2009 The Spinning World - 1200 1850

THE SPINNING
WORLD
A Global History of
Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850
EDITED BY
GIORGIO RIELLO
AND
PRASANNAN PARTHASARA THI
PASOLD RESEARCH FUND

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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations Vlll
List of Maps Xl
List of Figures Xll
List of Tables Xlll
Preface xv
Introduction: Cotton Textiles and Global History I

PrasannanParthasarathiand GiorgioRiello
PARTI
World Areas of Cotton Textile Manufacturing
1. Cotton Textiles in the Indian Subcontinent, 1200-1800

PrasannanParthasarathi
2. The Resistant Fibre: Cotton Textiles in Imperial China 43
Harriet T. Zurndorfer
3. The/First European Cotton Industry: Italy and Germany,
1100-1800
Maureen FennellMazzaoui
4. Ottoman Cotton Textiles: The Story of a Success that did not
Last, 1500-1800 89
Suraiya Faroqhi
5. 'Guinea Cloth': Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles
in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade-· 105
ColleenE. Kriger
6. The Production of Cotton Textiles in Early Modern
South-East Asia 127
William GervaseClarence-Smith
PART II
Global Trade and Consumption of Cotton Textiles
7. The Dutch and the Indian Ocean Textile Trade 145

Om Prakash
Vl Contents
8. Awash in a Sea of Cloth: Gujarat, Africa, and the Western Indian

Ocean, 1300-1800 161
Pedro Machado
9. Japan Indianized: The Material Culture oflmported Textiles
inJapan, 1550-1850 181
Fujita Kayoko
IO. Revising the Historical Narrative: India, Europe, and the Cotton
Trade, c.1300-1800 205
Beverly Lemire
11. Cottons Consumption in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-
Century North Atlantic 227
Robert S. DuPlessis
12. Fashion, Race, and Cotton Textiles in Colonial Spanish America 247
Marta V. Vicente
13. The Globalization of Cotton Textiles: Indian Cottons, Europe,
and the Atlantic World, 1600-1850 261
Giorgio Riello
PART III
Cotton Revolutions and their Consequences in Europe and Asia
14. The Birth of a New European Industry: L'Indiennage in

Seventeenth-Century Marseilles 291
Olivier Raveux
15. What were Cottons for in the Early Industrial Revolution? 307
John Styles
16. The Limits of Wool and the Potential of Cotton in the Eighteenth
and Early Nineteenth Centuries 327
Pat Hudson
17. The Geopolitics of a Global Industry: Eurasian Divergence and
the Mechanization of Cotton Text* Production in England 351
Patrick O'Brien
18. Cotton and the Peasant Economy: A Foreign Fibre in Early
Modern Japan 367
Masayuki Tanimoto
19. Involution and Chinese Cotton Textile Production: Songjiang in
the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 387
Bozhong Li
Contents vu
20. Decline in Three Keys: Indian Cotton Manufacturing from the

Late Eighteenth Century 397
Prasannan Parthasarathi and Ian Wendt
Glossary 409
Bibliography 421
Notes on Contributors 469

Index 475
I
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plates numberedin italicsalso appearin the colourplate section,betweenpp. 240 and 241
I.I. 'Cleaning the cotton from the seeds', watercolour, 1798- 1804 24
1.2. Indian cotton carder, engraving, 1774-81 25
1.3. An Indian weaver, from Frederick Shoberl, The World in
Miniature (1821-27) 26
1+ Method of printing chintz in India, watercolour, c. 1820 28
1-5. A nobleman seated smoking on a terrace, 1750-4 34
1.6. Cloth merchant seated in his shop selling chintz to a customer,
c.1800 35
1.7. Skirmish between Mughal and Rajput forces from the Akbarnama
(159()----{)5) 37
2.1. Multi-spindle spinning machine for spinning silk or ramie from
the Nongshu tupu (1313) 52
3.1. 'yenice Receiving Homage from Conquered Cit~~:iJate 1
sixteenth century ·· 66
3.2. 'Perugia' towel, fifteenth-sixteenth century 68
3.3. 'Perugia' towel, fifteenth-sixteenth century 72
3+ Furnishing fabric, 1600-1640 84
4.1. Village women spinning near the River Lorn, 1860s or early 1870s 98
5.1. Cotton tunic, plain weave check, eleventh-twelfth century 109
5.2. Detail, cotton wrapper, alternating strips of plain weave check
and stripes II8
5.3. Detail, cotton wrapper, alternating areas of plain weave white
and stripes II8
5.4. Detail, woman's cotton head cloth, plain weave check Il9
5.5. Detail, woman's cotton wrapper, plain weave strips Il9
6.1. Block-printed, mordant-dyed, and painted longcloth produced in
Gujarat, c.1680-1720 132
6.2. 'Dodot', ceremonial skirt-clot~, resist-dyed cotton, late
eighteenth century 136
7.1. Painted cotton cloth produced on the Coromandel Coast, late
seventeenth century 147
List of Illustrations lX
7.2. Painted and dyed palampore produced on the Coromandel

Coast, c.1730 155
7.3. Mordant-dyed and painted cotton produced on the Coromandel
Coast, eighteenth century 158
8. 1. Q!iay at Mozambique Island, 1809 164
9.1. 'La Femme exotica', early nineteenth century 182
9.2. 'The new urban fashion culture of the mid-Edo period',
mid-eighteenth century 192
9.3. 'Dranken Boer' (Drunken farmer), doll, 1823-30 193
9.4. Sample pieces of hand-woven cotton fabrics, 1823-30 193
9-5. Sample piece, second half of the nineteenth century 194
9.6. 'Selling textile imports', late sixteenth century 195
9-7- 'Nagasaki sarasa', first half of the nineteenth century 199
9.8. Sample books of textiles, first half of the nineteenth century 200
9.9. Japanese woodblock print, 1787-8 201
9. 1 o. Sarasa print undergarment, second half of the nineteenth/ first
half of the twentieth century 202
JO.I. Gujarati block-printed cloth traded to Indonesia and detail, c.1400 209
rn.2. Gujarati block-printed cotton, excavated at Fustat, Egypt, c.1400 210
IO.J. GJjarati block printed cotton, excavated at Fustat, Egypt 211
10+ English crewel-work bed curtain, 1690--1700 216
10.5. Bed curtain, Indian cotton painted and dyed, c.1700 220
rn.6. Hanging, cotton painted and dyed, c.1700 220
10.7. British-made muslin apron, 1785--90 225
10.8. British block-printed glazed cotton gown, 1795-1800 225
II.I. Sir John Caldwell, anonymous artist, c.1774-80 239
r2.r. Jose de Alcibar (attrib.), De espafioly negra,mulato, c.1760 257
r2.2. Miguel Cabrera, De indioy barsina;Zambayga, 1763 257
13.1. Doll's house belonging to Petronella Dunois, 1676 268
13.2. Painted and dyed cotton banyan, c.1750--75 270
IJ.J. A Dutch woman, from The Costumeof the Netherlands (1817) 272
r3.4. Hat-brim lining, printed and painted cotton, India, eighteenth
century 272
X List of Illustrations
13-5. Block-printed, painted, and resist- and mordant-dyed Kalamkari,

~1850 277
13.6. Bed curtain, plate-printed cotton, 1770--1780 279
13.7. Piece of a checked handkerchief, block-printed cotton, 1760 282
Chafarcani produced in Provence or imported into Marseilles
1 4. 1.
before 1759 293

14.2. Diyarbakir and Kurdistan in 1682 299
15.1. 'Flowered cotten', 1759 313
15.2. 'Flowered lining', 1759 313
15.3. Central panel of a cotton counterpane, 1809 315
16.1. A woman spinning and carding wool, from The Costume of
Yorkshire (1814) 349
17.1. The Louisbourg/Britannia Flag, 1745 356
18.1. A cotton-weaving peasant household in the Kawachi region,
south-east of Osaka 370
19.1. 'An old woman twisting cotton', 1800 391
19.2. 'A woman weaving cotton', 1800 392
19.3. 'Cotton ferry', 1800 392
20. 1. Gandhi spinning cotton in Bir la House, Mumbai, 1942 403
LIST OF MAPS
I.I. Cotton textile centres in India, 1200-1800 19

2.1. Path of diffusion of cotton cultivation in China, third to the
twelfth centuries 47
2.2. Songjiang prefecture in Jiangnan 50
3.1. Production and trade oflinens and cottons in Europe, thirteenth
to fifteenth centuries 65
3.2. Areas of production offustians in Italy, 1100-1800 70
3.3. Centres of production of fustians in medieval and early modern
Lombardy 71
4.1. Major cotton centres of the Ottoman Empire 90
5.1. Centres of cotton textile production in West Africa, c.1000-1500 108
5.2. General areas of cotton textile production and cotton textile
exports in West Africa during the Guinea trade, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries 113
6.1. Areas of cotton trade and production in South-East Asia 128
7.1. Principal places of cotton textile trade in the Indian Ocean 146
8.1. Aleas of cotton textile trade in the western part of the Indian
Ocean 162
18.1. Areas of cotton production in Japan 373
LIST OF FIGURES
9.1. Value of the major items imported into Nagasaki by the VOC,
1641-1800 184
9.2. Value of the VOC's textile imports into Nagasaki, 1641-1800 189
16.1. Raw wool and cotton price indices 335
16.2. Kent long raw wool and raw cotton price indices compared with
the Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz Price Index 336
18.1. The organization of the production and distribution of striped
cotton in the Iruma district, 183os-188os 384
LIST OF TABLES
1.1. Wages in the mid-eighteenth century 31

1.2. Estimates of the share of cotton cloth production purchased for
export by English and Dutch East India Companies 39
2. 1. The chronology and geographical diffusion of cotton cultivation
in southern China
9.1. Textile imports to Nagasaki by the VOC in 1672
11.1. Textiles in merchant stocks, 168os and 1690s 229
11.2. Textiles in merchant stocks, 1730-1739 230
11.3. Textiles in merchant stocks, 1760--1769 231
11+ Cotton garments in three French New World colonies 232
13.1. Textiles imported from Asia into Europe by the English, Dutch,
and French East India Companies, 1665-1834
13.2. Destinations of the textile exports of Great Britain and France,
1787-1820 285
15.1. Old Bailey cases that mention printed/painted fabrics, 1674-1834
15.2. Mean values of gowns, 1770--1789
15.3. 01&Bailey cases that mention counterpanes, 1674-1829
15-4- Old Bailey cases that mention shirts or shifts, 1674-1829
15.5. Stolen shifts and shirts, West Riding of Yorkshire Quarter
Sessions indictments, 1750-1759, 1780--1789, and 1824-1825
15.6. Old Bailey cases that mention sheets, 1674-1829
15.7. Old Bailey Cases that mention fustians and thicksets, 1674-1829
15.8. Old Bailey cases that mention jeans, velverets, and nankeens,
1674-1829 324
18.1. Annual provision of clothing in the region of Akita, 1808-1810 372
18.2. Production, payment, and consumption of cotton cloth in the
Niikawa district, mid-nineteenth century 374
18.3. Occupation of peasant households in Udaoutsu village, Izumi
district, 1843 377
18-4- Distribution of imported cotton yarn to the weaving districts,
1878-1879
18.5. Production of striped cotton cloth in lruma district, c.1875
PREFACE
This book is a product of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN), a

global network of scholars that was housed at the London School of Economics
from 2003 to 2007 with the financial support of the Leverhulme Trust.
Many of the papers contained in this volume were presented at a GEHN con-
ference on cotton textiles held in Padua, Italy, in October 2005. We would like
to thank the University of Padua and the Head of the History Department,
Giovanni Luigi Fontana, for their kind hospitality and assistance with that
meeting. Our thanks also go to the Fondation des Treilles where a conference
on cotton textiles was held in March 2006 and to Tirthankar Roy, the organiser
of a second GEHN conference on cotton textiles held in Pune, India, in
December 2006. Several of the papers in this book were presented at these
venues. We are indebted as well to the International Economic History
Association for giving us the opportunity to present the overall results of these
conferences at the Helsinki Congress in August 2006. The 'cotton session' was
organised in collaboration with Kent Deng who we warmly thank.
Our colleagues at the University of Warwick and Boston College provided
support and encouragement during the editing of this book. Andrew
Littlejohns, Raffaella Mase,Juliet Schor, Krishna and Sulakshana and Richard
Butler were critical in the preparation of the manuscript and Jackie Pritchard
was a superb copyeditor. John Saunders steered the manuscript through the
production process with great aplomb. Pat Hudson, Director of the Pasold
Fund and editor of the series, provided much assistance at all stages.
Finally, we are grateful to the Scouloudi Foundation, the University of
Warwick, and Patrick Maney, Dean of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, for
the financial support that made possible the reproduction of the images, Kevin
Bedell, Vice Provost for Research at Boston College, and David Quigley,
Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences at Boston College, for funds that financed
the compilation of the index, and the Pasold Fund and Leverhulme Foundation
for supporting the publication of this volume.
Our journey into the global history of cotton textiles would not have been
successful without the support, guidance and intellectual direction provided by
Patrick O'Brien, Centennial Professor of Global History at the London School
of Economics and Director of the Global Economic History Network. This
volume is dedicated to him.
GR and PP
May2009
INTRODUCTION
Cotton Textiles and Global History
PRASANNAN PARTHASARATHI AND GIORGIO RIELLO
Eric Hobsbawm famously wrote, 'Whoever says Industrial Revolution says

cotton.' 1 While this statement would be much qualified today, there is little
doubt that cotton textiles were central from the late eighteenth century and in
the nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrialization of Britain, the United
States, India, Japan, China, and elsewhere. 2 Cotton textile mills, whether in
Europe, North America, or Asia, have become synonymous with the world in
which we live, dominated by capital-intensive mass production, complex forms
of distribution, and high levels of consumption. While this modern history of
cotton textiles is well known and well recognized, the medieval and early
modern historical antecedents and their connections with modern industrial-
ization are far less examined. The purpose of this volume is to explore the pre-
history of cotton, and to point to important links with more familiar narratives
of cotton~ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as revisions in those
narratives.
Such an undertaking requires a global perspective, for the early history of
cotton was truly global in scale. Between 1200 and 1800 there was a steady
expansion of cotton textile consumption and manufacturing around the world
and cotton textiles displaced ramie, hemp, linen, wool, and other competing
fibres from Japan and China to Europe and North America. At the same time,
cotton textiles were a critical commodity in global trade, and, in the estimation
of several contributors to this volume, after 1500 the most important manufac-
tured good in world trade. In these centuries the bulk of the cottons that criss-
crossed the globe had their origins in the Indian subcontinent, which was the
pre-eminent centre for cotton manufacturing in the world until the nineteenth
century. Broadening the chronological focus and widening the geographical
framework of the history of cotton lays the foundation for a historical narrative
which explicitly rejects Eurocentrism.
1 Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day (New York, 1999), 34.
2 An excellent analysis of cotton textile manufacturing in this period is Douglas A. Farnie and
David]. Jeremy (eds.), The Fibre that Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International
Perspective, 1600-199os (Oxford, 2004).
2 Prasannan Parthasarathi and Giorgio Riello
Parts I and II of this book show that cotton cloth was 'the first global com-
modity': the scale of its production, consumption, and exchange was far greater
than that of any other manufactured commodity. Cotton textiles acted as global
commercial, cultural, and social connectors; they supported agrarian structures,
local manufacturing economies, and systems of taxation; they were a sector of
dramatic technological innovation, experimentation, and transfer; and finally
they were sought-after commodities that shaped taste and material expectations
of populations living across the vast Eurasian landmass and beyond. Part III of
this book reinforces the move from a Eurocentric narrative and recontextualizes
the so-called 'rise of European cotton textile manufacturing' within a global
framework. Rather than considering this only as a new, 'revolutionary' chapter
in the history of manufacturing, this book shows how this process was the result
of centuries of continuous change based on profound cultural as well as eco-
nomic interconnections.
THE DIFFUSION OF COTTON
Archaeologists suggest that cotton originated in India, which is supported by

the discovery of cotton cloth fragments on the banks of the Indus River that
have been dated to 3200 BC. It appears that the Indian subcontinent possessed
a well-developed cotton industry in ancient times. 3 The cotton plant diffused
from the subcontinent to China, the Middle East, and Africa between AD 800
and 1000 and its geographical expansion is part of a process of 'Southernization',
in Linda Shaffer's language, in which the cultivation of cotton as well as related
processes and technologies spread from the Indian subcontinent to other parts
of Asia and, eventually, to the entire globe.4 Such a process was as slow as the
capacity of the receiving areas to learn and put into practice techniques and
technologies that transformed cotton from a botanical rarity into a raw material
for a flourishing industry. Raw materials were not always local. In the early
Ming period, China's southern region ofJiangnan was the manufacturing core
of cotton textiles, but much of the raw cotton itself was grown in the northern
regions of the empire. 5 The case of China, but also those of medieval Europe
and Africa, make it clear that cotton did not just spread but increasingly became
a commercial crop and entered into many long-distance trade networks.
3Andrew M. Watson, 'The Rise and Spread of Old World Cotton', in Veronika Gervers (ed.),
Studies in Textile History in Memory of Harold B. Burnham (Toronto, 1977), 355-68.
4 See Linda Shaffer, 'Southernization',Journal of World History, 3/r (1994), 1-21 and her
Southernization (Washington, 2003).
5 Francesca Bray, Technologyand Gender:Fabricsof Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley,
1997), 214; Ramon H. Myers, 'Cotton Textile Handicraft and the Development of the Cotton
Textile Industry in Modern China', EconomicHistory Review, 18/3 (1965), 616.
Introduction 3
Local production systems in cotton had long-distance links in terms of tech-

nology as well. It is likely that bowing, ginning, reeling, and spinning technolo-
gies travelled along the very routes that took the cotton plant both eastwards
and westwards from India. The spinning wheel appeared in India in the four-
teenth century and in all likelihood came from west Asia.6 Middle Eastern pro-
ducers adopted the bow, reel, and cotton gin from India probably before AD
1000. Bowing, ginning, and spinning technologies spread from India across
South-East Asia and reached China in the second half of the thirteenth century.
Multi-spindle spinning machines were already in place in mainland China in
1313, although probably not for the spinning of cotton. 7
In the cases of bowing, reeling, ginning, and spinning of cotton there was a
convergence in methods and tools over a large geographical space across Africa,
Europe, and Asia. Cotton-weaving technologies, however, remained much
more varied across the Afro-Eurasian landmass and they were a function of the
specific varieties of textiles that were to be produced. There is evidence for the
adoption of vertical looms in India in 1184. Horizontal looms were also wide-
spread and this technology was probably introduced by Muslims from Iran in
the eleventh century and adapted to the local dry climate by digging pits where
the weavers could sit. 8 Backstrap looms based on mobile body tension were
common in India, especially for domestic production, but remained little used
in China. In China, instead, the draw-loom was widely used, probably adapted
for cotton from looms that were used in the weaving of silk and hemp. In
western l\.frica different looms could be found. Narrow cotton strips dated from
AD 1000 to 1200 were woven on a treadle loom that was originally from Asia,
but in present-day Nigeria, and since the fifteenth century, cotton textiles have
been woven on vertical looms operated by hand rather than by foot and they
were probably adapted from raphia looms.
This cursory analysis of cotton technology in the period before 1500 should
not lead to the conclusion that the industry developed on an equal footing across
the world. Many of the essays in this book reveal limitations and barriers to the
growth of cotton textile manufacturing for it was not simply a matter of trans-
mitting technologies but also one of adapting cotton manufacturing to varied
6 Irfan Habib, 'Indian Textile Industry in the 17th Century', in Arun Das Gupta and Barun
De (eds.), Essays in Honour of S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi, 1976), 182.

7 Mark Elvin, 'The High-Level Equilibrium Trap: The Causes of the Decline oflnvention
in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries', in W. E. Willmott (ed.), Economic Organization

in Chinese Society (Stanford, 1972), 148-9. See also Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming, Chinese
Capitalism, r522-1840 (London, 2000), 214-15.
8 Some looms such as the 'four-cornered frame' introduced from the Muslim north in the fif-
teenth-sixteenth century was used only in Muslim communities of the south. Carla M. Sinopoli,
The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, c.1350-1650
(Cambridge, 2003), 178.
4 PrasannanParthasarathiand GiorgioRiello
socio-economic and institutional contexts. The essays in Part I show that the
productive structures, gender divisions oflabour, and levels and structures of
commercialization in both the raw material and the final product varied widely
across the globe. Peasant household production in China was very different
from the weaving villages of India which in turn were very different from the
guild systems of Europe.
The global spread of cotton did not consist only of the diffusion of the raw
material and of technologies. Cotton textiles themselves, many oflndian origin,
were widely traded and exchanged around the world and came to be part of the
consumption patterns and material culture of a considerable proportion of the
world population long before European industrialization. Historical, but also
archaeological and literary, evidence documents the scale and geographical
reach oflndian cotton textiles. At the same time, locally made cotton goods dis-
placed alternative textiles around the world. By the end of the Ming period,
cotton had become the most common material for clothing in China. 9 Arabic
accounts mention cotton clothing being worn in West Africa from at least the
eleventh century. We are also aware of its use in pre-Columbian America.
Cortes was astonished by the quality of the local cotton textiles, far superior to
the fustians and bombazines used in early sixteenth-century Europe. 10 As chap-
ters in Part II explain, by the eighteenth century cotton textiles had substantially
altered the material life of consumers in Europe, Japan, and in North and South
America. They had spread well beyond the world of the Indian Ocean into the
Atlantic and the Pacific. Their trade consumption had now reached a truly
global scale.
The different uses and meanings that cotton textiles enjoyed across the globe
are more difficult to reconstruct. As noted by Parthasarathi in his analysis of the
Indian subcontinent, cloth consumption varied enormously by region and social
status. This was true also of South-East Asia where locally produced textiles
were supplemented with richer and fancier cloth from India. The imported tex-
tiles were used on ceremonial occasions and in religious rituals. In eastern
Africa, as underlined by Machado, cloth was often given to cement obligations
and relations of dependence or could be used in ceremonies to legitimize the
power of rulers. 11 Cotton textiles often articulated a language. Such language
was social and had specific expressions, vernacular uses, and syntactic structures
based on taste and custom.
9 Kang Chao, The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China (Cambridge, Mass.,
1977), 22.
10 Quoted in Jan Bazant, 'Evolution of the Textile Industry of Puebla, 1544-1845', in Michael
Adas (ed.), Technologyand EuropeanOverseasEnterprise(Aldershot, 1996), 264.

11 Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, 'Introduction', in Annette B. Weiner and Jane
Schneider (eds.), Cloth and Human Experience(Washington, 1989), 3.

Introduction 5
In many world areas, imported textiles supplemented local production. Their

acceptance was part of a novel early modern attitude of openness towards the
'foreign' and the 'extraordinary' that characterized not just Europe but also
most other global areas. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indian
cottons became popular among better-off Ottoman consumers as they did
among contemporary Europeans. 12 The shima-mono (textiles with striped or
checked patterns) and the sarasa(Indian cotton textiles printed and painted with
exotic motifs) became widely accepted among Japanese consumers in the Edo
period.
TRADE AND THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Before the end of the eighteenth century, the bulk of the cotton cloths in global
trade had their origins in the Indian subcontinent. The reasons for Indian pre-
eminence are complex and there is still no consensus on the matter. Several con-
tributors to this volume subscribe to a long-standing explanation that pointed
to the lower prices oflndian manufactured goods. Others adopt a revisionist
stance and observe that in many markets Indian goods were actually more
expensive than locally made cloth, whether linen in Europe or cotton in South-
East Asia, the Ottoman provinces, and West Africa. The Indian advantage,
then, lay in the qualities of the cloth, including colour, washability, design, and
so forth. I
Before 1500 most of the Indian textiles that reached foreign shores were man-
ufactured on the Coromandel Coast and in Gujarat. From the sixteenth century,
Bengal, the Punjab, and the heartland of northern India also became important
sources for the cotton textiles that entered global trade networks. The Indian
subcontinent had excelled in the printing, painting, and pencilling of cotton tex-
tiles from the early Middle Ages and historians have argued that this provided a
competitive advantage for Indian cotton textiles in global markets. Their unri-
valled design, range of colours, and resistance to light and washing made them
superior to other textiles available across and beyond the Indian Ocean.
The success of cotton textiles in global markets was also due to their design.
In contrast to woollens and linens, cottons could be easily printed and painted.
In Europe, for instance, while most textiles were dyed in one colour, the more
sought-after woollens, and even higher-quality silks and velvets, were patterned
on the loom to create appealing designs, complex plays of perspective and
colour, and the suggestion of floral motifs. Their design was entirely the result
of sophisticated methods of weaving. The Indian subcontinent, by contrast,
12 Andre Raymond, Artisans et commerfantsau Caireau XVII le siecle(Damascus, 1973-4), i.
135.
6 PrasannanParthasarathiand GiorgioRiello
developed a variety of processes for decorating cloth after it was woven. These
processes can be roughly divided into the three broad categories of dyeing,
painting, and printing. 13 In western India and Gujarat, for example, most
chintzes were printed with wooden blocks by using one or more of various tech-
niques, including direct printing, bleach printing (bleaching the design on an
already dyed cloth), 'mordant printing' (printing with mordants and then
bleaching the unmordanted areas), or 'resist printing' (printing a viscous sub-
stance, followed by dyeing, followed by the removal of the viscous substance).
It was this variety of processes, combined with the local availability of high-
quality dyes and the capacity to use mordants which fixed the colours, that gave
Indian textile production an enormous advantage over its European, African,
or American counterparts.
But India's technological and design superiority would have come to naught
without a well-structured system of trade. Regional and long-distance trade was
efficiently coordinated by a variety of merchants operating within the Indian
Ocean as well as overland to central Asia and the Middle East. Vaniya mer-
chants, Hindu and Jain communities resident primarily in western India, along
with Chettis, Chulias, Oriyas, and Bengalis, were at the centre of inter- and intra-
regional commercial, social, and cultural connections across the Indian Ocean.
Cotton textiles were both key exchange commodities and 'ready money' to pur-
chase a variety of other goods, including spices, foodstuffs, and luxuries. The
relative abundance of archival materials, especially for the Dutch and English
companies, has created the impression that the arrival of the Europeans in the
Indian Ocean led to the steady decline oflndian traders. This volume adds to the
correction of the historical record which a number of historians have initiated,
and shows that Asian merchants continued to be major players in the Indian
Ocean cotton cloth trade into the nineteenth century. The commercial and com-
munication networks of Gujarati merchants, for example, were far superior to
those of the Portuguese in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The capacity of Indian textile producers to customize products to suit the
tastes and preferences of differentiated markets was a key reason for the success
oflndian textiles across the world. Production in the subcontinent was flexible
enough to create products that suited the changing tastes and expectations of
customers thousands of miles away. It is well known that Indian printers and
painters expanded their repertoire of goods on white backgrounds to suit the
demands of European buyers. Consumers in the Indian Ocean world favoured
dark blue and red backgrounds in printed cloths. 14 Similar modifications in
13 A. I. Tchitcherov, India: Changing Economic Structure in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth
Centuries: Outline History of Crafts and Trade (New Delhi, 1998), 72.
14 John Irwin and P. R. Schwartz, Studies in Inda-European Textile History (Ahmedabad,
1966), 16--17.
Introduction 7
design and colour were made for other markets as well. Cloth order lists sent
from Batavia to the Coromandel Coast by the Dutch East India Company were
several pages long and indicated in great detail the size of the piece, the colours,
and the patterns. The details on designs extended into the widths of stripes or
checks and the types of floral design. In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
century Mozambique the fashion for Indian cottons changed seasonally and
merchants conveyed these shifts in taste back to weavers and cloth finishers in
Gujarat who produced the new varieties at a rapid rate.
FROM EAST TO WEST: A COTTON REVOLUTION
From the third quarter of the eighteenth century Europeans revolutionized the
manufacture of cotton textiles, which suggests that cottons were central to the
divergence between Europe and Asia. Chapters in the final section of this book
explore this European cotton revolution and in so doing expand the debate on
divergence beyond the famous exceptionalism of Europe and 'coal and colonies'
explanations. They do so by addressing three main issues:
1. Why did the cotton revolution take place in Britain and in the eighteenth
century?
2. What was the role of products and in particular the substitution oflocally
made cloth for Indian imports?
3. Whatlwere the roles of markets, consumers and fashionability in the story
of the rise of European cotton manufacturing?
1. An eighteenth-century revolution
Why was the European success with cotton an eighteenth-century affair? E. A.

Wrigley's reliance on the exploitation of coal resources as a key factor in modern
economic growth is only marginally relevant to this question as the rise of cotton
textiles was based on mechanical devices that made use of steam power only
after a lag of some years. 15 Before the eighteenth century substantial skills and
knowledge had accumulated in several regions of the world on the techniques
for the manufacture of cotton cloth. China had attained a high level of technical
expertise in spinning and weaving not only cotton but also flax and silk. India
had similarly amassed sophisticated knowledge in the handling of the cotton
fibre, particularly in the imparting of complex designs with natural dyes and
mordants. Other areas such as Anatolia were successfully imitating Indian prod-
15 E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chanceand Change: The Characterof the Industrial Revolution in
England (Cambridge, 1988).

8 PrasannanParthasarathi and GiorgioRiello
ucts and by 1500 West Africa and western Europe had sizeable local cotton
textile industries. However, the period from the sixteenth century to the mid-
eighteenth century appears to have been a moment of technological stagnation
in cotton textile manufacturing around the world. What changed in the eigh-
teenth century?
Patrick O'Brien makes an argument for a focus on geopolitical conditions in
Europe, and in Britain in particular, in the eighteenth century and the spur that
those conditions gave to technological innovation. The competitive disadvan-
tage of European cotton manufacturing was significantly reduced by the impo-
sition of a new power system in which the British gained substantial advantages
both in the Indian subcontinent and in North America. Cheap natural resources
and quasi-coerced markets for British manufactures became fundamental
stimuli for British cotton textile production. O'Brien connects these conditions
to mercantilist state policies. Mercantilism provided not just an institutional
conceptualization of trade, but also a practical framework for the rise of a
European cotton industry. It also underpinned the hegemony of the British
Navy in the Atlantic, which ensured British commercial dominance in that
ocean as well as more globally under the aegis of the British Empire. O'Brien
concludes that these geopolitical conditions that emerged in the second half of
the eighteenth century provided the context sine qua non for the rise of the
British cotton industry.
2. Industrialization and import substitution

A strand of European economic history has explained the growing European
engagement with the manufacture of cotton textiles as a kind of 'import-substi-
tution industrialization'. The rise of a calico-printing industry from the second
half of the seventeenth century and the later development of a spinning and
weaving cotton textile industry in Europe were fostered by the need to produce
at home what was imported from Asia. 16 Research along these lines has brought
new evidence and new questions to the import-substitution hypothesis. The
work of Maxine Berg on luxury and the import of a variety of Asian consumer
goods into Europe has rejected economic determinism in favour of an explana-
tory model that gives due importance to consumer behaviour. 'Imitation', a key
mechanism in import substitution, goes well beyond the copying of Asian prod-
ucts as it implies the existence of an enormous inventive effort in product and
process innovation in Europe.
16 Maxine Berg, 'In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the
Eighteenth Century', Past and Present, 182 (2004), 85-142; and id., 'Quality, Cotton and the
Global Luxury Trade', in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothedthe World:
Cotton Textilesand the Indian Ocean,1500-1850 (Leiden, forthcoming 2009).
Introduction 9
In contrast to this picture of Europe, the encounter with Indian cotton cloth
in other parts of the world has been long portrayed as having deleterious effects
on local textile economies. Extensive scholarship is beginning to challenge this
'double standard' and argues that successful import substitution was found
around the world. The cities of Aleppo, Urfa, and Gaziantep in Anatolia, for
example, produced a range ofimitations oflndian piece goods. 17 The Clarence-
Smith and Kriger chapters in this volume argue that imports oflndian textiles
may actually have stimulated local production rather than undermining it both
in South-East Asia and in West Africa. Therefore, it was not simply a case of
Europe benefiting and other parts of the world suffering from the encounter
with Indian textiles.
Several chapters in this volume argue against the concept of 'substitution' as
such and propose a more flexible concept of what one might call 'import blend-
ing'. This could be achieved, as in the case of West Africa or South-East Asia,
by mixing textiles from different places and supplementing local production
with imports, thus satisfying the extensive demand for cloth. In other cases it
was a matter of using imported cloth as the raw material for the manufacture of
local products. In South-East Asia and in West Africa this consisted of unrav-
elling imported cloths and incorporating the threads into textiles that were pro-
duced locally or, as in the case of Burma in the seventeenth century, mixing red
Indian cotton yarn, appreciated for its fastness, with local white and blue
threads. 18 In Europe, white cotton cloth from India was printed locally, thus
creating a1eplacement for imported chintzes and calicoes. This was only partly
a process of import substitution.
3. Markets, consumers,andfashionability
Import substitution is a conceptualization of a 'world of possibilities' that was
activated in specific conditions and that involved consumers and producers, as
well as institutions such as the state. Economic historians have long underlined
how the process ofimport substitution does not suffice to explain the dynamics
of European industrialization. The process of self-sustained growth that this
generated in Europe, it is argued, was strongly linked to export markets.
Kenneth Pomeranz in his Great Divergence emphasized the importance of
exogenous factors by highlighting the role of colonies in providing both cheap
supplies of raw materials and ready markets for manufactured products. The
17 Katsumi Fukasawa, Toilerie et commercedu Levant, d'Alep aMarseille (Paris, 1987), 47-8. .~
See also Suraiya Faroqhi, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources
(Cambridge, 2000), 227.
18 Wil 0. Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634-1680
(Copenhagen 2006), 130-1.

IO PrasannanParthasarathiand GiorgioRiello
point of reference for Pomeranz is North America, but similar conclusions have
been put forward for western Africa by Joseph Inikori, who argued that this
world area provided both raw materials, especially slaves to cultivate raw cotton
in the Americas, and markets for finished textiles. 19
This book supports the idea that European success in the manufacturing of
cotton textiles rested on its ability to capture markets for these fabrics across the
Atlantic and eventually back into the Indian Ocean itself. Robert DuPlessis and
Marta Vicente agree that both North and Latin American consumers were keen
buyers both oflndian and European cottons. Imported cotton textiles became
an important new category within a material culture that had traditionally been
dominated by fine woollens and homespun coarse woollens and linens. European
historians concur on the role of exports in the rise of the continent's cotton indus-
try. One need only cite Sir Francis Earing's estimates. In 1812 a quarter to a third
of Manchester's cotton production was destined for the United States. 20
Europeans were able to capitalize on the global capacity of cottons to promote
notions of fashion. Histories of fashion increasingly reject the idea that the phe-
nomenon was purely European in nature: cottons entered into a system of urban
consumption in Ming China, Edo Japan, and colonial Latin and North America.
Robert DuPlessis's detailed comparative analysis, for instance, suggests that con-
sumers in the North American colonies and West Indies discarded woollens and
linens in favour of cottons not just on the grounds of price or material comfort,
but also for the fashionable attributes carried by these textiles. The perceived
'fashionability' oflndian cotton textiles and their imitations explains the apparent
contradiction that their success was not necessarily based on low prices. In the
eighteenth century the average price of an Indonesian cotton piece was a quarter
to a third of an Indian one. Similarly in England, the cost of imported cottons
was higher than local alternatives such as printed linen and fustians. 21
GLOBAL HISTORY
Global and world history are long-standing areas of historical enquiry, but the
publication of David Landes's Wealth and Poverty of Nations and Kenneth
19 Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study of International
Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002).

20 Stanley David Chapman, 'Cottons and Printed Textiles', in Textiles in Trade (Washington,
1990), 33. But by this date the USA was importing cotton textiles directly from India. During
the period from 1795 to 1805 the trade with India (mostly formed by cotton textiles) exceeded in
value all trade with Europe. Susan S. Bean, 'The American Market for Indian Textiles, 1785-
1820: In the Twilight of Traditional Cloth Manufacture', ibid. 43-4.
21 Giorgio Riello, 'The Indian Apprenticeship: The Trade oflndian Textiles and the Making
of European Cottons', in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World.
Introduction II
Pomeranz's The GreatDivergencegenerated renewed interest in global questions.

These works sparked widespread debate among economic historians on the
reasons for the different paths of economic development in eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century Eurasia. However, they have also been widely discussed and
debated beyond the confines of economic history, and they have been widely read
by social and cultural historians working on global issues. The project and con-
ferences, of which this book is the final product, focused on cotton for its promise
in contributing to the debate on divergence between Europe and Asia. And cer-
tainly there is much in these essays that is of relevance to that discussion.
The project matured into a global history with a far broader agenda, however,
as it identified a number of striking parallels in the production and consumption
of cotton textiles around the world between 1200 and 1700. The identification
of this global cotton revolution, which preceded the European cotton revolution
of the eighteenth century, emerged from putting a number ofregions of the
world next to each other, so to speak, revealing striking similarities in patterns
of change. In other words, it was an exercise in comparison which revealed a
striking global pattern.
Landes and Pomeranz relied upon the comparative method for the develop-
ment and elaboration of their arguments. Landes undertook a series of compar-
isons to highlight the exceptional nature of European civilization and culture.
And Pomeranz compared Britain and the Y angzi to point to important pres-
ences and absences in the two cases. The act of comparison must go beyond the
simple en>1meration of similarities and differences, however. Marc Bloch has
argued that '[t]he most obvious service we can hope for from a careful compar-
ison between facts drawn from different and neighbouring societies is to enable
us to discern the mutual influences exercised by these groups' .22 Comparison,
therefore, must build upon mutual influences and in a kind of dialectic fashion
produce a new integration or synthesis of the objects of comparison into a single
framework of analysis.
This integration or mutual influence is explored in several essays in this
volume through a close examination of connections. The most important form
of connection was trade, but the simple act of exchange spurred new connections
on the basis of knowledge, the movement of people, and the transmission of
notions of fashionability and forms of consumption. The Indian subcontinent
was critical in these links as it was the nodal point from which many of these con-
nections emanated. The diffusion of cotton in the medieval and early modern
world was not always linked to the subcontinent, and here the cautionary words
of Ernest Renan that 'historical resemblances do not always imply connections' -~
22 Marc Bloch, 'A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies', in
Maurice Aymard and Harbans Mukhia (eds,), French Studies in History, i: The Inheritance
(Hyderabad, 1988), 42.
I2 PrasannanParthasarathiand GiorgioRiello
are apropos.23 The diffusion of cotton in China, for example, appears to have
been independent of the subcontinent, but this may be an artefact of the current
state of knowledge. Nevertheless, in a number of regions of the world the expan-
sion of cotton was shaped by the connection to India and the Indian example.
In this volume, a consideration of mutual influences and the integration of
the cases of comparison into a single framework lead logically to the global
economy. For the Indian subcontinent had a truly global reach and putting
together its areas of influence in the centuries from 1200 to 1800 highlights the
nature of the global trading system. It was this global economic order, in which
the cotton manufacturers of the Indian subcontinent were dominant, that pro-
vided the context and an impetus for cotton consumption and production in
many regions around the world.
A focus on the global economy, and therefore a history written at the global
level, emerges organically from the study of cottons in disparate locations. It is
only within a global framework that the many connections and mutual influ-
ences can be contained and understood. The need to confront the global, in
other words, emerges from the study of cotton textiles themselves and is not
imposed from the outside. To put it another way, this volume requires a global
history not because it is interesting or fashionable but because the comparative
interpretation of the material and evidence demands it.
TheSpinningWorlddraws upon the expertise of twenty scholars residing in nine
countries on three continents. The intellectual dialogue that led to this volume was
wide ranging across space, time, and areas of expertise. The linguistic and historical
competence that this volume draws upon is vast and far beyond the capacities of
any single scholar. The pursuit of global history requires historians to move beyond
the single authored monograph and to work in cooperation around common
themes and questions. Only with such cooperation is it possible to amass a density
of evidence that makes possible new interpretations and new insights. And only
with such cooperation is it possible to produce global histories that emerge organ-
ically from the historical material rather than as impositions from the outside.
Although based on the analysis of an economic phenomenon, this book
extends its remit to include social and cultural histories, thus making a modest
contribution towards a global history less heavily dominated by economic analy-
sis than is commonly the case. It treats cotton textiles not simply as commodities
that embody exchange value but as 'objects [that] circulate in different regimes
of value in space and time'. Several of the essays that follow explore 'the ways
in which desire and demand, reciprocal sacrifice and power interact to create
economic value in specific social situations'. 24
23
The Renan passage is cited ibid. 44.
24
Arjun Appadurai, 'Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value', in his The Social
Life of Things: Commoditiesin Cultural Perspective(Cambridge, 1986), 4.
Introduction 13
CONCLUSION
This volume is conscious of the problem of perpetuating a whiggish narrative

of unrestrained economic development which culminated with the triumph of
Europe because ofits capacity to coerce labour, allure consumers, and dominate
world markets. The relocation from India to Europe and the industrialization
of cotton textile manufacturing had lasting effects on the world as a whole. One
can say that the 'spark' provided by cottons had global domino effects, but the
role of cottons both in the history of textiles and in economic development,
while of enormous significance, became less pivotal with time. In the twentieth
century synthetic fibres came to challenge the dominance of cottons and, even
earlier, in the nineteenth century, woollens and worsteds regained some of their
former prestige, as Pat Hudson underlines in this volume.
Similarly the success of Europe did not remain unchallenged. The early
development of European calico printing was not unique. Printed fabrics pat-
terned with flower motifs and human figures (yaobanbu)had already developed
in Song China. 25 South-East Asia and West Africa maintained strong produc-
tion traditions, and chequered cloth in the latter and ikat in the former were imi-
tated by Indian and other producers. And by the seventeenth century, Japan
had developed its own cotton-printing and -painting industries in the same way
in which Anatolia had done a century earlier. Similar developments occurred
with resp9ct to the mechanization of spinning and weaving. Within a couple of
decades the sector had been transformed not just in Britain but also in the most
developed parts of continental Europe, and by the 1830s mechanized factories
could be seen at the other side of the Atlantic in New England. By the late nine-
teenth century cotton mills had appeared also in India, China, and Japan. And
by the late twentieth century Asia had regained its position as the textile-man-
ufacturing centre of the globe.2 6
25 Nishijima Sadao, 'The Formation of the Early Chinese Cotton Industry', in Linda Grove
and Christian Daniels (eds.), State and Society in China:JapanesePerspectivesonMing-QjngSocial

and EconomicHistory (Tokyo, 1984), 52-3.
26 Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Global Trade and Textile Workers, 1650-2000', paper presented
at Global History of Textile Workers Conference, International Institute of Social History,

November 2004.
PART I
World Areas of
Cotton Textile Manufacturing
I
1
COTTON TEXTILES IN THE
INDIAN SUBCONTINENT,
1200-1800
PRASANNAN PARTHASARATHI
INTRODUCTION
In the centuries before 1800, the Indian subcontinent was the most important
cotton-manufacturing region in the world. Indian textile workers supplied a
vast subcontinental market in which cotton was by a wide margin the fibre of
choice for textiles, both for garments as well as decorative and other household
uses. While silk was held in higher esteem and was considered the more auspi-
cious material, its high cost made it prohibitive for all except the wealthy. In
addition to the vast subcontinental market, Indian cotton goods were widely
demanded throughout the Indian Ocean trading world, and after 1500 through-
out the world. Both material and textual evidence attests to the consumption of
Indian cMth from Gujarat and Sind in Egypt, Iran, and other centres in west
Asia from as early as the eleventh century. Much the same is true for South-
East Asia and East Africa as well as even more far-flung places, in later time
periods, including China, Japan, Russia, and southern Europe. 1
By the fifteenth century, the export of cotton textiles to markets in the Indian
Ocean was on a large scale and from the sixteenth century Indian cottons
achieved a global reach. Europe, West Africa, and the Americas proved to be
fertile markets for Indian cloth, and the infusion of greater liquidity into the
global trading system with the discovery of rich deposits of silver in the
Americas, and to a lesser extent Japan, made demand in these new markets pos-
sible.2 By the seventeenth century, Indian cotton cloth had become a global
commodity and, as other essays in this volume argue, it was the most important
manufactured commodity in world trade. The purpose of this chapter is to
provide an overview of the production and consumption of these textiles in the
subcontinent itself.
1 On the early consumption oflndian cottons in Egypt, see Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed
Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collectionin the AshmoleanMuseum (Oxford, 1997).
2 K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading Worldof Asia and the EnglishEast India Company,r660-r760
(Cambridge, 1978), 1-ro.

