here. The
publication of the week’s newspaper in Bastrop was interrupted by
the norther, the editor mentioning, as a sufficient reason for the
irregularity, the fact that his printing-office was in the north part of the
house.

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Reform Era, 1989–2001

Investment Era, 2001 to the Present

engagement. Modi signalled as much, and India officials confirmed that

Any Indian interest in working with a Visegrad plus formula in Central

Title: The Cotton Kingdom, volume 2 (of 2)

Author: Frederick Law Olmsted

Release date: January 11, 2024 [eBook #72677]

Original publication: New York: Mason Brothers, 1861

Credits: Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

but I havn’t got through with you yet. (page 10)