How India Clothed The World: The World Of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850 (global Economic History Series)

Edited by Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capital across wide geographic spaces. South Asia has been central to the making of these global exchanges over time. This volume presents innovative research that explores the dynamic ways in which diverse textile production and trade regions generated the ’first globalization’. A series of experts connect this global commodity with the dramatic political and economic transformations that characterised the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Collectively, the essays transform our understanding of the contribution of South Asian cloth to the making of the modern world economy. Drawing on new research on textile trade and production in the regions that depended on the Indian Ocean, the book contributes to a new understanding of the role that Indian cloth played in the making of the modern world economy. Giorgio Riello, Ph.D. (2002) in History, University College London, is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick. He has published on early modern textiles, dress and fashion in Europe and Asia. Tirthankar Roy, Ph.D. (1989) in Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, is a Lecturer of Economic History at London School of Economics. He has published extensively on the economic and social history of modern and early modern South Asia, and has contributed to the textile history of the region in particular. CONTENTS......Page 6 List of Figures and Maps......Page 10 Colour Plates......Page 14 List of Tables......Page 30 Prologue......Page 32 Preface......Page 34 Introduction: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy)......Page 36 PART I REGIONS OF EXCHANGE: TEXTILES IN THE INDIAN OCEAN AND BEYOND......Page 64 Southeast Asian Consumption of Indian and British Cotton Cloth, 1600–1850 (Anthony Reid)......Page 66 Cloths of a New Fashion: Indian Ocean Networks of Exchange and Cloth Zones of Contact in Africa and India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Pedro Machado)......Page 88 English versus Indian Cotton Textiles: The Impact of Imports on Cotton Textile Production in West Africa (Joseph E. Inikori)......Page 120 British Exports of Raw Cotton from India to China during the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (H. V. Bowen)......Page 150 The Resurgence of Intra-Asian Trade, 1800–1850 (Kaoru Sugihara)......Page 174 PART II REGIONS OF PRODUCTION: TEXTILES IN SOUTH ASIA......Page 206 The Textile Industry and the Economy of South India, 1500–1800 (David Washbrook)......Page 208 Four Centuries of Decline? Understanding the Changing Structure of the South Indian Textile Industry (Ian C. Wendt)......Page 228 From Market-Determined to Coercion-Based: Textile Manufacturing in Eighteenth-Century Bengal (Om Prakash)......Page 252 The Political Economy of Textiles in Western India: Weavers, Merchants and the Transition to a Colonial Economy (Lakshmi Subramanian)......Page 288 Competition and Control in the Market for Textiles: Indian Weavers and the English East India Company in the Eighteenth Century (Bishnupriya Gupta)......Page 316 PART III REGIONS OF CHANGE: INDIAN TEXTILES AND EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENT......Page 342 The Indian Apprenticeship: The Trade of Indian Textiles and the Making of European Cottons (Giorgio Riello)......Page 344 The French Connection: Indian Cottons and Their Early Modern Technology (George Bryan Souza)......Page 382 Fashioning Global Trade: Indian Textiles, Gender Meanings and European Consumers, 1500–1800 (Beverly Lemire)......Page 400 Quality, Cotton and the Global Luxury Trade (Maxine Berg)......Page 426 Historical Issues of Deindustrialization in Nineteenth-Century South India (Prasannan Parthasarathi)......Page 450 Glossary......Page 472 Bibliography......Page 478 Notes on Contributors......Page 508 Index......Page 512

Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capital across wide geographic spaces. South Asia has been central to the making of these global exchanges over time. This volume presents innovative research that explores the dynamic ways in which diverse textile production and trade regions generated the ’first globalization’. A series of experts connect this global commodity with the dramatic political and economic transformations that characterised the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Collectively, the essays transform our understanding of the contribution of South Asian cloth to the making of the modern world economy.