18 PrasannanParthasarathi
THE COTTON MANUFACTURING REGIONS
Between 1200 and 1800 cotton was cultivated in virtually every region of the
Indian subcontinent. From the Punjab to the heartland of north and west India
and to Bengal and south India the cotton shrub or tree was essential to peasant
crop rotations and integral to peasant strategies for survival. In the Punjab, the
area around Multan appears to have been long a centre of cotton cultivation. By
the eighteenth century the plant was grown in several parts of Bengal, including
Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Birbhum, and Dhaka (Map 1.1). In Gujarat
cotton was cultivated throughout the region, and in south India the heavy black
soils of the southern Deccan plateau provided prime conditions for the cultiva-
tion of the plant. 3
The skill and knowledge to convert the cotton fibre into yarn and then into
cloth and then to bleach, dye or paint, or print the fabric was similarly wide-
spread. However, these manufacturing processes became of great economic
importance in several regions. In the centuries between 1200 and 1800 the
coastal regions of Gujarat, Coromandel, and Bengal stood out for their cotton
manufactures. All three had long coastlines, appropriate ports, and the com-
mercial sophistication to manufacture and send cloths to the vast markets and
extensive trading routes of the Indian Ocean. Gujarat on the west coast was a
thriving commercial centre and the pre-eminent source of cotton cloth in the
Indian Ocean world for much of the period. The Coromandel Coast in the south
had a long legacy of trade with South-East Asia in particular. And the fertile
delta of Bengal in the east came to be world famous for its fine muslins and silk
and cotton mixtures. Bengal came into increasing prominence after 1400, and
especially from the early seventeenth century, but this was not at the expense
of Gujarat and Coromandel. Both these regions exported huge quantities of
cotton cloth until the early nineteenth century. 4
Gujarat was famous in both the western and eastern halves of the Indian
Ocean for its printed textiles. 'Cambay chiefly stretches out her two arms, with
3 Irfan Habib's Atlas of the Mughal Empire: Political and EconomicMaps with Detailed Notes,
Bibliographyand Index (Delhi, 1982) reveals the ubiquity of the cotton plant. For cotton in sev-
enteenth-century Punjab, see Chetan Singh, Regionand Empire:Panjabin the SeventeenthCentury
(Delhi, 1991), rn4, rn7-8. For the cotton-growing districts in eighteenth-century Bengal, see
Hameeda Hossain, The CompanyWeaversof Bengal: The East India Companyand the Organization
ofTextile Productionin Bengal I750-I8I3 (Delhi, 1988), 24. For eighteenth-century south India,
see Parthasarathi, Transitionto a ColonialEconomy: Weavers,Merchantsand Kings in South India,
I720-I800 (Cambridge, 2001), 62-71.
4 For Gujarat see Pedro Machado, 'Gujarati Indian Merchant Networks in Mozambique,
1777-c.1830' (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2005), ch. 4. For south
India see A. Sarada Raju, EconomicConditionsin the Madras Presidency,I800-I850 (Madras,
1941), 206 and 303.
Cotton Textiles in the Indian Subcontinent 19
CHINA
Delhi• Bareilly
• Fa
Agra •
• Awadh•
Lucknow•
BIHAR Dinajpur
Benares• .Patna Maid:• ASSAM
Kasimbazar • •Murshidabad
Sironj. BENGAL •Dhaka
•Ahmedabad
CambaY.•
•Broach .Burhanpur
Surat
Bay of Bengal
I
Arabian Sea Golconda•
DECCAN
Indian Ocean
Bangalore
•
Laudepetlth
Map 1.1. Cotton textile centres in India, 1200--1800

20 Prasannan Parthasarathi
her right arm she reaches out towards Aden and with the other towards
Malacca,' Tome Pires wrote in 1515.5 Fragments of Gujarati cotton cloth dis-
covered in the Egyptian city of Fustat have been dated to as early as the eleventh
century. There is also material evidence for this westward trade in the form of
coin hoards from Broach, which have been dated to the late fourteenth century.
These hordes contain substantial numbers of gold and silver pieces from Egypt
and Syria along with a smaller number of coins from Yemen and a few from
Europe. 6
Cloths printed with designs similar to those found in Fustat have been found
in South-East Asia, which suggests a Gujarati provenance. This trade too dates
from the medieval period: a ceremonial banner, probably of Gujarati manufac-
ture, discovered in central Sulawesi has been dated to the mid-fourteenth
century. 7 After 1500, Gujarati cottons were carried on board European ships
around the Cape of Good Hope and marketed widely in the trading world of the
Atlantic Ocean. In the seventeenth century the English East India Company
relied heavily upon Gujarat for its purchases of Indian cottons, as did the
Dutch, Portuguese, and others. These cargoes included not only the printed
cloths for which Gujarat had been long famous, but also embroidered textiles
of various kinds. According to John Irwin and Margaret Hall, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, 'Gujarat was unquestionably the most renowned
source of commercial embroidery in the world'. 8
The Coromandel Coast was most famous for its painted cloths, which were
manufactured in the vicinity of Masulipatam and Pulicat. These cloths were
considered to be the finest of their kind in the subcontinent. In the early seven-
teenth century William Methwold described them as 'famous throughout India,
and are indeed the most exquisite that are seen, the best wrought all with pensil
and with such durable colours that not withstanding they bee often washed, the
colours fade not whilst the cloth lasteth'. 9 The Coromandel Coast was also
famous for its muslins, which were consumed widely in south India and sent to
other regions of the subcontinent as well as to the Indian Ocean world, notably
the Persian Gulf, and later Europe. 10 In the eighteenth century, the region
5 Tome Pires, The 'Suma Oriental' of Tomi Pires, and the 'Book' of Francisco Rodrigues
(London, 1944), 42, quoted in John Guy, Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (London,
1998), 39.
6 Simon Digby, 'The Maritime Trade oflndia', in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib
(eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, i: c.I200-c.1750 (Cambridge, 1982), 126.
7
Guy, Woven Cargoes, 41.
8
John Irwin and Margaret Hall, Indian Embroideries(Ahmedabad, 1973), 29.
9 William Methwold, 'Relations of the Kingdom of Golconda and Other Neighbouring
Nations', in W. H. Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century

(London, 1931), quoted in Guy, Woven Cargoes,30.
10 San jay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India, 1500-I650
(Cambridge, 1990), 80--2, 167-79.

became famous for its blue cloths, which were dyed with indigo. The most
prized ones came from the town of Porto Novo. These cloths were widely
sought after in West Africa well into the nineteenth century. 11
Bengal was not a major centre for cloth printing or painting. Its textile man-
ufacturers were renowned around the world, however, for their finely woven
goods, especially muslins and other delicate cloths. Before 1500, there are
reports that Bengal muslins were exported to China where they were highly
prized. These muslins were also sent from Bengal, as well as Bihar, to meet the
substantial courtly demand of northern India in Delhi Sultanate and in Mughal
times. 12 While cloth painting and printing were not done in Bengal, embroidery
was widespread, and was especially important in Bengal's trade from the mid-
sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. 13 The fine cloths of the region were
elaborately finished in a number of ways. In some cases, the cloth was given a
fine sheen with smooth chank shells which were rubbed over the fabric.
Finishing was also done by ironing and beating with a mallet, but these
processes were more expensive than polishing with shells. 14
The textile manufacturers in these three regions capitalized on the ease of
access to the Indian Ocean. Between 1200 and 1800, large port cities, which
served as entrepots and major commercial centres, as well as smaller port towns
served as vents for the export of cloth. In Gujarat, Cambay was the major port
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but was supplanted during the Mughal
period by Surat. In the eighteenth century Surat itself went into decline with
the politic,al dislocations that followed the waning of Mughal power, and the
trade of Gujarat came to be distributed among a number of smaller centres. A
similar rise and fall of port cities and towns were seen in Bengal and the
Coromandel Coast.
Mirroring these coastal commercial centres, numerous market places that
served as bulking points or major marts for cotton, yarn, and cloth were scat-
tered in the interiors of these regions. In the south, for example, towns such as
Bangalore and Laudepettah became major market centres in order to serve the
cotton textile industry. Cotton and yarn were carried from long distances to
these places and then sold and distributed to manufacturers located in other
towns and villages. 1s
11 Richard Roberts, 'West Africa and the Pondicherry Textile Industry', in Tirthankar Roy
(ed.), Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in Colonial India (New Delhi, r996), 142-74.
12
Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics (S Coiffure in Ancient and Mediaeval India
(Delhi, r973), r44-6; Irfan Habib, 'Non-Agricultural Production and Urban Economy', in
Raychaudhuri and Habib (eds.), Cambridge Economic History of India, i. 79; Tapan Raychaudhuri, -~
'Non-Agricultural Production', ibid. 273.
13
Irwin and Hall, Indian Embroideries, 35. Also see Hossain, Company Weavers, 44.
14
Hossain, Company Weavers, 43.
15 Parthasarathi, Transition, 67-7r. Also see Subrahmanyam, Political Economy, 7r-7.
Easy access to the Indian Ocean was not the only reason these regions became
prominent centres for textile manufacturing. Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast,
and Bengal also possessed highly productive agricultural systems, which con-
tributed to their commercial importance in the first place. All three regions gen-
erated with ease the agricultural surpluses that were needed to feed enormous
numbers of non-agrarian workers. Abundant supplies of grain also meant that
food prices were low, which gave Indian textile manufacturers a competitive
advantage in markets around the world, especially in those where price levels
were much higher, such as western Europe.
The Punjab, a fourth major cotton-manufacturing region, possessed these
same features-access to major trade routes and a highly productive agricul-
ture-and it too was a major centre of cotton manufacturing between 1200 and
1800. Although the region was not on the Indian Ocean, some of the textile
manufactures from it found their way to the sea, along with those from the Sind,
via boats that plied the rivers of north-western India, and reached outlets in the
Indian Ocean. More important markets for the cottons of Punjab were found
overland, however, along the caravan routes that criss-crossed the area and con-
nected northern India with Iran and central Asia. 16
Punjab was not the only major cotton-manufacturing region that lay at a
remove from the waters of the Indian Ocean. A fifth major centre of textile
activity was in the heartland of north India, which had long been an area of
dense settlement, productive agriculture, and extensive economic activity.
Textiles were manufactured in this region from Delhi Sultanate times to the
early nineteenth century. In the Sultanate period, Delhi appears to have been
the epicentre for both production and consumption of cotton goods. Cotton
fabrics varying in quality from coarse to fine were woven in the city and its
environs and there was also a thriving dyeing and cloth-printing industry in
the area. Hamida Naqvi has enumerated some thirty-five different varieties of
cotton cloth that were produced or consumed in the region between 1206 and
1555. 17 In the Mughal period, the scale and extent of cloth manufacturing
expanded enormously. Delhi continued to be a major centre for chintz manu-
facture and its painted cloths were reputed to be inferior only to those of
Masulipatam in the Coromandel Coast. Under Mughal rule, Agra was added
to the list of major manufacturing towns and it produced a wide variety of
goods. Numerous other centres are named in sources, including Bareilly,
Farrukhabad, Lucknow, and so on down the Gangetic valley, as far as Patna.
According to Naqvi, cotton manufacturing in this region was 'growing steadily
16
See Stephen Frederic Dale, Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600--1750 (Cambridge,
1994), 46---55.See in particular the map on 47.
17 Hamida Khatoon Naqvi, Agricultural, Industrial and Urban Dynamism under the Sultans of
Delhi, 1206-1555 (New Delhi, 1986), 40--51, 157-60.

during the reign of Akbar' but its 'real boom' began 'with the turn of the 17th
century' .18
While some of the cloth manufactured in north India found its way into
foreign hands, it appears that much of it satisfied the needs oflocal buyers and
consumers. Befitting its status as a major political centre in the period from 1200
to 1800, cloth manufacturing was buoyed by courtly demand for high-value
cotton goods and by middling-class demand in the abundant towns and cities
of the region. Nevertheless, some cloth was transported to the Punjab and
Gujarat and reached consumers outside the subcontinent. In the Mughal
period, for instance, Persian and Armenian merchants frequented the Delhi
area and purchased chintzes and dyed cloth. In the seventeenth century, the
English and Dutch East India Companies purchased substantial quantities of
cloth in the vicinity of Agra and exported them via Surat. In the eighteenth
century, Asian traders as well as the European companies also purchased cotton
goods in Awadh and exported them to Iran, Europe, and South-East Asia via
Calcutta. Some of these goods may have made their way to Iran via overland
routes as well. 19
TECHNOLOGY
Long experience and experimentation had led to the perfection of the tools and
methods piat were used in the preparation of raw cotton and in the manufacture
of cotton cloth in the Indian subcontinent. For example, in the early nineteenth
century the English East India Company sought to introduce the American
cotton gin into south India, convinced that it was superior to the machines of
local design for separating the seed from the cotton wool. Experiments with the
American gin showed that it was inappropriate for the short-stapled Indian
cotton varieties. According to an American planter who was resident in south
India at the time, 'The simplicity and efficiency of [the local ginning device]
cannot be too much admired, notwithstanding all the rage for the improvement
of it' (Illustration 1. 1).20
There is also evidence of significant technological improvements in the
process of textile manufacturing between 1200 and 1800. The methods of pro-
duction were by no means static but rather improved in a number of respects in
the late medieval and early modern period. The cotton bow, used in the final
cleaning of raw cotton, was introduced into northern India in medieval times
18 Id., Urban Centresand Industriesin UpperIndia, r556-r803 (Bombay, 1968), 135-44. The
quoted passage appears on 143.

19 Ibid. 138.and 140.
20 Quoted in Parthasarathi, Transition,55.
Illustration 1.1. Woman ginning cotton, inscribed in English: 'Oeaning the cotton from the
Seeds'. Watercolour, 1798-1804. British Library Add.Or.1224. By kind permission of the
British Library, London.
and at about the same time as the spinning wheel. Irfan Habib speculates that
Muslim migrants from west Asia in the eleventh or twelfth century carried this
device to the subcontinent. The bow was far more efficient than the technique
it supplanted, which was to beat the raw cotton with a stick. The bowstring was
placed on the surface of the raw cotton and the bow handle hit with a hammer
or mallet (Illustration 1 .2 ). With the bow, the vibration of the string separated
the cotton fibre from dirt, twigs, leaves, stones, and other foreign matter. The
vibrations of the bowstring also placed the cotton strands in parallel which made
the spinning easier and faster. Evidence from south India indicates that in that
region the carding bow pre-dated the arrival of Islam. According to Vijaya
Ramaswamy, literary evidence suggests the use of the bow from possibly the
second century and certainly not later than the sixth century. 21
21 Vijaya Ramaswamy, 'Notes on Textile Technology in Medieval India with Special
Reference to the South', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 17/z (1980), 227-8.
I
Illustration 1.2. Indian Cotton carder, 1774-81. Engraving by Poisson in Pierre Sonnerat's
Voyage aux Indes Orienta/eset a la Chine,fait par ordre du roi, depuis q74jusqu'en r78r
(Paris, 1782).
One of the most profound technical developments was the introduction of

the spinning wheel, which Irfan Habib argues was introduced into the subcon-
tinent, perhaps from Iran, in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. According
to Habib, the first literary reference to the spinning wheel or charkha is from
1350 ('That woman [alone] is good who works all the time with the charkha'). 22
The spinning wheel steadily diffused through the subcontinent and was mod-
ified and adapted for specific uses in different locales. The wheel was also
improved in several respects, the most critical being the addition of a crank
handle in the early seventeenth century. 23 By the eighteenth century in Bengal
the spinning wheel was used for spinning all but the finest yarns, for which a
spindle was deployed. In south India, the spinning wheel was used for all
22 lrfan Habib, 'Indian Textile Industry in the 17th Century', in Arun Das Gupta and Barun
De (eds.), Essays in Honour of S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi, 1976), 182.

23 Ibid.
Illustration 1.3. An Indian weaver, from Frederick Shober!, The World in Miniature. Descrip-
tions of Various Countries, with Coloured Engravings (London 1821-27). British Library
570.c.46.(2). Reproduced courtesy of the British Library, London.
varieties of yarn by the eighteenth century. Several different types of wheels

were in use for the spinning of different sorts of yarn. For the finest yarns,
which were needed for high-quality muslins, a smaller and more delicate wheel
was used. 24
A number oflooms were used in the subcontinent in the centuries from 1200
to 1800. In some areas, most notably Assam, where weaving was done by women
for family members, backstrap looms were used. The narrow strips of cloth that
these looms yielded were sewn together to create larger pieces. Such a narrow-
weave loom was not practical for commercial manufactures or professional
weavers, however. For these purposes, the most common loom was a horizontal
frame loom, but one that was adapted to the climatic conditions of the Indian
subcontinent. The most critical of these adaptations was the placement of the
frame over a pit dug into the ground. The weaver sat at the pit with his legs dan-
gling into the opening and the warp was placed over the hole (Illustration 1 .3).
The moisture from the earth in the pit maintained the proper humidity for
weaving and reduced yarn breakage. In addition, weavers who sat at the loom
to beat the weft and throw the shuttle were at an ideal posture for these tasks.
Typically these pit looms were constructed inside weaver houses. 25
In south India, evidence from the eleventh century and later indicates that
the simple horizontal loom had been modified in order to weave patterned tex-
tiles. Vijaya Ramaswamy describes these improvements as the development of
24 For Bengal, see Hossain, Company Weavers, 37; for south India, see Parthasarathi,
Transition, 60.
25 Parthasarathi, Transition, 11-12.
a 'process by which certain cords are attached to the wooden frame on top of the
loom, and patterns are produced by pulling the cords in the correct sequence
(by an assistant) while the weaver threw the shuttle through the resultant
sheds'. 26 In modern language, such a loom would be known as a simple draw
loom. With these looms, according to a seventeenth-century European
observer, weavers in south India were able to 'exactly imitate the nicest and
most beautiful patterns that are brought from Europe'. 27 Similar looms were
identified in Gujarat and Bengal in the nineteenth century where they were
known as naqsha, which means drawing or picture. These looms were also oper-
ated by two workers but it is not clear when they were adopted in these regions.
A more complex foom was also used in the Broach region of Gujarat for the
manufacture of cloth with four colours. It was reportedly invented by a weaver
named Hasanbhai Karimbhai and contained eight treadles, and correspondingly
eight heddles. It was operated by a single weaver and contained a sophisticated
system of springs and levers. 2s
In addition to horizontal looms, weavers in the subcontinent also used vertical
looms, but there is some disagreement about when and how they were adopted.
Vijaya Ramaswamy argues that they were the oldest type oflooms with refer-
ences to them in Vedic times. Ramaswamy also argues that vertical looms were
in use in southern India in the twelfth century. lrfan Habib, on the authority of
Streynsham Master, asserts that Persian migrants introduced vertical looms in
the late sixteenth century. Master saw such looms in use in south India for the
weaving pf cotton carpets. Habib also notes that vertical looms in Bihar were
attributed to 'Persian workmen and their descendants'. 29 Ribbon looms were
also used in various centres to manufacture the sizeable quantities of ribbons
and sashes that are noted in many sources. A nineteenth-century description of
such an indigenous loom in Varanasi was described as foreshadowing the 'appli-
cation of cards in the Jacquard loom'. 30
The final process in the manufacture of cloth was finishing. Indian dyers,
printers, and painters had amassed enormous amounts of knowledge on materials
and techniques for the colouring of cotton cloth (Illustration 1.4). They pos-
sessed a vast repertoire of colouring agents and were well acquainted with how
to manipulate and fix them on cotton with mordants. A variety of binding agents
and a panoply of vegetable and mineral materials imparted colours of great depth,
beauty, and vitality. While the technologies of spinning and weaving in the
26 Ramaswamy, 'Notes on Textile Technology', 232.
27 Ibid.
28 Eugenia Vanina, Urban Cra,f.s and Craftsmen in Medieval India (Thirteenth-Eighteenth
Centuries) (New Delhi, 2004), 34.

29 Ramaswamy, 'Notes on Textile Technology', 229-30; Habib, 'Indian Textile Industry',
183.
30 Vanina, Urban Crafts and Craftsmen, 34.
Illustration 1+ Method of printing chintz in India. Watercolour, c. 1820. British Library

Add. Or.51 IO. By kind:#permissionof the British Library, London.
Indian subcontinent and Europe were largely similar between the thirteenth and
late eighteenth centuries, Indian dyeing technologies were far superior to those
in Europe before the eighteenth century and were a major source of the compet-
itive advantage of these cloths in markets around the globe.31
THE PRODUCERS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION
The manufacture of cotton cloth was organized on a commercial basis from

1200 if not earlier. The commercialization of the manufacturing began with the
31
For more on dyeing, painting and printing, see the classic study of G. P. Baker, Calico
Painting and Printing in the East Indies in the r7th and r8th Centuries (London, 1921). Also see
Guy, Woven Cargoes, ch. 2.
raw material itself. Many major manufacturing centres were at some distance
from cotton-growing soils. Therefore, merchants played a key role in connect-
ing the cotton and yarn with spinners and weavers. Merchants, sometimes
organized into mercantile bodies, purchased the raw cotton from the peasant
growers and transported the material to major cotton marts throughout the sub-
continent. By the eighteenth century, and quite possibly much earlier, cotton
traders were financing the growing of cotton through advances of capital to
peasant cultivators. 32
The cultivators performed the initial cleaning of the cotton to separate the
seed from the fibre. The seeds themselves were prized for their oil and as feed
for cattle. A portion of this cleaned cotton was cleaned more finely by carders
and then spun into yarn in the immediate vicinity of the cotton-growing areas.
Some of this yarn would have been for local use but much of it was carried to
manufacturing centres located closer to the coasts. The bulk of the raw cotton
was transported to these same manufacturing regions without the finer cleaning
by carders. This second cleaning was done immediately before spinning to
ensure that the fibre was absolutely free of all foreign matter before being spun.
Specialist cotton carders performed this finer cleaning and they were adept in
the operation of the carding bow. In the south, these experts were drawn from
weaving castes and each carder possessed a monopoly right to card cotton in a
given territory. In Bengal, in some cases, women, perhaps spinners, performed
this carding with a small bow, the string of which was vibrated by plucking.
Larger qpantities of cotton were cleaned for commercial purposes by men with
a larger bow which was struck with a mallet. 33
The spinning of the cleaned cotton into yarn was primarily a female occupa-
tion. In Bengal, an East India Company official noted in the late eighteenth
century that there was 'no class of people who depend upon it as a profession,
it is generally performed as a subsidiary employment by the female'. 34 As just
noted, some of the spinning was done in the cotton-growing centres themselves,
but the bulk was done in closer proximity to the manufacturing areas. In some
cases, the raw cotton was distributed to women by weavers and merchants on a
putting-out basis. In others, women purchased cotton, spun the fibre, and mar-
keted the yarn on their own account. In the major manufacturing regions there
were major marts for both the raw cotton as well as the yarn. 35
In the south, a region for which detailed research has been done for the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, cotton spinning was closely connected to the
rhythms of agriculture. Much spinning was located in areas where agricultural
32 Hossain, CompanyWeavers,22-36; Parthasarathi, Transition,62-6.
33 Hossain, CompanyWeavers,37; Parthasarathi, Transition,56.
34 Qyoted in Hossain, CompanyWeavers,39.
35 Parthasarathi, Transition,56---61.
work was seasonal and spinning provided a valuable source of income for
peasant families in the slow months. In addition, spinning provided a form of
insurance for peasant families in lean years. When agricultural work was
unavailable, all hands turned to spinning for survival. In these times, the price
of yarn was known to fall since huge quantities of yarn suddenly appeared on
the market. 36
The bulk of cotton weaving in the subcontinent, especially in the major
cotton-manufacturing regions, was done by a class of professional weavers. By
the seventeenth century, and most likely even far earlier, many of these weavers
worked to satisfy the particular demands of merchants for both local and Indian
Ocean markets. These weavers received advances of capital from merchants,
purchased yarn and other materials with these funds, and delivered a specified
type of cloth, of a specified quality, by a specified date. On occasion weavers
received advances of yarn and, when prices of food were high, they also some-
times received grain. The forms of these contracts appear to have been similar
across the subcontinent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and they
gave weavers enormous autonomy and power. Weavers worked in their homes
with little interference from merchants. They determined the quality and the
quantity of the yarn that went into a piece, and therefore the quality of the final
cloth. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, because demand for Indian
cotton cloth was extremely high, merchants often had little choice but to take
the cloth that weavers delivered. 37
Weavers tended to be drawn from particular castes and they possessed strong
community organizations. In the south these caste and community organiza-
tions dated back to the ninth or tenth centuries. In the major towns and cities
of the south, weaver castes lived in particular streets or neighbourhoods. They
built temples for their worship. And they did the work of weaving together. In
villages, weavers again lived in close proximity to each other and worked and
worshipped together. Weaver caste organizations in the south also possessed a
regional structure. By the eighteenth century, the strong weaver community
organizations, the buoyant demand for cloth, and the advantages that the con-
tract system gave to weavers translated into a high standard ofliving for them.
Some of this evidence on standard ofliving is summarized in Table 1.1. 38
Despite the economic importance of the finishing processes, far less is known
about the producers and the organization of production. Bleaching, dyeing and
printing, and painting were located in places where water was abundant and
36
Ibid. 58--g.
37
Chaudhuri, Trading Worldof Asia, 256-9; Parthasarathi, Transition,22----9.
38 For an opposing point of view, see Stephen Broad berry and Bishnupriya Gupta, 'The Early
Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia,
1500-1800', Economic History Review, 59h (2006), 2-31.
TABLE r. r. Wages in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
Britain South India Bengal

Weaving (lbs/week) 40-140 65-160 55-135
Spinning (£!lb) 4d-2s. 7d-2s. 5d-2s.
Agricultural Labour (lbs/week) 30-35 26-30
Note: The wages for weaving and agricultural labour are given in terms of pounds of grain per week,
wheat for Britain and rice for South India and Bengal. For spinning they are given in terms of earnings
per pound of yarn spun but with correction for differences in grain prices. For further details, see
Parthasarathi, 'Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness'.
Sources: Britain and South India: Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in
the Eighteenth Century: Britain and South India', Past and Present, 158 (1998), pp. 79-109. Bengal
weavers' incomes: N. K. Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal: From Plassey to the Permanent
Settlement (Calcutta, 2nd edn. 1961), vol. 1, p. 176; D. B. Mitra, The Cotton Weavers of Bengal, I757-
I833 (Calcutta, 1978), p. 123; Peter J. Marshall, 'The Company and the Coolies: Labour in Early
Calcutta', in P. Sinha (ed.), The Urban Experience,: Calcutta: Essays in Honour of Professor Nisith R.
Ray (Calcutta, 1987), p. 28. Bengal rice prices: Mitra, Cotton Weavers, p. 123; Marshall, 'Company and
the Coolies', p. 28; Rajat Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialisation in Rural Bengal,
C.I760-I800 (Delhi, 2000), p. 255.
possessed chemical properties that made it well suited for these finishing
processes. In the south, for example, Porto Novo became a major indigo-dyeing
town because of the water that was found there. And in Gujarat, Broach was
reputed to be the best bleaching centre and cloth woven in other parts of the
province, and even from northern India, was sent there for washing. Similarly,
printing and painting centres, some of them very sizeable, were found scattered
through Gujarat and north and south India. 39
The families who bleached cloth were drawn from washermen castes and it
is likely that dyeing, painting, and printing were also done by specialist castes.
By the eighteenth century, washermen bleached cloth that was delivered to
them by merchants. It is likely that other finishers worked on a similar commer-
cial basis. Such a system of working to order would have been analogous to that
under which weavers undertook work. For painting and printing such a system
would also have been necessary for cloth to be finished according to merchant
specifications and patterns. This was certainly how the English East India
Company procured painted and printed cloth in the late seventeenth century. 40
39 Surendra Gopal, Commerce and Crafts in Gujarat I6th and I 7th Centuries: A Study in the
Impact of European Expansion on Precapitalist Economy (New Delhi, 1975), 221.

40 John Irwin and R. Schwartz, Studies in Jndo-European Textile History (Ahmedabad, 1966),
16--17 and 34-7.

THE VARIETIES OF CLOTH
Between 1200 and 1800 thousands of varieties of cotton cloth were manufac-
tured in the Indian subcontinent. Moti Chandra has compiled lists that contain
hundreds of textile terms from lexicons and other sources for the Sultanate
period. Comprehensive glossaries of textile types run to a few hundred pages.
The glossary compiled by John Irwin and P. R. Schwartz oflndian textile terms
from seventeenth-century European records, which contains cloth that was part
oflndo-European commerce, alone contains sixteen pages.41
The profusion of cloth types reflects the diversity of tastes within the sub-
continent. Cloth consumption varied enormously by region and, within a locale,
by social status and aesthetic preference. The textile manufacturers of the sub-
continent possessed the knowledge and the flexibility to meet the highly specific
tastes of diverse Indian buyers. This is not to imply that these preferences were
static and unchanging. To the contrary, there is substantial evidence for changes
in style and form of clothing from northern, southern, western, as well as
eastern India between 1200 and 1800. Such shifts in fashion or taste were highly
fragmented and did not lead to a greater uniformity of demand. 42
The tastes of buyers outside the subcontinent were similarly varied. The con-
sumers oflndian cottons in East and West Africa, the Middle East, South-East
Asia, Europe, and the Americas all had their preferred sorts of cloth, which
fitted their needs and preferences. These needs and preferences also changed
periodically, whether seasonally or yearly, and Indian textile manufacturers had
to keep up with these shifts, changing weaves, designs, and finishes to satisfy
the demands of the buyers.
The modification of des"ignsfor buyers in Europe is well known. In the late
seventeenth century, for example, weavers adjusted the widths of their cloths
to suit European company demand. Weavers were reluctant at first to make the
change for fear that the cloths would not be vendible to other potential buyers.
The painting and printing of cloth was also modified to conform to European
tastes. Indian printers and painters expanded their repertoire of goods on white
backgrounds to suit the demands of European buyers. Therefore, the expansion
in European demand led to some radical changes in the design and process of
cloth painting and printing. 43
Similar modifications had to be made for other markets as well. In the case
of Mozambique in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as Pedro
41 Chandra, Costumes Textiles, ch. 5; Satyaprakasa Sangara, Indian Textiles in the Seventeenth
Century (New Delhi, 1998); Irwin and Schwartz, Indo-European Textile History, 57-72.
42 See, for instance, Chandra, Costumes Textiles, ch. 5 and G. S. Ghurye, Indian Costume
(Bombay, 1951), ch. 6.

43 Irwin and Schwartz, Indo-European Textile History, 16--17.
Machado's essay in this volume makes evident, the fashion for Indian cottons
changed seasonally and annually. It is likely that for some centuries, merchants
in the Indian Ocean trading world conducted business on the basis of sample
books. Unfortunately, no such books survive.
Despite the bewildering variety of cloths, the textiles of the subcontinent may
be grouped into a few major categories according to the quality of the weave and
how the cloth was finished. The bulk of the cloth made in the subcontinent was
composed entirely of cotton. Only a small fraction was woven from mixtures of
cotton and other fibres, most commonly silk. Bengal, in particular, was famous
for some of its cotton-silk mixtures, perhaps because the region had a sizeable
silkworm industry. Because the addition of silk raised the prices of these cloths,
higher-income groups were the main buyers.
Much of the cotton cloth woven in India was relatively coarse stuff and fitted
the budgets of working people both in the subcontinent and in the Indian Ocean
trading world. European buyers, who entered the market for cloth in the six-
teenth century but became major players from the mid-seventeenth century,
tended to purchase cloth that was of middling quality or better. Even the coars-
est cloths that the Dutch and English East India Companies procured-with
the exception of the stuff that they sold in Asia-were superior in quality to the
average bazaar cloth of southern, western, or eastern India. These middle-range
textiles that became the staple of the European companies were variations on
the middling-quality cloths that the middle classes of the subcontinent had pur-
chased f9r centuries and used for clothing, bedding, and decoration. In
European parlance, these cloths were typically referred to as calicoes, as they
formed the raw material for printing: the designs took better on coarser and
heavier cotton cloths.
Europeans also purchased sizeable quantities of high-quality goods. These
consisted mainly of muslins, but also included high-quality calicoes woven from
finer yarn and containing a greater density of yarn in the weave. These fine
cloths were in great demand both within the subcontinent as well as in markets
in the Indian Ocean. In the subcontinent they were the staple for the clothing
of the wealthy. Illustration 1. 5 gives an indication of how muslins were used in
the dress of men in north India during the Mughal period. An appreciation for
muslins in northern India pre-dated the Mughal Empire. Amir Khusrau in the
early fourteenth century wrote that they were 'like a pleasant gift of a springtide
and sit as lightly on the body as moonlight on the tulip or a dewdrop on the
morning rose'. 44
Even the middling sorts in the subcontinent would have incorporated some
of these fine textiles into their dress. Men, for example, used these finer weaves
44 Quoted in Chandra, Costumes,Textiles, 138.

Illustration 1.5. A nobleman seated smoking on a terrace, attended by two servants. Gouache
on paper, c.1750-1754. 40.7 x 34.2 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, D.1202-1903.
for turbans. Sizeable quantities of muslins were exported to the Ottoman

Empire where they were prized as turban cloths in Istanbul and in other major
towns and cities where there was a market for luxury textiles. And these finer
weaves, albeit after elaborate finishing, were exported to South-East Asia where
they were prized for ritual uses. 45
45 Gilles Veinstein, 'Commercial Relations between India and the Ottoman Empire (Late
Fifteenth to Late Eighteenth Centuries): A Few Notes and Hypotheses', in Sushi! Chaudhury
and Michel Morineau (eds.), Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early
Modern Era (Cambridge, 1999), 108-10.
Illustration 1.6. Cloth merchant seated in his shop selling chintz to a customer.
Opaque watercolour, c. 1800. British Library Add.Or.2531. By kind permission of the
British Library, London.
In addition to fibre type and quality of weave, Indian cotton textiles may be
divided into different categories according to the finishing that they received.
Finishing was integral to the production process and could account for more
than half of the final price of a piece. The finishing alone could cost more than
the raw material, spinning, and weaving put together. 46
46 For some data on the economics of cloth finishing in south India, see Ian Christopher
Wendt, 'The Social Fabric: Textile Industry and Community in Early Modern South India'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 2005), ch. 4, esp. 302.
Prasannan Parthasarathi
Much of the cotton cloth consumed within the subcontinent was painted,
printed, embroidered, or dyed, either in the yarn or by the piece. A painting of
a cloth merchant in south India which was done around 1800 illustrates the
colourfulness of the cloth that was demanded and worn (Illustration 1.6). The
merchant's wares consist of printed and striped cloths in an array of reds, blues,
and yellows. While the merchant is wearing a white dhoti, which suggests the
austere and pious, and perhaps even frugal, mentality of the mercantile man,
his customer is wearing a red printed fungi and a white jacket with a print of
flowers. The white turban cloth that the merchant and the dealer are holding,
in preparation to seal an agreement it appears, has a vivid red border.
The panorama of colours that formed the dress of north Indians is on display
in countless paintings from the Rajput and Mughal schools and may be seen in
Illustration 1.7 in which Rajput and Mughal fighters are dressed in vibrant
blues, greens, and oranges and reds. The abundant use of colour and design is
conveyed in a description of the dress of an eighteenth-century Gujarati
Brahmin 'beau', in the words ofG. S. Ghurye:
His angarkha was of thin, Dacca muslin, tight-fitting and embroidered. His dhoti came
from Nagpur, and had the broad red-silk border which even the rich coveted ... He
never went out of doors without first donning newly dyed and fresh-folded deep-red
turban from Nadiad. 47
Much of the cloth exported to both the Indian Ocean and elsewhere between
1200 and 1800 was painted, printed, embroidered, or decorated in some fashion.
Because of the lower labour requirements of the process, in comparison with
other modes of finishing, a large proportion of the cloth was printed with blocks.
On low-quality and coarsely woven cloth, the printing itself was done quickly
and simply and the pattern would typically consist of a single colour, which
again kept the price low. At the other end of the spectrum, the highest-quality
painted cloths contained elaborate patterns in a number of different colours.
Between these two extremes there were a dazzling variety of printed, combina-
tions of printed and painted, and painted textiles that were consumed from
Japan to South-East Asia, East Africa, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire.
From the sixteenth century exports to the Atlantic world were largely mod-
ifications of these Indian Ocean patterns. In the early days of the trade, because
of the high costs of transport around the Cape of Good Hope, Portuguese and
then Dutch, British, and French buyers tended to buy high-value painted and
embroidered goods. With time, and the reduction in transport costs, Europeans
purchased lower-cost stuff which was finished in less expensive ways. Buyers
in some parts of West Africa, for example, were eager consumers of south
Indian cloth that was dyed blue with indigo. West Africans also had a voracious
47 Quoted in Ghurye, Indian Costume, 138.
Illustration 1.7. Skirmish between Mughal and Rajput forces from the Akbarnama.
Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 1590-95. 38.1 x 22.4 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.2:u6-1896.
appetite for checked and striped cloths, which were woven with dyed yarns,
usually in red and blue. 48
In the eighteenth-century the European trading companies began to pur-
chase enormous quantities of plain white calicoes with which they supplied the
burgeoning cloth-printing industries of Britain, France, Spain, the Swiss ter-
ritories, and other nations in Europe. 49 This cloth was finished only with a
bleaching by washermen. Such an export of white cloth with absolutely no
embellishments had no precedent before the eighteenth century. White cloth
was demanded within the subcontinent for use as turbans, dhotis, and saris, but
these items always contained a decorative border made up of either coloured
threads or silver and gold threads, or both. Such a border is evident in the paint-
ing of the cloth merchant in south India which depicts a white turban cloth with
a red border (Illustration 1 .6). The large-scale export of white cloth in the eigh-
teenth century put pressure on bleaching facilities and led to huge demand for
experienced washermen who could prepare the white cloth that European
printers demanded.
THE EXPANSION OF PRODUCTION AFTER 1500
From the sixteenth century the output of cotton cloth in the subcontinent
boomed. The expansion of world trade from mid-century, as new supplies of
silver were mined and pumped into the world economy, increased the demand
for Indian cotton goods in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and the Atlantic world.
The inflow of enormous quantities of silver and gold, as well as copper, cowries,
and other monetary media, into the Indian subcontinent in exchange for these
cottons propelled in the subcontinent itself a commercial boom and an economic
expansion. Trade within the subcontinent grew; market activity expanded and
flourished. Rulers and states benefited from the new-found sources of revenue
and both luxury and everyday consumption of cloth flowered. Therefore, from
the sixteenth century there was far greater demand for Indian cotton stuff both
inside and outside the subcontinent which was met with higher levels oflndian
cloth production.
The expansion of cotton manufacturing is striking from the mid-seventeenth
century when the purchases of the European companies took off. By the late
48 Roberts, 'West Africa and the Pondicherry Textile Industry'; Alfred Wadsworth and Julia
de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Tradeand IndustrialLancashire,1600-1780 (Manchester, 1931), 150-

1;Joseph Inikori, Africans and the IndustrialRevolutionin England:A Study in International Trade
and EconomicDevelopment(Cambridge, 2002), 435----9.
49 Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 139, 141-2; Stanley D. Chapman and Serge
Chassagne, European Textile Printers in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Peel and Oberkampf
(London, 1981), 4 and 14.
Table 1.2. Estimates of the Share of Cotton Cloth ProductionPurchasedfor Export by

English and Dutch East India Companies
Region Year Percentage of Total
Production
Bengal 1709-18 IO
Northern Coromandel Coast 1680s less than 50
South India 1700-25 20
Sources:Bengal: Om Prakash, 'Bullion for Goods: International Trade and the Economy of Early
Eighteenth Century Bengal', Indian Economicand Social History Review, 1312 (1976), pp. 159-187.
Northern Coromandel Coast: Joseph Breunig, 'Textile Producers and Production in Late Seventeenth
Century Coromandel', Indian Economicand Social History Review, 23/3 (1986), pp. 333-356. South
India: Prasannan Parthasarathi, The Transitionto a ColonialEconomy:Weavers,Merchantsand Kings
in South India, I720-I800 (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 73-77.
seventeenth century, European company purchases represented a sizeable frac-

tion of total cloth output in Bengal and in the Coromandel Coast. Table r.2
summarizes the results of a variety of studies that have estimated the share of
cloth that the Europeans bought in these two regions in these decades.
At the same time, there were signs of prosperity in various regions of the sub-
continent. Muzaffar Alam and Christopher Bayly have documented the
growing wealth in the lower rungs of the political order in Mughal north India
as a result of steady commercial expansion from the sixteenth century. As
Mughal p9wer declined from the early eighteenth century these local chiefs and
little kings took on the trappings of proper kingship and they built armies and
developed a courtly life. Both of these accoutrements of statecraft required
cloth. Similar growth in demand and consumption of cloth may be seen in
eastern and southern India from the late seventeenth century. 50
How did Indian producers meet the higher levels of demand for cloth both
locally and in the Atlantic world? Certainly one way was through a decline in
consumption of Indian stuff in some long-standing markets. Quantitative evi-
dence is not available for exports to the Indian Ocean world, but impressionistic
evidence suggests that demand for Indian cottons in South-East Asia declined
from the seventeenth century. Such a decline in demand would have been felt
across the subcontinent since manufacturers in Gujarat, Coromandel, and
Bengal all supplied cloth to markets in that region. 51
so Muzaffar Alam, The Crisisof Empire in Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, I 707-
48 (Delhi, 1986); C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmenand Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of
EuropeanExpansion, Il70--I870 (Cambridge, 1983).
51 See the William Clarence-Smith essay in this volume. See also Anthony Reid, 'South-East
Asian Consumption of Indian and British Cotton Cloth, 1600-1850', in Giorgio Riello and
Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothedthe World: Cotton Textilesand the Indian Ocean,I500--
I850 (Leiden, forthcoming 2009).
Despite the decline in consumption oflndian cottons in South-East Asia, the

available evidence suggests that there was nevertheless an expansion of cloth
production in the subcontinent from the mid-seventeenth century. These
higher levels of output were achieved on a subcontinental level in three ways:
the adoption of new techniques of production; an intensification of work, with
a concomitant reduction in quality; and, perhaps most critically, an increase in
the ranks of textile workers, especially in the frontier region of Bengal, which
accompanied a broader expansion of arable land at the expense of the jungle in
that region.
From medieval times new technologies for the manufacture of cotton cloth
developed and diffused through the Indian subcontinent and these improving
techniques contributed to greater productivity and higher output of cotton cloth
in the centuries after 1500. The spinning wheel, for instance, increased produc-
tivity several-fold and it appears to have been used more widely from the six-
teenth century. It was also adapted for particular spinning requirements.
Similarly, cloth printing with blocks may have displaced cloth painting after
1500 as it required less labour. The diffusion of this and other labour-saving
techniques is however difficult to capture from the surviving literary or archival
evidence.
In addition to using new methods of production, textile workers also inten-
sified their work. In the Coromandel Coast, both the Dutch and English East
India Companies demanded enormous quantities of cloth from the weaving
centres of the south. In the 1720s merchants reported that 'the very large
demand lately made has occasion'd the running the cloth off the loom so fast
'tis not practicable to keep them justly to the goodness of the muster'. 52 In addi-
tion to working more intensively spinners and weavers increased their output
by reducing the quality of their goods. Yarn was spun more quickly, and there-
fore not of the proper fineness. The widths and lengths of cloth were reduced
in order to weave pieces more quickly and the number of warp and weft yarns
was also reduced, which speeded up the production process but yielded a
loosely woven and flimsy cloth. 53
Technological change and its diffusion together with the intensification of
work and degradation of quality cannot fully account for the phenomenal growth
of cloth output in the three centuries after 1500. Also critical was the economic
expansion of Bengal, which was a frontier region that became increasingly
settled in this period. The eastern half of Bengal was largely jungle before the
sixteenth century, but by the eighteenth it had become a highly productive rice-
growing region. The growth in population, the establishment of settled agricul-
ture, and the building of towns and cities in this fertile delta added enormously
52 Qµoted in Parthasarathi, Transition, 18.
53 Ibid.
to the productive capacity of the subcontinent as a whole. The textile trades of

Bengal, both in cotton and silk, expanded enormously after 1500 and began to
meet the demands of both Indian Ocean and global markets. This is why from
the late seventeenth century Bengal became the most important textile manu-
facturing region in the Indian subcontinent. 54
CONCLUSION
Between 1200 and 1800 the manufacture and export of cotton textiles was
central to economic life in several regions of the Indian subcontinent. The
growing of cotton, the spinning of yarn, and the weaving and finishing of cloth
provided employment and income to millions. Vast merchant fortunes were
made from the trade in these goods. The export of cotton cloth was the chief
means by which the Indian subcontinent paid for imports from the Red Sea,
Persian Gulf, and central and South-East Asia. After 1500, cloth was traded for
silver, gold, and other commodities that were used as money in the subconti-
nent, which fuelled a great commercial boom. The trade in cotton cloth was
critical for the commercialization oflndian society and, therefore, had profound
economic, social, and political repercussions in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries.
At the same time, the manufacture of cotton cloth on an ever expanding scale
between 1 700 and 1800 had a far-reaching impact on the process of production
itself. Textile manufacturing became increasingly commercialized and the divi-
sion oflabour was extended as the numerous steps in the manufacture of cloth
came to be connected via merchants and markets. Technological innovations
and superior techniques in the manufacture of cloth undoubtedly diffused
through the subcontinent. Growing numbers of spinners, weavers, and cloth
finishers adopted countless small improvements in textile manufacturing, but
this process is difficult to reconstruct since these changes rarely appear in the
sources.
The trajectories of historical change and development described in this essay,
in the economy and society as a whole as well as in the textile industry, were
derailed in the nineteenth century after the European cotton revolution. The
economic order of the nineteenth century was of a completely different sort
from what had existed in the subcontinent in the period between 1200 and 1800.
54 Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier (Berkeley, 1993), 194-207. Also
see Om Prakash, 'Bullion for Goods: International Trade and the Economy of Early Eighteenth
Century Bengal', Indian Economicand Social History Review, 13/z (1976), 159-87.
2
THE RESISTANT FIBRE
Cotton Textiles in Imperial China
HARRIET T. ZURNDORFER
THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF COTTON IN CHINA
Cotton, commonly known in Chinese as mian or mumian, is not a plant native

to China. 1 Although there is written evidence of cotton growing in regions
peripheral to the Chinese empire, and some textile fabrication by tribal peoples
there several hundred years BC, it was not until around the year 1300 that cotton
cultivation became an integral feature of Chinese agriculture. It was also about
that time that cotton cloth production became an essential element in the
Chinese economy. Its transformation from exotic trade artefact to basic every-
day commodity reveals changes in Chinese economic and social history, and in
particular, the capacity of the textile industry to serve both self-sufficient fam-
ilies and market-oriented artisans.
The earfy history of cotton cultivation and textile processing in China can be
seen as part of what one historian has termed 'southernization', that is to say the
multi-faceted process by which crops such as sugar and cotton, and the devel-
opment of various related technologies, spread from southern Asia (what is now
India) elsewhere.2 The 'southernization' of cotton to China involved two species
of the plant: the African-Asian species (Gossypiumherbaceum)which penetrated
China via a northern route overland from central Asia to China's Gansu and
Shaanxi provinces (the Silk Route, in reverse); and the south Asian species
(Gossypiumarboretum)which travelled a southern course overseas from India
(east Bengal and Assam) to Burma, Yunnan, Guangxi, on to Hainan Island, and
into Guangdong province. 3 The first species was relatively poor in quality and
1 Standard references to the history of cotton textiles in China include: Kang Chao, The
Developmentof Cotton Textile Productionin China (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); Yan Zhongping,
Zhongguomianfangzhi shigao,I28<]-r937(Beijing, 1963); and Nishijima Sadao, 'The Formation
of the Early Chinese Cotton Industry', in Linda Grove and Christian Daniels (eds.), State and
Society in China:JapanesePerspectiveson Ming-Qjng Social and EconomicHistory (Tokyo, 1984),
17-77.
2 Linda Shaffer, 'Southernization',Journal of World History, 5h (1994), 1-21.
3 Chao, Development,4-11; Heita Kawakatsu, 'The Emergence of a Market for Cotton Goods
44 Harriet T. Zurndorfer
because of the arid climate of the general growing area production was limited.
Not only did weather and soil conditions affect cotton cultivation in Gansu and
Shaanxi but also governmental policy, which favoured the silk industry, dis-
couraged the spread of this variety. The influential and powerful silk industry
situated in the city of Xi'an, at the beginning of the Silk Route, effectively
barred cotton from penetrating Chinese textile production in northern China.
Given Xi'an's status as capital of China over the centuries, it seems logical that
the silk industry's interests were closely linked to those of government author-
ities. The extent of such influence may also account for the ability of the silk
industry controllers in Sichuan province to form a blockade against any pene-
tration from cotton merchants into its markets. The second species, which even-
tually became the most common cotton plant in China, diffused slowly but
eventually became the mainstay of cultivation and the burgeoning cotton textile
industry.
In this chapter, we trace four facets of cotton textile history in China before
the nineteenth century: first, the role of government in the institutionalization
of cotton cultivation and cloth fabrication; second, the technical and social organ-
ization of cotton textile production; thir~ousehold production and the role of
women; and finally, patterns of cotton cloth distribution and consumption.
THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF

COTTON TEXTILE MANUFACTURING
The transmission of cotton into China was summarized by the eighteenth-

century scholar Chu Hua (fl. 1784) in his survey Mumian pu (Treatise on
Cotton):
Although cotton entered China as tribute from the Han period through the Tang
[approximately, from the first to ninth century], it was not yet cultivated, the people
did not yet make clothes from it, and the government did not yet tax it. Its cultivation
spread [to China] during the era of the Song [960-1279] and the Yuan [1279-1368].
Gansu-Shaanxi and Fujian-Guangdong were the first regions to profit from it. This
was because Fujian and Guangdong carried on trade with seagoing ships and Gansu
and Shaanxi bordered on Central Asia. However, cotton was still not included in taxes.
Thus the 'Treatises on Fiscal Policy' in the Song and Yuan [dynastic histories] do not
mention it. In the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), however, it has spread throughout the
empire. It is used a hundred times more than silk or hemp. 4
in East Asia in the Early Modern Period', in A. J. H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu (eds.),
Japanese Industrialization and the Asian Economy (London, 1994),21-5.
4
Chu Hua, Mumian pu, 1, in the Congshujicheng, vol. 975 (Shanghai, 1937).
Cotton Textiles in Imperial China 45
Writing in the fifteenth century, the Ming observer Qiu Jun (142o-g5) noted
that: 'In our dynasty cotton [growing] has spread across the country: it exists in
both the north and the south; it is relied upon by both the rich and the poor.
The profit that it has generated equals a hundred times that of silk production. ' 5
Cotton cloth's fairly slow development before 1300, but relatively rapid pop-
ularity thereafter, resulted, in both instances, from government interests and
policy. Before the Song dynasty, successive imperial dynastic regimes effec-
tively barred cotton. Official aversion to the textile focused on two factors. First,
as vestimentary regulations were based on the distinction between silk and
hemp, the latter of which was worn by the majority of inhabitants, the author-
ities from the first to the ninth centuries regarded the wearing of cotton gar-
ments as a threat to the preservation of social status markers. Second, as cloth
(both silk and hemp) had monetary use in the payment of taxes, financial admin-
istrators viewed cotton as a potential complicating hindrance to the fiscal
regime. 6 Thus, it was only during the waning years of the Tang dynasty (618-
907) when the central government's available revenues in silk cloth were
severely reduced through loss of authority over silk-producing regions that the
role of cotton in China changed. 7
Both silk and hemp had long histories in China. Thus government initiatives
to promote cotton cultivation and textile production proved crucial for devel-
opment of the newer sector. Silk was known already in Neolithic times, and
became an important trade commodity as early as the second century BC.
During tl\e Early Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 9), silk production reached a high
level of sophistication: discoveries in Han tombs have yielded silk fabrics in
varying forms and qualities, from lightweight gauzes and satins to heavy bro-
cades, which could be dyed, embroidered, or woven with animal, cloud, flower,
and geometric designs. 8 In contrast to silk which remained a luxurious clothing
material, reserved for consumption by the elite throughout the imperial era,
cloth made from hemp fibre, and later ramie, was the principal fabric worn by
the masses of Chinese people until cotton textiles became popular. During
Neolithic times hemp grew principally in northern China, while ramie (some-
times known as nettle cloth) was farmed in the south. By the Song era both
plants were grown throughout the empire but farmers found that the yield of
5 Q!uJun, Daxue yanyi bu,juan 22, 'Gongfu zhichang', 7. Cited in Xu Xinwu,Jiangnan tubushi
(Shanghai, 1992), 1r.
6 Michel Cartier, •Apropos de l'histoire du coton en Chine: approche technologique,
economique et sociale', Etudes chinoises, 13/r-2 (1994), 417-35; id., 'Sapeques et tissus al'epoque
des T'ang (618---906):remarques sur la circulation monetaire dans la Chine medievale',Journa/
of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 19/ 3 (1966), 323-44.
7 Denis Twitchett, 'Provincial Autonomy and Central Finance in Late T'ang', Asia Major,
11/z (1965), 211-32.
8 Valery M. Garrett, Chinese Clothing: An Illustrated Guide (Hong Kong, 1994), 193-6.
Harriet T. Zurndorfer
TABLE 2. r. The Chronology and Geographical Diffusion of Cotton Cultivation in

Southern China
Name of the Book Period Place

Wulu 220-280 Yongchang (Yunnan) Jiaozhou (Indo-China)
N anzhou yiwuzhi 220-280 Nanzhou (Guangxi)
Nanshi 420-588 Linyi (Indo-China)
Liangshu 502-556 Linyi (Indo-China)
Bai Juyi's Poems 772-846 Gui (Guangxi)
Wen chang zalu 1085 Guangxi and Guangdong
Mege huisi 1023-1064 Guangxi and Guangdong
Guihai youheng zhi II26-II93 Guilin (Guangxi)
Lingwai daida II74-II90 Guangxi and Hainan Island
Zhufanzhi n74-n90 Fujian
Poze bian II80-I200 Fujian and Hainan Island
Source: Kang Chao, The Developmentof CottonTextile Productionin China(Cambridge, MA, 1977),
p. I I.
ramie per mu in terms of cloth was twice that ofhemp. 9 Also the yarn of ramie
has considerable strength and it was able to absorb dyes that could give the
woven fabric great lustre, equal to that of silk. For this reason, ramie was often
used to make summer and ceremonial robes for the wealthy elite. 10
It is significant that the first stage of widespread cotton cultivation within
China occurred in the south, far away from northern central governmental
control. The modern scholar Kang Chao has traced the chronology and path of
diffusion during this first phase from the third to the twelfth centuries (Table
2.1 and Map 2.1). 11 His research shows that cotton growing spread from
Yunnan to Guangxi and to what is now northern Vietnam, and then to the
Guangdong coast and Hainan Island, and finally to Fujian province. He has also
established that from around the tenth century the southern cotton species
developed from a perennial into an annual variety with higher yields and a
shorter fruiting period. It was in Fujian that Marco Polo, who resided in China
during the period 1271-92, mentioned that cotton cloth production flourished.
He noted that in Q!anning (Fujian), 'they have no lack of silk' and at the same
time 'so much cotton cloth is woven here of dyed yarn that it supplies the whole
province ofManzi'. 12
By the time of Marco Polo, the Song government had shifted southwards
9
Xu Dixin and Wu Chengming (eds.), ChineseCapitalism, 1522-1840 (Basingstoke, 2000),
29. Xu and Wu record that one mu equals 0.0667 hectare or 0.1647 acre. Ibid., p. xii.
10 Garrett, ChineseClothing, 193.
11 Chao, Development, 11-12.
12 Marco Polo, The Travels (Harmondsworth, 1958), 232.
\
.__,_,,---- ...7->'
/ QINGHAI
\
\
\.._
TIBET
INDIA
South China Sea
Bay of Bengal
MAP 2.1. Path of diffusion of cotton cultivation in China, third to the twelfth centuries
Source: Kang Chao, The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China
I (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), p. 17.
and, with the capital at Hangzhou, the authorities focused on local products for
taxation. Estimates vary about how much the annual tribute of cotton fabric
figured, from a high of rno,ooo pieces of cloth for the entire province, 13 to 5,000
bolts (pi) per one region (Quanzhou) that could total as much as 35,000
metres. 14 In any event, by the late Song era, it would seem cotton cloth had
become common in Fujian, and that cotton cultivation extended further north-
ward to the now economic heartland, the lower Yangzi region Giangnan), and
eventually to the Huai River basin, and into Sichuan province. 15 Farmers found
13
Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo (Paris, 1959), i. 49()-507.
14 Billy K. L. So, Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien
Pattern, 946--I 368 (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 79-80. Although the word pi was the common name
for a bolt of cloth, market measures of cloth used other terminology. According to Li Bozhong,
Agricultural Development in}iangnan, I620--I850 (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. xvi-xvii, cloth was
measured in terms of chi. Li calculates one chi the equivalent of 0.33 metre or 1.09 English feet.
One pi was 3.63 square yards. Li also writes in his chapter in this volume that it took six workdays
oflabour time for an individual (man or woman) to produce one bolt of cotton cloth in Jiangnan.
15 Nishijima, 'Early Chinese Cotton Industry', 19.
Harriet T. Zurndor.fer
Jiangnan's higher-lying dry land unsuitable for growing paddy rice but
favourable for cotton cultivation. 16 In its waning days, in 1273, the Song state
issued an agricultural handbook, Nongsangjiyao (Fundamentals of Agriculture
and Sericulture), in which the details of cotton cultivation were described. 17
It was the Mongol Yuan government that boosted cotton textile production
even further. The Mongols, who were familiar with cotton from India and the
Middle East, encouraged farmers to plant cotton and to weave cloth in China.
In their need for army uniforms, the Yuan regime installed in 1289 a series of
collecting agencies to procure cotton cloth and by 1296 this government had
integrated cloth collection into the taxation system at very favourable rates com-
pared to other textiles. 18 The assertive promotion of cotton by the Yuan rulers
originated out of a genuine need for military clothing made from some kind of
resilient material. In the course of their conquests and movements through
central, west, and south Asia, the Mongols must have perceived the value of
cotton textiles: cotton cloth's strength, durability, and effectiveness as a padded
fabric against winter chill, or as a light, absorbent textile against summer heat.
Archaeological discoveries in Xinjiang have revealed the inner linings of
Mongol army uniforms, underwear, pants, and inner jackets were all made of
cotton cloth. 19
The Ming government continued the policies ofits predecessor, encouraging
cotton cultivation, and the production of cotton textiles, as a means of gaining
revenue. The regime needed cloth to provide the military and their families,
and also used quantities of the textile to purchase horses from nomads along the
northern borders. 20 According to one estimate by the modern scholar Yan
Zhongping, government consumption of cotton cloth was substantial: with
some 1,700,000 soldiers, each receiving two to three bolts per year, the total
cloth required was five to six million bolts. Moreover, he surmises that the
number of bolts needed to satisfy the needs of the dependants of military staff,
officials, and the extensive imperial family brought the government cotton con-
sumption to no less than fifteen million bolts per year. 21
The Ming dynasty fostered a tax programme which assessed obligation in the
form of cotton and/ or cotton cloth and which also allowed the taxpayer to sub-
stitute cotton or cotton cloth for grain to fulfil quotas. InJiangnan, as the grain
16 Chao, Development, 16.

