Because of its high value as a trading commodity, indigo was often referred to as blue gold. It has been the foundation of textile export from India for centuries. As its demand increased during the industrialization in Britain (as it was most suitable for cotton and also required for navy uniforms), its production also increased and so did the oppression by white planters.

Although peasant resistance (Eg Indigo revolt) led to reduction in planters’ oppression. However, indigo plantation moved away from Bengal and into Bihar. That is where the Champaran satyagraha took place during Gandhian era. However, it was in reality its unprofitability in the world market because of new inventions that led to reduction in its production.

These inventions took place in Germany where the foundation of Industrial revolution was not the mechanization of process but the invention of scientific techniques like modern synthetic chemistry.

By the late 19th century nearly all indigo came from indigo bush plantations in India. The German chemist Adolf Baeyer succeeded in making it in the laboratory in 1878, but it took nearly three decades to find a method of making synthetic indigo on a large scale. The breakthrough came in 1890 when Karl Heumann in Zurich found a way of making indigo from aniline. A lucky accident at the German firm BASF involving a broken thermometer then revealed that mercury was a catalyst for a key part of the synthesis and BASF started the production of synthetic indigo in 1897. Johannes Pfleger then discovered a better route to synthetic indigo which was used by BASF’s competitor Hoechst.