17 Francesca Bray, Technologyand Gender:Fabricsof Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley,
1997), 213.
18 Chao, Development, 18-19.
19 Ibid. 19.
20 Mi Chii Wiens, 'Cotton Textile Production and Rural Social Transformation in Early
Modern China',Journal of the Institute of ChineseStudies of the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong,

7/z (1974), 517.
21 Yan Zhongping, Zhongguomianfangzhi shigao, 15-17.
tax was commuted into cloth equivalents, farmers had to produce cloth not only
to meet the fiscal requirement but also to earn enough income for subsistence.
Moreover, as the official conversion rate between cotton cloth and grain was
generally in favour of the former, people had ever more incentive to grow cotton
or even to buy cotton cloth for the purpose of paying taxes. 22 For tenant
farmers, participation in cotton production helped them to pay the high cost of
rent which was itself a consequence of the increased tax quota. Rent payment
in cotton, called huazi, was accepted by landlords not only on cotton fields but
on land with rice as a major crop. 23 From time to time, the Ming government
was also known to exacerbate demands. For example, in the 1430s eunuch com-
missioners, dispatched to Jiangnan, charged 'extra' tribute-some 800 bolts
above the normal requisite. 24 The high tax/ rent had a direct impact on the
'popularization' of the rural cotton industry because it stimulated crop special-
ization. As Wiens has noted: 'rice land was crowded out by cotton, necessitating
closer interregional dependence for subsistence and commercial goods and in
turn stimulating the rapid growth of markets and market towns.' 25
THE TECHNICAL AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF

COTTON TEXTILE PRODUCTION
Cotton's triumph in China was due not only to government initiatives to

promote iJs cultivation and textile manufacture, but also to the spread of useful
knowledge for transforming the fibre into yarn, which made cotton into an eco-
nomic crop good enough to compete with silk and hemp products. By the thir-
teenth century, cotton cultivation became the mainstay of Jiangnan's Songjiang
prefecture, located in what is now the outskirts of modern Shanghai, and even-
tually the greatest centre of cotton cloth manufacture in imperial China (Map
2.2). Cotton cloth production developed too along the coast south of the Yangzi
River in Suzhou, Taichang prefectures, and also in nearby Jiaxing, Huzhou,
and Hangzhou prefectures, locales which were also known for silk and ramie
cloth production. The entire Jiangnan region was criss-crossed by a series of
intricate canals and narrow waterways which facilitated communication and
marketing.
The origins of Songjiang's prominence as a cotton textile production centre
may be traced to a native woman known as Huang Daopo (born c.1245) who in
22
Chao, Development, 20.
23 Wiens, 'Cotton Textile Production', 518.
24 Michael Marme, Suzhou: Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge (Stanford, Calif.,
2005), 137.
25 Wiens, 'Cotton Textile Production', 519.
50 Harriet T. Zurndoifer
NORTIIERN IlANGSU
AlHUI
Hangzhou Bay
&1
EASTERN ZHEJIANG
Qiantang River 0 50 100km
MAP 2.2. Songjiang prefecture in Jiangnan

Source: Bozhong Li, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, I620-1850
(Basingstoke, 1998), p. xviiii.
effect some time around the 1290s provided the solutions to a number of snags
in cotton processing. 26 Although weaving cotton on traditional looms used for
silk or hemp manufacture did not present any great difficulties, there were other
problems that did inhibit cotton cloth production, such as cleaning the raw
26 Bray suggests that the information about Huang Daopo originates out of a story. See her
Technologyand Gender,215. Nishijima refers to the 'legend' of the Daoist nun Huang in his 'Early
Chinese Cotton Industry', 21.
cotton, preparing the rovings, and, most significantly, spinning them into yam.
'Aunty Huang' was responsible for introducing all the equipment and tech-
niques for ginning, bowing, and spinning cotton to central China from the
south. Huang had spent nearly thirty years on Hainan Island where cotton fab-
rication was common and upon her return to her home village, Wunijing in
Songjiang, she began to teach local people 'the use of the cotton gin, which elim-
inated the seeds; the technique of bowing, which untangled and fluffed up the
fibre ready for spinning; and the multiple-spindle treadle-operated wheel,
which allowed one woman to spin several threads simultaneously' .27Since spin-
ning cotton yarn differed somewhat from spinning silk and ramie, her contri-
bution here was vital to the burgeoning industry. Her biographer Tao Zongyi
credited her in his 1366 publication Chuogenglu (Writing and Cultivating) with
converting a poor region into a prosperous centre of cotton cultivation and
manufacture. 28
The difficulties in spinning cotton yarn in comparison to spinning silk or
ramie should not be underestimated. Unlike silk and ramie filaments which
were already in the form of thin, even threads before spinning, cotton had to be
drawn from the rovings and thinned into filament to the desired fineness. 29 The
three-spindle wheel for spinning cotton was essential for this process and as
illustrated in the 1313 agricultural handbook Nongshu,compiled by Wang Zhen,
it was operated by women. Interestingly, the same publication features in the
section 'Nongqi tupu' (Illustrations of Agricultural Implements) a large-scale
multi-spindle spinning machine for spinning silk or ramie that could be
powered either by men, animals, or water (Illustration 2.1). In effect, it was
comparable to James Hargreaves's 'spinning jenny' or Arkwright's spinning
frame. 30 As we know, these large-scale multi-spindle spinning machines were
never adopted for cotton textile production in China, a phenomenon which led
Kang Chao to ask why the more productive techniques in silk and ramie spin-
ning were never transmitted to cotton spinning. 31 The question seems all the
more problematic given the fact that cotton cloth production in Jiangnan
mingled with that of silks and fine ramie linens.
One explanation rests with the supply of cotton. During the first half of the
Ming dynasty cotton cultivation and fabrication in China became regionalized.
27 Bray, Technologyand Gender,215.
28 Tao Zongyi, Chuogenglu (Beijing, [reprint] 1959), 24: 1ia-b.
29 Chao, Development,64.
30 Ibid. 56-7. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (Stanford, Calif., 1973), 194-<).
Elvin's pages 196 and 197 feature a comparison of drawings ofWang Zhen's machine with those
of machinery for flax and silk spinning printed in Diderot's Encyclopidie.Elvin's drawing of Wang
Zhen's spinning machine is, as he acknowledges, a 're-drawing' based on that from the Siku
quanshu(1780).
31 Chao, Development,63.
Illustration 2.1. 'Big Spinning Wheel' for Processing

silk or ramie from the Nongshu tupu (1313).
This meant that cloth manufacturing was concentrated in Jiangnan while the
northern provinces, which also began to develop cotton cultivation in the fif-
teenth century, became the principal suppliers of raw cotton. In Henan, Hebei,
and Shandong provinces the dry climate hindered spinning: the thread became
brittle and uneven (Map 2. 1 ). Thus, an inter-regional trade evolved whereby
the northern provinces supplied Jiangnan with raw cotton that was processed
there into cloth. As the leading agricultural specialist Xu Guangqi (1562-1633)
wrote in 1628:
Nowadays in the north the price of raw cotton is low yet that of finished cotton is high,
and in the south it is just the reverse. Thus cotton is transported and sold to the south,
whereas the finished materials are shipped to the north for sale.32
Within Jiangnan itself, there was also specialization: cotton spinning and
weaving in the Ming era were concentrated in Jiading, Changshu, and
Songjiang. Songjiang, which was self-sufficient in raw cotton, was able to
supply the needs of weavers in neighbouring Jiaxing and Jiashan (Zhejiang
province). 33 In effect, the northern areas of China were reduced to the status
of an undeveloped periphery that exported raw materials and imported fin-
ished goods while the cotton processors and cloth producers bought grain and
foodstuffs. Elvin argues that the call for raw cotton from the north helps
explain the lack of interest in applying the hemp-spinning machine toward
cotton processing: with less demand for hemp cloth (the former mainstay of
northern cloth production) to make mechanized spinning worthwhile, the
machine fell out of use and consequently disappeared by the seventeenth
century. 34
By the second half of the Ming dynasty, there were basically three levels of
cotton cloth production. 35 First, there was subsistence fabrication: households
grew their own cotton, and then ginned, spun, and wove simple cloth which was
meant in the main for home consumption. In this scenario, women's input was
pivotal. As Susan Mann has noted:
The labor/required to prepare cotton fibers for spinning-including ginning, fluffing,

straightening, and sorting-was easily organized in the context of a joint family unit,
with its attendant servantsand multigenerationalworkforce.Like hemp and silk, cotton
absorbed the labor of women, who could work respectably in the home, where we see
them in paintings and drawings from the Song period onward.36
At this level, female labour productivity increased over time as spinning and
weaving technologies in peasant households spread.
A second level of production occurred in regions where agricultural special-
ization was the norm. Here women were involved in field work and did crop-
ping, picking, or processing commodities such as rice or tea. In these
32
Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu(Shanghai, [ 1640] 1979), 908.
33 Xu and Wu (eds.), ChineseCapitalism, 53.
in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries', in W. E. Willmott (ed.), EconomicOrganization

in ChineseSociety (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 138, 149-50.
36 Susan Mann, 'Work and Households in Chinese Culture: Historical Perspectives', in
Barbara Entwisle and Gail E. Henderson (eds.), Re-drawing Boundaries: Work, Households,and
Genderin China (Berkeley, 2000), 24.
S4 Harriet T. Zurndorfer
circumstances, they probably did not engage in weaving, but may have spun
cotton yarn as a 'sideline' indoor activity in order to gain cash for purchasing
cotton or woven cloth. A local gazetteer dating from the early sixteenth century
describes this interaction: 'Village women take the yarn to the market town at
dawn, trading it for [raw] cotton and then return home. They make yarn from
the cotton and take it out again the next morning with no rest. ' 37 Weaving
cotton, it seems, did not occupy as many women as did spinning. Song Yingxing
(born c.1600) in his 1637 agricultural technology compilation Tiangong kaiwu
(The Creations of Nature and Man) claimed that the cotton-weaving loom
'could be found in every tenth household'. 38
The third level of production took place in special workshops where fancy
cottons were manufactured, often under state sponsorship. In Songjiang and in
the imperial-sponsored ateliers in Nanjing, velvets and intricate patterned
cloths woven on large draw-looms, which were operated by at least two men,
served the luxury trade. These 'top-end' products were highly valued for their
refinement, superior textural quality, and beautiful colours. For instance, a
Songjiang manufacturer was reputed for his extra-thin white cloth woven for
summer stockings, and high-grade fabrics such as cotton interwoven with silk.39
Such products were mostly sold in small quantities in the capital for the use of
the imperial family and aristocrats. 40 Another example of this kind of cotton
commodity specially manufactured for the literati elite was the 'cotton robe'
which the Ming connoisseur Li Rihua (1564-1635) included in his prestigious
'Ranking of Antique Objects'. 41 Jiangnan cotton weavers could also provide
luxury goods on a mass scale. One Ming observer wrote:
Songjiang started making kerchiefs so light and pretty that they were soon in demand
even far away, and the town authorities allowed over a hundred shops to set up in the
western suburbs to sell them; men and women in nearby districts made these kerchiefs
for a living, a new source of income for the population. 42
A seventeenth-century contemporary, Ye Mengzhu, chronicled detailed infor-

mation about the variety of Songjiang-made fabrics: high-quality cloths such as
'three-shuttle cloth', 'floral cloth', and 'eye-brow knit' were manufactured in
town loom houses. In contrast, he wrote, rural households produced good but
37 Songjiang fuzhi (1506--22), reprinted in the Tianyige cang Mingdai fangzhi xuankan
(Shanghai, 1981), 214.

38 Song Yingxing, Tiangong kaiwu (University Park, Pa., 1966), 66.
39
Fan Lian, Yunjianjumu chao (1593), reprinted in Biji xiaoshuo daguan (Shanghai, c.1981),
vi. II I.
40Xu and Wu (eds.), Chinese Capitalism, 54.
41 Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China
(Cambridge, 1991), rn4-5.

42
Cit. in Bray, Technology and Gender, 225.
ordinary-quality fabrics such as hard-wearing biaobu(standard cloth), 'T-cloth',

and 'midloom'. 43
HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN
Aside from the specialist work places, almost all cotton cloth production during
the Ming period remained a household activity. 'Family handicraft' was a mode
of production deeply rooted in Chinese cultural tradition. The classical gender
division oflabour expressed in the saying 'men plough, women weave' (nangeng,
niizhi) required separate duties from the sexes. 44 But in practice, as textile pro-
duction involved different materials, both men and women could be engaged in
the making of cloth. 45 Silk production, for example, absorbed both men and
women's labour. Men planted and cultivated mulberry trees (whose leaves were
fed to the silkworms), while women raised the silkworms, reeled the threads or
flosses, and wove the silk. By the mid-Ming era, however, the weaving of top-
quality silk required more capital investment, including complex looms oper-
ated by at least two or three skilled workers, which inhibited women's singular
participation at this point. 46 A division oflabour also embraced the manufacture
of textiles made of hemp or ramie. Men harvested the plant while both men and
women using treadle-powered wheels spun the yarn and later wove the cloth. 47
In cotton cloth production, the gender division may have been somewhat
sharper. Yf e may observe from a set of drawings published in the 1637 Tiangong
kaiwu that ginning and bowing were tasks for men while straightening and
rolling the bowed cotton fibres, and spinning, were done by women. 48 Women
also sized the warp in preparation for weaving, warped, and wove, while dyeing,
washing, and calendaring cloth were men's jobs. Some 130 years later, in 1765,
another scholar, Fang Guancheng (1698-1768), demonstrated the unchanged
status of the sexual division oflabour in cotton processing. In that year, Fang
presented to the throne a set of exquisite drawings with the title Mianhua tu
43 Ye Mengzhu, Yueshi bian (1700) (Shanghai, 1981), 157. For more information on the types
and quality of cloth produced in Songjiang, see Nishijima, 'Early Chinese Cotton Industry', 49-
54.
44 Bret Hinsch, 'Textiles and Female Virtue in Early Imperial Chinese Historical Writing',
Nan Nii: Men, Womenand Genderin Early and Imperial China, 5/z (2003), 170--202.
45 Li Bozhong has argued vigorously that this saying is only applicable from the early Qing
era (late seventeenth century). See Li Bozhong, 'Farm Labour Productivity inJiangnan, 1620--
1850', in Robert Allen, Tommy Bengtsson, and Martin Dribe (eds.), Living Standardsin the Past:
New Perspectiveson Well-Beingin Asia and Europe(Oxford, 2005), 62-3.
46 Bray, Technologyand Gender,233-6, 239-52.
47 Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu,991-1000.
48 Song Yingxing, Tiangongkaiwu, 60--6.

(Illustrations of Cotton) which depict the stages of cotton processing in the eigh-
teenth century. 49 The sexual division oflabour in this collection remained the
same as that in Tiangong kaiwu. Another eighteenth-century compilation of
illustrations on cotton production, originally made by a court painter, Cao
Bingzheng, for the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722), were 'redone' with a
'hybrid' European-Chinese perspective by the well-known Jesuit artist Father
Giuseppe Castiglione who worked in China under the name of Lang Shining.
His series of eighteen plates which illustrate all the stages of cotton production,
from sowing the cotton seeds to weaving the cloth fabric, also convey the same
sexual divisions.so Men plant and tend the cotton plants (thus working in the
fields), bow and card the fibres, but the rest of the cotton fabrication was done
by women.
As cotton cloth production increasingly absorbed female labour, the ideal of
women working respectably at home, within the confines of the family house-
hold, took on ever-greater importance. The Ming government encouraged
peasant families to accumulate resources through hard work, and celebrated
enterprising households in statecraft writings and family instruction books.SI
Women's textile production was especially valorized. The Ming high-ranking
administrator Pang Shangpeng (1524-81) documents in his workPangshijiaxun
(Mr Pang's Family Instructions) how women even in gentry families were
expected to engage in cloth fabrication:
A girl will receive ten pounds (jin) of cotton and one pound hemp per year when she
reaches age six; twenty pounds cotton and two pounds hemp when she reaches age ten.
She can prepare her dowry clothes with these supplies. When a new wife arrives, she
will receive thirty pounds of cotton and five pounds of hemp. She has to weave herself,
instead of hiring anybody for the work. Husbands' seasonal clothes are all supplied from
their wives. The wives will receive many pounds of cotton and hemp annually to make
their own clothes. They cannot hire anybody for that work. Only servants' clothes will
be bought from the market seasonally. 52
Pang's writing here is significant for several reasons. First, it makes clear that
in the sixteenth century, by which time cotton had become common, hemp still
49 Reproductions of Fang's work, but of not very good quality, may be found in Craig
Dietrich, 'Cotton Culture and Manufacture in Early Ch'ing China', in Willmott (ed.), Economic
Organization, 115-22; and in Lisa Lee Peterson, 'Who Does the Weaving, Who Wears the Robe?
Didactic Poems and Pictures of Ancient Chinese Weavers',Arts of Asia, 26/3 (1996), 54---62.The
Rare Books Collection of the Harvard-Yenching Library (Harvard University) possesses three
versions of the Mianhua tu, all dating from 1765.
50 See Cotton and Silk Making in Manchu China (New York, 1980), which reproduces the
exquisite coloured plates now housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

51 Mann, 'Work and Households in Chinese Culture', 25.
52 Pang Shangpeng, Pangshijiaxun, 3, in the Congshujicheng, vol. 976 (Shanghai, 1937). Ajin
is approximately 0.5 to o.6 kilos.

remained an integral part of textile fabrication in Ming China. Hemp, because

of its coarseness, remained the required fabric for clothes worn to funerals and
in mourning which could last as long as three years. 53 A second reason relates
to Pang's role as an official. Because his duties sent him to locations all over the
empire, he had first-hand knowledge of the effects of trade and agricultural spe-
cialization. Pang was a champion of the common farming people's interests and
thus in his many writings he advocated an economic environment of strong
'family values' endorsing hard work conducted within the individual peasant
household. Pang was not alone in his thinking, and thus, whatever potential
cotton cloth fabrication may have had toward mass manufacture, government
policy encouraged its production to remain integral to household production.
Several modern scholars have viewed the consequences of this strategy for
peasant women. Both Nishijima Sadao and Mark Elvin have stressed the per-
sonal difficulties that farming women faced as they wove cotton cloth to meet
household expenses. They both cite well-known prose poems which depict the
rigours of weaving and peasant dependence on the market to pay rent and taxes.
The seventeenth-century poet Dong Hongdu wrote in his 'Complaint of a
Weaving Wife' what befell the peasant woman textile producer:
Hungry, she still weaves.
Numbed with cold, she still weaves
Shuttle after shuttle after shuttle.
The days are short, the weather chill.
I Each length hard to finish.
The rich take their rent,
The clerk the land tax,
Knocking repeatedly with urgent insistence.
Her husband wants to urge her on.
But has no heart to do so.
He says nothing,
But stands beside the loom. 54
Kenneth Pomeranz argues that however difficult the position of the female
labourer may have been during the Ming, as this poem implies, it is likely that
by the eighteenth century the economic conditions for weaving women in
Jiangnan had changed for the better.ss By then, women's 'rice-buying power'
53
Bray, Technologyand Gender,189.
54
Nishijima, 'Early Chinese Cotton Industry', 59; Elvin, Pattern of the ChinesePast, 274-5.
55
Kenneth Pomeranz, 'Women's Work and the Economics of Respectability', in Bryna
Goodman and Wendy Larson (eds.), Genderin Motion: Divisionsof Laborand Cultural Changein
Late Imperial and Modern China (Lanham, Md., 2005), 243. In contrast, Elvin in another later
publication has emphasized how labour-intensive work for women inJiaxing Giangnan) affected
female mortality rates for the worse. See his article 'Blood and Statistics: Reconstructing the
Population Dynamics of Late Imperial China from the Biographies of Virtuous Women in Local
had increased so much that 'on average, rural women making cloth were cer-
tainly closer to matching their husbands' earning power than they had been
when farms were larger and women had helped cultivate them'. 56 Although
scholarly discourse on wome_n'srole in cotton textile fabrication remains open
to varying interpretations, it does seem certain that in late imperial China the
female contribution to production had become vital to family livelihood and an
integral feature of Chinese ideals of a stable society. 57 At the same time, we
should also consider one adverse effect of women's participation in this indus-
try: women's input may have deterred further mechanical development of
cotton textile manufacture as their labour, however highly valued, remained
cheap relative to the end-product. Thus, there was no economic advantage in
promoting power-driven devices in aid of production.
DISTRIBUTION AND PATTERNS OF COTTON CLOTH CONSUMPTION
Toward the end of the Ming dynasty, another important breakthrough occurred
in cotton cloth production. Xu Guangqi recorded in his agricultural handbook
of 1640 Nongzheng quanshu (Complete Treatises of Agricultural
Administration) that peasants in Suning (Hebei) had discovered that cotton
could be spun and woven during the summer in northern regions in specially
dug underground cellars which preserved humidity. 58 News of this innovation
spread quickly. Now northern cotton cultivators had a way to process their own
raw cotton. The quality of the cotton cloth they wove was 'not a tenth as good
as that of the lower Yangzi', wrote Xu, but it was good enough for northern
households to become self-sufficient and thereby ignore the finished cloth
shipped from Jiangnan. Nevertheless, Jiangnan continued to thrive from its
cotton cloth production, even if the region now had to import cotton from
southern growing regions. It is estimated that by the late Ming, the annual
output ofJiangnan-made cotton cloth was around 30 to 35 million bolts. 59
Interestingly, in the many smallJiangnan market towns which developed as
cloth production increased, no single superintending organization to market,
Gazetteers', in Harriet T. Zurndorfer (ed.), ChineseWomenin the ImperialPast: New Perspectives

(Leiden, 1999), 142.
56 Pomeranz, 'Women's Work', 243.
57 Susan Mann, 'Household Handicrafts and State Policy in Q!ng Times', in Jane Kate
Leonard and John Watt (eds.), To Achieve Security and Wealth: The Qjng State and the Economy
(Ithaca, NY, 1992), 75---96.
58 Xu Guangqi, Nongzheng quanshu,910--11.
59 Li Bozhong, AgriculturalDevelopment,109. This is a rather conservative estimate, and it is
likely, from what is known about production in the eighteenth century, that the figure could be
much higher, from 40 to 45 million bolts. See Xu and Wu (eds.), ChineseCapitalism,170--3.
transport, and distribute this commodity emerged. The bulk of the cotton cloth
woven in rural households, whether in Jiangnan or elsewhere, was brought to
markets in villages or small towns where cotton cloth brokers (yaren) ran shops
°
to collect the goods. 6 From there, long-distance merchants (keshang) periodi-
cally purchased the cloth and shipped it to other regions in the empire. The
brokers were usually local people with useful political ties and landed property,
preconditions which enabled them to procure a broker's licence from the local
government in the first place. The keshang, who were not locals but sojourners,
usually had widespread connections in the empire, and sufficient capital to
invest in both advance purchase of the cotton textiles and their shipment to
distant areas where local merchants in turn sold the cloth at markets and fairs.
The most influential and wealthy of these big merchants were those from
Shanxi province and Huizhou (in Anhui). 61 According to contemporary
sources, these merchants might invest 10,000 taels of silver in order to purchase
50,000 bolts of cotton cloth. 62 At the lower end of the scale, it was the local mer-
chant who sold ginned cotton to spinners, or purchased spun yarn to sell to
weavers inJiangnan's specialized environment.
Private merchants also took charge of the dyeing and calendaring of cloth, by
one of two organizational methods. Brokers or merchants could either negotiate
a price in advance with the dyeing and calendaring establishments and thereafter
advance the cloth and funds or they could let the dyeing and calendaring ateliers
deliver the finished product to them, after which a negotiated price would be
arranged. 63 Modern scholars who have assessed the cotton industry in late impe-
rial Chin{ have remarked that merchants extracted their profits from outsidethe
production process 'by buying cheap and selling dear, by monopolizing the local
markets in which spinners and weavers could exchange their products, and by
binding producers to them through usury' .64 In that way, the organization of
cotton textile production and distribution in China did not resemble the
European putting-out system which was controlled from withinthrough the pro-
vision of raw materials and the regulation of production pace. 65 Although
Chinese Marxist historians likened merchant involvement in the cotton industry
to early capitalist relations, most modern historians do not concur. 66 Bray, who
6o Fan Shuzhi, Ming QingJiangnan shizhen tanwei (Shanghai, 1990), 139-41.

61 On these merchants see Terada Takanobu, Sansei sh nin no kenky (Kyoto, 1972); and
Harriet T. Zurndorfer, Changeand Continuity in ChineseLocal History: The Developmentof Hui-
chouPrefecture800 to r8oo (Leiden, 1989), 54-5, 132-5.
62 Ye Mengzhu, Yueshi bian, 157-8.
63 Dietrich, 'Cotton Culture', 130-1.
64 Timothy Brook, The Confusionsof Pleasure:Commerceand Culturein Ming China (Berkeley,

1998), 199.
65 Ibid.
66 Nishijima gives further evidence to distinguish the European putting-out system from the
considers merchant control over cloth workers, makes a distinction between

those cloth workers who earned money through 'piecework' and those who were
'locked into a system of mass production, with levels of self-exploitation typical
of pro to-industry elsewhere in the world'. 67
By the late Ming, the consumption of cotton textiles could also be dictated
by changing tastes in fashion. As the well-connected Ming official Fan Lian
observed, c.1583, the scholar's cotton gown was no longer acceptable (in fash-
ionable circles) because it was considered 'cheap' looking. 68 Cotton novelties
also caught the consumers' favour and gave rise to further commercialization.
Sometime in the 1570s there developed a craze for cotton socks:
There were no summer-sock stores in Songjiang before. Many people wore felt socks
even during the summer. Since the beginning of the Wanli reign (1573-1620), people
have been making summer-socks of youdun fabric. They are light and nice. People from
far away come to buy them. As a result, a hundred summer-sock stores opened in the
western suburb of the prefectural government site. Men and women in the whole pre-
fecture live by making summer-socks, gaining their wages from the store according to
their contributions. 69
Fashion could also dictate the colour and patterns of cotton clothing. Although
commoners were restricted from wearing the five official colours of yellow, red,
blue, white, and black which were only for the elite, they were allowed to have
clothes that were coloured in a mixture of the above, such as brown, green, and
paler shades of the restricted hues. 70 Because commoners were also discouraged
from wearing embroidered textiles, they wove simple patterns into the cloth to
decorate their clothing.
After the fall of the Ming dynasty, the new Manchu Qing regime ( 1644-
1911) did its best to restore the vigorous market economy that had flourished
since the sixteenth century. In their commitment to bolster even further the
household production system, the Manchus encouraged farming through the
introduction of new seed strains and technology to improve productivity. 71 This
effort sometimes worked at cross-purposes in the case of household cotton man-
ufacture. For example, during the early Qing, farmers in Fujian and
Guangdong provinces began experimenting with the possibility of growing two
Chinese merchants' involvement in the cotton industry. See Nishijima, 'Early Chinese Cotton
Industry', 63, 64, 66, 69. See also Tanaka Masatoshi, 'The Putting-out System of Production in
the Ming and Qing Periods: With a Focus on Clothing Production (I)', Memoirs of the Research
Departmentof Toyo Bunko, 52 (1994), 26-<).
68 Fan Lian, Yunjianjumu chao, IIO.
69 Ibid. II I.
70 Garrett, ChineseClothing, 12.
71 Mann, 'Work and Households in Chinese Culture', 26.
crops of rice per year as well as introducing sugar cane and tea. This meant local
people were no longer willing to plant cotton, and they turned to other regions
for their supply. For a period of time, they traded with Jiangnan sufficient
amounts of raw cotton for cloth production in exchange for locally grown and
processed sugar. 72 But in the eighteenth century, they began to import their
cotton supply from India, because oflower shipping costs. 73
At that point, these southern provinces also became heavily involved in the
export of a highly popular cotton fabric known as 'nankeen', so named because
foreigners thought it was produced around the city of Nanking (Nanjing). For
the first time, cotton textiles were now being exported in vast quantities abroad
to European and American markets. 74 This demand boostedJiangnan produc-
tion even further, although the profits made from foreign trade were earned by
the Guangzhou and Fujian merchants who shipped the nankeens fromJiangnan
to Guangzhou, and thus not by Jiangnan people. At the height of this export,
around 1819, some 3.36 million bolts were sold abroad. 75 The foreign trade
trickled off to next to nothing thereafter but in the long run this was not to affect
the cotton industry within China. Already by 1800 cotton cloth was China's
second most important trade commodity (after grain). 76 While weaving had
become widespread in north China during the second half of the seventeenth
century, the number of peasant households who wove cloth for sale outside the
home remained relatively small, and Jiangnan continued to dominate produc-
tion of all kinds of quality cloths. It is estimated that by the nineteenth century,
one in tw9 Chinese households bought cotton cloth, and thus the amount in cir-
culation must have been very high. 77 As much as 310 million bolts (or 52.5 per
cent of total production) came on the market per year but most of this cotton
circulated in local and regional markets and only a small proportion entered
long-distance trade. Thus, cotton cloth in late imperial China achieved the rep-
utation of a commodity that everyone needed, but few could produce. 78
72 Chu Hua, Mumian pu, 11.

73 See Huw Bowen, 'British Exports of Raw Cotton from India to China during the Late
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries', in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How
India Clothedthe World: Cotton Textilesand the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850 (Leiden, forthcoming
2009).
74 Billy K. L. So, Vincent W. K. Ho, and K. C. Tam, 'Overseas Trade and Local Economy
in Ming and Q!ng China: Cotton Textile Exports from the Jiangnan Region', in Angela
Schottenhammer (ed.), Trade and Transfer acrossthe East Asian 'Mediterranean' (Wiesbaden,
2005), 163-84.
75 Quan Hansheng, 'Yapian zhanzheng qian Jiangsu de mianfang zhiye', in Quan Hansheng,
Zhongguojingjishi luncong(Hong Kong, 1972), ii. 625-49.

76 Xu and Wu (eds.), ChineseCapitalism, 170-4.
77 Ibid. 170.
78 Ibid.
CONCLUSION
Cotton textile production in China was part of a series of changes that con-
tributed to the making of the modern Chinese economy. Offering new economic
opportunities, extra income, and, not least, an impetus for government to
promote family and household status, cotton manufacture competed success-
fully with silk and hemp production. Cotton textiles helped propel an obscure
region into a major commercial centre where traders from all over the empire
congregated and exported this commodity along China's extensive marketing
networks. As a textile, cotton offered maximum comfort for both winter and
summer clothing and allowed peasants a certain freedom from the rigidity of
former dress codes. What we also see is an industry that reached the maximum
extent to which an agrarian economy could produce and generate a valuable
commodity. No revolutionary mechanical or organizational development had
evolved to advance production and distribution by the nineteenth century. This
had many consequences in the long term both for this industry and for China's
general economy. Thus, to read the history of cotton textiles in Ming and Qing
China is also to understand the peculiarities of how on the one hand the industry
helped to generate China's wealth, and on the other hand how it perpetuated a
certain kind of intensive production that discouraged innovation and changing
configurations of the household domestic economy.
3
THE FIRST EUROPEAN COTTON INDUSTRY
Italy and Germany, I IOO-I8oo
MAUREEN FENNELL MAZZAOUI
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COTTON TEXTILE PRODUCTION

IN EUROPE, 1100-1300
The silk and cotton industries of medieval Europe were transplanted industries
based on technology and raw materials imported from the Islamic world. In
contrast to silks which found ready purchasers among traditional European
elites long accustomed to luxury cloth, cotton goods from the outset were geared
toward mass consumption. The success of the cotton industry required the
opening of new markets and the creation of consumer demand for a novel line
of affordable fabrics. This in turn required cost-effective solutions to the trans-
port and processing oflarge quantities of cotton fibre.
While the northward migration of some varieties of the cotton plant
(Gossypiifmherbaceum)from the tropical zone can be traced from an early date,
a sustained expansion of Old World cotton cultivation occurred between 700
and 1600 when the cultivation of the cotton plant reached its maximum geo-
graphical extension, stretching from southern Spain to South-East Asia. 1 An
initial impetus to this development came from an expanded knowledge of
agronomy and irrigation techniques disseminated throughout the Islamic
world. 2 Artisans in royal tiraz factories and private workshops borrowed tools
and techniques from Byzantine and Persian craftsmen, notably the spinning
wheel and the raised horizontal treadle loom, in addition to the bow, reel, and
cotton gin received from India. The application of sophisticated weaving and
dyeing techniques allowed the creation of a novel line of plain and patterned
fabrics. They ranged from sheer muslins and lawns to hybrid fabrics in which
cotton was mixed with linen, silk, and wool. Islamic sumptuary laws favoured
the use of cotton garments among adherents to the faith. The versatility of
cotton and its adaptability to a wide range of climatic conditions ensured a
1 Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages 1100-1600
(Cambridge, 1981), 7-27.

2
Andrew M. Watson,Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Dijfusionof Crops
and Farming Techniques700-1 JOO (Cambridge, 1983), 31-41.
Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui
steady demand among urban and rural consumers linked by extensive commer-
cial networks. Between 700 and 11oo, cotton was transformed from a luxury
commodity to an ordinary article of daily use in the Islamic world. 3
The reception of these techniques in southern Europe in the wake of the
Islamic conquests gave rise to new centres of cotton weaving based on imitations
oflslamic fabrics. In Barcelona, Marseilles, and several Italian ports, artisans
specialized in coarse fabrics and sailcloth. In zones of cotton cultivation such as
Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia, local weavers produced inexpensive fabrics,
apparel, and household goods for domestic or regional markets and, in some
cases, for export to Spain and France. In these regions the consumption of
cotton and linen cloth appears to have overshadowed woollens. 4 However, a
large-scale, export-oriented industry first took firm root in northern Italy in the
populous towns of the Po Valley, which were already important centres of
woollen cloth production. The ports of Venice and Genoa, the Po and its trib-
utaries, and the Alpine passes constituted vital commercial arteries for an indus-
try of mass production which was dependent upon imported supplies of raw
materials and international outlets for manufactured goods. 5
Underpinning the success of the Italian, and indeed the entire emerging
cotton industry oflate medieval Europe, was a highly evolved maritime traffic
in raw cotton linking the major areas of supply to most major and many minor
ports in the Mediterranean and eventually the Atlantic and North Sea (Map
3.1). Northern Italy was at the epicentre of a burgeoning Mediterranean trade
in crude cotton, dominated by Venetian and Genoese merchants. The provi-
sioning of raw materials required a high level of capital investment, and inno-
vative solutions to the logistical challenges of transporting large volumes of
the lightweight commodity at a contained cost. A prime example is the regu-
lated fleets and coordinated sailing dates of the Venetian convoys to the prime
cotton-producing zones in the eastern Mediterranean (muda gothonorum)
(Illustration 3. 1 ). 6 Large volumes of cotton were also carried on unregulated
cogs of Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Barcelona, Marseilles, Ragusa, and other
3 Mazzaoui, Italian CottonIndustry, 7-27, 73--0.
4 Stephan R. Epstein, 'The Textile Industry and the Foreign Cloth Trade in Late Medieval
Sicily (1300--1500): A "Colonial Relationship"?',Journa/ of Medieval History, 15/z (1989), 156-
7, 172; Mario Del Treppo, I mercanticatalani e l'espansionedella coronaaragonesenel secoloXV
(Naples, 1972-3), 201.
5 Mazzaoui, Italian CottonIndustry, 59-72.
6 The term mudagothonorumreferred both to ships sailing in convoy and to a specified loading
period for cotton cargoes. On the organization of the Venetian mude see the following studies by
Frederic C. Lane, VenetianShips and Shipbuildersof the Renaissance(Baltimore, 1934), 45-6; id.,
'Fleets and Fairs', in Veniceand History: The CollectedPapers of FredericC. Lane (Baltimore,
1966), 128-41; id., 'Rhythm and Rapidity of Turnover in Venetian Trade in the Fifteenth
Century', ibid. 109-27. On Venetian regulations regarding the loading of bulky cotton cargoes
see id., 'Cotton Cargoes and Regulations against Overloading', ibid. 253--02.
~---· LinenTrade,13thCentmy
->......
LinenTrade,15thCentmy
" FustianProduction,14thand 15thCentmy

G- FustianTrade,14thand 15thCentmy
,. RawCottonMarkets
Beirut
Map 3.1. Production and trade oflinens and cottons in Europe, thirteenth to fifteenth centuries
Source: Wolfgang Von Stromer, Die Grundung der Baumwollindustrie in Mitteleuropa: Wirtschaftspolitik im Spatmittelalter (Stuttgart: Anton Hieremann, 1978), 83.
66 Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui
Illustration 3.1. Venice Receiving Homage from Conquered Cities, by Palma ii Giovane, late
sixteenth century, Venice, Palazzo Ducale, © Art Resource, NY
Cotton was considered one of the key commodities traded from the Mediterranean into Venice.
Here we see the 'Senerissima' (the female personification of the Venetian Republic) accompanied
by the Doge receiving the many commodities from its Mediterranean Empire, including
raw cotton.
maritime cities which were linked to a system of cabotage serving minor

ports. 7
In the face of intense western demand, commercial cultivation expanded in
the principal cotton-growing zones of the Mediterranean. While the prime
grades of Syria, Palestine, Armenia, and Cyprus were heavily represented in
cargoes of Venetian and other ships, lesser qualities of cotton from Greece,
7 For an overview of the Mediterranean cotton trade see Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry,
28-55. For a detailed survey see now Jong-Kuk Nam, Le commercedu cotonen Mediterranie d la
fin du Moyen .Age(Leiden, 2007).
The First European Cotton Industry
Turkey, and southern Italy (Apulia, Malta, Calabria, and Sicily) as well as Egypt
and North Africa figured prominently in an ever widening radius of traffic. The
various grades of cotton were never mixed, but were employed separately for
distinct types of fabric. 8
North Italian merchants successfully launched a broad array of cotton fabrics
into European and Mediterranean trading channels. Cotton goods competed in
price with linens and light woollens. Cottons also complemented linens and
woollens by offering consumers of all means the widest possible choice of fabrics
for a variety of applications in apparel and household furnishings. The low cost
and versatility of cottons, available in a series of pure and mixed fabrics (with
warps of wool, silk, linen, and hemp), help to explain the great elasticity of
demand for cotton cloth. Consumers were offered quality products at affordable
prices through a dense distribution network, extending from international
dealers to urban retailers and itinerant vendors in country fairs and weekly
markets. The quality and provenance of recognized 'brands' was guaranteed by
registered trademarks and official guild and city seals. Trademarks, which could
be sold and even subdivided, were also counterfeited by rival producers in other
towns and regions. 9
Western fabrics were initially modelled on well-known Islamic prototypes
that often preserved the original Arabic name such as boccaramo,barracano,and
boccasino.In Italian documents, the generic terms for cotton cloth werefustagno
(from the Arabic fustan, a mixed cotton/linen fabric) and pignolato (possibly
referring t?the 'pine cone' pattern of a type of twill weave). In central Italy the
term guarnello designated both a cotton fabric and a garment made from it.
Under these general rubrics, which were equivalent to the later German
barchent, there was a high level of product differentiation. Some fabrics with
plain or compound weaves were bleached and/ or dyed in the piece. Figured
cottons were also prominently represented in Italian production. Unlike printed
and painted Indian fabrics which became popular in Europe in the seventeenth
century, Italian cottons had designs such as stripes, checks, or geometric shapes
woven into the cloth with coloured thread (Illustration 3.2). The tactile and
visual characteristics of cottons were also embellished by the use of twisted
thread or supplementary warp or weft threads. All-cotton products ranged from
sheer transparent veils and lightweight muslins and lawns in plain weaves to
napped flannels and flannelettes, velours and velveteens, sized buckrams, dim-
ities, and cotton corduroys. Felted cottons were fashioned into rain cloaks, while
8 On the role of Syrian cotton in Venetian Levant trade, see Eliyahu Ashtor, 'The Venetian
Cotton Trade in Syria in the Later Middle Ages', Studi medievali, 17 (1976), 675-715. See also
Nam, Le commerce,111-14.
9 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 87-104. For samples of Milanese trademarks that were
traded and even subdivided see Emilio Motta, 'Per la storia dell'arte dei fustagni nel secolo XIV',
Archivio storicolombardo,2nd ser., 7/r7 (1890), 140-5.
68 .Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui
Illustration 3.2. 'Perugia' towel, fifteenth-sixteenth century, Italian, woven linen and cotton.
V&A T12-1916. Given by W.G. Chamberlin through The Art Fund.
Household linen produced in Italy from the fourteenth century, especially near the city of
Perugia. The wyverns (mythical winged dragons) in the central band are woven by using
different colour yarn.
cotton filling was used for military and civilian quilted garments and coverlets.
Along with fine all-cotton cloth, cotton/ silk textiles (a type of velveret) and
cotton/wool mixtures were produced for a discriminating clientele. These
fabrics were also made by weavers working for the silk and woollen guilds.
The bulk of Italian production was comprised of mixed cotton/linen or
cotton/hemp textiles utilizing readily available local materials for the warp.
This was a broad category of affordable, serviceable cloth for apparel, household
decor, and industrial use. It included medium and coarse cloth, denims, drills,
ribbed and corded cloth, and various grades of canvas (bombasine),including
sailcloth made to precise specifications. Although brand names predominate in
The First European Cotton Industry 69
trade records, some popular fabrics were simply designated by the city of origin
such as 'denims' from Nimes or 'jeans' from Genoa. There was also a brisk
traffic in accessories such as cotton handkerchiefs, gloves, ribbons, and in ready-
made cotton garments such as tunics, cotes, veils, headgear, quilted doublets,
hose, and undergarments cut and sewn in standard sizes by specialized tailors.
At the lower end of production were loosely woven cloths of recycled cotton lint
(tiretaine) for industrial or domestic use. Finally, cotton wicks were used in
candles. 10
From the early twelfth century the cotton industry was established alongside
woollen manufacture as one of the most important sectors of the urban economy.
Cotton required fewer steps in processing than wool, thus allowing higher
volumes of production, upwards of 60,000-70,000 bolts per year in major urban
centres. The capacity of the industry to consistently deliver high levels of output
of standardized low-cost goods for mass markets required coordination of the
activities of thousands of urban and rural workers across broad geographical
areas. The cotton-producing towns of northern Italy constituted an industrial
complex characterized by a regional subdivision oflabour in spinning, warping,
and bleaching and an intense traffic in semi-processed raw materials.
By the thirteenth century, the presence of sizeable numbers of cotton workers
can be noted in virtually every town of significance and even some of lesser
importance. These included Genoa, Venice, Milan, Cremona, Piacenza, Pavia,
Brescia, Monza, Bergamo, Parma, Mantua, Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Treviso,
Modena, Ferrara, and Bologna. Cotton weaving later spread to Udine and to
towns in tife Romagna such as Imola, ForH, Faenza, Cesena, and Rimini (Map
3.2). 11 The hub of the entire complex was the flax-producing region of
Lombardy. Cotton beating and weaving and the finishing processes of dyeing
and pressing were carried on by urban artisans under the supervision of special-
ized masters. Capital for these enterprises was supplied through partnerships
with merchants who were leading members of the fustian guild. 12 Bleaching in
the lake district of northern Lombardy was in the hands of independent con-
tractors, employing a seasonal, largely female labour force. Bleachers also acted
as brokers, speculating on the difference in market price between unbleached
and bleached cloth.
The spinning of cotton, linen, and hemp yarn in a range of numbered counts
and the preparation oflinen and hemp warp threads (cavezzt) according to strict
guild prescriptions regarding length, weight, and density were tasks put out to
10 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 87-104, 166---7.
11 Ibid. 62, 105-26, 188 n. 9,210 n. 38. See also Nam, Le commerce,358, 397-8, 405. Cf. n. 15
below.
12 Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, 'Industria lombarda de! cotone e politica economica dei duchi
di Milano nella seconda meta de! secolo quindicesimo', in Milano nell'etddi Ludovicoil Moro: atti
de! convegnointernazionale28febbraio-4 marzo r983 (Milan, 1983), 174-6.
.Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui
Map 3.2. Areas of production offustians in Italy, 1100--1800
peasant women in the countryside. The supervision of spinning and warping

fell to specialized wholesale thread merchants called filaroli or telaroli who
worked on commission for cloth producers, or for their own account. There
were heavy concentrations of spinners in the flax-growing districts around
Milan (Gera d'Adda, Gallarate, Somma Lombardo), and in the vicinity of
Novara, Pavia (Pizzighettone), and Cremona (Casalmaggiore, Castellone,
oLecco
•Bergamo
.Vicenza
oMilan
•verona Padua•
.Lodi
.Asti .Parma
Map 3.3. Centres of production of fustians in medieval and early modern Lombardy
Piadena, and Regazolo ). The city of Cremona was a major distribution centre
for crude cottonthread and prepared warp threads (Map 3.3). Spinners and
warpers als6 had access to hemp from Piedmont and Burgundy that was mixed
with cotton and linen yarn in the production of canvas and sailcloth.
The distribution of cavezzi to fustian producers by the telaroli paralleled the
use of prepared warps for mixed fabrics in the woollen and silk industries,
although on a far larger scale. Cavezzi of a prescribed length and fineness and
weft yarn of a determined count were employed for specific varieties of cloth,
thus allowing the standardization of brand-name fabrics in weight, dimensions,
and tactile characteristics. The implementation of the system required a precise
alignment oflooms, heddles, interchangeable loom reeds, and warping frames,
based on uniform linear measures and weights across the entire zone of produc-
tion. In the wake of organized migrations of Lombard artisans carrying the tech-
niques of cotton production to other cities in the Veneto, Emilia Romagna,
Tuscany, Umbria, the Marches, and Lazio, new centres aligned their linear
measurements, loom reeds, and other implements to the Lombard standard. 13
13 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 66---72,r 16---21,219 n. 50. Yarn counts were numbered
1 to 7 for heavy yarn and 7 and above for fine yarn. Maureen Fennall Mazzaoui, 'La diffusione
delle tecniche tessili de! cotone nell'Italia <leisecoli XII-XVI', in Tecnica e societd nell'Italia dei
secoli XII-XVI: atti dell'Undicesimo Convegno Internazionale di Studio tenuto a Pistoia 28-JI
ottobre r<j84(Pistoia, 1987), 159 n. 5. Loom reeds determined the width and density (thread count
Illustration 3.3. 'Perugia' towel, fifteenth-sixteenth century, Italian, woven cotton and line.
V&A 1017-1900. Given by Dudley Myers.
These linen-cotton cloths were used both in ecclesiastical and secular contexts. They have linen
warp and weft and the band is created with a supplementary cotton weft, normally in indigo or
woad blue, and occasionally in red or brown.
The availability of yarn and prepared linen warps allowed the spread of
fustian weaving to smaller centres, including localities in non-flax-producing
areas of northern Italy. In some cases output was limited. Cotton workers in
Mantua, for example, produced a mere 300 pieces of fustian a year for the
domestic market. 14 In contrast, cotton weaving assumed considerable impor-
tance in Tuscany and central Italy where urban artisans concentrated on niche
products for export such as sheer veils, sailcloth, articles of apparel, and deco-
rative household goods, utilizing Lombard linen warps and cotton imported
through Venice, Pisa, and Ancona (Illustration 3.3). Cloth from this area was
well represented in the cargoes of ships destined for France and Spain. Fustian
workers organized into minor guilds or affiliated with woollen corporations can
per linear unit) of the woven fabric. Interchangeable reeds were designed to accommodate dif-
ferent sets of warp threads used for specific types of cloth. Sets ofheddle threads were also stan-
dardized according to cloth types.
14 Archivio di Stato di Mantova, Archivio Gonzaga, Arte della Lana, busta 3234, fos. 6-7.
be identified in a wide swathe of territory including many ports and interior

cities. There was a substantial production of cloth for local consumption in a
number of small communities. 15 In southern Italy, fustians from Naples and
Palermo also achieved visibility in commercial channels. 16
THE EXPANSION AND RESTRUCTURING OF EUROPEAN COTTON

MANUFACTURING, 1300---1600
After two centuries of rapid growth, the north Italian urban industry reached
the peak ofits development around 1300. In the economic downturn of the early
fourteenth century, intermittent supplies and rising prices for cotton forced
production cutbacks at the same time that demand in European markets weak-
ened. In 1338, thefustagnari of Milan complained about declining exports of
some types of fabric to Germany, owing to a rise in the wholesale price of unfin-
ished fustians. The guild attempted to fix the price in order to limit speculation
by wholesalers and bleachers. They also sought relief from import duties on
yarn and cavezzi. 17 Almost a decade later in 1347, just a few months before the
plague struck Europe, the fustagnari of Milan attributed the high costs of raw
cotton to speculative transactions between wholesale merchants. The guild
attempted to restrict cotton sales to its own members. Caps were placed on the
amount of cotton purchased weekly by guild members. The number of looms
owned by jndividual masters was limited to fifteen, while new entrants to.the
guild were allowed only four to five. 18
Speculation in raw materials, a practice thefastagnari of Milan considered so
detrimental to their interests, was heightened in the second l:flMfof the four-
teenth century when German firms made large purchases of cotton in Venice
15 Florence, Arezzo, Siena, Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato, San Gimignano, Cortona, Poggibonsi,
Pontremoli, Citta di Castello, Sansepulcro, Perugia, Assisi, Urbino, Orvieto, Terni, Narni,
Foligno, Todi, Ancona, Ascoli Piceno, Fano, Exculo, Civitanova, Jesi, Fabriano, Montecastro,
Recanati, Cingoli, Macerata, Sirolo, Camerino, Morrovalle, Montefano, Monteabbio,
Montelupone, and Rome. Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Inaustry, 62 and id., 'La diffusione', 158-62;
Bruno Dini, 'L'industria tessile italiana nel tardo medioevo', in Saggi su una economia-mondo:
Firenze e !'Italia Mediterraneo ed Europea {secc.XIII-XVI) (Ospedaletto, Pisa, 1995), 28, 37-8;
Nam, Le commerce, 397-8, 405,413,417. On the importance of the fustian industry of Arezzo
and the commerce in fustians of central Italy, see Bruno Dini, Arezzo intorno al 1400: produzioni
e mercato (Arezzo, 1984), 56 and 67.
16 Luciana Frangioni, Milano fine trecento: ii carteggio Milanese dell'Archivio Datini di Prato
(Florence, 1994), i. 186. On Naples see also Nam, Le commerce, 405.

17 Antonio Noto (ed.), Liber Datii Mercantie Communis Mediolani (registro de! secolo XV)
(Milan, 1950), 105-6; Gino Barbieri, Origini de! capitalismo lombardo: studi e documenti
sull'economia milanese de!periodo ducale (Milan, 1961), 59-60.
18 Barbieri, Origini, 60-2 and 75-7; Cesare Cantu, Scorsa di un lombardo negli Archivi di
Venezia (Milan, 1856), 149-51.

and Milan. These were intended to provision an expanding Swabian industry,

which was actively promoted by the Emperor Charles IV. According to a com-
plaint by officials of the Fondaco <leiTedeschi in 1373, German merchants in
Venice utilized lower grades of imported cotton yarn (primarily from the
Levant) to manufacture cheap imitations of Italian products, complete with
counterfeit copies of well-known trademarks used by Italian manufacturers. 19
Despite the use of counterfeit trademarks, Swabian barchentoffered a narrower
band of cloth types, with minimal refinements in finishing and limited price
variations, compared to the broadly diversified options offered by Italian fustian
producers. 20 However, the south German towns, with access to locally grown
flax and to a pool of skilled spinners and weavers in their hinterlands, proved
capable of generating a steady stream of serviceable cotton/linen goods that
undersold Italian products. The aggressive marketing oflow-priced Swabian
barchentprimarily affected exports of medium and low-grade Italian cottons to
Germany and central Europe. Large consignments of high-quality Lombard
fabrics were still transported over the Alpine passes to south Germany, for ship-
ment to the Hanse towns, and to Prague and Vienna. However, the trade was
now increasingly dominated by German merchants. 21
In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, import-substitution
industries producing cotton goods were established in the Rhineland, Bavaria,
Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Hungary, and Poland. While not all these experi-
ments were successful, the proliferation of minor centres of production con-
tributed to saturated markets for plain cloth. These new entrants also placed
increasing pressure on the price of.raw cotton. The cotton trade was further dis-
rupted by trade wars between Venice and Sigismund of Luxembourg, king of
Hungary at the very beginning of the fifteenth century. In the course of this
conflict, Sigismund attempted to establish an alternative trade route through
the Black Sea ports for imports of Levant cotton, bypassing Venice. 22
19
Georg Martin Thomas (ed.), Capitulare dei visdomini de! Fontegodei Tedeschiin Venezia.
(Berlin, 1874), 73 f. 77, cc. 168, 176; Wolfgang von Stromer, Die GriindungderBaumwollindustrie
in Mitteleuropa (Stuttgart, 1976), 157-9.
20 The German fustian centres used four common marks or brands, namely the ox, the lion,
the grape, and the wheel. In addition, half a dozen or so speciality fabrics of Milan and other
Italian towns were widely imitated in Swabia. For a detailed list see Stromer, Die Griindung,149-
5 L The prices of Memmingen barchent in four tiers of quality purchased by merchants of
Ravensburg in 1515-17 ranged from 2 gulden 16 shillings for the lowest-cost unfinished cloth to
a high of 3 gulden for first-quality cloth. In the same period speciality 'raincloth', a felted and
fulled cotton cloth in large dimensions, fetched 7 gulden. Aloys Schulte, Geschichteder grossen
RavensburgerHandelsgesellschafl1380-1530 (Stuttgart, 1923), ii. 97-8.
21 Mazzaoui, Italian CottonIndustry, 142.
22 For a list oflocalities see Stromer, Die Griindung,135, 149-51. For the attempt by Sigismund
to sponsor an alternative route for imports of Levant cotton via the Black Sea ports see Wolfgang
von Stromer, 'Die Kontinentalsperre Kaiser Sigismunds gegen Venedig 1412-1413, 1418-1433
In the early 1400s, substantial exports of German cottons to Spain, France,

Switzerland, and the Netherlands challenged traditional producers. The flood of
cheap German cottons into Spanish markets put severe pressure on the venerable
industry of Barcelona. In 1441 the city council expressed alarm at the sharp
decline in cotton working in the city, where merely 6 to IO workshops remained
of the more than 300 firms operating at the height of the sector's prosperity. In a
series of protectionist measures, the council sought to ban all retail sales of foreign
fustians within the city walls. The city also subsidized the annual production of
1,000 pieces offustian in three varieties valued between 38 and 45 soldi per piece
to be supplied by local weavers. This figure was adjusted downward to 900 pieces
in 1443. However, following complaints from tailors and haberdashers about
inadequate supplies and the poor quality of cotton fabrics, the programme was
abandoned and the restriction on imports of foreign cottons was lifted. Deprived
of public subsidies, the cotton industry sank to the level of a small domestic man-
ufacture devoted to the provisioning of sailcloth for the fleet. 23 A viable urban
cotton manufacture was not revived until the eighteenth century when the city
became a leading centre for the production of printed cottons. 24
The simultaneous invasion of Italian markets by German barchent also
elicited a series of protectionist measures. In 1417, noting the deleterious effects
of imports of German cloth on the industries of the hinterland, Doge Michel
Steno levied a heavy tax on imports of 'foreign' fustians from Germany and
other parts of Italy. An exception was made for the fustians of Milan and
Cremona t):iat were destined for re-export. In 1477 Venice banned all imports
of fustians, bedding, and ready-made apparel such as cotton doublets and tunics
unless they were intended for the export trade. 25 In 1499 access to internal
markets was allowed for the fustians of Cremona when that city passed under
Venetian rule. The resulting flow of contraband Lombard cloth required special
inspection procedures on the frontier. In 1515, following the loss of Cremona,
this dispensation was revoked. 26
und die Verlagerung der transkontinentalen Transportwege', in Anna Vannini Marx (ed.), Trasporti
e sviluppo economicosecoli XIII-XVIII: atti delta Quinta Settimana di Studio dell'Istituto
Internazionaledi Storia EconomicaF. Datini, 4-IO maggioI973 (Florence, 1986), 61-84.
23 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 146--7; Claude Carrere, Barcelone,centreeconomiquea
l'epoquedes difficultes IJ8o-I 462 (Paris, 1967), 370-1, 811-18. Cf. Antonio de Capmany y de
Montpalau, Memorias historicassobrela marina, comercioy artesde la antigua ciudadde Barcelona
(1742; rev. edn. Barcelona, 1961-3), i. 630-1 (doc. 434).
24 James K. J. Thomson, 'Proto-industrialization in Spain', in Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Marcus
Cerman (eds.), EuropeanProto-industrialization(Cambridge, 1996), 95-7; Robert S. DuPlessis,

Transitionsto Capitalismin Early Modern Europe(Cambridge, 1997), 229.
25 Archivio di Stato di Verona, Casadei Mercanti, reg. 2, cc. 145v-152'; Camera Fiscale, 116,
C. 31v.
26 Biblioteca de! Museo Civico Correr, Venice (hereafter BMC), Mariegola de Fustagneri e
Coltreri, fos. 32-6, 75-6.

Protectionist measures in Lombardy took the form of bans on the export of

yarn and cavezzi, and implements such as loom reeds and heddles. In the early
fifteenth century the Visconti, dukes of Milan, issued a series of decrees pro-
hibiting the unlicensed export of yarn and cavezzi from the duchy. Licences
were granted only for exports from the capital city. In 1448, under the
Ambrosian Republic, the fustian guild of Milan condemned the illicit export of
cotton and linen yarn and warp yarn to Cremona and Florence, to the detriment
of 'innumerable poor persons' who derived a living from the fustian industry of
Milan. According to petitioners, since the death of Filippo Maria Visconti in
1447, the trade by both subjects and foreign merchants had increased, with great
damage to government revenues. New legislation assessed heavy fines for
exports from the duchy (5 florins for each set of warp threads and 20 soldi per
pound oflinen or cotton yarn) while safeguarding the internal commerce in yarn
and warp thread. The law permitted direct transport of yarn and thread to the
market towns of Saronno, Gallarate, and Varese which served as centres of dis-
tribution for the entire duchy. 27 The legislation also betrayed a growing concern
with counterfeit fabrics produced in the emerging weaving centres in the dis-
trict. Merchants or carters who transported from the city of Milan fustians or
other cotton fabrics that lacked the requisite trademarks and seals of inspection
were subject to a fine of 50 gold ducats per bale. Members of the fustian guild
were required to update the registration of their company trademarks to avoid
fraud. Use of unauthorized trademarks by merchant producers was punishable
by a stiff fine of 50 gold ducats. 28
While contraband was rife, measures restricting the export of cavezzi
undoubtedly resulted in higher yarn prices for cities in non-flax-growing areas
such as the Veneto that were dependent on Lombard supplies. 29 Also hard hit
were the numerous small, scattered industries of Tuscany and central Italy.
Outside of the residual output of canvas in port cities and a handful of work-
shops producing limited runs of speciality fabrics and accessories, few urban
industries in that region survived. Protectionism also signalled the breakdown
of the integrated system of production that had sustained the growth of cotton
manufacture in the Po Valley from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. The
combined impact of German competition and the higher cost of Lombard yarn
and warp threads led to the decline of cotton production in many traditional
centres in the Veneto and Emilia Romagna.
27 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 148-9, 220 n. 54; Alfio R. Natale, Acta Libertatis
Mediolani (Milan, 1987), 72-5.

2 8 Natale,Acta Libertatis Mediolani, 410-12.
29 According to Salvatore Ciriacono, the paucity of flax cultivation in the Veneto was perceived
by the authorities as damaging to the economic interests of the state. Salvatore Ciriacono,
'Industria e artigianato', in Storia di Venezia (Venice, 1996), v., 551, 587 n. 151.
The industry was virtually extinct in Verona and Bologna by the early six-
teenth century. 30 In 1585, Bergamo requested an exemption from the ban on
foreign fustians, given the total absence of production in that city. In 1599 the
fustagnari of Venice opposed the lifting of the ban, with the dubious claim that
the 170 looms in the port city were sufficient to satisfy local demand. 31 By cal-
culating the annual output of a loom at 30 pieces a year, we arrive at a total pro-
duction of circa 5, 1 oo pieces, of which 2,000 were destined for the Arsenal. That
is a sharp drop from the more than 60,000 pieces woven in Venice in the late
fourteenth century. 32 At the end of the sixteenth century, only 45 looms for the
weaving of cotton cloth were said to be operating in the city of Venice. 33 As a
result of interruptions in the supply of Levant cotton caused by warfare and
diplomatic reverses, weavers were (at least temporarily) using spun cotton of
unstated origin imported through Germany. 34
The urban industries of Milan and Cremona maintained a competitive edge
over German producers by virtue of their superior dyeing and finishing tech-
niques. Milanese fustians were actively traded throughout Germany and the
Netherlands and were sold at the fairs of Geneva and Lyons. They were also well
represented in the markets of Vienna, Prague, and Buda where they sold for prices
well above German barchent. In some instances, Milanese fustians were exempt
from protectionist measures aimed at German fabrics that competed with the
products of nascent cotton industries in central Europe. There was a heavy
demand for the quality cottons of Milan and Cremona in Barcelona, Valencia, and
other Spanjsh markets. In the fifteenth century, Lombard producers found new
outlets for their cottons (and light woollens) in the Ottoman Empire. 35
30 Mazzaoui, 'La diffusione', 168---9.

31 BMC, Mariegola di Fustagnari, fos. 119-22, 129-31, 137---9.
32 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Carte Strozziane, s. I, 148, c. 26 (Lettera da Venezia 16 April
1621): 'di ditto fustagno ma piit fisso e grosso questi che se ne servono per far le vele per le loro
galere e ne consumano 2000 pezze l'anno.' Cf. Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 114, 212 n. 52.
33 By 1788 the total workforce in the Venetian fustian industry had been reduced to 346 (com-
prising foremen, labourers, and apprentices) who were clearly incapable of supplying the domes-
tic market. Salvatore Ciriacono, 'Mass Consumption Goods and Luxury Goods: The
De-industrialization of the Republic of Venice from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century',
in Herman Van der Wee (ed.), The Rise and Decline of Urban Industries in Italy and the Low
Countries (Late Middle Ages-Early Modern Times) (Louvain, 1988), 54-5.
34 Ciriacono, 'Industria e artigianato', 551-2.
35 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 138--53,219 n. 45. In 1438 the newly established barchent
weavers of Vienna petitioned the city council for a ban on imports of cotton fabrics from Ulm,
Augsburg, Revensburg, Kirchdorf, and Passau which competed with local products. An excep-
tion was made for 'Italian' cottons (from Milan and Cremona) marketed through Venice which
were of a superior quality.JosefKaltbrunner, 'Zur Geschichte der Barchentweberei in Osterreich
im 15. und 16.Jahrhundert', Vierteljahrschriftfor Sozial- und- Wirtschafisgeschichte,23 (1930) 81.
In a tariff of 1562 preserved in the Hungarian national archives in Budapest, 'Barchent' of Milan
is assessed at 20d. per bolt and that of Ulm at rod. The dimensions are not noted. Fol. Lat. 928:
These successes, however, masked a sea change in the structure of north

Italian cotton manufacturing. In the course of the fifteenth century, the entire
landscape of the industry was profoundly altered by the rise of new centres of
cotton cloth production in rural Lombardy. In the same period, a cheaper line
of products was developed in Piedmont and Savoy that targeted the lowest tier
of the export market. The merchants of Turin were active in the cotton trade
and cloth production in the late fifteenth century. 36 Incentives offered to immi-
grant workers helped to establish the industry in Asti, Pinerolo, Alba, and Ceva.
The duke of Savoy recognized the cotton guild of Chieri in 1482. Cotton
workers are also recorded in Chamberry, Novara, and Valsesia in the 1500s. In
the early sixteenth century, 6,000-7,000 bales of Piedmontese fustians were
exported annually through Genoa. By 1560 the annual output of Chieri reached
100,000 pieces, comparable to the output of Ulm in the same period. 37
The rapid rise of rural-based fustian weaving, new to this zone, was facili-
tated by the importation via Venice of cotton yarn from the Levant. As early
as 1373, officials of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice had prohibited
German merchants from exporting cotton that was beaten and spun in
Venetian territory. However, they were permitted to freely export cotton yarn
imported from the Levant (bambasiofl/ado d' oltra mar) to provision their fledg-
ling industries. 38 By 1421, according to Doge Tommaso Mocenigo, re-exports
of cotton yarn accounted for 30,000 ducats or circa 10 per cent of the total trade
in cotton with Lombardy, which was valued at 280,000 ducats. 39 According to
the account books of the Venetian merchant Andrea Barbarigo (1432-49),
cotton yarn was imported from Acre and Hama. 40 In 1503 a commercial
manual noted that cotton yarn transported via Venice was destined for Turin
Limitatio Nova Vectigalium pro Tricesimis Regni Hungarice (13January 1562). Imports offus-
tians from Milan, Ulm, and Augsburg into Hungary via Sopron are also mentioned in a sixteenth-
century mercantile account book: see Karl Mollay (ed.), Das Geschiiftsbuch der Kriimers Paul
Moritz I520-I529 (Sopron, 1994), ser. B, vol. 1, passim. Milanese black and bleached fustians
sold for higher prices than south German fustians in Austria in the early sixteenth century:
Othmar Pickl, Das iilteste Gewolbe-Register Osterreichs: Die Geiilberegisterder Wiener Neustiidter
Firma Alexius Funck (I516-ca. 1538) und verwandtes Material zur Geschichte des Steirischen
Handels im 15. /J6. Jahrhundert (Graz, 1966), 68 and 108.
36 Nam, Le commerce, 358.
37 Rinaldo Comba, 'Produzioni tessili nel Piemonte tardomedievale', Bollettino storico-
bibliografico subalpino, 82 (1984), 28-34 and id., 'Per una storia della produzione tessile nel
Piemonte dei secoli XIII-XVI', in Antichi tessuti delta Pinacoteca Civica (Asti, 1982), 77-85; A.
M. Nada Patrone, 'Introduzione', in V. Balbiano di Aramengo (ed.), Statuti dell' arte delfustagno
di Chieri (Turin, 1966), n*-13*. Cf. Mazzaoui, 'La diffusione', 169-70.
38 Thomas, Capitulare, 73 f. 77, cc. 168, 176; Stromer, Die Griindung, 157----<J.
39 Marino Sanuto, 'Vite de'duchi di Venezia', in L.A. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores
(Milan, 1723-51), vol. 22, col. 954.

°
4 Frederic C. Lane, Andrea Barbarigo, Merchant of Venice 1418-1449 (New York, 1967),
187----<)3.
and all of Piedmont. 41 The use of commercial yarn allowed the employment of
less-skilled weavers and reduced the need for large numbers of sorters, beaters,
and spinners. It thus gave an advantage to industrial centres in an early stage
of development. However, when the yarn was inexpertly spun or was of vari-
able quality, the result was non-uniform fabrics with irregular and uneven
weaves. Thus the substantial maritime traffic in commercial yarn from the
principal cotton-producing areas in the Mediterranean raises larger issues
regarding specialization and product differentiation within the early European
cotton industry.
Yarn from Syria, Greece, southern Italy, and North Africa appears in import
registers and tariffs in Barcelona, Marseilles, Venice, Pisa, Genoa, Ancona, and
other Mediterranean ports, and also in Bruges and Antwerp. 42 The trade was
clearly a response to long-term growth in consumer demand for affordable
cotton cloth. However, imported yarn was specifically banned by established
manufacturing centres in Lombardy and by those towns in southern Germany
which catered to the mid-level sector of the market. In addition to uneven spin-
ning, commercial yarn from foreign sources could contain mixtures of different
grades of cotton. It thus failed to meet the rigid quality controls regarding
counts and content essential to the reputation of standardized brands backed by
mercantile, guild, and city trademarks. Imported yarn was also a threat to the
livelihood of beaters and thousands of country spinners dependent on the
industry. It was not until the early 1570s,when Ottoman military advances tem-
porarily dilrupted the supply of cotton from Cyprus, that the city council of
Ulm lifted its ban on the use of spun Syrian cotton and also on Brazilian cotton
imported through the port of Marseilles. 43
Low-cost fabrics from Piedmont and Savoy such asfustanes, cotonias,and
cotonetesmade from imported cotton yarn with warps of hemp or linen, and
dyed with inferior materials, undercut ordinary German fustians in key distri-
bution markets. In Lyons in the sixteenth century, fustians from Piedmont and
Savoy represented 60 per cent of cotton products sold in that city, with
Milanese fabrics accounting for 20 per cent, and barchentfrom Ulm 12 per cent.
In 1552-3 the toll rate on Milanese cottons was 12 sous or twice that of
Piedmontese and Savoyard fustians (6 sous), whereas cottons of Ulm paid IO
sousper bale. In 1569 Milanese fustians were charged a toll of 40 sousper bale as
opposed to 15 for cottons from Piedmont and Savoy, while fustians from
41 Bartholomeo di Paxi de Venetia, Tarijfa de pexi e mesure(Venice, 1503), 129r: 'Da Venesia
se traze per Torino e per tutto ii Piemonte gotoni filadi'; Mazzaoui, 'La diffusione', 169.
42 The price of imported spun cotton was r.5 to 3 times the price of raw cotton of the same
quality. This may be compared to the cost of hand spinning in the Lombard countryside.
Mazzaoui, Italian CottonIndustry, 163-5, 176 n. 12. Cf. 176 n. 17; 178 nn. 34, 36, and 37; 179 n.
45; 181 nn. 55 and 56 for the Mediterranean commerce in cotton yarn.
43 Eugen Niibling, Ulms Baumwollwebereiim Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1890), 166, 168-<J.
So Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui
Fiitigny (Franche-Comte) were valued at 13 sous per bale, below those of

Piedmont and Savoy. 44
By the fifteenth century cotton cloth production was also well established in
Liguria. Genoese merchants organized fustian weaving in rural districts around
Acqui, Alessandria, Gavi, Serravalle, Novi Ligure, Bussala, Voltaggio, and
Savona. The region was known for its heavy, coarse fabrics and denims (jeans)
that combined local flax and hemp with Italian, Turkish, and other inferior
grades of cotton. A flood of low-priced cottons from Liguria and Piedmont
shipped through the port of Genoa captured market share in Spain at the
expense of German barchent. Large quantities were also shipped to France and
England. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a parallel stream of fustians
exported from Naples, en route to Spain and the New World, suggests the con-
tinuing resilience of rural weaving centres in the cotton-growing districts of
southern Italy. 45
The restructuring of the Lombard cotton industry that occurred in the wake
of severe market challenges must be seen in the context of the economic and
political policies of the Visconti and Sforza dukes. While urban producers of
Milan and Cremona retained a monopoly over fine cloth production, the rulers
of Milan fostered the growth of cotton weaving in provincial towns and bor-
oughs. In 1425 the duke of Milan recognized the right of fustagnari of
Melegnano to freely export yarn and cavezzi from the city of Milan to provision
their weavers. However, the final steps of dyeing and finishing were to be done
exclusively in Milan. 46 In 1448 the Ambrosian Republic confirmed the rights
of merchants of Saronno, Gallarate, and Varese to freely distribute yarn and
cavezzi to other parts of the duchy, bypassing Milan. 47 Subsequently, fastagnari
from Busto Arsizio, Monza, Melegnano, and other boroughs were granted the
privilege of inscription as full members of the Milanese guild, with rights to
maintain shops in the capital and to enter into partnerships with leading
masters. They also took on apprentices from the district who were instrumental
in raising the level of technical expertise in workshops in the Lombard coun-
tryside. 48
The reformed statutes of the Milanese cotton guild in 1467 sanctioned the
employment of artisans in the district subject to the issuance of a licence and
the registration of all masters and workers with the heads of the guild. Weavers
44 Richard Gascon, Grandecommerceet vie urbaineau XVIe siecle:Lyon et sesmarchands(Paris,
1971), i. 74.
45 Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 150, 153. Cf. Nam, Le commerce,369.
46 Antonio Noto, Liber Datii Mercantie CommunisMediolani: registrode! secoloXV(Milan,
1950), 122.
47 Archivio di Stato di Milano (hereafter ASM), Archivio Panigarola, reg. 5, fos. 3or-31r;
Lettere Ducali, reg. VII, fos. 138r-14ov;Natale,Acta, 72-5.

48 Mazzaoui, 'Industria lombarda', 174-7; cf. Barbieri, Origini, 10 and 197.
within and outside the city were officially registered as full members of the
fustian guild of Milan. Guild officials were empowered to inspect the shops of
cotton producers in the district to ensure compliance with the technical pre-
scriptions of the guild. All cloth was to be transported to the capital for final
inspection and the affixing of seals by guild officials.49
These concessions were a prelude to a restructuring of the cotton guild. The
original corporation comprised masters, beaters, and weavers in the city and
suburbs with jurisdiction over spinners in the countryside. It was now recon-
stituted as a guild of licensed master producers in Milan and throughout the
duchy. Affiliated guilds of weavers, nappers (cimatori), and beaters registered
both urban and rural workers. All masters and workers in these occupations
were registered with the fustian guild. The abbots of the latter were empowered
to inspect all workshops and private domiciles of licensed members to ensure
conformity to guild norms of production. The final inspection and sealing of all
fustians produced in the duchy was restricted exclusively to the abbots of the
guild offustagnari in Milan. so The restructuring reflected the growth of proto-
industrial enterprises in the Lombard countryside that controlled the entire
cycle of production, from spinning and warping through to the finishing
processes of bleaching, dyeing, and pressing.
Despite these reforms, the interests of Milan and the new rural centres
inevitably diverged. In a series of petitions dating from 1478, the guild abbots
complained repeatedly about defects in dyeing and finishing of imitations of
Milanese ottons fabricated in Monza, Melegnano, and other localities. They
7
adamantly rejected claims to immunity from guild regulations put forth by
practitioners in the district. 51 Despite these pleas, in 1497 Ludovico il Moro
recognized the economic importance of rural cotton production when he abol-
ished all import and export levies on the commerce in fustians throughout the
entire duchy. 52
BETWEEN TOWN AND COUNTRYSIDE: COTTON TEXTILES,

1500-1800
The shift of production toward the countryside continued unabated under

Spanish rule. Mounting tension between the fustian guild of Milan and employ-
ers of cotton workers in the district was reflected in punitive measures adopted
49 Archivio Storico Civico di Milano (hereafter ASCM), Materie, cartella 428, fasc. 11;
'Statuta Mercatorum Bombacis et Fustanei', fos. 21V, 23v.
50 Mazzaoui, 'Industria lombarda', 174.
51 ASM, Archivio Panigarola, reg. 9G, fos. 153v-155v (ro March 1478).
52 ASCM, Lettere Ducali, 1497-1502, fos. 52r---95v.
82 Maureen Pennell Mazzaoui
by the guild in a futile attempt to stem the flight of skilled labour from the
capital. In 1546 the fustian guild attempted to reaffirm the city's monopoly over
cotton beating (and by extension over the trade in crude cotton) by banning
beaters from carrying on this activity in any city, borough, castello,district, or
village outside the city of Milan, including those centres where this process was
already well established. 53 That set the stage for violent encounters between the
guild and rural artisans. In 1548 new sanctions imposed by the abbots on
masters and workers in the borough of Abbiategrasso were fiercely resisted.
Residents rejected attempts by the guild to fix the length, weight, and density
of cloth produced in the borough. They also refused to transport finished fus-
tians to Milan for final inspection and sealing, noting that adherence to these
rules would damage the livelihood of'thousands' of workers in the borough. 54
Other regulations were equally ineffective. In the statutes of the guild of
fustagnari of 1585, masters, beaters, and weavers in Milan and elsewhere in the
duchy were obliged to register with the guild in order to guarantee the collection
of dues and fees, given that many workers 'in remote places' withheld payment.
In an obvious drive to expand supervision, masters were prohibited from
employing unregistered weavers and beaters. 55 In 1603 the fustian guild recog-
nized the right of new entrants formally inscribed in the affiliated guilds of
weavers and beaters to open a workshop anywhere in the duchy. 56
The extent of the displacement of cotton manufacturing toward the Lombard
countryside is clearly described in the statutes of 1585, where the guild claimed
jurisdiction over as many as seventeen small towns, boroughs, and industrial-
ized villages that were located in a wide arc around the city of Milan. 57 In the
1600s, production expanded into M.ileo Lodigiano where traidaine,bombasine,
valessi,and other types of heavy cotton fabric were woven with yarn and warp
threads imported from Gera and Pizzighettone. 58 Small fustian industries can
also be traced in Bormio, Tortona, Lecco, Vigevano, Como, Crema, Carpi,
Mirandola, and in Riviera di Salo in Venetian territory. 59 Occupational zones
53 ASCM, Materie, Cartella 49, fasc. 11. The regulation of 1546 is recorded in the Capitoli
dell'Universita dei Battitori di Bombace of 1627.

54 ASCM, Materie, Cartella 428, fasc. 11; Cartella 429, s.d.
55 ASM Commercio, p.a., Cartella 263, fasc. 13: 'Ordines et Statuta Universitatis
Fustaneorum' (1585), c. 47.

56 ASCM Materie, Cartella 49: 'Statuta della Universita dei Battitori' (1603), cc. 2, 3.
57 These included Monza, Melegnano, Cassino Scanasio, Senago, Magnago, Bienate, Buscate,
Venzago, Legnano, Busto Arsizio, Borsano, Gallarate, Castellanza, Abbiategrasso, Samarate,

Verghera and Olgiate. ASM Commercio p.a., Cartella 263, fasc. 13: Ordines et Statuta
Universitatis Fustaneorum (1585), c. 42r.
58 ASM, Commercio, p.a., Cartella 248, fasc. 9.
59 S. R. Epstein, Freedom and Growth: The Rise of States and Markets in Europe 1300-1750
(London, 2000), n8-19. For maps showing the distribution of the Lombard linen, fustian, and
woollen industries 1350-1550 see figures 6.2 and 6.3. Cf. Nam, Le commerce, 358.
of cotton and linen working developed alongside concentrations of woollen

workers, which suggests a very high degree of industrial specialization in the
Lombard countryside in the sixteenth century.
As capital and labour moved from city to country, new networks of distribu-
tion arose for both raw cotton and finished goods that often bypassed the capital
city. Interruptions in supply and rising prices for prime grades ofLevant cotton,
owing to political and military vicissitudes, took a toll on traditional producers
in both Italy and south Germany. The decline of the south German fustian
industry during the Thirty Years War was offset by the continuous expansion
of cotton weaving based on the putting-out system in northern Germany,
Austria, and Bohemia. By the sixteenth century the industry had achieved a
solid footing in France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries where basic tech-
niques and products had been earlier introduced by Italian immigrants. In addi-
tion to imitations of popular types ofltalian and German fustians, new centres
in Bruges and elsewhere developed innovative styles which catered to changing
tastes and consumer preferences in European and transatlantic markets. 60
Dutch and Walloon immigrants brought the craft to England by the mid-six-
teenth century. In the 16oos and 1700s, the ongoing expansion of new rural and
proto-factory industries north of the Alps was fuelled by protectionist legisla-
tion favouring import-substitute cottons and fustians, and by the growing
importance in Atlantic trade of New World cotton from the West Indies and
Brazil. 61 The same trends worked to the advantage of producers in Piedmont,
Savoy, aqd Liguria who relied on coarse grades of Turkish, Italian, Maltese,
and North African cotton, commercial Levantine yarn, and, at times, New
World cotton for the weaving oflow-pricedfustanes, cotonias, and jeans.
By cutting costs and streamlining processes, Lombard rural producers were
able to adjust to the growing domestic and foreign demand for low- and medium-
priced cloth. That was not the case for the traditional urban producers of quality
cotton cloth. High wages and fiscal imposts, combined with conservatism in
product development and technology, limited the ability ofltalian urban produc-
ers to compete with low-cost producers in Italy and elsewhere. In the early sev-
enteenth century, sales ofltalian fustians in Ottoman markets registered a sharp
downturn, owing to diminished consumer purchasing power and the availability
of cheaper, cotton goods supplied by an expanding domestic industry. 62 In
European markets, weavers of high-end, dyed or figured cotton cloth faced stiff
60 Jos Vermaut, 'Structural Transformation in a Textile Centre: Bruges from the Sixteenth
to the Nineteenth Century', in Van der Wee (ed.), Rise and Decline, 191.
61 Ibid. For an overview of the expansion of cotton manufacture in northern Europe see
DuPlessis, Transitions to Capitalism, 201-4, 220, and 242.

62 Domenico Sella, Commerci e industrie a Venezia nel secoloXVII (Venice, 1961), 60---1;and
id., Italy in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1997), 35. Cf. Ciracono, 'Rise and Decline', 51. On
the expanding Ottoman industry see Murat <;:izaks;a,'Incorporation of the Middle East into the
llustration 3-4- Furnishing fabric, 1600-40, woven silk and cotton. V&A 529-1884.
This yellow silk fabric is decorated with designs of birds and flowers patterned with blue cot-
ton wefts. It was probably used as a wall-hanging or canopy.
competition from printed cottons and from the products of a burgeoning linen
industry that catered to new tastes and fashions (Illustration 3.4). Wealthy con-
sumers increasingly opted for fine linens which, owing to new technologies, sold
European World Economy', Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, 8/ 3 (1985), 368-
9. Cf. Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Notes on the Production of Cotton and Cotton Cloth in XVIth and
XVIIth Century Anatolia',Journal of European Economic History, 8/3 (1979), 405-17.
at prices comparable to those of high-quality cottons. All of these trends took a

heavy toll on the traditional urban centres of cotton production in Lombardy.
In the course of the seventeenth century, the urban industries that had long
been at the' forefront ofltalian cotton manufacture entered a steep decline. In
Cremona the number of cotton-manufacturing firms fell from a peak of 138 in
1627 to 60 in 1631 following the plague, declining further to 41 in 1648. In that
year, the remaining guild members declared themselves too 'poor and miser-
able' to pay their share of the fiscal levy imposed on the corporation. The occu-
pations of bleachers and cotton doublet makers were said to be almost extinct.
In a separate document of 1627, the guild noted a loss of artisans to Brescia,
owing to the Venetian ban on foreign fustians sold in its territory, which kept
Cremona's fustians from retail outlets. The authors claimed that trade in fus-
tians in the city had virtually 'ceased' in the face of foreign competition. In 1749
a post-mortem assessment of the long-term decline of cotton manufacturing in
the city, then under Austrian rule, noted the ineffectiveness of bans on imports
of German cloth and of prohibitions against the export of warp yarn that had
greatly damaged the industry. While acknowledging the impact of warfare and
the epidemic of 1630, the report also cited the burden of direct levies on com-
merce and industry. Particularly onerous were the heavy tolls on the movement
of goods within the state, especially on imports into the capital city of Milan,
which the authors claimed were much higher than those of neighbouring states.
In 1761 the city of Cremona, which in the early fifteenth century had produced
over 60,QDObolts of cloth, including 40,000 exported to Venice alone, proved
capable of exporting no more than 8,000 pieces of fustian to foreign markets. An
industry that once employed tens of thousands oflabourers, including well over
2,000 weavers, now provided work for a mere 300. 63 Still, that figure compares
favourably with the minimal output in Pavia, where the industry was virtually
moribund by 1714. A royal proposal to revitalize cotton production in the city
through the repatriation of departed artisans was rejected as impractical by the
heads of the College of Merchants. 64 In 1676 the ten still-active cotton firms
employing 300 workers in Milan decried the stiff competition from sales of foreign
fustians and bombasineby merchants of Lyons and Flanders. They also cited the
illicit trade in foreign fustians by local merchants and haberdashers. Thefastagnari
also attempted to curb the illegal sales of cotton yarn and cloth by weavers and
hosiers, a trade traditionally reserved to members of the cotton guild. 65
63 Ubaldo Meroni, Cremonafedelissima: studi di storia economicae amministrativa di Cremona
durante la dominazionespagnola(Cremona, 1951-7), ii. 13-21, 105-12; Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton
Industry, 155-6.
64 Archivio Civico di Pavia, Pacco 5 ro, MSS dated I June 1714.
65 ASCM, Materie, Cartella 429: printed document dated 23 July 1676. For jurisdictional dis-
putes between thefustagnari and the corporations of weavers, hosiers, and haberdashers, see the
relevant documents in Materie, Cartelle 428 and 429.
Approximately a century later in 1798, the few remaining fustian firms of

Milan assessed the damage allegedly caused to the industry by taxes imposed
by the Hapsburg monarchy in 1780 on fustians, bombasine,and other types of
cotton cloth which amounted to one-third the value of the goods. They noted
that over one-half of the traffic in cotton goods was then in the hands of mer-
chants of Busto Arsizio, Gallarate, and other surrounding localities where
weaving was carried on in virtually every household. In fact, seventy families
from Milan-'victims of necessity'-had migrated to Busto Arsizio alone, thus
augmenting a workforce that had already reached 5,000-6,000 in the seven-
teenth century. In the view of guild officials, the lack of expertise of rural
workers was offset by their ability to acquire prepared warp threads and yarn
from surrounding districts, free of tolls. 66 At that time the combined annual
output of Busto Arsizio and Gallarate alone was rno,ooo bolts of quality fustian,
utilizing raw cotton imported through Milan, Genoa, and Livorno. 67 That was
roughly equivalent to the output of the city of Ulm at the peak of its prosperity
in the early sixteenth century, but well below the approximately 430,000 bolts
oflow-grade fustians produced by rural weavers in the hinterland of Augsburg
around 1600. 68 Rural fustian and linen production supported a number of
bleaching establishments along the shores of Lake Maggiore in the late eigh-
teenth century. 69 There were also extensive bleach fields at Riviera di Salo on
Lake Garda in Venetian territory. The latter area was also a centre for the spin-
ning of flax from Lombardy. 70 In the nineteenth century, north-west Lombardy
became a primary centre of mechanized cotton cloth production. 71
To be sure, any description of country-based crafts from the vantage point
of guildsmen in declining sectors of the urban economy distorts the overall
picture of district-wide economic growth encouraged by government policies.
In northern Italy, cotton was just one of many enterprises, including wool, silk,
metallurgy, and glass making, which benefited from a reallocation of capital and
labour away from larger towns into boroughs and villages. 72 In his assessment
of the decline of the north Italian urban industries, Domenico Sella downplays
66 ASCM, Materie, Cartella 429: document dated 1798.
67 Bruno Caizzi, Industria, commercioe banca in Lombardia nel secoloXVIII (Milan, 1968), 33
and 89; Domenico Sella, Crisis and Continuity: The Economy of Spanish Lombardy in the
Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 113-14.
68 For comparative production figures, see Mazzaoui, Italian Cotton Industry, 141-2.
69 ASM, Commercio, p.a., 'Tele', p.g. 'Relazione sull'Imbiancatura della tela a Intra e
Pallanza' (1758).
70 Salvatore Ciriacono, 'Economie urbane e industria rurale nell' Italia de! Cinque e Seicento:
riconversione o stagnazione?', Rivista storica italiana, 113 (2001), 17-18.

71 Carlo Marco Belfanti, 'The Proto-industrial Heritage: Forms of Rural Proto-industry in
Northern Italy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', in Ogilvie and Cerman (eds.),
European Proto-industrialization, 161-3.
72 Sella, Italy in the Seventeenth Century, 29-49.
the role of protectionism and taxes, pointing instead to the high wage scales
prevalent across all sectors of the urban economy. He also cites the failure of
urban guilds to adjust to shifts in consumer demand and competition from new
centres of production. 73 From a longer-term perspective, Larry Epstein credits
political and institutional factors, notably the loosening of urban and feudal eco-
nomic and fiscal controls over boroughs and rural communities, in promoting
the growth of rural industry. In his view, jurisdictional factors, rather than rel-
ative production costs, played a key role in determining industrial relocation
during the second wave of 'ruralization' in the 16oos that followed the initial
restructuring of economic activities in the Lombard countryside in the post-
plague period. Epstein contrasts the sustained expansion of the rural fustian
industry in Lombardy, Piedmont, Savoy, and Liguria with the absence of
proto-industrial concentrations in Tuscany, which he attributes to the monop-
olistic policies of Florence. 74
Cotton weaving in southern Italy was hampered by a lack of infrastructure
and limited capital investment. In Sicily, export capacity was restrained by the
lack of guild traditions and by an inadequately trained labour force.75 However,
an independent tradition of cotton cloth production survived through the eigh-
teenth century in the Kingdom of Naples, which boasted a substantial acreage
devoted to cotton and hemp cultivation and an important export trade in fus-
tians. According to a 1789 report on the economy of Naples under the Bourbon
dynasty, the district of Cava still supported 1,000 looms which consumed 1,500
cantars of cotton for an annual output of 15,000 bolts of cotton fabrics, valued at
150,000 ducats. Weavers in Gallipoli, Taranto, Nardo, Tropea, and Francavilla
produced a variety of sheer muslins, napped cottons, as well as silk/ cotton and
cotton/linen fabrics for export markets. Numerous communities in the
provinces of Bari and Lecce were producing coarse cotton, linen, and hemp
fabrics or hybrid cloth from local raw materials for domestic consumption. 76
CONCLUSION
The reception of the techniques of cotton production in Europe was an out-

growth of the global expansion of cotton cultivation and weaving in the Middle
Ages. The first export-oriented industry on European soil was organized by
merchant entrepreneurs in the populous towns of northern Italy. As the indus-
try spread in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the towns maintained a
73
Ibid. 35-41.
74 Epstein, Freedomand Growth, 138-45.
75
Ibid. 143.
76 Giuseppe Maria Galanti, Della descrizionegeograficae politica de/le Sicilie (repr. Naples,
1969), ii. 171-2.

monopoly over the beating, weaving, and finishing processes. These activities
were supported by an extensive traffic in raw and spun cotton and prepared
warp yarn.
The rise of the south German industry after 1350 was based on a putting-out
system that allowed access to large pools of predominantly female weavers and
spinners in the rural hinterland of major urban centres. The utilization oflow-
wage, seasonal labour allowed the output of large volumes of inexpensive
fabrics. Despite protectionist barriers, the flood oflow-priced German fustians
onto European markets from 1400 on led to the demise of many smaller centres
of production, including that of Barcelona and numerous Italian towns.
In response to these challenges, a major restructuring in the traditional
centres of the duchy of Milan was actively promoted by measures taken by the
Sforza dukes and by subsequent legislation under Spanish rule. Beginning in
the late fifteenth century, a decisive shift of capital and labour to the countryside
led to the emergence of specialized industrial boroughs devoted to the weaving
of cotton cloth. Drawing on the legacy of accumulated techniques in weaving,
dyeing, and finishing, passed on in part through apprenticeship to urban
masters, rural fustian producers in Lombardy maintained a qualitative edge
over competing low-cost goods from Germany, Piedmont-Savoy, and Liguria,
as well as imitation products emanating from new centres north of the Alps.
This proto-industrial complex in north-west Italy continued as a vibrant sector
of the regional economy through to the end of the eighteenth century.
4
OTTOMAN COTTON TEXTILES
The Story of a Success that did not Last, r500-r800
SURAIYA FAROQHI
INTRODUCTION
When casting our eyes over the numerous places in the Ottoman Empire where
the growing, spinning, weaving, and dyeing of cotton were major agricultural
and industrial activities, it is hard to avoid asking ourselves why these active
producers did not initiate an 'industrial revolution' of their own. At first glance
this question will appear very old-fashioned, and the questioner will in all like-
lihood be told that it is wrong to measure the performances of non-European
manufacturers against those of their European competitors. But given the
importance of cotton in the early modern economies of Anatolia, Egypt, and
Syria, the question why local manufacturers did not use economies of scale and
mechanization of production is not so easily ruled out of court. Present-day
answersf however, are rather different from those put forward in the 1960s and
1970s when it was assumed that 'peripheralization' in a world economy domi-
nated by European states and commercial companies sufficed to explain why
Ottoman manufacturers were unable not only to capture markets abroad, but
even to maintain themselves in their own domestic context. 1
Some authors in the peripheralization school assumed a general decline of
craft industries from as early as the late sixteenth century. 2 Others assumed that
'incorporation' and 'deindustrialization' occurred rather later, from the last
quarter of the eighteenth century and especially-after r8r5. What happened-in·
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was for a long time very little studied.
However, Fernand Braudel pointed out that the Ottoman state maintained
control over the land routes crossing its territory until the late eighteenth
1 For an early statement of the problem, in which the uncertainties are clearly spelled out, see
Immanuel Wallerstein, Hale Decdeli, and Resat Kasaba, 'The Incorporation of the Ottoman
Empire into the World-Economy', in Huri islamoglu-inan (ed.), The Ottoman Empire and the
World Economy (Cambridge, 1987), 88-100.
2 Omer Liitfi Barkan, 'The Price Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: A Turning Point in
the Economic History of the Near East', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 6 ( 1975),
3-28.
90 Suraiya Faroqhi
Black Sea Sinop
Rize
• Tokat
.Ak~asehir
cO~ ~
O ~ Beysehir
.Tire
.Nazilli Diyarbakir •
di • Eregli
• Ayntab .Urfa
.Aleppo
Mediterranean Sea
l?O 2QOkm
160miles
Map 4.1. Major cotton centres of the Ottoman Empire
century. His argument implied that for the early modern period the role of
ocean routes had perhaps been overestimated, and quite explicitly he asked
himself how phenomena such as large and active cities, which are well attested,
could have existed in an Ottoman polity that supposedly was in a state of
decline. 3
Several more or less recent studies have further demonstrated this tenacity
of Ottoman traders, showing that caravan connections from India and Iran to
Ottoman commercial centres remained of significance well into the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. 4 Moreover not only merchants but also artisans
were adept in the art of self-defence. In the seventeenth century, European
demand for many raw materials produced in the eastern Mediterranean was
probably less important than it had been in the late sixteenth century. 5 This
declining demand allowed quite a few Ottoman craftsmen time for recovery,
and they made good use of it. This argument also meant that the pace of 'incor-
poration' had definitely been overestimated by all too zealous historians.
Already in the mid-seventeenth century, for instance, izmir had prospered as
a trading centre frequented by Europeans and Iranian-based Armenians alike,
3
Fernand Braudel, Civilisationmatirielle, iconomieet capitalisme(Paris, 1979), iii. 402-19.
4
Eugen Wirth, 'Aleppo im 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Beispiel fiir die Stabilitat und Dynamik
spatosmanischer Wirtschaft', in Hans Georg Majer (ed.), OsmanischeStudien zur Wirtschafts-und
Sozialgeschichte:In memoriamVancoBos"kov(Wiesbaden, 1986), 186--205.
5 Murat <;:izak,;a,'Incorporation of the Middle East into the European World Economy',
Review: FernandBraudel Center,8/3 (1985), 353-78.

Ottoman Cotton Textiles
many of them at least partially concerned with the cotton trade; this development
became possible because Ottoman central control was no longer as absolute as it
had once been. 6 On the other hand an active industrial town such as Tokat in
north-central Anatolia even in the late eighteenth century was oflittle signifi-
cance to European merchants. 7 The goods exported from the Ottoman realm,
when compared to overall production, were nothing but the tip of the iceberg:
the vast majority of Ottoman textiles, made of cotton, wool, or silk, were doubt-
less produced for the domestic market, and therefore Tokat is a more character-
istic manufacturing centre than, for instance, Aleppo with its large communities
of foreign traders. Given this variety it is a source of major misunderstandings
to make one or two centres or even regions 'stand in' for the empire's economy
as a whole, common though this practice has been even in the recent past.
In the last decade there has been a kind of sea change, and a reaction has set
in against the 'world economy and peripheralization' paradigms because they
have led to an industrial history in which all initiative is situated on the side of
European and later American entrepreneurs. As a result, these paradigms do
not give sufficient agency to artisans or peasants in Anatolia, the Balkans, and
the Arab provinces. 8 A less welcome consequence of this paradigm shift has
been that the fate of individual Ottoman industries has ceased to interest many
historians altogether. The number of studies dealing with any aspect of cotton
textile manufacture in the period before 1800 is limited indeed. Instead, indi-
vidual enterprises now occupy centre stage, but since so few records survive of
artisan '1orkshops, scholars tend to concentrate on trade. In addition much
thought is being given to the legal and institutional framework; this includes
state legitimization and taxation practices, the functioning of craft-and in our
perspective, cotton weavers'-guilds, or else the operation of the pious foun-
dations that so often owned the workshops in which weavers and dyers carried
on their work. 9 Yet scholars studying Ottoman cotton production have fared
better than most. Thus for example the manufacture of cotton yarn for Austrian
weavers before and shortly after 1800 was largely in the hands of associations of
Ottoman Greeks doing business on Hapsburg territory. As production and
6 Daniel Goffman, 'Izmir', in Edhem Eidem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The
Ottoman City between East and West, Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul (Cambridge, 1999), 83-5.
7 Mehmet Gen~, '17-19. Yiizy1llarda Sanayi ve Ticaret Merkezi Olarak Tokat', in Tiirk
Tarihinde ve Kiiltiiriinde Tokat Sempozyumu, 2--6 Temmuz r986 (Tokat, 1987), 145-69.
8 Ariel Salzmann, 'Review of <;aglar Keyder and Faruk Tabak (eds.), Landholding and
Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)',
Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 16/2 (1992), 264-71.
9 As two examples among many see: Omer Liitfi Barkan, ',$ehirlerin Te§ekkiil ve inki§afi
Tarihi Bak1mmdanOsmanh imparatorlu gunda imaret Sitelerinin Kurulu~ ve i~leyi§Tarzma Ait
Ara~tirmalar', istanbul Universitesi iktisat Fakiiltesi Mecmuas,, 23/ 1-2 ( 1962-3), 239-96. I thus
share the reservations of Donald Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial
Revolution (Cambridge, 1993), 5.
92 Suraiya Faroqhi
commerce were being controlled by a small group of families, this is one of the
very few cases in which the focus on individual firms has shed a good deal of
light on cotton-manufacturing processes. 10
COTTON MANUFACTURING FROM THE LATE FIFTEENTH TO THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
For the very beginning of our period, namely 1487-90, some information has
emerged about Anatolian cotton yarns and cotton cloth imported into the
Crimean khanate, whose rulers had recently come to recognize the sultans as
their suzerains. The goods on record include fine muslin for turbans, coverlets
from the western Anatolian town ofBergama as well as handkerchiefs, and a
rough fabric (kirbas) from Bursa; the latter town was already on record for its
production of cottons. 11 Moreover a comparison with French data from the late
eighteenth century, compiled by the French consul Claude Peysonnel, has
shown that the Crimean market even at this late date, when this territory was
already ruled by the tsars, continued to absorb Anatolian cotton fabrics. Because
of their cheapness printed cottons (basma)from Tokat and bogaszfrom northern
Anatolia, which in this time and place was usually dyed and polished, competed
on favourable terms with those imported from the Netherlands and France. 12
This evidence shows that the cotton goods of northern Anatolia, in the tongue
durie of three centuries, remained an item of regional and even inter-regional
trade.
In terms of cotton cultivation and manufacture, it was not the north, but
rather Anatolia's western and southern regions, in addition to northern Syria
and Cyprus, that held pride of place ever since the fourteenth century if not
earlier. In the sixteenth century the sultans' administration paid considerable
attention to cotton, as it was used for sailcloth and also for the underwear of sol-
diers and the linings of uniform cloaks. 13 We possess some evidence about
traders from the Aegean coast of Anatolia who managed to smuggle cotton and
sell it to foreign merchants even though they risked confiscation if discovered;
10 Olga Katsiardi-Hering, 'The Allure of Red Cotton Yarn, and how it Came to Vienna:
Associations of Greek Artisans and Merchants Operating between the Ottoman and Habsburg
Empires', in S. F. Veinstein and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Merchants in the Ottoman Empire
(Leuven, 2008), 97-131.
11
Hali! inalcik, Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 121;
Heath Lowry, Ottoman Bursa in Travel Accounts (Bloomington, Ind., 2003), 41, from the account
ofBertrandon de La Broquiere.
12
inalcik, Sources and Studies, 127.
13 Ibid. 63 and 68. The heavy cloth known as kirbaz/ kirpas could be made of flax, hemp, or
cotton.
Ottoman Cotton Textiles 93
presumably the price differential was important enough to make it worth their
while. 14 Towards the end of the century and definitely in the early eighteenth
century, however, the export prohibition was relaxed, and Venetian merchants
were granted permission to take cotton out of the empire. 15
What we know about the manufacture and distribution of cotton cloth,
unfortunately, for the most part leaves out what we would like to know best,
namely the fabrics destined for private customers. 16 Given the official character
of documentation, most of the available information deals with the needs of the
Ottoman state. Even the writers of petitions who denounced the smuggling of
cotton often focused on the bad effects on state supplies. 17 Yet manufacturers
could hardly have survived working for the state alone and must have sold to
private customers as well. Apparently there were even people who in the second
half of the sixteenth century went around western Anatolia collecting sailcloth
and tent-cloth from the producers and then selling it to 'Frankish' merchants. 18
That sort of crime made it into the records, but the bath towels and shirts of the
ordinary consumer remained a low priority for Ottoman authorities.
A price list from Istanbul, dated to 1600, shows that while this was certainly
a period of economic difficulties, the shops of Istanbul continued to receive a
variety of cotton yarns and fabrics. 19 Q!.iilts were covered with a textile called
beledi,usually of cotton but occasionally of silk: this fabric was produced in the
capital itself, but also in the Aegean coast-lands of Anatolia, in Urla and Tire. 20
In specialized shops the customer could purchase bez-probably an ordinary
I
14 Suraiya Faroqhi, Towns and Townsmen of Ottoman Anatolia: Trade, Crafts, and Food
Production in an Urban Setting I520-I650 (Cambridge, 1984), 136; Zeki Ankan, 'Osmanh
imparatorlugunda ihrac1 Yasak Mallar (Memnu Meta)', in Professor Dr. Bekir Kiitiikoglu'na
Armagan (Istanbul, 1991), 279-307.
15 In 1004/1595-6 a permission to export cotton from the area ofizmir and Fos;a was revoked
on the grounds that not enough was left for the-sacrosanct-needs of the capital and for those
of other provinces. Ba§bakanhk Ar§ivi-Osmanh Ar§ivi (hereafter BA) Miihimme defteri, 74,247.
16 Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Notes on the Production of Cotton Cloth in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-
Century Anatolia',Journal of European Economic History, 8/z (1979), 405-17.
17 BA, Miihimme defteri, 6, 184, No. 395 (972/I564-5); this register has been published:
ismet Binark et al. (eds.), 6 Numarali Miihimme Defteri 972/ I564-65 (Ankara, 1995).
18 BA, Miihimme defteri, 7, 21, No. 72 (975/I567-8), published as Hac1 Osman Y1ldmm et
al. (eds.), 7 Numarali Miihimme Defteri 975-976/ I567-69 (Ankara, 1997).
19 M iibahat Kiitiikogl u, '1009 ( 1600) Tarihli N arh Defterine gore istanbul' da s;e§idliE§ya ve
Hizmet Fiyatlan', Tarih Enstitiisii Dergisi, 9 (1978), 1-86.
20 Whenever textiles in price lists and estate inventories are called after a town, we unfortu-
nately have no way of knowing whether this meant that the fabrics in question had been woven
in the localities referred to or whether they were simply 'fas;on de'. But as the products of the
Ottoman Empire tended to come together in Istanbul, the likelihood that sources compiled in the
capital deal with the real places of origin is quite high. On textile terminology in general see Mine
Uzuner Ozen, 'Tiirks;ede Kuma§ Adlan', istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakiiltesi Tarih Dergisi,
33 (1980--1), 291-340.
94 Suraiya Faroqhi
cotton or sometimes linen fabric without any frills; this material bore the names
of the Anatolian towns ofRize, Sinop, Ak9a§ehir, Eregli, Nazilli, and Bey§ehir.21
As the Black Sea coast produced linen and hemp, presumably the bez from Rize,
Sinop, and Eregli was made from these materials, while that called after Nazilli
and-perhaps-Ak9asehir and Bey§ehir must have been woven of cotton.
Cotton towels came from Bursa and Tire; this latter place produced an espe-
cially expensive variety 'with silk along the edges', which probably meant
embroidery or crochet work. 22
Forty years later a similar price list from Istanbul indicates those regional
cotton specialities that better-off customers might purchase in the markets of
the capital. 23 Cotton yarns were almost exclusively an Anatolian product. In
1640, they came in many varieties, from the fine yarn, named after Istanbul
itself, which was used to sew valuable furs and form borders around what were
probably the more expensive varieties of shirts, to the coarse yarn that was used
for candle wicks. 24 Buttons were often of silk yarn, but poorer customers made
do with items manufactured out of cotton. In the shops of the fabric sellers (bez-
zazan) customers could not only buy materials by the ell, many of them woven
in the capital itself, but also ready-made shirts, that mainstay of Ottoman
costume both male and female. Both these seventeenth-century lists are of
special interest not only because they show that the manufacture of cotton yarn
and cotton cloth was widespread in Istanbul and elsewhere, but also because
they give us some inkling of the broad range of cotton textiles used by well-to-
do customers who were neither military men nor officials.
Researchers have identified a variety of textile industries that flourished
during the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies, a period that earlier
researchers had always considered a time of overall 'decline'. The work of
Mehmet Gen9 has made it clear that the mid-eighteenth century saw a moder-
ate prosperity in certain regions of the Ottoman realm, before the Russo-
Ottoman War of 1768-74 destroyed civilian demand and made capital
formation, always a weak point of Ottoman enterprises, virtually impossible. 25
Cottons were very much part of this-albeit limited-growth in the manufac-
turing sector.
21 Kiitiikoglu, 'E~ya ve Hizmet Fiyatlan', 34-5.

22 Ibid. 37. For a similar description of late eighteenth-century towels, this time from the
Macedonian town of Serres/Serrai, see inalcik, Sourcesand Studies, 129.
23 Miibahat Kiitiikoglu, OsmanhlardaNarh Miiessesesive 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri (Istanbul,
1983), 156---66.
24
Ibid. I 58----9.
25 Mehmet Geni;:,'L'Economie ottomane et la guerre au XVIIleme siecle', Turcica,27 ( 1995),
177----96;
id., 'Ottoman Industry in the Eighteenth Century: General Framework, Characteristics,
and Main Trends', in Donald Quataert (ed.), Manufacturing in the OttomanEmpire and Turkey,
1500--1950 (Albany, NY, 1994), 59-86.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MANUFACTURING:
EVIDENCE FROM THE PROVINCES
In the mid-eighteenth century many manufactures, of cottons and other tex-

tiles, were able to expand; but for the Anatolian trading town ofTokat evidence
is available mainly for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This
was a less prosperous period, but cotton textiles were manufactured in appre-
ciable quantities. 26 Printing (basma) became important during this period;
unfortunately we do not know what kinds of designs were preferred. However,
the industry suffered from a great increase in indigo prices, which made dyers
hunt for cheaper substitutes, and also from heavy taxation and continual inter-
ference on the part of the principal tax farmers. Thus dyeing fabrics in indigo
blue, as practised in the north-central Anatolian towns of Zile and Niksar, was
prohibited by the central financial administration, in order to ensure the
regional monopoly of the man who had farmed the dye house ofTokat. 27As a
result of these difficulties copper took over from cotton as the city's major
industry.
An 1802 list of fabrics belonging to a recently deceased inhabitant ofTokat,
probably a textile dealer, provides a fine example of the continuing availability
of cotton weaves, even in a period of serious economic depression, and also of
the numerous regional trade routes on which these textiles were moved around.
The docpment enumerates bales of bez, some of them dyed red, black, and other
colours, lining (astar), and chintz (fit). 28 In addition the inventory records bez
from Giiriin, Malatya, and Mosul, while the more expensive kutni, a cotton-silk
mixture, is said to have come from Bursa and Syria/Damascus. In addition we
find a fabric called alaca, which once again may have been a mixture of fibres
containing a share of cotton. Most probably the term alacawas used for striped
cotton-silk mixtures with a substantial share of cotton; after all, in Istanbul
around 1600, customers had been expected to buy their alaca from cotton mer-
chants.29 Our inventory also documents different alacas from Manisa,
Diyarbakir, and Aleppo, the latter city also manufacturing a fabric called 'with
flowers' (firekli). Since the latter was a good deal cheaper than kutni, the cotton-
26 Y. Duman, 'Notables, Textiles and Copper in Ottoman Tokat' (Ph.D. Thesis, State
University of New York, 1998), 125-72.

27
BA, section Maliyeden miidevver 9996, 167 (1180/1766--7); Duman, 'Notables', passim,
provides many similar examples.
28 Mehmet Oztiirk, 'Tokat'ta Fiyatlar (1772-1823)', in Tiirk Tarihinde ve Kiiltiiriinde Tokat,
203. For terminology relating to textiles oflndian origin: Hali! inalcik, 'Osmanh Pamuklu Pazan,
Hindistan ve ingiltere: Pazar Rekabetinde Emek Maliyetinin Rolii', ODTU Geli;me Dergisi-
METU Studies in Development, Special Issue (1979-80), 32-7.
29 Uzuner Ozen, 'Tiirk<;ede Kuma§ Adlan', 300.
96 Suraiya Faroqhi
silk mixed cloth, one would expect that fifekli was made almost entirely of
cotton. 30
As this list indicates, some Ottoman cotton manufactures managed to survive
the crisis of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and from the
important centre of Bursa we possess several other sources confirming this
impression. When in 1779 the Italian scholar Domenico Sestini visited Bursa,
he was impressed by the silks, but also by the cottons manufactured in this
city. 31In Sestini's time, a textile made of a cotton warp and a silk weft that he
called cutunl kutni was decorated with stripes. In addition Armenian weavers
manufactured muslin handkerchiefs that he called testemel/destmal;as the envi-
rons of Bursa produced mainly silk and mulberries, the raw cotton needed by
the weavers was brought in from further south, from the region of Manisa well
known for its cottons.3 2
Anecdotal evidence indicating the survival of well-established cotton indus-
tries in south-eastern Anatolia is also available, namely from the old cotton town
of Urfa. Here the English traveller James Silk Buckingham was held up for
some time in 1816. He watched cotton printers at work and told a local textile
manufacturer about the methods of production used in Britain; he was
promptly offered a job as a 'technical adviser'. 33Buckingham also saw cotton
manufacturers at work in Diyarbaktr, another old-established centre, where 500
printers were at work in the early nineteenth century. 34
It has been claimed that after 1750---60,urban craft enterprises often stagnated
or even declined, but that the slack was taken up by rural industries. 35This ten-
dency may have been more marked in some regions than in others, but it cer-
tainly did occur in the cotton-growing, spinning, and weaving industries of
Thessaly. Here the poverty of the sharecropper villages in the plains, where
dues to landlords were heavy, induced the cultivators to grow cotton, spin some
of it during the agriculturally slack season, and sell cotton wool and yarn at low
prices to the inhabitants of the uplands who dyed and wove these materials into
cloth. Production processes were controlled by local dignitaries who were also
merchants, sometimes with contacts both to Istanbul and to foreign markets. In
Thessaly as elsewhere, cotton and silk fabrics were manufactured under much
the same commercial arrangements.
3
31
° Kiitiikoglu, 'E~ya ve Hizmet Fiyatlan',
43.
Domenico Sestini's description of Bursa in Lowry, Ottoman Bursa, 56-fi1.
32 Gilles Veinstein, 'Ayan de la region d'lzmir et le commerce du Levant (deuxieme moitie
du XVIIle siecle)', Revue de !'Occident musulman et de la Miditerranie, 20 (1975), 131-46.

33 James Silk Buckingham, Travels to Mesopotamia, Including a Journey to Aleppo (London,
1827), 51-129.
34 ibrahim Yilmaz-;:elik,XIX. Yiizyt!zn jlk Yarmnda Dzyarbakzr(Ankara, 1995), 312.
35 Socrates Petmezas, 'Patterns of Protoindustrialization in the Ottoman Empire: The Case
of Eastern Thessaly, ca. 1750--1860',Journal of European Economic History, 19/3 (1990), 581-2.
INDO-OTTOMAN FABRICS
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Indian cottons became popular

among better-off Ottoman consumers just as they did among contemporary
Europeans, and some merchants of Cairo made money reselling this cloth on
the Ottoman market. 36 The official historian Mustafa Naima in the early eigh-
teenth century expressed concern about this development, because Indian mer-
chants purchased few goods in the Ottoman lands, and thus were deemed guilty
of emptying the realm of silver and gold.37 At the end of the eighteenth century,
Sultan Abdiilhamid I (r. 1774-89) was concerned enough about this loss of
bullion that he attempted to impede the trade: people not of the highest rank
were forbidden to wear Indian luxuries, with the avowed intention of protecting
local manufactures. However a recent biographer has suggested that the real
intention was to limit spending on consumption in order to make funds available
for the conduct of war. 38 To what extent these prohibitions were enforced
remains debatable. For by this time Indian cottons, with their fast colours and
often elaborate designs, had long become part of Ottoman culture: witness the
many words for cotton cloth from Indian languages that entered Ottoman parl-
ance during those years; today they are for the most part defunct. 39
More relevant for the historian of Ottoman cotton manufacture is the
response of certain textile producers active in the sultans' realm: in the region
between,\-leppo in the south and Urfa and Ayntab (today Gaziantep) in the
north, manufacturers began to produce successful imitations of Indian piece
goods. The chafarcaniswoven and printed in Diyarbaktr, today in south-eastern
Turkey, were dyed either red or violet, with floral motifs in white and a border;
they seem to have resembled their Indian models quite closely.40 It is assumed
that the techniques required for the manufacture of chafarcanis arrived from
northern India by way oflran, possibly carried by the Armenian merchants who
were such active textile traders. These cottons, along with the red bogastthat
had long formed a stock in trade of Anatolian manufacturers, are well docu-
mented in French archival sources. Moreover the kadi registers of Diyarbaktr
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries indicate that apart from
silks, silk-cotton mixtures such as alaca and kutni were being produced, some
36 Andre Raymond, Artisans et commerrantsau Caire au XVIIIe siecle(Damascus, 1973-4), i.
135.
37
Hali! Inalcik, 'The Ottoman Economic Mind and Aspects of the Ottoman Economy', in
Michael Cook (ed.), Studies oft he EconomicHistory of the Middle East (London, 1970), 207-18.
38 Duman, 'Notables', 144-5; Fikret Saricaoglu,Kendi Kalemindenbir Padi;ahznPortesi,Sultan
I. Abdiilhamid (r774-1789) (Istanbul, 2001), 254-5.

3 9 inalc1k, 'Osmanh Pamuklu Pazan', 32-4.
°
4
Katsumi Fukasawa, Toilerieet commercedu Levant, d'Alep d Marseille(Paris, 1987), 47-8.
98 Suraiya Faroqhi
of which were given a special sheen by passing them through a press (mengene).
Since nothing is said about the designs, we do not know whether these fabrics
also were inspired by Indian models. 41
Another centre of cotton manufacture was Ayntab (today Gaziantep in south-
eastern Turkey), from where French merchants procured the fabrics called
ajami and a broader version known as toiles larges.In the seventeenth century
many of these had been dyed blue by the well-known dyers of Aleppo; but in
the mid- 1700s French manufacturers began to produce their own adaptations
oflndian prints, the well-named indiennes, and demand therefore switched to
undyed fabrics. 42 These Indo-Ottoman cotton textiles of the mid-eighteenth
century must have found customers in the Ottoman Empire as well but very
little is known about this aspect of their distribution. It is obvious that some
French consumers used the chafarcanisof Aleppo mainly for home textiles such
as curtains and bedspreads; the only surviving examples have apparently been
found in French archives. 43
SURVIVING INCORPORATION INTO THE WORLD ECONOMY-

AT LEAST FOR A WHILE
A significant example of craftsmen at least temporarily successful in adapting

to the requirements of distant markets was the inhabitants of certain small towns
and villages in Thessaly that spun and dyed red cotton yarn for enterprises
located on Hapsburg territory. 44 This was, as Petmezas has pointed out, an
industry in which the villagers' production was financed and organized by mer-
chants (Illustration 4.1). 45 The latter also were ofThessalian origin and the most
successful ones built themselves fine houses in Ambelakia and elsewhere. But
at the same time these merchants were so closely tied to their Austrian environ-
ment that one of the most prominent personages translated his Greek family
name into its German equivalent, and it is as the house of the Schwarz family
that the dwelling, still extant, is known to the present day. The Ambelakia
traders combined family connections to their home villages with a shrewd
appreciation of the possibilities offered by Austrian commercial law: they thus
regularly dissolved and re-formed their associations in order to maximize com-
mercial advantages. However, in the long run, both the world economy and
domestic conditions worked against them: by the late eighteenth century the
41 Y ilmazi;:elik,XIX. Yiizyilzn ilk Yartstnda Diyarbak1r, 311-14. It is also noteworthy that in
tax terms, the weavers of this city were the highest assessed, and therefore presumably the most
prosperous, among the local guilds.
42 Fukasawa, Toilerie, 51-2.
43 Ibid.
44 Katsiardi-Hering, 'The Allure of Red Cotton Yarn'; Petmezas, 'Patterns'.
45 Petmezas, 'Patterns', 589.
Illustration 4.1. Village women spinning near the river Lorn, 1860s or early 1870s
Source: F. Kanitz, Donaubulgarienund der Balkan, Historisch-geographisch-ethnographische
Reisestudienaus
denJahren I860-I875 (Leipzig, 1875), vol. 1, opposite p. 196.
dyeing of fabrics in 'Turkey red' was no longer an Ottoman monopoly, while

from the early nineteenth century onwards, English machine-made yarn was
both che:fper and easier to use on mechanized looms.46 Thus when Ambelakia
was sacked by a local magnate, the town did not recover, and even today, it is a
very small and remote place.
Why did the Ottoman cotton industry not establish a place for itself on the
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world market? Answers must be tentative;
however, the idea that Mediterranean textile crafts might have developed into
modern-style industries had it not been for European intervention is now
mostly discounted. 47 Research on what we might call the 'economic mind' of
the pre-nineteenth-century Ottoman elite, as well as a variety of studies on tax
farming, have identified some of the reasons why textile producers, in spite of
appreciable successes, proved unable to break through a certain 'glass ceiling'.
In this perspective, the dynamics of cotton textile production are symptomatic
of wider trends for the Ottoman economy as a whole.
First of all, the Ottoman elite believed that supplying the consumers' market
and thereby keeping prices low had high priority; for only in this fashion, so it
46 Traian Stoianovich, 'The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant', Journal of Economic
History, 20 (1960), 257; Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing, 33-6.

4 7 Petmezas, 'Patterns', 576.
IOO Suraiya Faroqhi
was assumed, were military successes and public construction financially feasi-
ble, and these two things stood high among the hallmarks of a successful
monarch. In addition supplying Istanbul, one of the largest cities of early
modern Europe, was secured by keeping the prices of foodstuffs and supplies
artificially low: the cotton manufacturers of the Anatolian towns ofDiyarbaktr,
Tokat, or Manisa, as well as their competitors from Mosul or Cyprus, were
obliged to sell their fabrics at prices determined by the kadi oflstanbul. 48
Given the priorities of the Ottoman elite, export was not regarded as some-
thing to be promoted by the state. Until about 1600, as we have seen, the expor-
tation of cotton had usually been forbidden for political and military reasons,
and no exception was made in favour of finished cotton textiles. As to the per-
sonal security of Ottoman merchants who ventured into foreign parts, in the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the sultans did make considerable
efforts to protect the commercial interests of their subjects who traded in the
Adriatic. But this was probably more the result of political than economic con-
siderations: by intervening in disputes concerning merchants from the Ottoman
realm, both Muslims and non-Muslims, the sultans showed their interest in the
welfare of'their' traders, such a concern being expected of a just ruler according
to Ottoman statecraft.
Given the overriding concern with the supplies needed by the Ottoman
court, the military, and the capital, the Ottoman governing elite considered
that goods produced in the empire were to be kept within its borders, and
exportation might be tolerated only if something was left over after domestic
needs had been met. This 'provisionism', as it has been called, certainly did
not prevent Ottoman subjects from selling their goods in Iran, Venice, and
occasionally even in India. Moreover, in the eighteenth century, these traders
were to be found in Amsterdam, Vienna, Trieste, and the fairs of Leipzig as
well.49 Yet the Ottoman elite certainly did not view foreign markets as territo-
ries to be conquered and foreign trade as a legitimate site of battle against the
'infidels'.
Mercantilism was thus never imagined, much less implemented, although
there was a serious concern about the outflow of bullion towards the east: but
here Indian and Iranian merchants were viewed as a more severe threat than
Europeans, who well into the eighteenth century often brought silver into the
realm rather than carrying it out. 50 At least where French traders were con-
cerned it was only with the financial speculation of the later eighteenth century
48 Kiitiikoglu, OsmanlzlardaNarh Miiessesesi,126---32.

49 On 'provisionism' see Gens;, 'Ottoman Industry', 60. For an older but still instructive
overview of the activities of Balkan traders, unfortunately with but few references to cottons,
compare Stoianovich, 'Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant', passim.
so Inalcik, 'Ottoman Economic Mind'.
Ottoman Cotton Textiles IOI
that this latter trend was reversed and by that time political problems were
serious enough to prevent the sultans' administration from interfering. 51
Secondly, although Halil Inalcik's pioneering study of Ottoman capital for-
mation is now forty years old, some of his conclusions are still helpful. 52 Inalcik
pointed out that in the sixteenth century, when the sultans were at the acme of
their power, members of the ruling group and pious foundations were in the
best position to accumulate capital and invest it. Pious foundations in addition
enjoyed a significant advantage over individual members of the elite, as their
capital was inalienable at least until the later eighteenth century. Otherwise,
apart from judges and professors (ulema), Ottoman officials could count on
having most of their wealth confiscated at their deaths if not before. Pious foun-
dations certainly played a more active role in economic life than they have long
been given credit for: many administrators of pious foundations were quite effi-
cient and the number of profitable deals that they engaged in could be substan-
tial. Yet in the end, the money made by such institutions was reinvested only to
a limited extent: most of it served the purposes for which the trust had been
instituted. It is also worth noting that the prospect of confiscation did not
prevent many Ottoman officials from investing in productive activities,
however, in the end, these men were largely concerned with political power, for
themselves and for the members of their households, rather than with economic
gain by and of itself.
Thirdly, the prevalence of tax farming must be taken into account. Recent
studies h~ve shown that lifetime tax farms, instituted in 1695, had a significant
role in keeping the empire together, as local elites were made shareholders in
the Ottoman enterprise and were thus discouraged from exploiting the weak-
ness of the central government in order to set up states of their own. 53 But from
the economic point of view the consequences were often negative. In theory
they should not have been, as lifetime tax farmers were supposed to take an
intelligent interest in the welfare of 'their' taxpayers and be careful not to kill
the goose that laid the golden eggs. But in fact, subcontracting tax farms to local
men was common and, as the latter had no security of tenure, they often did all
the things that lifetime tax farmers should have been anxious to avoid. These
underlings attempted to maximize short-term gains and thus frequently forced
craftspeople to produce in places which were convenient for tax collection but
51 Edhem Eidem, French Tradein Istanbul in the EighteenthCentury (The OttomanEmpire and
its Heritage) (Leiden, 1999), 170.

52 Hali! Inalcik, 'Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire',Journal of EconomicHistory, 29h
(1969), 97-140.
53 Ariel Salzmann, 'An Ancien Regime Revisited: "Privatization" and Political Economy in
the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire', Politics and Society, 21/ 4 (1993), 393-423; Dina
Khoury, State and ProvincialSociety in the OttomanEmpireMosul r540--r834(Cambridge, 1997),
168.
I02 Suraiya Faroqhi
not necessarily for the productive processes involved. This tendency towards
keeping producers anchored in particular places sometimes impeded those
craftsmen who wished to move production into rural/ semi-rural locales, where
costs were lower. 54 Moreover, through over-taxation, tax farmers tended to
exacerbate the lack of capital which, as we have seen, was a constant problem in
Ottoman production including cotton textiles.
As a fourth factor of significance historians have pointed to the role of large
workshops which in the eighteenth century were set up by pious foundations to
increase revenues. 55 This tendency was especially relevant to cotton producers
since dye houses, because of the investment they required, were often founda-
tion property. These establishments did not involve a factory-like division of
labour but seem to have been simply juxtapositions of independent craftsmen
who undertook small investments and paid rent to the pious foundation in ques-
tion. Such buildings set aside for the use of artisans provided workspaces at
limited cost, and may well have aided the revival of cities hard hit by the merce-
naries' rebellions that had disrupted much of Anatolia during the seventeenth
century. But there were negative aspects as well: thus the close proximity of the
artisans working in such a place and frequently the common investment in costly
implements tended to reinforce mutual control and make it more difficult for
enterprising craftsmen to branch out into activities not foreseen or approved by
their neighbours. Furthermore state controls were facilitated by this concentra-
tion of production, and they also often proved detrimental to manufacturers. 56
If the tenants of a collective workshop wished to do so, they could exclude
unwelcome competitors by applying to the courts and invoking the traditions
of their crafts.Judges, while upholding the right of each and every craftsman to
make a living, certainly had no particular interest in aiding innovators.
Innovations could easily be described as lowering the established standards of
the craft involved and admittedly this was quite often true. Presumably the fine
border line between rapid adaptation to market requirements and the attempt
to fob off shoddy goods on unsuspecting customers was often crossed. But even
if we accept this objection as valid, the fact remains that large workshops made
life more difficult for artisans willing to experiment with new production
processes.
Duman, 'Notables', 126----g.

54
55
Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Between Collective Workshops and Private Homes: Places of Work in
Eighteenth-Century Bursa', in Stories of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing Status,
Establishing Control (Istanbul, 2002), 235-44.
56 Gem;, 'Ottoman Industry', 63.
CONCLUSION
Recent work on Ottoman textile production has tended to prioritize factors con-
nected with domestic development rather than those originating outside the
realm of the sultans. This in a sense is paradoxical, for now that researchers are
increasingly interested in global issues, Ottoman economic history has turned
in upon itself. Perhaps this is a consequence of the fact that social and economic
history, as practised well into the 1980s, has currently yielded pride of place to
a concern with discourse, state formation, the conduct of war, consumption as
a manner of establishing social status, or the history of women. Agriculture and
manufacturing have been left somewhat in the shadow and as a result
researchers practising these 'old-fashioned' branches of study have perhaps
failed to catch up with the most recent trends.
We are left with a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, archival research,
especially that focusing on the eighteenth century, continues to turn up lively
cotton industries in all sorts of places, while at the same time historians more
interested in 'macro' developments have emphasized the limits that Ottoman
state and societal structures, to say nothing of the mentalitis of the elites, placed
upon the growth of manufacturing. Probably this apparent paradox can be
mainly explained by the fact that the Ottoman domestic market was a great deal
larger than we appreciate at present. If this is true, then the limits so eloquently
described 1by Mehmet Gene,:and Yiiksel Duman operated mainly when it came
to widening the scope of production to a point that access to the international
market would have become a possibility. In spite of the difficulties caused by
officials and tax farmers, supplying the domestic market continued tant bien que
ma/.
5
'GUINEA CLOTH'
Productionand Consumptionof
Cotton Textilesin WestAfrica beforeand during
the Atlantic Slave Trade
COLLEEN E. KRIGER
'Guinea cloth' was the name given to cotton textiles that Europeans exchanged
for slaves, gold, ivory, pepper, and other commodities on the west coast of
Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 1 Along with other cottons
that had more specific names-such as allejars,baftas, brawles,cannikens,chel-
loes, morees, niccanees,and tapsells-they were manufactured in India and
shipped to Europe and from there re-exported by slave traders to the Guinea
Coast of Africa and to the West Indies. 2 From the late eighteenth century
Guinea cloth also included cotton textiles produced in Europe by English and
French manufacturers who imitated the most popular varieties of Indian tex-
tiles. The,tiistory of Guinea cloth is thus long in time span and global in scale,
as these cloths criss-crossed both the Indian and Atlantic oceans. The economic
and social implications of Guinea cloth were wide ranging and they were central
in the slave trade from Africa to the Americas and in the rise of industrialized
textile manufacturing in Europe.
The import oflndian cottons into West Africa has received a great deal of
attention. Less well known is the history of cotton textile production in Africa
and its dynamic relation to these imports. The aim of this chapter is to highlight
the role of West Africans in the Guinea trade-both as consumers and produc-
ers of Guinea cloth. Cotton textiles from India were in great demand in many
of the major ports along the African coast, but why these cloths were in such
great demand remains an open question. The most common and apparently
obvious answer is that they were new and exotic products.
1 Jan S. Hogendorn and Henry A. Gemery, 'The "Hidden Half' of the Anglo-African Trade
in the Eighteenth Century: The Significance ofMarionJohnson's Statistical Research', in David
Henige and T. C. McCaskie (eds.), WestAfrican Economicand Social History: Studies in Memory
of Marion Johnson (Madison, 1990 ), 81---9I; Philip Curtin, EconomicChangein PrecolonialAfrica:
Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1975), 247-53.
2
John Irwin and P.R. Schwartz, Studies in Indo-EuropeanTextile History (Ahmedabad, 1966).
106 ColleenE. Kriger
This chapter questions this conventional wisdom. Cotton had been culti-
vated, harvested, cleaned, spun into yarn, and woven into cloth for centuries in
West Africa, long before direct trade with Europeans. Consumer markets for
certain types of textiles were already in place in West Africa when Portuguese
mariners began exploring the coastline in the fifteenth century. As the Atlantic
trade developed, European merchants learned that if they wanted to purchase
gold or slaves or ivory, the key to success was knowing which products were in
demand in which African ports. 3 Textiles, especially cottons, made up the
largest category of commodities that African merchants were keen to receive
and many of them were similar to varieties of cotton cloth produced in West
Africa itself. 'Guinea cloths' were successful not because they were novelties,
but because they supplemented the output of similar goods from West African
workshops.
Trade along the Guinea Coast was shaped by the particularities of West
African consumer markets, which craftsmen producing throughout much of
the region's interior had served for centuries. From the sixteenth century, the
production of textiles in West Africa was both stimulated and reshaped by over-
seas imports. It was not the case that imports were 'cheap', driving local goods
out of the market, or that they were monopolized by the ruling elites.
Assumptions such as these can be challenged only by examining the trade in
foreign and locally made textiles in its full complexity.
Analysing this trade is a difficult task as documentation is uneven and often
limited to 'official' European trade. Records of the Luso-African coastal trade
are almost non-existent, and the same can be said for West Africa's inter-
regional trade networks. The sheer number of cloth names is an additional
problem and a source of confusion and error for historians. In this chapter the
material features of textiles are emphasized in order to avoid the problems asso-
ciated with multiple names for essentially the same variety of cloth. A combi-
nation of documentary and material evidence reveals that the manufacture of
cotton textiles persisted in West Africa despite centuries of massive imports of
Guinea cloth.
3 David Richardson, 'West African Consumption Patterns and their Influence on the
Eighteenth-Century English Slave Trade', in H. A. Gemery andJ. S. Hogendorn (eds.), The
Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979),
303-30; George Metcalf, 'A Microcosm of Why Africans Sold Slaves: Akan Consumption
Patterns in the 177os',Journal of African History, 28/3 (1987), 377----94;Stanley Alpern, 'What
Africans got for their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods', History in Africa, 22
(1995), 5-43.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa
COTTON TEXTILE PRODUCTION IN WEST AFRICA,

c.1000-1450
It is not known when the cotton plant was first cultivated in West Africa. Several
factors suggest that it may have been established in the first millennium AD or
perhaps a bit earlier. In this period environmental conditions were favourable for
the production of food and other crops, and the number and scale of human set-
tlements increased in many parts of the region. Concurrently, expanding over-
seas markets for African ivory and gold, together with the introduction of the
camel, which revolutionized transportation across the Sahara, brought West
Africa more fully into international trading networks. 4 In addition to these cli-
matic and economic factors, cotton textile manufacturing existed in Nubia, espe-
cially during the third and fourth centuries, and later in Aksum. It would
therefore not be at all surprising if evidence came to light that perennial varieties
of Old World cotton were established in West Africa before the end of the first
millennium, or even before the Muslim conquests of North Africa. However, so
far the archaeological evidence for cotton and for West African textiles in general
is relatively scarce. 5
Cotton textile production centres arose in at least two areas of the West African
interior. A western centre was located around the upper Niger, Gambia, and
Senegal watersheds, and contiguous areas on the desert's edge. An eastern centre
was located around Lake Chad, and the area of the early Hausa kingdoms (Map
5.1). Ling{iistic evidence suggests that Muslims who spoke Africanized dialects
of Arabic disseminated the knowledge and cultivation of cotton along major trade
routes. This pattern oflinguistic evidence correlates well with the archaeological
evidence for spinning in the form of spindle whorls. Taking into account the
timing when Islam and Muslim merchants began to have a noticeable presence in
West Africa, the general timing of population movements southward caused by
drier climate conditions, and the dates for archaeological sites, it is reasonable to
estimate that these two centres of cotton textile production arose around AD moo
and developed over the next four centuries. This estimate is in accord also with
Andrew Watson's work on the 'routes of crop diffusion' in the Muslim world
before 1500. 6
4 Peter Mitchell,African Connections: ArchaeologicalPerspectivesonAfrica and the Wider World
(Lanham, Md., 2005); Scott MacEachern, 'Two Thousand Years of West African History', in
Ann Brower Stahl (ed.), African Archaeology(Oxford, 2005), 441-66.
5 Graham Connah, 'Foreword', in Colleen E. Kriger, Cloth in WestAfrican History (Lanham,
Md.,2006).
6 Colleen E. Kriger, 'Mapping the History of Cotton Textile Production in Precolonial West
Africa', African EconomicHistory, 33 (2005), 92-7; Andrew Watson, Agricultural Innovation in

the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Cropsand Farming Techniques,700---1100 (Cambridge,
1983),passim.
Qi= lah(/O,da=,==!;==;'--1~0.00 km
9
0 100 500 miles
SAHARA DESERT
"~
• c.•
.
CAPE VERDE ISIANDS
Saharan Chadic & S · di Wh

Berber Languages • pm e or1s
WestAtlantic & B Bandiagara
Mande Languages Gulf of Guinea
(:) ra_ufJ'3'l~Mties
C? Benin
City
0
Map 5.1. Centres of cotton textile production in West Africa, c.1000-1500

Note: Early Muslim polities, left to right: Takrur; Ghana; Gao, Kanem. Source: Kriger (2005).
More detailed information on cotton textile manufacture in West Africa comes

from an archaeological site located in the upper Niger region. A spectacular trove
of textiles was found preserved in a series of burial caves located in the remote
Bandiagara escarpment, an area east of the inland Niger delta (point 'B' in Map
5. 1 ). Most of the textiles were fragments of cotton cloths, tailored tunics, and
caps made of narrow strips woven on a horizontal, foot-operated treadle loom
that was originally from Asia. The textiles that are attributed to the Tellem, the
people who preceded the current inhabitants ofBandiagara, range in date from
the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Almost three-quarters of the cotton cloths
were dated to the first two centuries of this period, and they include rectangular
mantles or wrappers as well as tunics. The fabric structures are balanced plain
weave, or, in the case of cotton blankets, heavier, weft-face plain weave. Some of
the fabrics are undyed, while others have loom-produced patterns of checks or
stripes made with yarns dyed blue, presumably indigo (Illustration 5.1). 7 Taken
together, they indicate the extent to which cotton textiles were being manufac-
tured and traded in West Africa during the first half of the second millennium.
And the relatively smaller number of woollen cloths found amongst them, which
appear to have been woven in North Africa, indicate that trans-Saharan products
were reaching remote locales such as the Bandiagara cliffs.
7 Rita Bolland, Tel/em Textiles: Archaeological Finds from Burial Caves in Mali's Bandiagara
Clijf(Leiden, 1991),passim.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa 109
,,.. T ,..._........-----~-----
Illustration 5.1. Cotton tunic, plain weave check (treadle loom), eleventh/twelfth century,
from Cave C, Sanga, Bandiagara escarpment, Mali.
© Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden; RMV C7r-r86, loan from the Musee National du Mali,
Bamako. Photo G.Jansen.
I
Accounts written in Arabic tell us that cotton cloth also circulated as a cur-
rency during this time in these same two areas. One source, compiled in rn68,
described the weaving of cotton cloth in Takrur (located along the Senegal
River), with many houses reportedly having their own 'cotton tree'. The cloth
measured four spans square and circulated as money alongside sorghum, salt,
and copper. Another Arabic source from the first half of the fourteenth century
mentions a cotton strip-doth currency in Kanem, north-east of Lake Chad,
which was measured out in units of length. It circulated alongside cowries,
beads, copper, and silver, and was also used as a currency of account. 8 These
early cloth currencies may have been similar to the ones we know about from
later descriptions and examples, which were exchanged in units sufficient to
make a particular item of clothing. The most famous cloth currency was the
lit ham, or veil, worn by Berber men of the Sahel and the Sahara. The role of
cotton cloth strips as currency, which would call for a certain standard of uni-
formity over time and space, helps to explain what some scholars have referred
8 Nehemia Levtzion andJ. F. P. Hopkins (trans. and eds.), Corpusof Early Arabic Sourcesfor
WestAfrican History (Cambridge, 1981), 78,260,475; Kriger, 'Mapping the History of Cotton',
II2n. 35.
I IO Colleen E. Kriger
to as the relative conservatism of this particular weaving technology and the fea-
tures of its products. 9 Moreover, an advantage of the narrow strips is their flex-
ibility-they can be sewn together into any number of garment types of
different sizes and construction.
Textile manufacturing in West Africa was supplemented by imports across
the Sahara. Arabic sources describing sub-Saharan societies between the
eleventh and fifteenth centuries mention the general conventions of dress in
major entrepots along the southern shore of the Sahara and in the West African
savannah regions. Woollen cloth was imported from the Maghreb and was espe-
cially associated with Berber groups. Even so, sturdy woollen blankets and other
textiles were also produced south of the Sahara from camel hair and sheep's
wool. Silks were the most exotic and luxurious of the imports, and were given
special mention in these accounts. Ibn Battuta, in his mid-fourteenth-century
visit to Mali, noted the impressive attire of the sultan's interpreter, who wore
an elegantly patterned imported silk brocade. References to cotton clothing
worn by urban dwellers and members of the nobility, however, do not identify
them as coming from outside the region. Rather, the few specific comments on
cotton remark on the fine quality of the cotton textiles woven in West Africa. 10
As more of West Africa's urban elites and political leaders converted to Islam
after the eleventh century, tailored garments became the preferred clothing for
prominent men. Garments of all sorts, especially shirts, robes, veils, and turbans,
made their way across the Sahara into markets along the sub-Saharan Sahel and
savannah belt to clothe growing numbers of Muslim notables. Those who were
wealthy enough to make the pilgrimage to Mecca were exposed to the variety
and splendour of textiles produced throughout the Islamic world, and they may
have brought back with them special gifts of clothing. For example, Mali's
Mansa Musa and his entourage, on their way to Mecca in 1324, were awarded
garments and robes of honour by the sultan of Cairo. 11 Tailors in West African
towns and cities, some of them Q!:iranic scholars and their students, fashioned
their own versions of foreign-made garments, coining vernacular names for
them depending on the weave, colour, and cut of the cloth. Cotton textile man-
ufacture thus continued to thrive alongside a long-distance exchange of textiles
and garments. Leo African us, in his early sixteenth-century description of his
homeland, singled out the upper Senegal basin and inland Niger delta as major
cotton-producing areas, and also the Hausa kingdoms of Kano and Zamfara to
the east. He noted in passing that North African merchants purchased cotton
Kriger, Cloth, 82-4.
9
10
Levtzion and Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, So, 85, 97, 107, 120, 123, 171,
193, 210, 265, 290, 335, 416; R. B. Serjeant, Islamic Textiles: Material for a History up to the
Mongol Conquest (Beirut, 1972), 178, 183-4.
11 Levtzion and Hopkins (eds.), Corpus of Early Arabic Sources, So, 85, 107,171,265,270,291;
Serjeant, Islamic Textiles, 245, 246.

Cotton Textiles in West Africa III
south of the Sahara, but it is not clear whether he was referring to the raw fibre
or to textiles. 12
The lower Niger region (present-day Nigeria) was another important textile-
producing centre in West Africa before the fifteenth century. It featured a type
of loom that is very different from the horizontal treadle loom. This one stood
vertically, was operated with the hands rather than the feet, and was probably
an adaptation of the raphia loom generally associated with the rainforest areas
of west central Africa and the Congo basin. The earliest evidence of its products
comes from the ninth-century archaeological site known as lgbo-Ukwu, located
in the rainforests of south-eastern Nigeria. This site yielded over twenty frag-
ments of bast and raphia cloth, none of which contains any cotton. 13
The precise timing of cotton's arrival is unknown in this region, and archaeo-
logical evidence is inconclusive. Excavations in Benin City, the capital of the
former Benin Kingdom, yielded some rare and intriguing fragments of cloth
dating to the mid-thirteenth century (point 'C' in Map 5.1). Microscopic analyses
revealed that the fibres of some of the fragments had convolutions and other fea-
tures associated with cotton, but the condition of the samples prevented a defin-
itive identification. 14 Other features of the cloths point to indigenous rather than
foreign manufacture, including the variety of fabric structures, the thread-count
densities of the fabrics, and the diversity of types and weights of yarn elements.
These features are consonant with cloth woven on the vertical loom. Above all,
the mixing of flat, raphia-like fibres with spun elements in some of the samples
points mof strongly to a West African provenance. 15 In any case, European nav-
igators and merchants who began to frequent this part of the Guinea Coast in the
1490s noted that cotton cloths could be readily purchased in the Benin area. 16
AFRICAN COTTONS AND THE GUINEA TRADE, 1450-1850
International trade on the west coast of Africa has been described as the
exchange of cheap overseas products for African gold, ivory, pepper, and
slaves. 17 It was much more varied and complex than that, of course, and written
records are full of complaints from Europeans on the intricacy and unpre-
dictability of the West African trade. Traders had to be constantly aware of how
12 Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein
Contained (New York, 1963), iii. 822-31; Kriger, Cloth, ch. 3.

13 Thurstan Shaw, lgbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria
(Evanston, Ill., 1972); Kriger, Cloth, ch. 2.

14 GrahamConnah, TheArchaeologyofBenin(Oxford, 1975),236---7.
15 Kriger, 'Mapping the History of Cotton', 95-6.
16 Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeralda de Situ Orbis (London, 1937), 128.
17 Robin Law (ed.), The Operation of the Slave Trade in Africa (London, 2003), p. xviii.
II2 ColleenE. Kriger
their products were doing against those of their rivals, and the gifts that might
give them greater leverage for sealing agreements with kings, officials, and
brokers. The range of overseas commodities they needed for trade was extensive
since demand changed over time and from port to port. In aggregate, textiles
were the largest category of goods that were used to make purchases on the
Guinea Coast. 18 Dutch and English accounts from the seventeenth century, for
example, specify by name the many textiles that their ships carried to West
Africa's ports, most of which came from European and Indian manufacturers.
But as was the case with the trans-Saharan textile trade, a closer examination of
the material features of textile imports in the coastal trade reveals a relatively
coherent set of consumer preferences. Some products were singled out and
appreciated as unusual items that were not available in nearby workshops, such
as the vividly coloured woollen yardage that came from northern European
looms. Others, especially cottons and linens, were similar to textiles woven in
West Africa in their fibre content and fabric structure. Cottons from overseas
tended to be plain, piece dyed, or loom patterned with stripes and checks, much
like West African cottons. 19
After 1500, textile manufacturing in West Africa was supplemented and
stimulated by the new era of imports on the coast. The Bight of Benin and its
hinterland was one of several regions where cloth was imported and where West
African weavers produced cotton cloth of their own for export (Map 5.2).
References to this export trade in the written sources are very difficult to inter-
pret, since they are so few and offered only in passing, but when they give indi-
cations of scale, it is in the thousands of pieces. In 1505, for example, one
Portuguese merchant stationed at the trading post ofUghoton purchased over
1,800 locally woven cotton cloths and used them to clothe slaves, make ship's
awnings, and purchase gold on the Gold Coast. 20 Indirect evidence suggests
that they were woven on the vertical loom. A common feature of vertical-loom
cloth was its width, which was greater than strip-cloth. Nevertheless, several
pieces were used to make up a wrapper or mantle.
The large numbers of 'Benin cloths' in the seventeenth century that
European merchants began trading were classified according to the number of
18 John Vogt, 'Notes on the Portuguese Cloth Trade in West Africa', International Journal of
African Historical Studies, 8/ 4 (1975), 642; Metcalf, 'Microcosm', 386---7;Philip Curtin, 'The
Tropical Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade', in Michael Adas (ed.), Islamic and European
Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order (Philadelphia, 1993), 186---7;Marion Johnson,
'Commodities, Customs, and the Computer', in Anglo-African Trade in the Eighteenth Century
(Leiden, 1990), 9; Peter K. Doom, J. Thomas Lindblad, and L. Jeroen Touwen, 'The Marion
Johnson Data on African Trade', ibid. 27; Ray Kea, Settlement, Trade, and Polities in the
Seventeenth Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982), 208-<).
19 Kriger, 'Mapping the History of Cotton', 98 table 2, 104 table 3.
20
A. F. C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (New York, 1969), 37.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa Il3
0 100 1000km
Ol==IOFO=r"=r==s==50r-0-m~iles
SAHARA DESERT
CAPE VERDE ISLANDS
• t,•
Cotton Textile Production Area

Gulf of Guinea
0
/ Cotton Textile Exports
Map 5.2. General areas of cotton textile production and cotton textile exports in West Africa
during the Guinea trade, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Source: Kriger (2005).
pieces per wrapper (point I in Map 5.2). Dapper's account described two main
types of t11esetextiles: a wrapper made from three pieces of cloth and one made
from four pieces of cotton dyed indigo blue or patterned with indigo stripes.
There were other types of 'Benin cloth' as well, but their precise features and
vernacular names have not been identified. The popular three-piece served as
an accounting term-dreibants-that the Dutch used to calculate their pur-
chases. Textiles coming from the hinterlands into the ports of Arbo and Lagos
in the eighteenth century were bulked and sorted to be shipped to markets on
the Gold Coast, the Gabon estuary, Angola, the island of Sao Tome, and as far
away as the West Indies and Brazil. Several descriptions specify some of the
preferences of buyers in different places: striped cloths were exchanged for gold
on the Gold Coast and indigo-blue cloths were demanded in Gabon and Angola
in exchange for ivory and slaves. 21
Allada (point 2 in Map 5.2) was another entrepot along the Bight of Benin
from where cotton textiles were exported. There, too, many of the cloths were
produced in hinterland communities, some as far inland as the northern Yoruba
21 Adam Jones (trans. and ed.), Olfert Dapper's Description of Benin (Atlanta, 1998), 18; Adam
Jones (trans. and ed.), West Africa in the Mid-Seventeenth Century: An Anonymous Dutch
Manuscript (Atlanta, 1995); Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 94-5; John Adams, Sketches Taken
during Ten Voyages to Africa between the Years I786 and I8oo (New York, 1970), 24-5.
Colleen E. Kriger
kingdom ofOyo. Merchants' records from the seventeenth century noted that
thousands of 'Allada cloths' were brought from there to the Gold Coast by
Dutch, English, Swedish, and German ships. On occasion, these records
include brief descriptions of the cloths-they were either plain or loom pat-
terned with stripes or brocading-but vernacular names for standardized prod-
ucts are not given. Some of the cloths were made with wool, presumably the
unravelled yarn from imported textiles that Yoruba and Edo weavers used to
make their most vividly coloured brocaded patterns. 22 It is likely that some of
the Allada exports were products of a vertical loom, while others from further
north would have been made of strip-cloth woven on a treadle loom. That cer-
tainly was the case in the late eighteenth century, when Oyo and Ijebu Ode were
both noted as prominent suppliers of textiles to Allada's markets. 23
On the Ivory Coast, cotton textile exports were called 'quaqua cloths' by
European merchants (points 3a and 3b in Map 5.2). Descriptions of them in
seventeenth-century sources are also brief and very general, and, as with the
Allada cloths, sources do not include their specific vernacular names. Made of
narrow cotton strip-doth woven on the treadle loom, they were characterized
by Europeans as being of two main types: a five-strip cloth was available just
west of Assinie; and a six-strip cloth predominated further west around Cape
Lahou (points 3a and 3b in Map 5.2). Other cottons were exported from the
Grain Coast around Cape Mount and Cape Mesurado but it is not clear whether
these were quaqua cloths. Here cotton textile production was carried out pri-
marily in the interior, and the finished goods were brought to the coast where
they were exchanged for salt and overseas goods. Quaqua cloths were not as
varied structurally and visually as Allada and Benin cloths and they were made
up of alternating white and blue strips or loom-patterned stripes. There appar-
ently were no brocaded quaqua cloths. 24 Perhaps for that reason, seventeenth-
century Dutch merchants sold Allada cloth to traders on the Ivory Coast and
shipped the quaqua cloth to ports in the Gold Coast and Niger delta regions.
The simpler structures and patterns of quaqua cloth may explain why it was less
expensive than certain types of cloth from Benin. 25
Cotton textile exports from the upper Guinea Coast (point 4 in Map 5.2)
were also made of narrow strips woven on a treadle loom. Some may have been
22 Adam Jones (trans. and ed.), German Sources for West African History, I59g--I669
(Wiesbaden, 1983), 302; Robin Law (ed.), The English in West Africa, I68I-I683: The Local
Correspondenceof the Royal African Company of England, I68I-I699, Part I (Oxford, 1997), 237;
Kea, Settlement, 209,405 nn. 12 and 13.
23 Adams, Sketches, 19, 22, 24-5.
24 Jones, German Sources, 64-5, 64 n. u6; Louis Jadin, L'Ancien Congoet !'Angola, I6Jg--I655
(Brussels, 1975), i. 292; Walter Rodney,A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, I545-I800 (Oxford,
1970), 182.
25
Kea, Settlement, 209, 405 nn. 12 and 13.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa II5
produced as far inland as the Niger bend, while many others were made in a
broad region defined by the watersheds of the Senegal and Gambia Rivers.
These textiles served as the models for cloth manufacturers in the Cape Verde
Islands and their importance in regional trade is remembered in the oral tradi-
tions of prominent ju/a trading families. 26 They continued to be made in the
West African interior throughout the Atlantic slave trade era and remained
important commodities for English, Dutch, Portuguese, and especially Euro-
African merchants well into the eighteenth century. Available in large numbers
especially along the upper Gambia and Senegal Rivers, thousands of cotton
cloths were purchased in the seventeenth century to be used either as curren-
cies for buying provisions or as export goods for trade elsewhere on the coast.27
Only a few of the vernacular names for the local forms and varieties of cotton
cloth were recorded at the time. Described as either plain white, dyed, made
up of alternating white and dyed strips, or elaborately loom patterned, they
were originally exchanged for salt and other goods from coastal areas. Sources
also indicate that major production centres were Bundu, Futa Toro, and prob-
ably also Jahaanke communities in the upper Senegal basin. Barafulas were
traded widely, as were the panos pretos, 'black wrappers' that had been piece
dyed indigo blue and then beaten to create a glazed finish. Xereos were plain
white cloths woven in Serer workshops, and galanswere described as white and
blue cloths woven in Galam, near the confluence of the Senegal and Faleme
Rivers. 28 Bantans earned their name from vernacular words for ceiba(American
kapok or ~ilk-cotton tree), whose fine fibres, unspinnable on their own, were
mixed with cotton and then spun into yarn. Cloths woven from these special
yarns were highly prized because they resembled silk.29
Much more famous than the cloths described above were the textiles manufac-
tured in the Cape Verde Islands (point 5 in Map 5.2) from the sixteenth to the
eighteenth centuries. 30 Supplies of these cottons, many of which were distin-
26 Donald R. Wright, Oral Traditionsfrom the Gambia, ii: Family Elders (Athens, Oh., 1980),
14--15, 19--20.
27 Nize Izabel de Moraes, 'Le Commerce des tissus a la petite cote au XVIIe siecle
(Senegambie)', Notes africaines, 139 (1973), 71--5; Curtin, Economic Change, 213.
28 T. Bentley Duncan, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes in
Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972), 215--16; Antonio Carreira,

Panaria Cabo-Verdiano-Guineense (Lisbon, 1968), 84--<)7;Curtin, Economic Change; John M.
Dalziel, The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa (London, 1937), 207--8; George Brooks,
'Cacheu: A Pape! and Luso-African Entrepot at the Nexus of the Biafada-Sapi and Banyun-Bak
Trade Networks', in Carlos Lopes (ed.), Mansas, Escravos, Grumetes, e Gentio (Bissau, 1993),
175----<)5.
29 Duncan, Atlantic Islands, 219 n. 57; Andre A. de Almada, 'Brief Treatise on the Rivers of
Guinea' (typescript, University of Liverpool, [c.1594] 1984), 38; Dalziel, Useful Plants, 122--6;
Sigismund Koelle, PolyglottaAfricana (Graz, 1963).
30 Carreira, Panaria.
u6 ColleenE. Kriger
guished by elaborate loom-produced patterns, gave Portuguese and Luso-African

merchants a much-needed advantage during the pivotal early period in Atlantic
trade. Exploiting the textile technology of the West African mainland, cotton and
indigo plantations were established on the islands of Sao Tiago and Fogo and, by
the last decades of the fifteenth century, raw cotton was being exported to the
Gambia, Casamance, and Cacheu Rivers. After the mid-15oos, cotton textiles
were being woven on the islands, imitating the mainland products and relying on
the skills of slaves who grew, harvested, processed, spun, wove, and dyed cotton
under merchant supervision. The Cape Verde Island cloths competed with the
textiles that were made in the hinterlands of the upper Guinea Coast and, as a
result, plain cottons from workshops in the interior were traded to entrepots such
as Cacheu, where they were dyed with indigo imported from the Senegambia
region farther north. Dutch records from the seventeenth century show quite
clearly however that the competition from Cape Verde Island cloth stimulated
rather than displaced the textile production centres on the mainland. 31
The precise role oflocally made cloth in the Guinea trade cannot be quanti-
fied, primarily because of the lack of evidence, especially for the trade of lanra-
dos and their descendants, who were merchants of mixed Portuguese and
African ancestry. They traded in African-made cloth and slaves in and around
the islands of the Cape Verdes and Sao Tome but we find only fleeting refer-
ences to them and their businesses in the written sources. One unusually
detailed description comes from the upper Guinea Coast in 1623:
The trade we call 'coastal' is mostly undertaken, in small ships, pinnances and launches,
by Portuguese [sic]who live on Santiago Island. First they load these with salt, which
they conveniently obtain for nothing on the islands of Maio and Sal and they sail to
Serra-Lioa with the salt and trade it for gold, ivory, and kola. Then from Serra-Lioa
they sail again to Joala and Porto d' Ale [in Senegal], where they trade a portion of the
kola for cotton cloths. They also sometimes trade ivory obtained in Serra-Lioa for Cape
Verde cloths (so called because many are made at Cape Verde [that is, by weavers living
along the Petite Cote]). From there they sail again east to Cacheo where they trade the
rest of their kola and their remaining goods for slaves. They acquire fifty to sixty slaves
in exchange for the goods they have obtained by trade along the coast, and each slave is
worth to them 150 reals, or pieces-of-eight. So they make 9,000- 10,000 reals out of
nothing, in a manner of speaking. 32
Luso-African merchants operated a similar trade from the island of Sao Tome,
which included, among other things, the exchange of several types of 'Benin
31 George Brooks, Eurafricansin WesternAfrica: Commerce,Social Status, Gender,and Religious
Observancefrom the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Athens, Oh., 2003), 62-3; de Moraes, 'Le
Commerce des tissus'.
32 Brooks, 'Cacheu', 193; Brooks, Eurafricans, 76, citing P. E. H. Hair, 'Sources on Early
Sierra Leone: (2) Andrade ( 1582), Ruiters ( 1623), Carvalho ( 1632[5])', Africana ResearchBulletin,
sh (1974), 51-2.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa II7
cloth' for slaves and ivory in Gabon and Angola. As late as 1816schooners from
Sao Tome were trading in thousands of'Benin cloths', but the abolition of the
British slave trade was beginning to reduce the demand for them. 33 During the
heyday of the Guinea trade, however, canny and well-connected Luso-African
merchants made substantial profits by exploiting their knowledge of ports,
prices, and consumer preferences.
Cotton cultivation and textile manufacture in West Africa must have
expanded into new areas during the era of the Guinea trade, but detailed evi-
dence for tracing this process is almost impossible to come by. Perhaps most
striking is the relatively little change in spinning and weaving technology.
Spinners continued to use the hand-held spindle for making yarn, and weavers
used the same horizontal and vertical looms to manufacture the characteristically
narrow West African cotton cloth. Oral traditions and linguistic data indicate
that export production in the lower Niger region prompted the transfer of ver-
tical-loom weaving into communities further inland, while inter-regional trade
in the West African interior and the export of textiles on the upper Guinea Coast
led to the establishment of more and larger workshops of treadle-loom weaving.
There is no evidence of merchant-organized putting-out production before the
nineteenth century outside the Cape Verde Islands. We can infer, therefore, that
higher levels of textile output were achieved mainly by expanding the workforce
and by exploiting the labour of slaves and family members. For instance, a boom
in cotton textile manufacture in the nineteenth-century Sokoto Caliphate (now
northern;Nigeria) and the renown of its export products relied on specialized
yarns and the weaving of higher-density fabrics, made possible in part by longer-
staple varieties of New World cotton that were introduced via Atlantic trade. 34
Plain white, piece-dyed, and loom-patterned cottons produced in and around
the caliphate made their way to Asante in the kola trade and across the whole of
West Africa to the Atlantic (Illustrations 5.2 to 5.5).35 Capitalizing on the long-
standing and widespread demand for these standard types of cloth, caliphate
textile producers made and marketed superior-quality cottons into the twentieth
century.
33 Ryder, Benin and the Europeans,233-4.

34 Colleen Kriger, 'Textile Production and Gender in the Sokoto Caliphate',Journal of African
History, 34 (1993), 361-401; Philip Shea, 'The Development of an Export-Oriented Dyed Cloth
Industry in Kano Emirate in the Nineteenth Century' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of
Wisconsin, Madison, 1975).
35 Paul Lovejoy, Caravansof Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade, r700-r900 (Zaria, 1980); Heinrich
Barth, Travels and Discoveriesin North and CentralAfrica (London, 1965), iii. 357-8.
rr8 Colleen E. Kriger
Illustration 5 .2. Detail, cotton wrapper, alternating strips of plain weave check and stripes
(treadle loom). Strip width 14 cm. Purchased near the Niger-Benue confluence, 1841.
Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, GK; Niger Expedition Collection, 43.3-11.43.
Photo C. Kriger.
Illustration 5.3. Detail, cotton wrapper, alternating areas of plain weave white and stripes
(vertical loom). Two breadths, each 45/ 46 cm. Purchased near the Niger-Benue confluence,
1841. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, UK; Niger Expedition Collection,
43.3-11.60. Photo C. Kriger.
Cotton Textiles in West Africa
Illustration 5.4. Detail, women's cotton head cloth, plain weave check (treadle loom). Strip
width 6 cm. Purchased near the Niger-Benue confluence, 1856. Copyright the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew, UK; Baikie Collection. Photo C. Kriger.
Illustration 5.5. Detail, women's cotton wrapper, plain weave strips (treadle loom), dyed in
indigo and glazed. Strip width 6 cm. Made north ofNiger-Benue confluence, purchased 1856.
Copyright the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK; Baikie Collection. Photo C. Kriger.
I20 ColleenE. Kriger
TEXTILE IMPORTS TO THE GUINEA COAST, 1450-1850
Overseas textile imports to the west coast of Africa consisted mainly of woollens
and linens from northern Europe at first, which were followed by cottons and silks
from India, and, finally, European-made cottons and silks. A systematic survey
and assessment of these imports is not yet possible given the complexities of the
trade and the scattered and uneven nature of the sources. Regional and local par-
ticularities in consumption patterns along the Guinea Coast and the hinterlands
meant that the markets for textiles and preferences for certain fibres and colours
varied widely. And African brokers were a diverse group, coming from commu-
nities near the trading stations as well as further inland. As a consequence, the
import market changed significantly over time even in a single port, depending
on who the local brokers were and which particular consumer groups they had in
mind when purchasing cloth. Added to the complexity was the demand that com-
modity assortments include a mix of goods across a broad price range. Cheap
imports were acceptable only if bundled with more expensive goods.36
Nevertheless, some general consumption patterns can be identified. The
basic modes of dress did not undergo significant change until the late nineteenth
century. Ruling elites sometimes adopted European garments for show, while
other groups-merchants of mixed ancestry or African employees of European
companies-wore European-style clothing. 37 But wrappers continued to be the
main form of dress for women and many non-Muslim men, and overseas cloth
pieces were cut to standard wrapper sizes. Muslim males continued to wear
their ample robes, shirts, and drawstring trousers, sometimes of imported
fabric. And indigo and white cottons continued to be prominent in the market-
place-both as a locally made product and increasingly as an overseas import.
In other words, foreign textiles were for the most part s~lected according to
West African cultural norms and aesthetic preferences.
At the beginning of the Guinea trade, and through the sixteenth century,
European-made linens and woollens and African-woven cottons were the main
textiles included in commodity exchanges. Linens were demanded in Cape
Verga and Sierra Leone and also down the coast in the Kongo Kingdom, a place
where finely woven raphia cloths were made and used as a currency. 38 During
36 George Metcalf, 'Gold, Assortments and the Trade Ounce: Fante Merchants and the
Problem of Supply and Demand in the 177os',Journal of African History, 28/i (1987), 39;Jones,
West Africa; Kea, Settlement, 235.
37 A. Van Dantzig (trans. and ed.), The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, 1674-1742: A Collection
of Documents from the General State Archive at The Hague (Accra, 1978), 295-7; Curtin, Economic
Change, 96.
38 Jan Vansina, 'Raffia Cloth in West Central Africa, 1500-1800', in Maureen F. Mazzaoui
(ed.), Textiles: Production, Trade and Demand (Aldershot, 1998),passim.

Cotton Textiles in West Africa I2I
this early period it appears that linens were imported in locales where con-
sumers were accustomed to wearing cloth made of bark, bast, or raphia fibre.
Imports of European woollens present a rather different case. Wool textiles had
been imported from across the Sahara for centuries, and blankets of wool and
camel hair had long been made by pastoral groups in the West African savan-
nahs and Sahel. 39 But a very special demand existed for red wool cloth. Early
evidence for this demand comes from the Rio Grande on the Petite Cote, at
Cape Verga and Sierra Leone, and on the Gold Coast, where there was also a
market for blue and striped woollens. In the 1590s, red cloth and red yarn were
being imported along the Senegal, Gambia, and Casamance Rivers and red cloth
alone in the environs of Sierra Leone, indicating that in some places red wool
was used as an intermediate good by weavers and perhaps also by tailors and
embroiderers. 40
Demand for woollens remained steady throughout the Guinea trade. In the
court of the Benin Kingdom imported red wool fabric was integrated into offi-
cial and ceremonial textile forms. An early sixteenth-century description of a
rare public appearance by Benin's king recorded that the king and his horse
were covered in red scarlet cloth and red coral beads. Red wool also became the
customary uniform of the kingdom's military officers.41 Woollen cloth was also
unravelled in Benin and the yarn used in local textile production. A cloth woven
for the king by the royal weavers' guild was made of bast fibre with patterns bro-
caded in multicoloured wool. And in neighbouring Yoruba communities, elab-
orately brpcaded funeral cloths and masquerade costumes representing the
ancestors were embellished with red woollen yarn. Cotton textiles were also
made fancy for the market with the addition of vividly coloured patterns made
with unravelled wool. Examples were noted near Offra on the Bight of Benin in
1682 as well as Ouidah in the 1730s. Red, green, yellow, blue, purple, and
orange were the preferred colours. 42
Cottons from India made up the lion's share of overseas textile imports to the
west coast of Africa, especially from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
In some cases it is possible to uncover continuities of taste in West Africa despite
the introduction of what might seem to have been 'new' products. In the lower
Senegal basin a type of Indian-made bafta became the most important cloth
imported overall in this period. Its design-deep indigo-blue dyed cotton with
39 Curtin, EconomicChange, 212; Bernhard Gardi and Christiane Seydou, 'Arkilla kerka: la
tenture de rnariage chez !es Penis du Mali', in Beate Engelbrecht and Bernhard Gardi (eds.), Man
Doesnot Go Naked: Textilien und Handwerk aus afrikanischenund anderenLiindern(Basel, 1989),
83-106.
40 Pereira, Esmeraldade Situ Orbis, 92, 94, 98, 120-1, 144; de Almada, Brief Treatise on the
Rivers of Guinea, part I, 28, 47, 73, part II, 5.

41 Jones, GermanSources,38, 4r;Jones, 0/fert Dapper'sDescription,18-19.
42 Kriger, Cloth, 35-'7, 141; Law, English in WestAfrica, 237.
122 Colleen E. Kriger
a glazed finish-connects it to an earlier locally made product, which was known

as panospretos, or 'black wrappers' in Creole, the coastal lingua franca. These
were cotton strip-cloth wrappers that were piece dyed to a dark shade of indigo
and they were traded along the coast north of Cape Verde in the late sixteenth
century. It is not clear who first imported the indigo-dyed bafta cloth and when,
but even as the quantities of imports increased, the production of panospretos
continued in the Cape Verde Islands and in the West African interior where they
were again known as 'black wrappers' in vernacular languages of the region. 43
The imported version came to be called piecesdeguineeand served as an essential
commodity currency in the desert-side gum trade. English and French attempts
in the eighteenth century to imitate it failed and so it continued to be shipped
from India. 44 Through these commercial changes, and despite different cloth
names, consumer demand for cottons dyed to a deep indigo blue and finished
with a shiny glaze remained a constant (Illustration 5.5).
In the first half of the seventeenth century, African-made cottons were
holding their own against Indian cottons in the officially recorded European
trade. A mid-century Dutch description of commerce on the lower Guinea
Coast reveals a complex system of transit trading in which cotton cloth from
India was exchanged for locally produced cotton goods. Indian cottons (morees,
bafta, cannikens, cassa Bengale) and European woollens and linens were
exchanged for 'Benin cloth' which was then traded for gold on the Gold Coast.
Similarly, Indian silks and mixed cotton and silk cloth (armozjin,tapsells)were
traded for 'Allada cloth', which was also demanded on the Gold Coast. Quaqua
cloths were also acquired in exchange for 'Allada cloths' and then traded on the
Gold Coast as well. The only Indian import recommended for Gold Coast
assortments was red cotton, worth eight times the 'Benin cloth' and over twice
the 'Allada cloth'. Thus it appears that at this time the lowest-priced textile
imports on the Gold Coast were still the plain and loom-patterned cottons made
in the Benin Kingdom and its hinterland. 45
By the 1680s, a greater variety oflndian-made cotton goods was imported
into the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin. In their requests for supplies from
London between 1681 and 1683, Royal African Company factors named
twenty-three Indian cottons or silks and ten European woollens or linens.
Between 1690 and 1708 sales of Benin cloth on the Gold Coast declined,
perhaps because ofLuso-African competition. 46 There were some common fea-
43 Carreira, Panaria, 88, 127, 143, 145; Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districtsof Africa
(Durham, NC, 2000 ), 2 52-3; E. Peroz, Dictionnairefranfais---mandingue
(Paris, 1891 ), 64, 69, 114;
D. Westermann, Handbuchder Ful-Sprache (Berlin, 1909), 7, 136.
44 Curtin, EconomicChange,260-1, 319; Adams, Sketches, 253----<J.
45 Jones, West Africa; Irwin and Schwartz, Studies in Jndo-European Textile History; Kea,
Settlement, 405 n. 12.

46 Ryder, Benin and the Europeans,133-4, 137; Kriger, Cloth, 42 table 2.7.
tures but also distinct differences in the consumer markets of these two sections
of the coast in this period. Tapsells,niccanees,and brawles,which were mainly
loom-patterned cottons, were more popular on the Gold Coast than on the
Bight of Benin. However, loom-patterned allejarsalong with long cloth, plain
white and dyed blue, were in demand in both places. Plain white muslins,along
with novelty textiles-printed calicoes,chintz, and pintadoes-sold well in the
Bight of Benin but not at all on the Gold Coast. Multicoloured silks were
demanded on the Bight of Benin, woollens (especially blue and green) were
regular items on the Gold Coast, and linens continued to sell in both areas.
'Guinea cloths' were the lowest-priced overseas cottons, selling at half to a
quarter of the price of other loom-patterned imports. The prices of the cheapest
cloths were a tenth of the most expensive, which suggests that in the late sev-
enteenth century overseas cloth was available to a broad section of the popula-
tion and was not monopolized by the ruling elites. 47
The eighteenth century was the peak of the transatlantic slave trade and
England was the largest carrier of slaves. Customs data from 1699 to 1808 show
that on the whole textiles amounted to almost two-thirds of the value of British
exports to Africa in the period. Woollens dominated until the 1720s, and then
re-exports from India took their place, and came to account for from a third to
two-thirds of textiles shipped from England to the Guinea Coast every year.
From the middle of the century British cottons joined these Indian goods and
by 1800 both categories combined to make up 70-80 per cent of textiles. 48 All
the while English manufacturers busied themselves with trying to replicate
1
popular African-made cloths. In mid-century, instructions went out from
London to Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast to send some samples of
'Ashantee and Whydah cloth' so that imitations of them could be produced. 49
By the 1790s, certain varieties ofloom-patterned or printed textiles made in
India and in England were being adapted to consumer preferences at particular
ports along the Guinea Coast. 50 Although some of these attempts at imitation
were more successful than others, it is evident that West African tastes were
having an impact on cotton textile production elsewhere.
No one was affected more by the tastes and values of West African consumers
than the 'men on the spot', the agents who managed European trading on the
coast. Metcalrs analyses of over a thousand commodity exchanges between
1772 and 1780 reveal the complexity of the assortments of overseas goods, even
in this short time period. Twenty-eight items were 'staples' in the trade, half of
them textiles. Of those, half were cottons and silks from India: chelloes,cuttanees,
47 Law, English in West Africa.
48 Doom et al., 'Marion Johnson Data', 27-9; Johnson, 'Commodities', 9.
49 J. K. Fynn,Asante and its Neighbours, 1700--1807 (London, 1971), II-12.
50
Adams, Sketches, 253-9.
124 Colleen E. Kriger
guinea stuffi, pulicats, mixed romauls, silk romauls, and satin stripes. The other
half were European-made textiles, including plain cotton and chintz from
England, along with several varieties oflinens and woollens. Agreement on the
composition of trade assortments could hinge on the inclusion of specific
colours or brand names, demonstrating the acuity of Fante brokers in their
inspections and their shrewdness in bargaining. British smuggling is a further
indication of the strong trading position of the Fante. British ships that left
London for the Guinea Coast often stopped at Amsterdam to purchase textiles
from India that were considered superior to those the English East India
Company supplied. Moreover, the price range for imported textiles, especially
cottons and linens, shows that they were not reserved solely for elites but were
available to other segments of the population. Different commodity assortments
were recorded for different locales along the coast. Textiles were less important
in the trade for pepper, camwood, and ivory along the Grain Coast and Sierra
Leone, but cotton goods were essential on the Gold Coast in exchanges for gold
and for slaves, and in the trade for slaves on the Bight of Benin. The latter
example shows that textiles, cottons in particular, were not demanded only in
places where there was little or no cloth production. 51
West African patterns of consumption shaped much trade on the Guinea
Coast. At the same time, however, imported cloth was also a vehicle for creating
new 'local' textile products. Asante, an Akan kingdom that expanded into a
powerful federation in the Gold Coast hinterland, provides two examples of this
process: the textiles known as kente and adinkra. Before international trade on
the coast, peoples of the rainforests in this region produced cloth from
processed bark and bast fibre and this doth continued to be made into the twen-
tieth century in rural areas for the poor and for ceremonial purposes. 52 Weaving
of narrow strip-cloth on a treadle loom was introduced from the north where
there is archaeological evidence of cotton production from the fourteenth
century. 53 This technology was then harnessed in the eighteenth century to
develop a distinctive new textile, kente. In the 1740s, a Danish trader at
Christiansborg Castle recounted how the famous kente cloth of Asante was pro-
moted by the king, Opoku Ware (r. c.1720--1750).Under royal patronage, strip-
cloth weavers replaced locally hand-spun cotton yarn with more elaborate and
brightly colourful yarns of imported silk and wool. These luxury cloths were
much more costly and visually impressive, and they relied on purchases of
taffeta and other overseas textiles on the coast which were brought up-country
and unravelled for their yarn. The unravelling was abandoned when imported
51 Metcalf, 'Microcosm', 379,385, 387----90;id., 'Gold', 40-r;Johnson, 'Commodities', IO.
52 Kea, Settlement, 298----g;
Jones, German Sources, 255; Dalziel, Useful Plants, 274; Robert S.
Rattray, Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), 134, 220.
53 Kriger, 'Mapping the History of Cotton', 92-5.
factory-spun yarns became available. By the early twentieth century, the loom-
produced patterns of kente had been elaborated to such a degree that they sur-
passed even the most richly brocaded Cape Verde cloths. 54
It is not known when, where, or by whom the hand-printed Asante cloth
known as adinkra was invented. The oldest extant examples of adinkra (which
date from the early nineteenth century) were plain white cotton strip-cloths
from Dagomba, in Asante's northern territories, which were painted and
stamped with geometric patterns. One specimen collected by Bowdich in 1817
was painted by special commission; later examples were made more quickly and
in greater numbers by stamping rather than painting the patterns. Imported
linens and then factory-woven cottons replaced the Dagomba strips as the
ground cloth. 55 Production of adinkra, however, remained artisanal in scale and
organization. Other types of'African chintz' were produced and traded widely
in West Africa after the price of Manchester cloth came down in the late nine-
teenth century. 56
CONCLUSION
'Guinea cloth' was a major global product with an intercontinental pedigree.

Tracing its history broadly and over the long term reveals that it was an African,
south Asian, and European commodity and shows that West Africa was not
simply a p,assive receiver of cloth in the coastal trade with Europe. The cultiva-
tion of cotton and the manufacture of cotton textiles were established in West
Africa from at least the eleventh century. The expansion of cotton production
was furthered by the economic stimulus generated by the trans-Saharan trade
and the growing influence oflslam between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries.
When the first Portuguese explorers arrived on the Guinea Coast there were
markets for cotton cloth with well-established preferences for particular vari-
eties and designs.
54 Ludewig F. Romer, A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea (1760) (Oxford, 2000), 160;
Ivor WIiks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975); Rattray, Religion and Art, 220-
63; Brigitte Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika (Berlin, 1972-3), vol. i, cat. nos. 602-11, 615-32,
634-45, 647-742, 796-1429; Doran Ross, Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African
American Identity (Los Angeles, 1998).
55 T. Edward Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle toAshantee (London, 1966), 310, 331-
2;]. G. Christaller,A Dictionary of the Asante and Pante Language called Tshi (Twi) (Basel, 1881),
84; Rattray, Religion and Art, 264-8; Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, vol. ii, cat. nos. 267-446;
Daniel Mato, 'Clothed in Symbol: The Art of Adinkra among the Akan of Ghana' (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1986).
56 Kriger, Cloth, ch. 4; Marion Johnson, 'Technology, Competition, and African Crafts', in
Clive Dewey and A.G. Hopkins (eds.), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of
Africa and India (London, 1978), 264-5.
During the era of Atlantic trade, textiles were imported into West Africa very
selectively. The varieties that were most widely and consistently preferred were
variants of'Guinea cloth'-plain, piece-dyed, or loom-patterned cottons-and
they supplemented the well-established products of West African workshops,
such as the striped and indigo-dyed 'Benin' cottons, the patterned quaqua
cloths, the plain white xereos,and the richly dyed and finished panospretos. To
be sure, the import trade brought changes: competition spawned new produc-
tion centres and marketing strategies; exotic imports inspired the invention of
new products; and fibres, tools, and techniques were transferred to new locales.
All the while, though, and amidst these changes, 'Guinea cloth' continued to be
both locally produced and consumed as an enduring hallmark of West African
culture.
6
THE PRODUCTION OF
COTTON TEXTILES IN EARLY MODERN
SOUTH-EAST ASIA
WILLIAM GERVASE CLARENCE-SMITH
Ravi Palat and Immanuel Wallerstein have argued that because of more
advanced manufacturing techniques, cotton textiles from the Indian subconti-
nent 'deindustrialized' the early modern Indian Ocean world. 1 That much
Indian cloth penetrated deep into the markets of the Indian Ocean, including
South-East Asia, is undeniable, even if descriptive information is patchy and
statistics hardly exist. However, it is argued here that Indian exports probably
did more to stimulate than to undermine South-East Asian production of cotton
textiles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in part because India pro-
vided patterns to imitate, and commercial channels to exploit. There was cer-
tainly a marked resurgence in the production of cotton textiles in South-East
Asia from,around 1650 to 1850, which coincided with reduced sales oflndian
cloth. Scholars have only recently begun to explore the manifestations of this
upswing, but it was not confined only to South-East Asia and appeared quite
widely in different locations around the Indian Ocean.2
Anthony Reid portrays the import oflndian cotton cloth into South-East
Asia as a zero-sum game in which local output fell as Indian cottons flowed in
during the prosperous sixteenth century. Local production rose and Indian
imports declined when incomes contracted during the 'seventeenth-century
crisis'. 3 This view receives apparent support from a detailed Dutch report of
1675 on Burma. 4 However, Reid's inverse relationship does not hold for the
1 Ravi A. Palat and Immanuel Wallerstein, 'OfWhat World-System was Pre-1500 "India" a
Part?', in Sushi! Chaudhury and Michel Morineau (eds.), Merchants, Companies and Trade:
Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1999), 36---7.
2
An earlier version of this paper covered East Africa and the Middle East, and is to be pub-
lished separately. See also William Clarence-Smith, 'Locally Produced Textiles on the Indian
Ocean Periphery 1500-2800: East Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia', paper presented
at the 8th GEHN Conference on 'Cotton Textiles in the Indian Ocean', Pune, December 2005.
3 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, r450-1680, i: The Lands below the
Winds (New Haven, 1988), 96.

4
Wil 0. Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, r634-r680
(Copenhagen, 2006), 129.
128 William Gervase Clarence-Smith
Philippine Sea
North Pacific Ocean
Map 6. I. Areas of cotton trade and production in South-East Asia
eighteenth century when both local textile production and incomes expanded
in South-East Asia. In general, Reid's zero-sum game vision of cloth in South-
East Asia is problematic. The concept of a 'seventeenth-century crisis' has been
much criticized, notably for mainland South-East Asia. 5 And India exported
not only textiles for consumption, but also a wide variety of semi-manufactures,
which were finished in South-East Asia, including coloured cloth, bleached and
unbleached white cloth, and plain and dyed yarn.
State intervention had little effective impact on the performance of textile
industries in South-East Asia and cannot fully explain the expansion of textile
manufacturing, although it looms large in the sources. European and indigenous
mercantilist states not only vacillated in terms of policy, but also found that their
ability to enforce measures was limited. European powers exercised a growing
naval supremacy, but failed in attempts to favour their woollen textiles. They thus
faced the same dilemma as indigenous rulers, whether to protect local artisans or
promote sales oflndian cottons and Chinese silks. Imports were easy to tax, and
additional profits may have accrued from monopolistic transport rights, but they
simultaneously drained bullion away to India and China. Direct production by
rulers and lords was occasionally attempted, but with disappointing results,
due to the dubious efficacy of concentrating production and coercing workers.
Networks of Asian traders were probably much more effective in shaping the
5 Victor Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context c.800-I830, i:
Integration on the Mainland (Cambridge, 2003).

Early Modern South-East Asia 129
evolution of textile production in the region. Merchants stimulated the sector

by supplying inputs, credit, and consumer goods, sometimes in the form of
formal putting-out arrangements. They also controlled quality, traded in fin-
ished textiles, and shipped them to distant markets. On occasion, they even set
up small workshops. Asian merchants probably also contributed most to the
poorly investigated process of disseminating textile technology.
COTTON AND OTHER TEXTILES IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA
Cloth 'was South-East Asia's leading item of manufacture', and it also served as
a quasi-currency. 6 Cottons were the most common form of cloth, whereas silks
were largely confined to parts of mainland South-East Asia. Other fibres were
in retreat in early modern times, notably bark, ramie, bamboo, Manila hemp
(abacd;Musa textilis),and true hemp (Cannabissativa).7 Dyeing cotton yarn prior
to weaving (ikat) dated back at least to the tenth century, and dyeing cotton cloth
in stages by applying beeswax (batik) may have been equally as old. Women
wove, on Chinese lines, and more generally dominated textile production. 8
The attractions of silk overcame mainland South-East Asia's Buddhist scru-
ples about killing silkworms, leaving cottons to supply the middling and lower
ends of the market. 9 Production of Thai cottons centred in the north, and they
were channelled down the Chao Phraya river system. 10 'Cheap coarse Siamese
cloth for the poor people' was available at the great Malay entrepot of Melaka
in the 151@s.11 In subsequent centuries, some Thai cottons went to Sumatra.
Cambodia was another significant centre of cotton weaving, also supplying
Sumatra from the seventeenth century. 12 Vietnam shipped raw silk to China
6
Reid, Southeast Asia, 90--4.
7
Lynda A. N. Reyes, The Textiles of Southern Philippines: The Textile Traditions of the
Bagobo, Mandaya and Bilaan,from their Beginnings to the 1900s (Quezon City, 1992), 20--1 and
70-1; Brigitta Hauser-Schiiublin et al., Balinese Textiles (London, 1991), 7-8; David Henley,
Fertility, Food and Fever: Population, Economy and Environment in North and Central Sulawesi,
1600-1930 (Leiden, 2005), 71-5, 81, 96---7,599,604; Lieberman, Strange Parallels, 144-5.
8 Robyn Maxwell, Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade and Transformation
(Melbourne, 1990); Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Handwoven Textiles of South-East Asia (Singapore, 1988);
Michael Hitchcock, Indonesian Textiles (London, 1991); Fiona Kerlogue, Batik: Design, Style
and History (London, 2004).
9
Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Burmese Crafts, Past and Present (Kuala Lumpur, 1994); Gillian Green,
Traditional Textiles of Cambodia: Cultural Threads and Material Heritage (Bangkok, 2003).
10 Katherine A. Bowie, 'Unravelling the Myth of the Subsistence Economy: Textile
Production in Nineteenth-Century Northern Thailand',Journal of Asian Studies, 51/ 4 (1992),

807-9.
11 Tome Pires, The 'Suma Oriental' of Tomi Pires, and the 'Book' of Francisco Rodrigues
(London, 1944), 99, ro8.

12 Barbara W. Andaya, 'The Cloth Trade in Jambi and Palembang Society during the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Indonesia, 48 ( 1989), 41; Green, Traditional Textiles, 44.
r30 William Gervase Clarence-Smith
and Japan, but cottons were for local consumption. 13 Burmese cottons were also
for internal consumption, although raw cotton from the dry zone was the
country's chief overland export to Yunnan, in south-western China. 14
Cotton textiles were even more significant in maritime South-East Asia.
'Countless' coarse cloths arrived in Melaka in the 1510s, made from the abun-
dant raw cotton grown from Java to Sumbawa. 15 Such cloth, especially brightly
coloured ikat from Bali and Sumbawa, played a subsidiary role in purchasing
fabled Moluccan (Maluku) spices. 16 However, Sumatra's rough homespun,
woven in the cotton-growing uplands, was only sold on the coast. 17 Chinese
traders bought cotton textiles in the Philippines from the thirteenth century, if
not earlier. 18
Cloth imports from India stimulated South-East Asian production, with
Java's batik sector especially reliant on cambric from Coromandel or Malabar. 19
This plain white south Indian fabric, with its high thread density and even
surface, was ideally suited to dyeing with wax.20 Burmese dyers imported
similar types of cloth to dye in orange shades appropriate for Buddhist monks,
and occasionally also bleached grey imports. 21 As for coloured Indian cloths,
Sumatran artisans stamped them with gold flowers and decorated them with
borders. 22 Cotton yarn imports from India were also significant, especially for
areas such as east Malaya, bereft of raw cotton. 23 In the seventeenth century,
Burma imported much red Indian cotton yarn, reputed for its fastness, to mix
with local white and blue thread in local weaving. Mixing ofimported and local
yarn also occurred in nineteenth-century Thailand. 24
13 Nguyen Thanh Nha, Tableau iconomique du Vietnam aux XV/le et XV/Ile siecles (Paris,
1965), 166-8 and 173-4; Li Tana, Nguyen Cochinthina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (Ithaca, NY, 1998),66-7, 73-5 and 122; Li Tana and Anthony Reid (comps.),
Southern Vietnam under the Nguyen: Documents on the Economic History of Cochinchina (Dang
Trong), 1602-1777 (Singapore, 1993), 31, roo, 111 and 121-4.
14
[Vicentius] Sangermano, A Description of the Burmese Empire (London, 1966), 157, 193,
217-18; Michael Symes,AnAccountof an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava in the Year 1795 (New
Delhi, 1995), 230,325, and 432; Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma, 129-31 and 177.
15 Pires, 'Suma OrientaI', 169-70, 180.
16 Reid, Southeast Asia, 94.

17 Pires, 'Suma OrientaI', 148.
18 Laura L. Junker, Raiding, Trading and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine
Chiefdoms (Honolulu, 1999), 241 and 269.

19
Hiroshi Matsuo, The Development of Javanese Cotton Industry (Tokyo, 1970), 77.
20 Hitchcock, Indonesian Textiles, 86-8.
21
Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma, 131-2.
22
John Anderson, Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra in 1823 (Kuala Lumpur, 1971), 205
and 355.
23 Maznah Mohamad, The Malay Handloom Weavers: A Study of the Rise and Decline of
Traditional Manufacture (Singapore, 1996), 83-8.

24 For Burma: Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma, 130--r; for Thailand: Bowie, 'Unravelling
the Myth', 8r8.

THE REVIVAL OF COTTON TEXTILES IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA
South-East Asian imports oflndian cloth began to decline from the mid-sev-
enteenth century, with an estimated decrease of 20 per cent in sales of the Dutch
East India Company (VOC) between 1652 and 1703. The sharpest fall occurred
after 1695.25 That said, an annual average of some 70,000 Indian pieces still
entered Batavia CTakarta)by sea in 1774-7, compared to 13,000 Balinese ones
and 6,000 made in Java and Madura (Illustration 6.1). The average price of an
Indonesian piece was a quarter to a third of an Indian one. 26
Dutch officials reported that the Javanese increasingly favoured their own
'painted cloth', and exported it in growing quantities from the 168os, mainly to
south-eastern Sumatra, Borneo, and the Straits ofMelaka. The Javanese item
may have been one-quarter to one-eighth as expensive as Indian equivalents in
Sumatra around 1700.27 Batik was prominent, with the first documented ref-
erence to exports in 1641.28 Indigo cultivation stimulated production, underly-
ing Pekalongan's coastwise trade in batik to west Java. 29 There was fivefold
growth in quantities of central Javanese cloth dispatched to the Melaka zone
between 1720 and the mid-177os. By the 1820s 'fine Java batiks' reached north
Sulawesi. Indeed,Javanese batik gradually acquired wider markets in the Indian
Ocean. 30 In addition, Europe imported increasing quantities of Javanese cotton
yarn. Dutch artisans craved this product, because their own yarn was too weak
for weaving pure cotton cloth, obliging them to make fustians out oflinen warps
and cottonlwefts. 31 Into the nineteenth century, the Dutch keenly sought
Javanese yarn, especially fine grades from east Java. VOC officials reported
profits of 243 per cent on this commodity in 1761, at a time when the
Company's overall financial situation was in the doldrums. 32
25 Kenneth R. Hall, 'The Textile Industry in South-East Asia, 1400---1800',Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient, 39/ 2 ( 1996), 1H,--20, citing figures from an unpublished
doctoral thesis by Ruurdje Laarhoven.
26 Gerrit J. Knaap, Shallow Waters, Rising Tide: Shipping and Trade in Java around IJJS
(Leiden, 1996), 131-3.

27 Andaya, 'Cloth Trade', 38---41.
28 Fiona Kerlogue, Scattered Flowers: Textiles from Jambi, Sumatra (Hull, 1994), 17-18;
Hitchcock, Indonesian Textiles, 23 and 94-

29 Elly M. C. van Enk, 'Britse kooplieden en de cultures op Java; Harvey Thomson, 1790---
1837, en zijn financiers' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, 1999), 242.
30 Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the Northeast
Coast of Java, I680-I743 (Leiden, 1996), 135-6 and 149; Henley, Fertility, 98; Peter Boomgaard,
Children of the Colonial State: Population Growth and Economic Development in Java, IJ95-I880
(Amsterdam, 1989), 127-8.
31 Alfons van der Kraan, Contest for the Java Cotton Trade, I8I I-40: An Episode in Anglo-
Dutch Rivalry (Hull, 1998), 8.

32 Kwee Hui Kian, The Political Economy of Java's Northeast Coast, c.I740-I800: Elite Synergy
(Leiden, 2006), 45-6 and 57.

Illustration 6.1. Block-printed, mordant-dyed and painted long cloth produced in Gujarat,
c.1680-1720. V&A, IS.100-1993.
It was found in Toraja in central Sulawesi and bears the VOC stamp. This floral motif was
popular in the late seventeenth century and appears also in seventeenth-century Japanese
screen paintings.
Production and exports of cottons expanded outside Java. South-eastern

Sumatra imported from Java, Madura, Bali, Thailand, and Cambodia. In 1691,
a Dutch envoy to the sultan of Palembang declared that most men, from
monarch to pedlar, donned South-East Asian cloth. Although the ladies of the
court remained loyal to Indian fabrics, imports had fallen markedly. 33 Sumatra's
own expanding output helped to reduce Indian imports, for example in the
western highlands, employing raw cotton from the coastal strip. 34 Some south-
eastern upland farmers switched from pepper to cotton, and the skills of spin-
ning, weaving, dyeing, and 'batikking' were widespread in 1832. Coastal east and
north Sumatra exported fine cottons by 1823, while coarse homespun persisted
in the interior. 35
Dynamic new exporters arose in the eastern archipelago in the course of the sev-
enteenth century. South Sulawesi cottons were characterized by a 'fine consistent
weave, and clear colours-mainly in the checked pattern favoured by Muslims'. 36
Weaving was a major source of income for Bugis families of the area by 1785, with
exports sent 'to all Malay countries'. 37 The neighbouring island of Selayar 'mass
produced' cheap checks for tunics, and striped varieties for trousers. The finest
weaves were reserved for nobles, who by custom only wore local cloth. 38 Weaving,
partly for export, also expanded in south-eastern Sulawesi, north Sulawesi, south-
eastern Borneo, Sumba, and east Malaya. 39 'Malay' cloth was initially exchanged
for Moluccan spices, but then spread through the archipelago, accounting for 6
per cent of the value of Singapore's imports in 1835, rising to 11 per cent in 1836.40
Exports ~flocal cloth in the Philippines took off later, from around 1750,
forming 8 per cent by value of Manila's exports ofinsular goods in 1818.41 The
province oflloilo, on the Visayan island of Panay, developed valuable piiia, dyed
in bright and varied colours. The name came from pineapple fibre, a new crop
brought by the Spaniards from the Americas, but it might also contain cotton,
silk and abacd.The industry sucked in migrants from far and wide, accounting
33 Andaya, 'Cloth Trade', 40---1;Green, Traditional Textiles,44.

34 Christine Dobbin, 'Economic Change in Minangkabau as a Factor in the Rise of the Padri
Movement, 1784-1830', Indonesia,23 (1977), 18-19.
35 Andaya, 'Cloth Trade', 39-45; Anderson, Mission.
36 Reid, SoutheastAsia, 95.
37 Christian Pelras, The Bugis (Oxford, 1996), 241-2 and 245.
38 Christiaan Heersink, Dependenceon Green Gold:A Socio-economic History of the Indonesian
CoconutIsland Selayar (Leiden, 1999), 49-50.
39 Janet Hoskins, 'Slaves, Brides and Other Gifts: Resistance, Marriage and Rank in Eastern
Indonesia', in Edward Alpers et al. (eds.), Slavery and Resistancein Africa and Asia (London,
2005), 113; Maznah, Malay Handloom Weavers; Heersink, Dependence, 49; Hall, 'Textile
Industry', 99-100; Henley, Fertility, 81, 96-8, and 599.
40 Reid, Southeast Asia, 94-5; Heersink, Dependence,12-13, 46-50; Anderson, Mission, 206,
247,265; Maznah, Malay Handloom Weavers,79-81.

41 Onofre D. Corpuz, An EconomicHistory of the Philippines(Manila, 1997), 100.
for over half the value oflloilo's exports in 1855, and selling as far afield as
Europe and the Americas. Pina drew praise for its 'exquisite weave'. 42
Ilocos, in north-western Luzon, dominated the weaving of pure cotton cloth
in the Philippines. After 1785, the new Royal Philippines Company exported
some Ilocos cloth to Spain, and possibly to New Spain and China, with produc-
tion rising from around 10,000 pieces a year to some 60,000 by 1796.43 About
20,000 looms were at work in Ilocos in the 1840s, by which time much of the
output went overland, notably to Animists in the highlands. Southern Luzon and
the Visayas wove complex fabrics of mixed fibres, Manila specialized in embroi-
dery, and Visayan cloth found a market in the South Pacific.44 Luzon also made
piiia, much prized for men's shirts in the 183os.45 The early nineteenth-century
parish registers of south-western Luzon recorded every bride as a weaver. 46
In a detailed examination of the south Sumatran case, Barbara Andaya attrib-
utes expanding textile production to the falling price of pepper, combined with
the rising cost oflndian textiles, itself due to surging demand from the Atlantic
world and the VOC's shipping monopoly. This would seem to fit the Reid
model, but Andaya admits that the cost oflndian textiles began to increase in
the 1690s, a decade too late for her explanation to be truly persuasive. Moreover,
she acknowledges that newly discovered tin deposits in Bangka pumped much
new income into the region in the eighteenth century. Conversely, she fails to
consider whether the well-documented expansion in the area planted in pepper
compensated for falling prices, and she does not explore the implications of
supply-side transformations in Sumatra. 47
THE ROLE OF STATE AND NOBLES
European thalassocracies commonly tried to restrict the development oflocal

textile industries, in order to reap benefits from transporting and selling Indian
42 Alfred W. McCoy, 'A Qy.eenDies Slowly: The Rise and Decline oflloilo City', in Alfred
W. McCoy and Edilberto de Jesus (eds.), Philippine Social History, Global Trade and Local
Transformations (Quezon City, 1982), 301-3; Maria Lourdes Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth
Century Philippine Economy: Agriculture', Philippine Studies, 14/J (1966), 119.
43 Maria Lourdes Diaz-Trechuelo Spinola, La Real Compaiiia de Filipinas (Seville, 1965),
274-5; Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy', 113-23.

44 Jean Mallat, The Philippines: History, Geography, Customs, Agriculture, Industry and
Commerce of the Spanish Colonies in Oceania (Manila, 1983), 87, 119, 125, 143, 174, 176----9,187-
90, 195-8,201-2,458--<).
45 Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam and Muscat in the
US Sloop-of-War Peacock, during the Years 1832-3-4 (Wilmington, Del., 1972), 58--<).
46 Norman G. Owen, 'Textile Displacement and the Status of Women', in Gordon Mearns
(ed.), The Past in South East Asia's Present {Ottawa, 1978), 165.
47 Andaya, 'Cloth Trade'.
and Chinese stuffs. The Dutch thus discouraged weaving in west Sumatra's
highlands from the 1660s, banning cotton planting in the coastal strip, albeit
with dubious effectiveness. Weaving was flourishing again by the late eigh-
teenth century, by which time a fatally weakened VOC was short oflndian
cloth. 48 Reacting to the advance of South-East Asian fabrics in Sumatran
markets, the Dutch proclaimed a monopoly over the trade in Javanese textiles,
in 1681 for Palembang, and two years later for Jambi. In the 1730s they 'per-
suaded' the sultans of Palembang and Jam bi to order that all cotton plants be
destroyed in their domains. In 1770 the VOC banned imports of'foreign' tex-
tiles from north ofMelaka. None of these measures enjoyed much success.49
The Dutch fought another losing battle in Java to protect their imports of
Indian cloth (Illustration 6.2). In 1684, they commissioned Coromandel weavers
to copy Javanese batik, but the product turned out to be five times as expensive
and oflesser quality. Two years later, the VOC toyed with the impractical idea
of prohibiting imports of beeswax into Java. Attempts to monopolize trade in
Javanese cloth from the 1680s worked poorly, and were abandoned before the
1720s.50 Another failure was a late seventeenth-century scheme to deny yarn to
weavers by buying it up and shipping it to India. Taxes on Javanese cloth
exports were fixed at 25 per cent ad valoremin the 1740s, three times the usual
level, but this merely encouraged smuggling, so the duty was reduced to IO per
cent by 1778.51
The VOC admitted defeat, and sought to profit from local textiles instead,
manipulati~ tribute arrangements in Java and south Sulawesi to obtain cloth
for regional trade. 52 The Company appointed a draper in Semarang, central
Java, in 1751, charged with supervising the collection of cloth. The VOC at
times purchased on the open market, inviting tenders for specific materials. In
1788, the leader of the Chinese of Surakarta bid for the contract to deliver half
the coarse cotton cloth required for the Company's slaves. 53 In 1781, the
Company sent 'superior' cotton seeds from India's Coromandel Coast, obliging
a few reluctant local cultivators to plant them. 54
Increasingly, the VOC focused on extracting Javanese cotton yarn for the
48 Oki Akira, 'A Note on the History of the Textile Industry in West Sumatra', in Francine
van Anrooij (ed.), Between People and Statistics: Essays on Modern Indonesian History (The Hague,
1979), 148; Dobbin, 'Economic Change', 18-19.
49 Andaya, 'Cloth Trade', 38-41.
50 Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger, 136.
51 Kwee, Political Economy, 45, 62, 73-4, 190, 288.
52 Matsuo, Development, 2-3; Reid, Southeast Asia, 90.
53 Peter Boomgaard, 'The Non-Agricultural Side of an Agricultural Economy: Java 1500-
1900', in Paul Alexander et al. {eds.), In the Shadow of Agriculture: Non-Farm Activities in the
Javanese Economy, Past and Present (Amsterdam, 1991), 22.
54 Kwee, Political Economy, 191,288.
William Gervase Clarence-Smith
Illustration 6.2. 'Dodot, ceremonial skirt-cloth, resist-dyed cotton, produced in Gujarat,

late 18thcentury for the Javanese market. V&A, IS.41&A-1988.
This high-quality textile is decorated with fabulous animals and include the Chinese kylin
(a dragon-headed horse) and the Indian gajasimba (elephant-lion).
Netherlands. From 1706, villagers in Priangan, west Java, had to deliver pre-- -
scribed amounts at fixed prices, through Sundanese 'regents'. Three years later,
the sultan of Mataram signed a contract to sell specified quantities at agreed
prices. From 1791, tax farmers had to pay the state partly in yarn, either oblig-
ing 'their' villagers to spin, or buying it in local markets. Supplies grew, but
problems with shortfalls and quality persisted. Bans on exports to regional des-
tinations failed, as did experiments with supervised workshops. The Dutch only
enjoyed any success by increasing prices, and authorizing supplementary pur-
chases at even higher prices on the free market. Between 1797 and 1803, the
voe obtained an average of 40 tons a year through forced deliveries alone,
which were only abolished by Marshall Daendels after 1808. 55
In the unusual context of the British naval blockade of Java from 1795, Dutch
officials resorted to import substitution to supply their armed forces with coarse
cotton cloth, while using up yarn piling up in warehouses. They failed to ask for
prior authorization from the Netherlands, and were obliged to buy yarn on the
free market once Company stocks had been exhausted. 56 There were five such
textile 'manufactories' in Semarang by the time of the British conquest in 1811.
Each contained 70 to So looms, and they produced cloth for an army of some
15,000 men. They suffered from the British clamp-down on debt-bonded
labour between 1811 and 1816, but four remained in existence in 1823, one with
400 looms. 57
The Spaniards in the Philippines demanded cotton yarn and blankets as
tribute, and)ater experimented with direct production. Around 1750, Francisco
Salgado set up a semi-official 'factory' for sailcloth, uniforms, and cheap cottons
in Manila, with 21 looms and small exports to Batavia. Once yarn in royal store-
houses had been exhausted, however, the establishment closed, for local spin-
ners refused to sell Salgado any more yarn. When the British briefly seized
Manila in 1762, they broke up the looms for firewood, and production never
recovered. 58 Chastened by the short British occupation, Spain launched a
reform programme in 1764, culminating in the visionary dreams of Governor
Basco y Vargas from 1778 to 1787. Seeking to end the silver deficit that had
plagued the islands since the origins of Spanish rule, he gave the 'highest pri-
ority to iron and cotton manufactures', even hoping to export textiles to New
Spain. 59 However, he went little further than exhortation, prizes, and projects
55 Robert van Niel,Java's Northeast Coast I740--I840: A Study in Colonial Encroachment and
Dominance (Leiden 2005), 176--81; Kwee, Political Economy, 45--6, 48, 57, 62, 190--1, 197;
Boomgaard, 'Non-Agricultural Side', 22.
56 Niel,Java's Northeast Coast, 181--2.
57 Thomas S. Raffles, The History of Java (London 1817), i. 179--80; Niel,Java's Northeast
Coast, 182; Boomgaard, 'Non-Agricultural Side', 22.

58 Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy', 113--14.
59 Corpuz, Economic History, 89, 91, 99.
to train weavers. 60 In a more practical spirit, General Ricafort ordered in 1826---

7 that 'troops be dressed only in the cloths manufactured in this country',
although this measure soon lapsed. 61
Indigenous South-East Asian rulers and nobles focused on supplying their
courts and households through the labour of servile artisans, and seventeenth-
century Thai monarchs may have seen this as an import-substitution strategy. 62
Theravada Buddhist kings seized numerous artisans in war, resettling them as
tied labourers in and around their capital cities, with Burma and Thailand the
most successful predatory states. 63 North Thai lords obliged their 'serfs' to pay
dues partly in woven and dyed cottons. 64 In Java, where debt bondage was the
rule, the capital ofMataram contained some 4,000 women in the 1650s engaged
in spinning, weaving, embroidering, sewing, and 'painting' cloth. 65 A report of
1684 referred to these as 'royal weaving mills'. 66 The regents of Cirebon, west
Java, exploited debt-bonded women in such workshops around 1800.67 Coerced
labour also existed in the home. In east Sumatra in 1823, 'in almost every house
at Batubara is one or more looms; and the slave girls spin, dye and weave'. These
slaves were mainly Animist Bataks from the highlands. 68
THE ROLE OF MERCHANTS
The upsurge in South-East Asian cotton textile production from the late sev-
enteenth century owed much to Chinese traders. In Java, they extended credit
to peasant families, in return for guaranteed deliveries of yarn and cloth, and at
times provided inputs. That said, individual peasant women continued to bring
small packets of cloth independently to local markets. 69 Putting-out arrange-
ments continued to coexist with looser market mechanisms in Java and Madura
in 1808, when the Dutch recorded a loom for every 2.5 households in Surabaya
°
and Gresik. 7 Chinese merchants developed similar putting-out arrangements
60 Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy', 115.

6! Mallat, Philippines,143.
62 Nicolas Gervaise, The Natural and PoliticalHistory of the Kingdomof Siam (Bangkok, 1928),
56.
63 G. E. Harvey, History of Burmafrom the Earliest Timesto IO March I824: The Beginningof
the English Conquest(London, 1925), 238---<J;Fraser-Lu, Handwoven Textiles,258---<).

64 Bowie, 'Unravelling the Myth', 808----9,813.
65 Boomgaard, 'Non-Agricultural Side', 23; Matsuo, Development,77.
66 Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger, 135.
67 D. H. Burger, Sociologisch-economische geschiedenisvan Indonesia (Amsterdam, 1975), i.
58.
68
Anderson, Mission, 312.
69
Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch Tiger, 135, 149.
70 Boomgaard, Children,126----<);
Boomgaard, 'Non-Agricultural Side', 22-4.
with weavers in east Malaya.7 1 North Thailand's 'indigenous entrepreneurs',

engaging in similar activities, may have been mixed-race Sino-Thais. 72
Because the Chinese were bottled up in the Parian ghetto in Manila, the
Philippines were open to Catholic mixed-race 'Chinese mestizos', accused of
'exploiting' the spinners of southern Luzon. The Royal Philippines Company
sought to replace them in the 1780s and 1790s, partly by supplying raw cotton
directly to spinners. The Company enjoyed some success, notably in Ilocos,
until Spain entered a disastrous war with Britain in 1796.73 Chinese mestizos
were crucial to the success of Panay cloth, organizing weekly cloth fairs in set-
tlements around the port oflloilo. Almost every family in the province had a
loom by 1800, and leading mestizos kept 6 to 12 looms at work in urban com-
pounds. Workers were meant to receive monthly wages, but a trifling initial loan
could result in years of bonded labour. 74
Other traders played a part. When Bugis, Makassarese, and Mandarese
developed their shipping in the seventeenth century, they marketed south
Sulawesi's cloth around the 'Malay world,' including the Philippines. 75 In nine-
teenth-century Java, Hadhrami Arabs provided Javanese women with cloth and
wax, in return for finished batik. They later financed the batik workshops of
European women, and eventually set up their own. 76
THE DIFFUSION OF TECHNOLOGY
New techni4ues did not necessarily imply more intricate cloth, but they allowed
for textiles to be produced faster, in greater quantities, and in wider formats.
While implying investment and new skills, they reduced production costs.
Spinning wheels, treadle looms, and printing blocks were the crucial technologies
at this time, diffusing mainly from China and India, and adapted locally.77
Unfortunately, the evidence for this process is extremely thin in documents, and
archaeologists lament the perishable nature of wood and bamboo.
Treadle looms, which freed the weaver's hands and allowed for two or more
71 Maznah, The Malay Handloom Weavers, 4-5.
72 Bowie, 'Unravelling the Myth', 808-9.
73 Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth Century Philippine Economy', 116-18.
74 McCoy, 'Qieen', 301-3.
75 Reid, Southeast Asia, 94-5; Heersink, Dependence, 12-13, 46-50.
76 Chantal Vuldy, Pekalongan: batik et Islam dans une ville du nord de Java (Paris, 1987), 107,
110-13; L. W. C. van den Berg, Le Hadramout et !es coloniesarabes dans !'archipel indien (Batavia,
1886), 153.
77 Venice Lamb, Looms Past and Present: Around the Mediterranean and Elsewhere
(Hertingfordbury, 2005); H. Ling Roth, Studies in Primitive Looms (Bedford, 1977);Dieter Kuhn,
Science and Civilisation in China, v/9: Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling (Cambridge,
1988).
William Gervase Clarence-Smith
heddles, may have been the chief technical stimulus to the development of
South-East Asian textile production. From Han times, China gradually moved
from mobile body-tension (backstrap) looms to fixed treadle looms enclosed by
integral frames, with the weaver perched above her treadles. Largely complete
by the thirteenth century in lowland China, the transition took longer in high-
land borderlands with South-East Asia.78 In South-East Asia itself, Reid only
encountered body-tension looms in his documents, which end round 1700.79
As treadles were used in Java by the 18rns, this suggests a process of technolog-
ical change during the eighteenth century. 80 However, solid evidence for tread-
les in South-East Asia currently exists only for the nineteenth century.
Moreover, some kind of back-piece was frequently retained from the old body-
tension looms, possibly to help with the tensing of the warp. 81
The eighteenth-century hypothesis for the introduction of treadles is
strengthened by other evidence. Never before had so many Chinese emigrants
reached South-East Asian shores, and never had such substantial numbers of
women, bearers of weaving skills, come with their menfolk. 82 Numerous Bugis
from south Sulawesi also migrated within South-East Asia, disseminating
weaving skills to south-east Sulawesi, the Moluccas, and east Malaya. 83 In the
late eighteenth century, the Royal Philippines Company requested looms from
Spain, experimented with Chinese looms, and suggested employing Indian
weavers. 84 In central Burma, deported Manipuri weavers from the Indian bor-
derlands were credited with introducing superior looms. These new looms were
probably wider than the old ones, for the seventeenth-century Burmese piece
was only half as wide as its Indian counterpart. 85
Batik's rise from the late seventeenth century owed much to technical inno-
vation and diffusion.86 Wooden blocks probably reaching Java from India around
1700, were used for cheaper Javanese batik by the 18rns, and spread to southern
78 Cheng Weiji, History of Textile Technology of Ancient China (New York, 1992), 247-50;
Lamb, Looms, 159--00.

79 Reid, Southeast Asia, 94. Anthony Reid, personal communication.
80 Raffles, The History, i. 168, and illustration opposite 168; Matsuo, Development, 5.
81 Fraser-Lu, Handwoven Textiles, 33-9; Green, Traditional Textiles, 59-67; Hitchcock,
Indonesian Textiles, 53,1; Pelras, Bugis, 243-4; Roth, Studies, 71, 82-93; Bowie, 'Unravelling
the Myth', 813.
82 Leonard Y. Andaya, 'Interactions with the Outside World and Adaptation in Southeast
Asian Society, 1500-1800', in The Cambridge History of South-East Asia (Cambridge, 1992), i.
346--51.
83 Heersink, Dependence, 49-50; Maznah, The Malay Handloom Weavers, 88.
84 Diaz-Trechuelo, La Real Compaiiia, 274-5; Diaz-Trechuelo, 'Eighteenth Century
Philippine Economy', u8.
8S Ma Sein Yi, 'The Weaving Industry of Amarapura', New Burma Weekly, 13 September
1958, u6; Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma, 131.
86 Hall, 'Textile Industry', 120.
Early Modern South-East Asia
Sumatra. 87 The Cham of Cambodia and Vietnam, Austronesian-speaking and

largely Muslim, are thought to have adopted batik from their Malay cousins,
with whom they had significant links. 88 The canting, employed in Java by the
181os, was unusual in being a local invention. It was a kind of metal pen with a
reservoir, used to apply hot wax to more expensive hand-drawn batik. 89
Least is known about the spread of spinning wheels, although the use of a
Sanskrit term in Malay implies an Indian provenance. 90 South Sulawesi and
Maluku had wheels by 1600, but apparently not the Philippines. 91 The Royal
Philippines Company obtained 'advanced' ginning, carding, and spinning
apparatus from Catalonia in 1800.92 There was said to be a spinning wheel in
every Javanese cottage by the 1810s, but these were simple affairs, for Raffles's
illustration showed neither crank handle nor treadle. 93 The Dutch recorded
22,628 of them in the Surabaya-Gresik area alone in 1808.94 Wheels and spin-
dles long coexisted, however, as in Burma in the 192os.95 The spindle is more
portable and reliable, advantages that still commend it to artisans of eastern
Indonesia in our own times. 96
CONCLUSION
Indian textiles not only failed to deindustrialize South-East Asia, but even seem
to have stimulated the development oflocal textile industries. Most obviously
positive w~ the supply of intermediate goods from the Indian subcontinent.
Local textiles may also have 'piggy-backed' on flows of Indian cloth, for
example benefiting from established shipping services. In addition, India sup-
plied models for local industries to emulate or surpass, and was the home of
some of the diasporic communities with the capital, commercial experience, and
technical skills to stimulate local output.
87 Kerlogue, Batik, 20-1; Raffles, The History, i. 171 and illustration opposite 168; Matsuo,
Development,78----<).
88 Green, Traditional Textiles, 200-1, 206; Hitchcock, Indonesian Textiles, 97; Maznah, The
Malay Handloom Weavers,89.

89 Kerlogue, Batik, 18; Raffles, The History, i. 168----<J and illustration opposite 168; Roberts,
Embassy,332.
9 0 Maznah, The Malay Handloom Weavers,73.
9! Reid, SoutheastAsia, 93-4.

9Z Diaz-Trechuelo, La Real Companfa,27 S.
93 Raffles, The History, i. 86, 93-4, 168, and illustration opposite 168; Matsuo, Development,4.
94 Boomgaard, Children,127.
95 J. A. Stewart, 'Spinning Magic', in Fiftieth AnniversaryPublications,No. 2 (Rangoon, 1960),
527.
96 Roy Hamilton (ed.), Gift of the Cotton Maiden: Textiles of Floresand the So/or Islands (Los
Angeles, 1994), 6, 68, 233.

The evidence suggests that the faltering of Indian exports from the second
half of the seventeenth century cannot simply be attributed to falling income in
South-East Asia and rising costs oflndian textiles. Rising productivity on the
periphery also had a part to play. The model tentatively proposed in this chapter
is that merchant communities reduced costs and uncertainties in making and
marketing cotton textiles, and were probably instrumental in spreading best
practice.
An understanding of the base line prior to the mass arrival of industrially pro-
duced textiles in the 1840s may make it easier to grasp later developments. As
modern industrialization gathered pace, advancement and retardation tended
to reflect earlier patterns of textile development. Those areas which boasted the
most developed early modern industries tended to be those that acquired flour-
ishing modern ones, other things being equal. The main factor perturbing this
pattern was poor governance, as in the last years of the Sukarno regime in
Indonesia.
Last but not least, a better knowledge of markets in South-East Asia, and
elsewhere in the Indian Ocean world, can yield a more sophisticated under-
standing of the strengths and weaknesses of early modern India's own textile
sector. In the case of the relationship between hand weaving and factories in
India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Tirthankar Roy has argued that
the weaker partner to some extent shaped the development of the stronger
one. 97 Indigenous textile production on the early modern Indian Ocean periph-
ery may have played a similar role vis-a-vis the weavers oflndia, with the textile
manufactures of South-East Asia shaping the development of cotton manufac-
turing in India.
97 Tirthankar Roy (ed.), Cloth and Commerce;Textiles in ColonialIndia (New Delhi, 1996),
13.
Part II
Global Trade and Consumption of
Cotton Textiles
I
7
THE DUTCH AND THE INDIAN OCEAN
TEXTILE TRADE
OM PRAKASH
INTRODUCTION
With the rise of an early modern world economy and the arrival of European
chartered companies in the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth century onward,
there was a significant increase in the Indian textile trade. The first of the cor-
porate enterprises, the Portuguese Estado da India, was mainly interested in the
procurement of pepper for Europe and participated in trade within Asia only
in a very limited way and over a relatively small period of time. However,
private Portuguese traders, operating under the protection of the Estado,
engaged in a remarkably large quantity of trade within Asia, stretching from
Goa at one end to Nagasaki in Japan at the other via Malacca and Macao. Indian
textiles figured prominently in this trade.
The Ewopean commercial presence in the Indian Ocean was significantly
augmented with the establishment of the English and the Dutch East India
Companies at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The English East India
Company confined its operations essentially to the Euro-Asian trade, leaving
trade within the Indian Ocean to its employees operating in their private capac-
ity. The trading strategy of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), however,
was very different. Large-scale participation in intra-Asian trade was an integral
part of the Company's policy from the very beginning, making it by far the
single most important feature distinguishing the VOC from all other European
corporate enterprises in the Indian Ocean. Indian textiles, together with
Indonesian spices and Japanese precious metals, constituted the core commodi-
ties in the network of the Dutch intra-Asian trade. This chapter analyses the
VOC's extensive Indian Ocean trade in Indian textiles during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries (Illustration 7.1).
PERSIA
Basra•
I
Arabian Sea Mani!~··
1.~ #
Indian Ocean
Map 7.1. Principal places of cotton textile trade in the Indian Ocean
Illustration 7.1. Painted cotton cloth produced on the Coromandel Coast, near Madras and
representing a Dutch sailing ship. Late seventeenth century. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.
Credits: Werner Forman/ Art Resource, NY.
THE DUTCH CENTURIES
As in the case of the other European trading companies, the initial principal aim
of the VOC was the procurement of pepper and other spices in Asia. Unlike the
Portuguese before them, the Dutch sought to do this in Indonesia. By the early
1620s, the voe had acquired effective monopsony rights in cloves, nutmeg,
and mace in the Spice Islands. But they soon discovered that Indian textiles
were used in the region as the principal medium of exchange. No large-scale
procurement of spices was possible unless the Company could lay its hands on
Om Prakash
large quantities of relatively cheap Indian cotton textiles. The Company could
have obtained these textiles at Acheh and other places in the Indonesian archi-
pelago, but its acute business instinct drove it to their source, the Coromandel
Coast, where four factories were established between 1606 and 1610 covering
both the northern and the southern stretches of the coast.
This was the starting point of the VOC's intra-Asian trade which eventually
assumed proportions as large as its Euro-Asian trade. The special privileges
obtained from the petty rulers in the archipelago enabled the Company to earn
considerably more than the rate of profit that Asian merchants obtained in the
textile trade. In fact, in a number of treaties signed by the Company in the archi-
pelago, one of the clauses specified the rate of exchange between the particular
commodity in which it had been granted monopsonistic privileges and the main
varieties of Indian textiles that it proposed to import. 1 Another index of the
crucial role of Indian textiles is the unquestioned domination of these textiles
in the mix of goods the Indonesian and Malay traders carried out of Batavia,
where they obtained them from the Company in exchange for a variety of
goods. 2
The specialization of the Coromandel Coast consisted in the manufacturing
of relatively inexpensive cotton textiles which were either plain or patterned on
the loom. They were often dyed in bright colours with vegetable dyes. The
printing or painting was done in floral and a variety of other motifs. While the
northern Coromandel-the area between the Rivers Krishna and Godavari-
specialized in the production of plain textiles, the south-the coastal stretch
between Pulicat and Nagapattinam-engaged mostly in the production of the
famous painted textiles, the so-called pintadoes. The principal consuming
markets served by the Dutch were in South-East Asia and included the Spice
Islands (the Moluccas, Banda, and Celebes), Java, Sumatra, the Malay
Peninsula, Siam, and Burma. In the Far East, limited quantities of Coromandel
textiles figured in the exports to Taiwan and Japan. Sri Lanka and Persia were
also supplied with similar commodities.
In Indonesia, these textiles were used primarily to procure pepper and other
spices, but were often also used as a medium of payment to the soldiers in the
service of the Company. Throughout the archipelago, these textiles were used
1 Two of these treaties-both relating to pepper-were the 1649 agreement with the Achinese
dominions ofTiku, Priaman, and lndrapoera in western Sumatra and the 1660 agreement with
the ruler of Padang in the Malay Peninsula. J.E. Heeres (ed.), Corpus-Diplomaticum Neerlando-
Indicum (The Hague, 1907), i. 528-31; Pieter van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oost-Indische
Compagnie, ed. F. W. Stapel (The Hague, 1927-54), ii/I. 290.
2
The proportion of textiles in the total value of the cargo was 83.5% in 1659, 84.2% in 1661,
76.2% in 1670, 60.5% in 1673, 32.9% in 1674, 41.1% in 1675, 42.7% in 1680, 50.0% in 1681,
and 44.6% in 1682. Calculated from the end-of-the-month statements in the Batavia Dagh-
Register of the relevant years.
primarily as apparel by all sections of the community. While the bulk of the
demand seems to have been for the relatively coarser and inexpensive types, there
was also a fairly large market for the more expensive and ornamental varieties.
In Java, for example, 'the principal varieties sold were tapis(including tapi saras-
sasand tapi chindaes)and goulongs'.While the coarser varieties of tapis were partly
for 'the peasants in the hills' ,3 the goulongs,which were patterned on the loom
and often incorporated gold thread, were obviously for higher-status consumers.
In a letter to Masulipatnam in 1617,Jan Pietersz. Coen, the director-general
of the voe, emphasized that:
it was essential that only the best quality goulongsand tapi-sarassaswere procured for
Java since these people were very particular about the quality and, given their good
buying power on the basis of the high price of pepper, would pay a very good price for
the right kind oftextiles. 4
It would, therefore, be quite inaccurate to classify these markets as absorbers

merely of coarse cottons. Moreover, each of these consuming markets, with
their several sub-segments, was a distinct unit with its own specific tastes and
preferences with regard to the colours of the dyes, as well as the patterns and
designs created through printing and painting. The orders lists sent by Batavia
to Coromandel, therefore, were elaborate affairs, often running into several
folios, indicating in great detail the market requirements in terms of variables
such as the size of the piece, the colours preferred, the size of the stripe, the
pattern of the border, the exact floral design that was to be duplicated, and so
on. ThJs the eighty packets of tapi-sarassasasked for in 1623 were to have
'bright red borders and small flower work in lively colours'. 5
The Company's trade with Gujarat, the other major Indian region supplying
textiles to South-East Asia, was taken up in earnest only from about 1620. In
letter after letter, Batavia asked Surat to invest the bulk of the limited funds
available in textiles for the South-East Asian markets, because 'without these
textiles, it was difficult to carry on trade in the southern quarters'. 6 While small
3 Nationaal Archief, The Hague (hereafter NA), VOC 849, fos. 82v-85v: 'Coen at Batavia to
Andries Soury and Abraham van Uffelen at Masulipatnam', 8 May 1622.

4 NA, VOC 1067, fos. 31v-35v: 'Coen at Jacatra to Hans de Haze at Masulipatnam', 30
November 1617.
5 NA, voe 1080, fos. 89v-90V: 'An estimate ofCoromandel clothes that could be sold in a
year in the Moluccas, Amboina, Banda, Java, Jambi, Patani and other southern quarters.'
Prepared at Batavia, 27 April 1623.
6 NA, VOC 849, fos. 26v-27=Letter from Coen at Batavia to Pieter van den Broecke at Surat
dated 6 November 1621. The letter went on to say that until further orders, no funds were to be
invested in any other commodity. Earlier, in his letter of17 October 1621, Coen had told Van den
Broecke to invest money in indigo only after meeting the textile orders from South-East Asia in full.
The procurement of textiles for Holland was also to be postponed till such time as the availability
offunds improved. VOC 849, fos. 15-16v: Letter dated 17 October 1621. Also see letters from Coen
to Surat dated 5 May 1622. NA, voe 849, fos. 85v-&7vand 22July 1622, voe 850, fos. lv-4.
Om Prakash
quantities of textile exports from Surat to other parts of Asia went to the Middle
East (Basra, Gombroon, and Mocha), and Sri Lanka, the bulk of the exports
were directed at Batavia. From Batavia, an overwhelming proportion of these
textiles was sent on to the Spice Islands and Malaya. According to an estimate
prepared in 1623, the principal varieties sold in this region were bafias, cangans,
chelas,cannikens,and tajfachelas.In the case of bafias and taffachelas,there was
a fairly large market for the medium and fine qualities. Amongst the Gujarat
silk textiles, the most important variety procured for the South-East Asian
markets was patolas. In 1621, good-quality patolas with figures of elephants and
humans were reported to be selling in the Moluccas at the extremely high price
of 40 to 50 rials per piece. 7
When the Company arrived in Bengal in the early 1630s after establishing
itself in Coromandel and Gujarat, it was also mainly in quest of goods for its
intra-Asian trade. This time, however, the commodity they looked for was not
textiles for South-East Asia, but raw silk, silks, and mixed textiles to be sold in
Japan. It is important to realize that together with the spice monopoly, exclusive
access to the Japan trade from 1639 was the other pillar of the VOC's success in
intra-Asian trade through the seventeenth century. This was because, following
the discovery of new gold and silver mines in the sixteenth century, Japan had
become by far the largest supplier of precious metals in Asia. Indeed there were
years around the middle of the seventeenth century when the Company pro-
cured more silver in Japan than it got from home. By providing large quantities
of raw silk, as well as silken and mixed textiles for the Japanese market, 8 Bengal
played a key role in the successful functioning of the Company's trade with
Japan and, by extension, of its intra-Asian trade in general.
As far as the Indian Ocean trade in Indian textiles carried on by the Dutch
East India Company was concerned, by far the most important consuming
market was that of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago and the most important
Indian region supplying that market was the Coromandel Coast. The archipel-
ago accounted for an overwhelming proportion of the total Asian market for
Coromandel textiles. This is borne out clearly by the annual order lists sent
from Batavia to Masulipatnam which are our only source for an estimate of the
scale of the Dutch intra-Asian trade in Coromandel textiles. Instructions from
Batavia repeatedly required Coromandel to attach priority to the textile orders
from different parts of Asia over those from Europe. The extent to which the
orders were under-fulfilled (which was mostly the case) depended mainly on
the availability of capital at any given point in time. The value of the textile
orders for South-East Asia at 1640- 1 prices registered a rapid rise from around
7 NA, VOC 849, fos. 26v-27: Coen at Batavia to Van denBroeckeatSurat, 6November 1621.
8 In the 1660s, the share of Bengal goods in the total cargo sent to Japan from Batavia was only
a little under 50%.
Early Modern South-East Asia
Dutch florins (f.) 300,000 in 1617 to f.455,000 in 1626 and to f.824,000 in 1640.9
Thereafter the rise was even more rapid, and the value increased to f. 1.3 million
in 1644, and f. 1.55 million in 1650. 10
The Company had a nearly captive market in the Spice Islands and exploited
this advantage in full by charging prices for cloth which were considerably
higher than those that other traders used to charge earlier. In 1618 these prices
were reported to be so high as to be almost counter-productive insofar as they
adversely affected the delivery of cloves in the Moluccas. 11 With a brisk pro-
curement of spices by the Chinese, Malay, and other traders, the sales in the
Java market picked up considerably from the 1630s. The average rate of profit
around this time was reported to be between 60 and 100 per cent. 12 The 1641
conquest of Malacca helped the VOC expand its share of the spice trade and the
subsequent decades witnessed a considerable increase in the trade in
Coromandel textiles in South-East Asia. Indeed, until the 1680s this market
continued to be supplied overwhelmingly by Coromandel.
The only other Indian region supplying textiles for South-East Asia in any
reasonable quantity was Gujarat. The bulk of the supplies received from Gujarat
at Batavia were sent on to the Spice Islands and Malaya. Between 1663 and 1680,
for which quantitative information is available, there was an enormous fluctua-
tion in the number of pieces exported by the Company from Surat to Batavia
each year. Thus while there was a year such as 1664-5 when the number of pieces
exported was as high as 396,570, at the other end of the scale there were years
such as tpose between 1669-70 and 1672-3 when this number was under 50,000.
The bulk of the textiles exported were coarse cottons, though fine cottons, silk
piece goods, as well as piece goods made of a mixture of silk and cotton yarn, were
also exported. The profitability in Indonesia was reasonable: in 1679, Surat chintz
was reported to have yielded a gross profit of 100--28per cent, while the following
year ;arricanswere sold at a profit of 70 per cent. 13
The last quarter of the seventeenth century represented the peak of the
VOC's trade in Indian textiles in South-East Asia. The bulk of these textiles
originated in Coromandel: in 1696 of the f. 1.26 million-worth of textiles the
Batavia Council ordered in India for this market 93 per cent came from
9 Between 1620 and 1659, the silver content of the Dutch florin was 10.28 grams.
10 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce, Southern India r500-r650
(Cambridge, 1990), 174.
11 NA, VOC 1068, fos. 218---29:General letter from Governor-General Laurens Reael to the
Directors at Amsterdam, 20 August 16!8. ,

12 In 1633, the profit on white cloth was reported to be as much as 125°/o. Tapan
Raychaudhuri,Jan Company in Coromandel (The Hague, 1962), 159.
13 V. B. Gupta, 'The Dutch East India Company in Gujarat Trade, 1660-1700: A Study of
Selected Aspects' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University,
1991), 311 and 337.
152 Om Prakash
Coromandel, 4 per cent from Bengal, and 3 per cent from Gujarat. 14It was only
from the end of the seventeenth century that the Company was confronted by
the problem of growing competition in Java from locally produced supplies of
cheaper painted textiles. 15
Until the 1660s the value of the textiles procured in Coromandel for the rest of
Asia had exceeded that destined for Europe. At the end of the century, however,
Asian markets accounted for only about a third of the total value of textile pur-
chases; the remainder were purchased for Holland. An important development in
the period after 1690 was the growing shift in the area of procurement from north-
ern to southern Coromandel, where textile supplies were both more abundant and
cheaper. Districts such as Cuddalore, Salem, and Tanjavur now provided a large
proportion of the total supply of cloth. Districts such as Madura and Tinnevelli,
which lay south of Point Calimere and were not under the jurisdiction of the
Dutch 'government' of Coromandel but that of Sri Lanka, were also increasingly
attractive. In South-East Asia, the Company was now concentrating increasingly
on the relatively captive markets of Java, southern Celebes, and the Moluccas, and
increasingly opted out of places such as Acheh, Johor, Kedah, Tenasserim, and
Pegu where the competition from Asian merchants was crippling.
The deterioration in the situation on the Coromandel Coast with regard to
the availability, price, and quality of coarse cotton textiles was reflected in
growing VOC cloth procurement in Bengal. But in Bengal there were also prob:..
lems of rising prices and deteriorating quality, so much so that in 1715 Batavia
reported that the quality of the garras-an ordinary calico---was 'so poor that
we do not recall an occasion in the past when textiles of such bad quality were
received from Bengal' .16The situation did not significantly improve over the
following decades. A statement prepared at Batavia recorded f.656,279 worth
oflndian cotton textiles sold at the Batavia Castle over the period I September
1728 to 30 October 1734, with a profit of only f.194,497 (29~75per cent of the
capital invested). The sales at Bantam were much smaller: over the same period
a profit of only f. 17,198, representing approximately a profit rate of 50 per cent,
was earned there.17
The available data do not indicate the division of the Company's Coromandel
textile exports between European and Asian markets. There is, however, evi-
dence which suggests that in the mid-eighteenth century the share of the two
markets was broadly equal. Thus of the total off.13.9 million worth of textiles
14 Calculated from Pieter van Dam, Beschrijvinge van de Oost-Indische Compagnie, ii/ 2. 79----80
and 220----1;
ii/ 3. 104----5.
This is the only comprehensive list oforders available.
15 Raychaudhuri,Jan Company in Coromandel, 162.
16 Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630----1720
(Princeton, 1985), 144.

17 NA, voe 2301, fo. 34r6-34r6V: Statement signed at Batavia.
exported between 1744-5 and 1753-4, f.6.8 million worth went to Asia and
f.7 .08 million to Holland. The rate of profit earned on these textiles in Asia was
reported to be around 35 per cent. 18The fact that the Indian merchants oper-
ating from Coromandel were still a major force is also suggested by the same
report. It is pointed out that from Porto Novo alone, the textiles exported by
these merchants to ports such as Manila, Malacca, Acheh, Arakan, Pegu,
Mocha, and to those in Persia and other places amounted each year to approx-
imately f.1 million.19
The southern part of the Coromandel Coast continued to be the principal
supplier of textiles to the Company. The factory at Pulicat in central
Coromandel provided expensive varieties such as extra fine rumals, bethilles,
gingams,taftas, chelas,and fine murisetc. The chintz procured at Sadraspatnam
was said to be the best available anywhere on the coast in terms both of the
quality of the material as well as of the workmanship of the painting. The most
important centre of procurement in southern Coromandel continued to be
Nagapattinam where Guinea cloth and muriswere woven in the Company's own
villages.20 But, as elsewhere, the problem of rising cost and deteriorating quality
was getting increasingly acute. In 1754-5, for example, it was noted that a piece
of ordinary guinea,salampuri,and parcal, which cost respectively f.5.90, f.2.60,
and f.1.40 in 1690-1, now cost as much as f.9.15, f-4-00,and f.2.10, representing
an increase of more than 50 per cent. But there is ground to suggest that the
profit on these and other varieties of textiles both in the Netherlands and Asia
continu1d to be satisfactory. Batavia exhorted its factors in India in 1756 to
ensure that the orders for varieties such as fine bleached guineaswere met in full
even if the price paid had to be pushed up somewhat. Half of these guineashad
to be sent on to the Netherlands while the other half was intended for the
markets of the East Indies. The other item for South-East Asia to whose pro-
curement priority was to be attached was salampuris. The blue textiles for
Malacca were to be procured at Porto Novo. 21
As for northern Coromandel, the procurement at Masulipatnam had to be
suspended from 1750 after the takeover of the town by the French.lt.is.not clear
whether an attempt to bribe the French governor, De Morain (who had been
18 These calculations are based on the report by Jacob van der Waeyen dated 25 November
1757. NA, Hooge Regering Batavia (HRB) 341 (unfoliated). According to Van der Waeyen, a
total profit of f.2. 1 million was earned on Coromandel textiles in Hi>ltand ovenhe terr"-yeat·period,
assuming a rate of profit of 30%. On this basis, the value of the textiles sold in the Netherlands
works out at f. 7. 1 million. That leaves f.6.8 million worth for Asia, on which a profit of f.z.3
million (actual and not assumed) was reported to have been earned, suggesting a figure of 34.8%.
19
NA, Report by Jacob van der Waeyen, HRB341 (unfoliated).
20 NA, HRB 344, fos. 119,207: Memoir of the outgoing governor ofCoromandel, Pieter
Haksteen, for his successor, ReYJiiervan Vlissingen, dated 20 September 1771.

21 NA, HRB 341 (unfoliated): Report by Jacob van der Waeyen.
154 Om Prakash
born in The Hague), with the offer of a 3 per cent commission on all textiles
bought in the town was successful. 22 The varieties hitherto procured at
Masulipatnam were now bought at Narsapur, Bimilipatnam, Palakollu, and,
above all, Jagannnathpuram. The latter had been taken in farm from the
Mughal governor Rustam Khan Bahadur in 1734. In the second half of the eigh-
teenth century it became an important centre of procurement. The washing,
bleaching, and starching of the Company's textiles procured in the region had
been organized for over a century at its own village of Gondawaran located at
the edge of a reservoir noted for its alkaline water. Another of the Company's
villages, Golepallem, also in the eastern Godavari delta, similarly specialized in
painting and dyeing. These processes were helped by the existence in the village
of ground water with specific chemical properties. 23
THE USES OF COTTON TEXTILES IN THE INDIAN OCEAN
A portion of the Indian textiles shipped by the VOC to Batavia was for the use
of the Company itself. Such uses included the manufacturing of sailcloth for
the Company's ships, the production of uniforms for cavalry and guards, and
for use by the Company's personnel on ceremonial occasions such as proces-
sions and funerals (Illustration 7 .2 ). 24 Another major use was to dress the slave
population, which was forced to wear distinct clothing provided by the
Company. While Guinea cloth was commonly used for this purpose in the sev-
enteenth century, garras,fotas, and niquaniaswere more widely adopted in the
following century. It has been suggested by F. W. Stapel that over the 200 years
of its existence, the Company provided more than one million pieces of clothing
to its slave population. 25
The employees of the Company at Batavia and other places in the Indonesian
archipelago were often paid a part of their salary in Indian textiles. In the
Moluccas, where between 2,000 and 3,000 individuals served the Company, half
the salary was paid in cash and the other half in textiles. According to the esti-
mates of de Korte, the total burden of salaries paid in Asia between 1613 and
1790 to the personnel on land and ships amounted to a whopping f. 179 million.
On the assumption that half the amount was paid in textiles, the total sum paid
22 Ibid.
23 NA, HRB 344, fos. 53-4: Haksteen memoir; Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Rural Industry and
Commercial Agriculture in Late Seventeenth Century South Eastern India', Past and Present,
126 (1990), 92.
24 Ruurdje Laarhoven, 'The Power of Cloth: The Textile Trade of the Dutch East India
Company (VOC), 1600-1780' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Australian National University, 1994),
338.
25
Ibid. 79 and 339.
Illustration 7.2. Painted and dyed palampore produced on the Coromandel Coast, c. 1730.
It shows the coat of arms of J.C.Pielat (1692-1740), an official of the VOC who served in Sri
Lanka until 1734. The cranes are derived from Japanese motifs. 274 x 215 cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.137-1950. Given by G. P. Baker.
through that medium would have amounted to nearly f.90 million, including
the Company's profit calculated at between 50 and 7 5 per cent on the cost
price. 26
26
Ibid. 151, 347-8.
Om Prakash
Finally, following the extensive and long-standing usage oflndian luxury

textiles in gift giving in the Indonesian archipelago, the Company had also
adopted the practice on a fairly large scale. Again, according to de Korte, the
Company spent a total of f.19 million in gift giving in Asia over a 177-year
period. Since luxury textiles were the most common of gifts, probably many
thousands of pieces of cloth would have been gifted away annually. The fact
that Indian luxury textiles were the most desirable gifts would be corroborated
by the fact that, according to the Batavia Dagh Register of 1648, a Chinese del-
egation presented the Dutch governor-general with Indian rather than Chinese
textiles. 27
An overwhelming proportion of the Indian textiles imported by the
Company would, of course, have been sold in the market. The single largest
market for the purpose was Batavia itself from where, according to the evidence
in the Dagh Registers, the bulk of the textiles were transported to all parts of
the archipelago. As a result, Indian textiles reached the furthest parts of the
archipelago. While the luxury varieties remained confined by and large to the
coastal and the urban areas, the ordinary varieties were bought by inland rural
consumers who wore them as part of their everyday attire. The success oflndian
textiles was based on the fact that they were cheaper than comparable qualities
of locally produced textiles. Domestic production had to be put in place to
replace foreign imports only when Indian textiles were not available. This is
what happened in 1617 when three of the Company's ships on their way to the
archipelago were wrecked with large consignments of textiles on board. 28 The
point to emphasize is that the capability of producing the more common vari-
eties of textiles for domestic consumption certainly existed in South-East Asia.
However, this capability was ordinarily not used because of the availability of
cheaper and better textiles imported from India.
After its conquest by the VOC in 1669, the town of Makassar in south
Sulawesi became an important destination in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago
for shipments of Indian textiles imported into Batavia. An immediate conse-
quence of the Dutch conquest of the town was the initiation in 1670 by the
Manila authorities of a new direct route linking Madras and Manila bypassing
both the Dutch and Makassar. By the end of the seventeenth century this trade
in Coromandel cloth and Manila silver had grown to over one million florins
per annum. In the eighteenth century, 20 to 25 per cent of the voe imports
into Makassar consisted oflndian textiles. This amounted to about 21,500 rix
dollars per annum, with Chinese tobacco worth around 12,000 rix dollars being
a distant second. Only after 1780 did this figure go down to about 15 per cent.
Private traders who bought the textiles from the Company at Batavia were also
27
Ibid. 97-100.
zs Ibid. 74.
allowed to bring them into Makassar. In addition, there was a certain amount
of Indian textiles imported into the city 'illegally' fromJohor and other neigh-
bouring ports in the Malacca straits. The competition provided from these
imports as well as from the domestically produced textiles at neighbouring
centres such as Selangor and Buton meant that in the 1710s the Company was
able to make an average profit of only around 50 per cent on Indian textiles
imported into Makassar.29
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the private import (i.e. outside
the Company's jurisdiction) oflndian textiles into Makassar exceeded rn,ooo
pieces, more than double those by the VOC. This was reflected in an increasing
pressure on the Company's profit margins. Towards the end of the 1720s, the
Company contemplated the possibility of selling at a profit of less than 50 per
cent, a figure further lowered in 1730 to 40 per cent. Sales, however, did not
pick up, while the profit margin plummeted in the 1740s to 30 per cent. The
second half of the eighteenth century witnessed practically an end of this branch
of trade. 30
While ordinary imported Indian textiles were used for everyday wear, the
considerable quantities of luxury textiles imported from India into the Malay-
Indonesian archipelago found more specific uses. Such varieties were also used
overwhelmingly as clothing, but the occasions on which this was done were
largely ceremonial, principally marriages and death ceremonies (Illustration
7.3). The use of decorative gold thread for borders and stripes constituted a very
important element in the status-enhancing role of these textiles. Indeed, the
possess/on of such textiles became a measure of one's wealth, class, status, and
power. Often these textiles were also used as a store of value. Moreover, as
observed earlier, the use ofluxury Indian textiles for purposes of gift giving was
quite widespread. In Ambon, dancing girls invited to perform on special occa-
sions are known to have been paid in Indian textiles.31
The long-term exposure of the population of the archipelago to luxury Indian
textiles led to innovations and imitations in the domestic manufacturing of
similar textiles. An outstanding example of an Indian textile leading to such
innovation was the patola which inspired new motifs, designs, and patterns in
Indonesian textiles. And the import of painted and printed cloths from
Coromandel inspired the development of batik. The technique of decoration in
batik, unlike ikat, is done on the already woven textile and seems to have
involved at first the use of imported undecorated Indian textiles. 32
29 Gerrit Knaap and Heather Sutherland, Monsoon Traders:Ships, Skippers and Commodities
in Eighteenth-CenturyMakassar (Leiden, 2004), 38----g.

Jo Ibid. 39-41.
31 Laarhoven, 'Power of Cloth', 90.
32 Ibid. 97.
Om Prakash
Illustration 7.3. Mordant-dyed and painted cotton produced on the Coromandel Coast,
eighteenth century. This ceremonial hanging represents a scene from the Ramayana.
Although the epic is Indian, Ramayana cloths were manufactured for the Indonesian market
and in many cases were traded by the VQC. 450 X 95 Cm.
Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.23.1996.
Next to the Malay-Indonesian archipelago, the most important Asian market

for Indian textiles was Japan. Although not located in the Indian Ocean, Japan
was a major component of the Indian Ocean-South China Sea complex and
formed a key trading area for the Dutch East India Company. The principal
Indian exports to Japan were Bengal raw silk, silks, and mixed textiles of cotton
and silk. Until the 167os,Japan received about 50 per cent of the cargo procured
in Bengal for trade with Asia and a similar share of the Bengal goods passing
through Batavia. But this changed dramatically between 1680 and 1740. In
1681-2 the share of goods for Japan in the total cargo procured in Bengal was
not more than 25 per cent and it decreased to less than rn per cent in the 1690s.
In the 1720s and the 1730s, it fluctuated between 4 and 6 per cent.
The radically altered situation of Bengal goods in the Japanese market was in
good measure the outcome of trade policies adopted by Japan in the 1680s and
1690s. The introduction in 1672 of the system of 'appraised trade' had caused
a substantial deterioration in the foreigners' terms of trade. But it had not been
sufficient to stop the export of precious metals as a means of payment for
imported commodities. For this reason, in 1685 Japan introduced a system of
what might be called 'limited trade'. Under the new arrangement, the Company
was permitted to import annually goods whose sale value did not exceed f. 1.05
million, a third of which could be raw silk.
The decline of the Japan trade is apparent in the fact that the average annual
value of the total Dutch exports to Nagasaki between 1686 and 1700 was
reduced to f.630,000. Since the Company could not estimate precisely the quan-
tity of raw silk equivalent to the f.350,000 quota imposed by the Japanese gov-
ernment, the amount of raw silk sent to Japan was worth less than the maximum
allowed. Throughout this period, Bengal continued to be the principal supplier
of raw silk for Japan, but increasing quantities were now sent to Europe where
demand was high. 33
By forcing a rapid decline in the Dutch silk trade, the 1685 regulations actu-
ally promoted the trade in textiles with Japan. The first manifestation of this
was an increase by 50 per cent in the 1686 Nagasaki orders for most varieties of
Bengal textiles. Bengal armosinsfetched a good profit of 137 per cent in 1702,
and of 92 per cent two years later. In the early part of the eighteenth century,
Bengal cotton textiles became a regular item of import into Japan. In 1715,
whereas Bengal textiles achieved an average gross profit of 151 per cent, those
from the Coromandel Coast fetched only 116 per cent, while the few pieces
imported from Gujarat had to be sold at a loss of 67 per cent. 34 In the 1720s and
the 1730s, the quality of the Bengal textiles sent to Japan probably varied con-
siderably from year to year. Thus while in 1728 and 1729 the quality of the
taffachelasginghamsand the tassaralachaswas reported to be so poor as to have
involved a net loss,35 a 1731 Batavia evaluation of the lot of Bengal silk textiles
received for Japan pointed out that not only had the samples on the basis of
which the contracts had been put out been generally reproduced competently,
but in many cases they had actually been improved upon in terms of quality. 36
The tp1lyother Indian Ocean region to which Indian textiles were exported
by the VOC in any quantity was the Middle East-Bandar Abbas and Basra in
the Persian Gulf and Mocha in Yemen. Since the trade with these places had
been organized from Surat, Gujarat textiles had traditionally been included in
the _cargosent there together with items such as Indonesian spices. The value
of the textiles exported to Persia from the mid-1630s usually fluctuated between
around f.50,000 and f.150,000 per annum. In the late 1630s, Surat cargo
accounted for nearly half of the total value sent to Persia by the Company. The
gross profit earned on the textiles was 40 per cent in 1642 but registered a steep
decline thereafter to 4 per cent in 1651 and 7 to 8 per cent in 1659. The export
of the textiles, therefore, was curtailed heavily. Between 1660 and 1700, the
value of the exports from Surat to Persia was insignificant and often accounted
33 Thus the amount of Bengal raw silk exported to Japan had come down from 180,000 pounds
in 1675 to 124,000 pounds in 1682, and to 44,000 pounds in 1693-4. The figure in 1700----1was
60,700 pounds, in 1710----u, 42,845 pounds, and in 1717-18, 33,806 pounds. Prakash, Dutch East
India Company, 126.
34 Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 137.
35 NA, VOe 2165, fos. 20----1: Hugli to Batavia, 30 November 1730.
36 NA, voe 2174, fos. 2427-8: Evaluation done by Hendrik Haak and Anthony Jubbels at
Batavia dated 20 April 1731.

Om Prakash
for less than I per cent of the total Dutch exports from Gujarat. The only excep-
tions to this were the years 1664-5, when Persia's share was a respectable 13.9
per cent, and 1668-<)when it was 8.56 per cent. The story was even more dismal
in the case of Mocha. The export of Gujarat textiles to this port had begun
around 1638, but was terminated in 1656 because of extremely poor profitabil-
ity. It was only around the end of the seventeenth century that the Company's
interest in Mocha had been revived because of coffee. The role of Gujarat tex-
tiles in the Mocha trade, however, never assumed any importance, and it was
only occasionally that a gross profit of about 50 per cent was earned on these
textiles. 37 The profit earned in Persia on the small quantity of Bengal textiles
sent there was also quite small and, occasionally, even a net loss was incurred.
Indeed, in 1665, in order to minimize the chances of net loss, the Batavia
Council ruled that a minimum of 40 per cent gross profit had to be earned on
any given variety in a particular year to qualify it for export the following year. 38
CONCLUSION
If there was one commodity that dominated the Indian Ocean trade through the
ages well into the eighteenth century, it was Indian textiles, made overwhelm-
ingly from cotton but also from silk as well as cotton and silk mixtures. This
reflected the unusually strong position oflndia as a low-cost producer capable
of supplying textiles across the board on highly competitive terms. That is what
persuaded many Asian societies to depend on Indian textiles as an important
source both for mass as well as luxury consumption. In the Indonesian archi-
pelago, in particular, Indian textiles also came to play an important role in cer-
emonies, rituals, and systems of gift exchange. They also led to important
innovations and imitations in the domestic production of corresponding vari-
eties of textiles.
37 H. W. van Santen, De Verenigde Oost-lndische Compagnie in Gujarat en Hindustan, r620-
r660 (Leiden, 1982), 17; Gupta, The Dutch East India Company in Gujarat Trade, 263-6, 278.
38
NA, voe 889, fo. 394: Batavia to Hugli, I July 1665.
8
AWASH IN A SEA OF CLOTH
Gujarat, Africa, and the Western Indian Ocean,
IJOO-I8oo
PEDRO MACHADO
South Asian cotton textiles have long played a central role in Indian Ocean cir-
cuits of exchange due to their highly competitive prices and efficient produc-
tion, procurement, and distribution networks. While attention has been paid to
these two dimensions of commercial exchange, less well examined are the
sophisticated cultures of consumption in the Indian Ocean which were equally
important elements in the commercial order. In this essay I focus on markets
for Indian cotton cloth in East, east central, and south-east Africa and argue for
the centrality of African consumer tastes and preferences in sustaining produc-
tion of cloth in the Indian subcontinent, with particular focus on Gujarat from
1300 to 1800.
I
THREADS THAT BIND: SOUTH ASIA, CLOTH,
AND THE INDIAN OCEAN
One of the greatest strengths of the Indian textile industry was its capacity to
serve different networks of long-distance trade. Indian cloth manufacturers
were highly adaptable and had an ability to extend product differentiation,
which resulted in the creation of segmented, regional markets. 1 The main
cotton textile production areas for export were located in Gujarat, the
Coromandel Coast, Bengal, the Punjab, and Sindh. 2 Cloths woven in the latter
1 Tirthankar Roy, 'Introduction', in Tirthankar Roy (ed.), Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in
Colonial India (New Delhi, 1996), 11-32; K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the
English East India Company, r660-r760 (Cambridge, 1978),205; R.J. Barendse, 'Reflections on
the Arabian Seas in the Eighteenth Century', Itinerario, 25/ I (2001), 25-49; Michael N. Pearson,
Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal in the Early Modern Era
(Baltimore;-1998).
2 K. N. Chaudhuri, 'The Structure of Indian Textile Industry in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries', in Roy (ed.), Cloth and Commerce, 38--84;Tapan Raychaudhuri, 'Mughal
India', in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India,
i: r200-1750 (Cambridge, 1982), 270.
162 Pedro Machado
.Baghdad
AFGHANISTAN
PERSIA
PAKISTAN
PUNJAB
SUDAN
Arabian Sea
() "
Map 8. 1. Areas of cotton textile trade in the western part of the Indian Ocean
regions were mainly destined for the markets of Afghanistan, eastern Persia,
central Asia, Masqat, and Basra. 3 Outlets for the products of Coromandel and
Bengal were found primarily in South-East Asia, though there was some trade
with the Red Sea and Persian Gulf (Map 8.1).
Gujarat also traded cottons extensively to these markets but it was to the
western Indian Ocean that the bulk of its manufactures were sent. The promi-
nence of Gujarati textiles in the western Indian Ocean is attested in early
3 Chaudhuri, 'Structure', 41.

Gujarat, Africa, the Western Indian Ocean
textual and other sources. For example, Gujarati textiles were likely to have
been found on Sokotra island (located a short distance north-east of the tip of
the Horn of Africa) in the fourth century BC, given the presence there oflndian
merchants. 4 The well-known first-century AD mariner's guide the Periplus of
the ./ErythreanSea includes references to the commercial exchange of textiles
from Gujarat (along with those from south-east India and Bengal) with the
Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea coast of Africa. 5 Recent archaeological findings
from Berenike, a harbour site on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea, provide
material evidence from the fifth century AD of patterned textiles of Indian,
probably Gujarati, origin. 6 Textual references to a ninth-century trade in
Indian textiles to Baghdad and the rich printed cloth fragments collected in
Egypt from the late ninth and tenth centuries confirm the continuity-and
possible growth--of this textile commerce. 7 An expansion in trade is suggested
by correspondence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which makes ref-
erence to cotton cloths from north-western India being traded in Aden and
Fustat; 8 and archaeological evidence spanning the ninth to the seventeenth
centuries of textiles found in Egypt at the transhipment site of Quseir al-
~dim bordering the Red Sea and at regional outposts like ~sr Ibrim and
Gebel Adda in Nubia. 9
It appears that the reach of Gujarati textiles in the western Indian Ocean grew
over the next few centuries. Evidence from the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies shows these textiles being traded at Aden, 10 which by the sixteenth
century had become a vibrant and important trade and trans-shipment centre
for Guja~ati textiles that were sent to Cairo and the Mediterranean. 11 Arabic
sources of the fifteenth century refer to textiles being brought to Yemen, 12 while
in the sixteenth century up to twenty ships carrying cotton textiles from India
4 Richard Pankhurst, 'The "Banyan" or Indian Presence at Massawa, the Dahlak Islands and
the Horn of Africa', in Catherine Mehaud (ed.), Mouvements des populations dans I' ocean indien:
(Paris, 1979), 107.
5 Periplus of the /Erythrean Sea .. . Containing, an Account of the Navigation of the Ancients
(London, 1805), cit. in Pankhurst, 'Banyan'.
6 Ruth Barnes, 'Introduction', in Ruth Barnes (ed.), Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies
(London, 2005), 5; John Peter Wild and Felicity Wild, 'Rome and India: Early Indian Cotton
Textiles from Berenike, Red Sea Coast of Egypt', ibid.
7 Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford, 1997); id., 'Introduction'.

8 S. D. Goitein, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders (Princeton, 1973).
9
John Guy, Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (London, 2002), 39.
10 Pankhurst, 'Banyan', 108.
11
Surendra Gopal, Commerce and Crafts in Gujarat I6th and I7th Centuries: A Study in the
Impact of European Expansion on Precapitalist Economy (New Delhi, 1975); Halil inalcik, 'The
Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300--1600', in Halil inalcik with Donald Quataert (eds.),
An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, IJOO-I9I4 (Cambridge, 1994), 323.
12
Guy, Woven Cargoes, 39.
Pedro Machado
Illustration 8. 1. Qiay at Mozambique Island as represented in Salt's A Voyageto

Abyssinia (1809).
Source: 'Documentos para a Historia de Mocambique/Relacao dos Estabelecimentos Portugueses na
Costa Oriental de Africa em r 809, Henry Salt', MocambiqueDocumentarioTrimestral, 37 ( r 944).
arrived annually in the northern Red Sea coast at Jidda. 13 By the end of the
century, the Red Sea was western India's main overseas market. 14 Hormuz was
also an importer of Gujarati textiles in the sixteenth century as Indian trade
expanded in the Persian Gulf. 15 And from the late sixteenth century Ottoman
lands were supplied with Gujarati textiles and Indian cotton primarily through
the major supply channel of Basra-Aleppo, though ships from Hormuz and
Mecca did make direct voyages to Basra. 16
Turning to East Africa, we find Gujarati cotton textiles-together with fine
silk cloths-being widely traded (perhaps more so than in west Asia), and
invested with significant social, cultural, and political meaning. Early trade in
Gujarati textiles to the Red Sea as outlined above probably included some com-
mercial exchange with the Horn of Africa and possibly also with the East African
13 inalcik, 'Ottoman State'.
14 Ashin Das Gupta, 'Indian Merchants and the Trade in thelndian Ocean, c. 1500---17
50', in
Uma Das Gupta (ed.), The World of the Indian OceanMerchant r500-r800: CollectedEssays of
Ashin Das Gupta (New Delhi, 2001), 59-87.
15 Gopal, Commerceand Crafts; inalcik, 'Ottoman State', 338.
16 inalcik, 'Ottoman State', 338.
coast. Evidence shows that by the first century AD Gujarati textiles were being
traded in the Horn, 17 and over the course of the following centuries Gujarati
textiles continued to be traded to the region. However, it seems that they became
more widely available from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, connected
perhaps with the spread oflslam and the growth and establishment of far-flung
Muslim merchant networks. By the fifteenth century Gujarati cottons had
become dominant in the Horn and along the Swahili coast. Zeila, a city on the
southern side of the Gulf of Aden, was an important trade centre to which
vessels from Gujarat (and Aden) carried textiles in considerable number, 18 and
early in the first quarter of the fifteenth century Massawa and Berbera traded in
Gujarati cotton textiles which served widespread markets in the region. 19
Mogadishu, according to one source, also maintained links with Gujarat. 20
Further along the southern coast, evidence exists for a well-established trade
in Gujarati textiles to Malindi and Mombasa, to which large vessels from
Cambay made direct voyages.21 Merchants from these Swahili city-states, as
well as Pate, also sent ships expressly to Gujarat to purchase a variety of cotton
(and silk) textiles. 22 As was recorded in the fifteenth century, the ruler of Pate,
Mwana Mkuu, constructed vessels exclusively for trade with Gujarat, which
was by this time the most important Indian Ocean region maintaining regular
trade links with Pate, Kilwa, and other centres on the Swahili coast. 23 Other
places, such as Zanzibar and Mafia, received cotton textiles from Gujarati mer-
chants via Mombasa. 24
When he Portuguese arrived on the East African coast late in the fifteenth
1
century, 1twas clear that trade stretching from Barawa, in present-day Somalia,
to Inhambane, located south of Sofala in modern-day Mozambique, 25 relied on
the importation of Gujarati textiles. 26 This cloth arrived on the coast in a vast
array of styles, colours, and shapes, the most popular of which appear to have
17 Periplus,cit. in Pankhurst, 'Banyan', 107.
18 M. D. D. Newitt, 'East Africa and Indian Ocean Trade: 1500--1800', in Ashin Das Gupta
and Michael N. Pearson (eds.), India and the Indian Ocean1500-1800 (New Delhi, 1987), 201-23.
19 Pankhurst, 'Banyan', 108.
20 Tome Pires, A Suma Orientalde Tome Pires,ed. Armando Cortesao (Coimbra, 1978), 203.
21 Newitt, 'EastMrica'.
22
Pires, Suma Oriental,203.
23 Jeremy Prestholdt, 'As Artistry Permits and Custom May Ordain: The Social Fabric of
Material Consumption in the Swahili World, circa 1450--1600', Program of African Studies
Working Papers, Northwestern University, 3 (1998), 17; Edward A. Alpers, 'Gujarat and the
Trade of East Africa, c.1500--1800', InternationalJournal of African HistoricalStudies, 9/ 1 ( 1976 ),
22-44.
24 Gopal, Commerceand Crafts.
2s Prestholdt, 'Artistry Permits', 11.
26 See, for example, the comments of Almeida in 1505 on the 'quantities of cotton cloth from
Cambay' found at Mombasa. Ada Silva Rego, T. W. Baxter, and E. E. Burke (eds.), Documentos
sobreosPortuguesesem Mofambique e na Africa Central(Salisbury, 1962-89), i. 533.
166 Pedro Machado
been indigo-dyed cloths called vespifa. Although some of these and other cotton
textiles, along with the more elaborate silk cloths also imported from Gujarat,
may have remained on the coast, the bulk were transported into the interior
where they were in great demand. In the early sixteenth century, a Swahili mer-
chant brought 100,000 Indian cloths from Malindi to Angoche and 'neighbour-
ing areas', from where they were traded throughout the Zambesi Valley. 27
Between 1507 and 1513, a little under 83,000 Gujarati textiles were imported
directly into Mozambique Island from India (Illustration 8.1); in this case the
most popular for the interior trade were not vespifas but 'barnazes' and
'do tins'. 28 At Sofala, located south of the mouth of the Zambesi River, Gujarati
cloths were the only trade items that found ready sale in the middle of the
century; a number of these had been shipped from Kilwa, where 'it was soon
apparent that nothing could be achieved unless [merchants and traders] were
able to offer the natives the Indian cotton goods with which they were familiar,
and which were in demand'. 29
It is clear that by the sixteenth century Gujarati cotton textiles had assumed
a prominent place in the material exchange of the Swahili coast and African
interior. Their widespread popularity reflected the array of ways in which
imported cloth was used. Their popularity also confirmed the dominance of
Gujarati manufactures as exchange media through which trade was made pos-
sible in areas that effectively constituted cloth zones of contact. 30 Gujarati dom-
inance continued into the seventeenth century as the region's exports expanded
in the Indian Ocean, 31 and grew over the course of the eighteenth century in
east central and south-east Africa. 32 In 1608, for example, two Gujarati vessels,
stopped by the English near Mozambique, were found to be loaded with 'a vast
amount of coarse [i.e. cotton] textiles'. 33 By the middle of the century, more
than 250 tons of mostly Gujarati cloths were entering East Africa annually,
some of which appears to have been sent to the Comores and possibly
27 Alexandre Lobato, A expansiioportuguesaem Mofambique de r 498 a r530 (Lisbon, 1960),
96; Silva Rego, Baxter, and Burke (eds.), Documentos,ii. 374.

28
Lobato, Expansiio, 130.
29 Justus Strandes, The PortuguesePeriod in East Africa (Nairobi, 1989), 92 and 40; Lobato,
Expansiio, 57. The emphasis is mine.

30 My terminology has been influenced by Richard Roberts, 'Guinee Cloth: Linked
Transformations within France's Empire in the Nineteenth Century', Cahiersd' etudesafricaines,

32/ 4 (1992), 596--627.
31
Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century (Delhi, 1994), 54.
32 I should raise one caveat: due to the limits of the evidence, it is difficult to determine pre-
cisely whether Gujarati textiles became more important in these centuries than they had been in
earlier ones, or whether they are more noticeable because the documentation improves. This
point draws on Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Crisis and Change, 1590-1699', in Halil inalcik with Donald
Quataert (eds.), An Economicand Social History of the OttomanEmpire, I 300-r914 (Cambridge,
1994), 411-636.
33 Gopal, Commerceand Crafts, 23.
Madagascar. 34 The numbers of cloths imported into east central and south-east
Africa from Gujarat in the eighteenth century, for which detailed records exist,
offer a further striking illustration of the dimensions which this trade had
reached by this time: annual textile imports stood at 300,000--500,000 pieces in
the middle of the century, 35 and may in some years have been as high as a
million pieces. These textiles were used for the purchase of ivory, for which
there was a large market in south Asia, and in the second half of the eighteenth
century for the purchase of slaves who were transported in increasing number
to markets in the western Indian Ocean and southern Atlantic. 36 This high
volume of trade in textiles in east central and south-east Africa continued until
the nineteenth century, as African consumer demand remained of major impor-
tance to Gujarat's productive capacity. 37
Whether imports of Gujarati cloth undermined local production is a question
that is difficult to answer. We know that at least until the sixteenth century a
vibrant weaving industry existed in East Africa. Textiles were produced in
many towns between Mogadishu in the north and Sofala in the south, and
cotton was grown at Kilwa. Artisans in Sofala, Angoche, and the Kerimba archi-
pelago were known to weave cotton textiles which were used in local and long-
distance trade. 38 In south-east Africa, local hand-woven cotton cloth was worn
by women at Delagoa Bay. 39 By about the middle of the seventeenth century,
however, weaving had declined throughout the region, and survived at only a
few sites. The most prominent was probably Mogadishu where in the 1840s a
large null}ber of weaving households continued to manufacture cloth. 40 Even
34 Manuel Lobato, 'Rela<,:oescomerciais entre a India ea costa Africana nos seculos XVI and
XVII: o papel do Guzerate no Comercio de Mo<,:ambique', Mare Liberum, 9 ( 1995), 166; Gopal,
Commerce and Crafts.
35 Pedro Machado, 'Gujarati Indian Merchant Networks in Mozambique, 1777-c.1830'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2005).
Pieces made up the bundles of cloths brought to Mozambique Island; however, pieces were sorted
and arranged into bars of 400 cloths and it was these that were 'the currency of the land'. So, the
number of'pieces' discussed here actually represented a far higher number of cloths which were
eventually transported into the African interior.
36 A discussion of these trades can be found in Machado, 'Gujarati', and id., 'A Forgotten
Corner of the Indian Ocean: Gujarati Merchants, Portuguese India and the Mozambique Slave
Trade, c.1730-1830', in Gwyn Campbell (ed.), The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa
and Asia (London, 2004), 16--32.
37 Details are provided in Machado, 'Gujarati'.
38 Pearson, Port Cities, 122; Prestholdt, 'Artistry Permits', 26; A. Rita-Ferreira, African
Kingdoms and Alien Settlements in Central Mozambique (c.I5th-I7th Cent.) {Coimbra, 1999),
n6--19.
39 Patricia Davison and Patrick Harries, 'Cotton Weaving in South-East Africa: Its History
and Technology', in Dale Idiens and K. G. Ponting (eds.), Textiles of Africa (Bath, 1980), 175--92.
40 Edward A. Alpers, 'Futa Benaadir: Continuity and Change in the Traditional Cotton
Textile Industry of Southern Somalia, c.1840-1980', in Actes du Colloque Enterprises et

Entrepreneurs en Afrique (XI Xe et XXe siecles) (Paris, 1983), i. 76--<)8.
168 Pedro Machado
in Madagascar, where a vibrant and diverse textile industry had existed for cen-
turies, from the 1780s, and especially after 1800 'when it gained momentum',
Indian cotton textile imports were weakening the domestic weaving industry. 41
This does not mean, as I have recently demonstrated for east central and
south-east Africa,42 and William Gervase Clarence-Smith has shown more gen-
erally for East Africa in a provocative essay,43 that the manufacture of local
cotton cloths-along with other types such as bark--disappeared in the face of
Indian competition. For example, in the Zambezi Valley well-known machiras
(roughly woven undyed cotton cloth) continued to be traded on the prazos
(crown estates) and were popular among the Nsenga Chewa, southern Lunda,
and Karanga-related peoples.44 In the Barwe area of Mozambique local weaving
survived into the twentieth century, while at Sofala gondos were produced
where, among other applications, they were used as sails.45 Clarence-Smith goes
further and argues that far from undermining local production throughout the
Indian Ocean, imports of Indian textiles may actually have stimulated these
industries, with weavers in some cases adopting such strategies as unravelling
imported cloths and incorporating the threads into textiles that were produced
locally.46 Although he offers a suggestive argument and draws attention to neg-
lected aspects of textile trade and production in East Africa, the conclusion is
unavoidable that local textile production in East, east central, and south-east
Africa was much reduced by the eighteenth century.
It is clear that by as early as the sixteenth century Indian manufactures, espe-
cially cotton textiles from Gujarat, occupied an important place in the social,
cultural, and political milieu of the coast and many parts of the interior.
Moreover, their use as currency media against which ivory and other commodi-
ties could be acquired, together with slaves, ensured that Gujarati textiles
retained a pre-eminent place in exchange relations. We should not, however, as
Pearson has urged us, see these textiles as entering a 'vacuum' but rather place
them within a broader context oflocal textile production and understand them
as supplementing local supplies in vital ways.47 There can be little doubt that
Indian textiles were regarded as integral to the East African textile trade which
41 Pier Larson, History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland
Madagascar, 1770-1822 (Portsmouth, 2000), 128.
42 Machado, 'Gujarati' .
. 43 William ..Gen,ase Clarence-Smith, ·'Locally Produced Textiles on the Indian Ocean
Periphery 1500-1850: East Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia', paper presented at the
8th Global Economic History Network Conference, Pune, December 2005.
44 Machado, 'Gujarati', 112-13; Allen F. lsaacman, Mozambique: The Africanization of a
European Institution-The Zambesi Prazos, 1750-1902 (Madison, 1972), 66 and 73.

45 Davison and Harries, 'Cotton Weaving', 87; Machado, 'Gujarati', 113.
46 Clarence-Smith, 'Locally Produced Textiles'; Prestholdt, 'Artistry Permits'.
47 Pearson, Port Cities.

stretched from the northern coast down to the Zambezi Valley.48 Every indica-
tion for the period from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries points to Indian
manufactures being considered as necessities for a market whose consumers
could afford the foreign imports. It appears that the growth in preference for
imported textiles over locally produced cloths in East Africa generally, and
specifically in east central and south-east Africa, dates from this period and
deepened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The expansion of cotton cloth imports into East and east central Africa in the
seventeenth century is best understood in the context of growing Gujarati trade
more generally in the western Indian Ocean. It is well known that Gujarati
trade, especially to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, experienced a marked
increase as Cambay was steadily replaced by Surat as a commercial centre from
the beginning of the century and ports such as Dabhol emerged as important in
long-distance oceanic trade. 49 While Gujarat's eastward commerce to South-
East Asia continued at least until the final decade of the seventeenth century,
there is little doubt that over the course of the century Gujarati merchants
expanded their commercial engagement in the western reaches of the ocean,
including to East Africa but particularly to east central and south-east Africa. 50
Gujarati merchants, along with 'Arab', English, Dutch, and Portuguese mer-
cantile capital, advanced more deeply into regional markets in the western
Indian Ocean, as private Indian shipping from Surat and other coastal ports
expanded. This made the trade across the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf,
southern frabia, and the Red Sea 'the foundation of Surat's prosperity and the
mainstay of the merchants'. 51
The eighteenth-century decline of Surat and its merchants due to a combi-
nation of factors, including the disintegration of the Mughal and Safavid dynas-
ties, the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, and growing competition from
Bombay under British influence, is well documented. 52 Yet, the city remained
an important financial centre and textile trading port, as well as an importer of
east central and south-east African ivory. It would be wrong to see the 'decline'
of Surat as representative of Gujarat as a whole, as other parts of the region
flourished in the eighteenth century. Gujarati merchant networks operating
from Diu in Kathiawar, an island entrep6t nominally under Portuguese admin-
istration, were highly active in the textile trade of the western Indian Ocean,
particularly to the Red Sea in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
48 For details see Machado, 'Gujarati'.
49 Arasaratnam, Maritime. See also the various essays of Ashin Das Gupta collected in Das
Gupta (ed.), World of the Indian Ocean Merchant.
50 Arasaratnam, Maritime, 73.
51 Ibid. 75.
52 For example, Das Gupta, Indian Merchants; Das Gupta (ed.), World of the Indian Ocean
Merchant.
PedroMachado
But from about 1700 these merchants increasingly began to concentrate on

markets in east central and south-east Africa. Remarkably, textiles for these
markets were acquired in a single locale in Gujarat: Jambusar. From around the
1740s, this cotton-growing, textile-producing, and trading centre rose to promi-
nence under favourable Maratha economic policies and booming east central
and south-east African demand for cotton cloth. 53 Indeed, Jambusar owed
much of its existence as a weaving centre to the demands of African consumers.
Jambusar thus confirms the insight that 'one of the best indicators of a region's
[industrial] ties to a particular market area is the degree to which producers [are
able to] adjust their products to consumer tastes'. 54 Over the course of the eigh-
teenth century (if not earlier), weavers inJambusar and cloth consumers in east
central and south-east Africa were brought into a transoceanic relational
dynamic defined by the logics of taste and fashion. Though often overlooked in
the literature on cloth in the Indian Ocean, African demand was critical in sus-
taining high levels of weaver production in India. It is thus important to our dis-
cussion to explore some of the dynamics of African consumer demand in the
period under discussion.
CONTOURS OF CONSUMPTION: SOUTH ASIAN TEXTILES AND

AFRICAN DEMAND
If we are to have a full understanding of the complex dynamics oflndian Ocean

exchange, we require regional studies of consumption which examine the use
oflndian cottons as a socially embedded activity reflecting cultural, economic,
social, and political currents and developments. 55 Such research is in its infancy,
but early studies indicate the importance of consumption and consumer tastes
for an understanding of the Indian textile trade. In addition, tracing consump-
tion and its changing patterns offers a way to chart how actors often regarded
as marginal to global systems of material, cultural, and social exchange affected
these in important ways. In our examination of these issues, the discussion will
be restricted to East, east central, and south-east Africa from the sixteenth to
the eighteenth centuries for which we have solid evidence.
As has been made clear, Indian textiles were widely used in East and east
central Africa where they served as currency. 56 However, cloths were not used
53 For details see Machado, 'Gujarati'.
54 Chaudhuri, 'Structure', 42.
55 This point draws on Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Research on the History of Ottoman Consumption:
A Preliminary Exploration of Sources and Models', in Donald Quataert (ed.), Consumption Studies
and the History of the Ottoman Empire, r550-r922: An Introduction (Albany, NY, 2000), 22.
56 Gold extracted from the Zimbabwean plateau had served a similar function along the coast
but Indian cotton textiles appear to have been utilized over a far greater area.
solely for their exchange value. They also had 'use' value, 'as a means of
bestowing moral and social qualities, of marking both high and low status'. 57
How cloths were used was a function of the social, cultural, political, and sym-
bolic meanings that they were given, which happened through complex
processes of domestication. In its journey from a weaver's loom in Gujarat to
the hands of a local ruler, trader, or patron in East and east central Africa, a
piece of cloth was transformed as it was inscribed with meanings that reflected
local articulations of taste and fashion. In addition to their use as a form of con-
spicuous consumption, textiles also had important political uses, especially
through exchanges that established and helped underpin ties between people.
A gift of cloth cemented a relation and givers could in this way ensure that
receivers were committed 'to loyalty and obligations in future'. Furthermore,
textiles were utilized in investiture ceremonies where rulers legitimized the
power of successors or regional chiefs. 58 It is becoming increasingly clear that
Africans used imported and local textiles in ways which were socially, politi-
cally, economically, and symbolically sophisticated, and whose complexity
scholars are only now beginning to appreciate.
In the Swahili world of the fifteenth century, cloth 'both reflected social atti-
tudes and stratification and served as culturally relative instruments for main-
taining or challenging status in city-states and towns along the East African
littoral'. 59 Indian imports-along with locally produced cotton and silk manu-
factures-were important in determining individual status or claims to status
through ljhe cultural logics of display and personal adornment. 6 Clothing °
served to mark status, reinforce and/ or produce social hierarchies, and preserve
identity. The symbolic capital which cloth possessed was, therefore, integral to
the processes by and through which the Swahili world was constituted.
Through the medium of dress rulers signalled their high standing, the wealth
and the authority of the state, and, in the case oflndian imports, their connec-
tions to a wider world.
Moreover, by reflecting power and rank in the social hierarchy, cloth along
with other material possessions was integral to the making of (u)ungwana ('cul-
turedness'). Through redistributive practices, elites (both the ungwana and
royalty) could secure the loyalty of followers and gain respect and power. For
57 Mark Horton and John Middleton, The Swahili (Oxford, 2001), 111-12.
58 Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, 'Introduction', in Annette B. Weiner and Jane
Schneider (eds.), Cloth and Human Experience (Washington, 1989), 3; Richard Roberts, Two
Worlds of Cotton: Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, r800-r946
(Stanford, Calif., 1996).
59 Prestholdt, 'Artistry Permits', 8.
60 The importance of cloth in processes of social differentiation is of course not unique to East
Africa. See, for example, Kenneth R. Hall, 'The Textile Industry in Southeast Asia, 1400-1800',
Journal of the Economicand Social History of the Orient, 39/z (1996), 86-135.
Pedro Machado
instance, in the 1350s the sultan ofKilwa, Abu al-Muzaffar Hasan, was well
regarded by the people of Kilwa for his generosity in distributing cloth.
Accumulation of cloth was therefore critical to the attainment and preservation
of authority and power. Cloth and the way in which it was worn and/ or dis-
played located an individual in the social milieu of East African coastal society.
Cloth formed part of the regalia worn by sultans and their court, and imported
and local cloth was especially popular as wall hangings. Further, as was the case
at the coronation of Hajj Muhammad Rukn al-Din al-Dabuli as the sultan of
Kilwa, when he 'decorated the houses of several princes', rulers used cloth for
the adornment of their entourages. 61 Cloth was thus central to cultural produc-
tion and reproduction in the Swahili world of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.
Indian-primarily Gujarati----cotton cloth was critical to these processes both
along the southern Swahili coast and in the interior of east central and south-
east Africa, particularly with the expansion of foreign trade in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. The complexities of demand and consumer tastes in
east central Africa are illustrated by the vast array of textiles which were
imported from Gujarat. Despite the difficulty in identifying many of these tex-
tiles, in large measure because they have disappeared from present-day usage,
it is nonetheless possible to describe a few of the most widely traded Gujarati
manufactures. Capotins were blue and white chequered or striped cloths;
ardians, plain dyed cloths of differing sizes; dotins, strong coarse cotton cloths;
canequins,coarse indigo-dyed blue or black calicoes; chauderes,plain white cal-
icoes, possibly of superior quality; longuins,long cloths which were white gen-
erally but were also found in blue or brown;jorians, plain white calicoes from
Gujarat that varied in quality. Samateres and zuartes were the most expensive
and prestigious textiles at east central African markets and they were described
by a contemporary author respectively as 'white, very narrow, rough, open and
ordinary', and as 'blue [i.e. indigo-dyed] cotton'. The same observer also noted
that 'the best is ofJambuceira Uambusar]'. 62
In Manyika (located in the Zambezi Valley), zuartes and dotinswere the vari-
eties in greatest demand in the second half of the eighteenth century. 63 Other
cloths which were sent to the regional trading fair at Masekesa included
samateres,used for sacrificial ceremonies to appease the Vadzimu (an ancestral
spirit) and to denote mourning; and cured savagagins, which were worn by
royalty and nobility as markers of distinction and connection to the global
61 De Barros, Asia: dosfeitos que os Portuguesesfizeram no descobrimentoe conquistados marese

terrasdo Oriente(Lisbon, [1615] 1945), i. 328, cit. in Prestholdt, 'Artistry Permits', 43.
62 A. C. Gamitto, King Kazembe (Lisbon, 1960), ii. 198.
63 H. H. K Bhila, Trade and Politics in a Shona Kingdom: The Manyika and their Portuguese
and African Neighbours,1575-1902 (London, 1982), 131.

Gujarat, Africa, the Western Indian Ocean 173
trading world of the Indian Ocean. From the 1780s, zuartes became the most
sought-after cloths and vashambadzi('professionalized' African caravan leaders
of slave status who were responsible for organizing trade into the interior of the
Zambesi Valley) accepted only this type of cloth. 64 The Muta pas received cal-
icoes and other textiles, and the court was one of the biggest consumers. In the
sixteenth century it seems they did not wear foreign cloth, but began to do so
after 1600 with the expansion ofregional trade. In the Rozvi empire Gujarati
cottons were sent by the emperor as part of the regalia at the investiture of new
provincial chiefs. Cloth was also given as presents to the mhondoro,the Mutapa
spirit medium, while rulers who regularly brought tribute to the Zimbabwe
were rewarded with cloth. 65 In the Lunda kingdom of south-central Africa in
the late eighteenth century, great prestige was attached to acquiring Indian
imports as rulers sought to adorn themselves with cloths that 'showed the influ-
ence of [their] involvement in world trade'. 66
As reflections of local articulations of taste and fashion, the forms of textile
consumption were never static, unchanging, or uniform in the areas where
Gujarati cloth found buyers. In the mid-179os, for instance, the Portuguese
were surprised that the market for some popular varieties had collapsed:
previously the best cloths were capotins and ardians, which generated a great deal of
profit because they were not discounted and were cheaper, and now at this fair nothing
is sold other than zuartes and some dotins, which are good quality cloths, that is, the
mossambazes [vashambadzi] do not want to take any other quality cloth ... the zuartes
and doutiqs, besides being the most expensive cloths, are only of this particular quality
... any other quality of cloth serves for [the acquisition of] provisions only. 67
Merchants had to pay close attention to the fluctuations in demand, and failure
to supply the 'proper' cloths could be disastrous. Towards the end of the eigh-
teenth century, a European official lamented that two Gujarati cloths, capotins
and ardians,had been rejected. 'The Africans', he wrote, 'do not accept them
for the purchase of provisions because they had been of inferior quality than
were normally traded. ' 68 Merchants ran the risk of being unable to sell their
cargoes when they faced such refusals. 69 Regional differences in demand added
to the challenges and complexities of supplying the textile market, as was dis-
covered in Delagoa Bay (south-east Africa) in 1793:
64 Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (hereafter AHU), Mo~., Cx 69 Doc 22.

65 S. I. Mudenge, A Political History of Munhumutapa (Harare, 1986), 185.
66 Ian Cunnison, 'Kazembe and the Portuguese, 1798-1832',Journal of African History, 2/I
(1961), 65.
67 AHU, Mrn;:.,Cx 69 Doc 22.
68 AHU, Mos;., Cx 31 Doc 7.
69 See, for example, Machado, 'Gujarati'.
174 Pedro Machado
an abundance of cloths caused the Africans to not want half ardians in exchange for pro-
visions which are needed by the army, and only serve for the ivory trade in the Rivers
[Zambezi Valley] ... it is damaging that the esteem for the other cloths has been lost .
. . capotins and longuins were also not exchanged in great abundance for payments ...
and some are taken only as gifts by rulers. 70
Possessing a well-developed understanding of the nuances in demand among

African consumers was therefore critical for success in the textile trade. Often
these were bound up with particular notions of taste and fashion. This is cap-
tured in a Portuguese explanation in 1781 for why Indian merchants were suc-
cessful in the textile markets of east central Africa:
[Indian merchants] compete ... to give cabayas that are infashion, toucas ... ordering
them especially from Diu with new designsthat are communicated to their partners in
the monsoons, from which we can see that the Africans, seeing these painted cloths of
a newfashion, every year hurry to the [Indian merchants] and not to any Christian [mer-
chants], and when one [Christian] by chance does appear he leaves disappointed and
will certainly not return on another occasion. 71
Merchants had to ensure that they were importing cloths 'after the fashion' or
'of new invention' 72 that corresponded to sophisticated African aesthetic sen-
sibilities. Demand was shaped by the local particularities of consumer tastes, 73
and as such dictated the varieties of cloth that entered the east central and south-
east African markets. Far from being marginal players, African consumers
negotiated the terms of trade and the goods that were to be produced and deliv-
ered. African demand, therefore, had an impact beyond the continent since it
stimulated and shaped productive activity inJambusar in Gujarat, where the
bulk of the western Indian textiles for the African markets were manufactured.
Employment in textile manufacturing inJambusar was sustained by the high
level of demand from Africa, and to sell these cloths, they had to be made to the
specifications of African buyers. The merchants who traded in cloth from
Gujarat to east central and south-east Africa had to ensure that they had up-to-
date information on the textiles demanded in every trading season. This 'knowl-
edge capital' was provided by agents such as the vashambadzi, who were
important links in the chain that connected producers, intra-regional oceanic
exchange, and local consumers. Merchants maintained contact with these
agents on a regular basis. In pointing to the centrality of the African consumer,
this essay contributes to a growing understanding that 'under-considered
70 AHU, Mos;., Cx 64 Doc 19.
71 AHU, C6dice 1345, fl., 44v. The emphasis is mine.
72
AHU, Mos;., Cx 36, Doc 35.
73 A similar point has been recently argued by Adenaike for West Africa. See Carolyn Keyes
Adenaike, 'West African Textiles, 1500--1800', in Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui (ed.), Textiles:
Production, Trade and Demand (Aldershot, 1998), 251-61.
populations' must be included in narratives of regional and global interconnec-

tions. They possessed leverage and defined the terms of material exchange. 74
ALL AT SEA: SOUTH ASIAN MERCHANT NETWORKS AND

THE INDIAN OCEAN
The movement of textiles around the Indian Ocean involved a number of actors
and communities, ranging from several Muslim and Hindu merchant networks
to European state and private merchants. Taken together, they carried thou-
sands of pieces of cloth of different styles and qualities to markets in the Indian
Ocean. Much of the scholarship on Indian Ocean exchange, however, has
focused on European companies and merchants. The introduction of European
competition into the waters of the ocean, beginning with the Portuguese in the
sixteenth century, intensifying with the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth, and
continuing with the British in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was sig-
nificant and presented myriad challenges to the south Asian merchant networks
which had operated throughout its waters for centuries. 75
But the over-emphasis on European commercial engagement in the Indian
Ocean has meant that scholars have not adequately appreciated the continued-
and in some cases growing-involvement of south Asian merchant networks in
the myriad textile markets of this vast space. Q!.iantifying the textile trade of
south Asi n merchants across the Indian Ocean, made all the more difficult over
1
a long time period, is generally agreed to be an impossible task given the lack of
detailed evidence. Yet, sufficient material has come to light (some of it fragmen-
tary, certainly) to show that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, par-
ticularly in the western reaches of the ocean, the vast bulk of the trade in
manufactures (especially in cotton textiles) was organized and carried by south
Asian groups who were not deeply affected by European activity. Increasingly,
historians have come to accept this conclusion. 76
74 Jeremy Prestholdt, 'On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism', American
HistoricalReview, 109/3 (2004), 755-81.
75 For details see, for example, Om Prakash, 'The Indian Maritime Merchant, 1500---1800',
Journal of the Economicand Social History of the Orient, 47/3 (2004), 435-57; and id., The New
CambridgeHistory of India, ii/ 5: EuropeanCommercialEnterprisein Pre-colonialIndia (Cambridge,
1998).
76 See, for example, Sushi! Chaudhury, 'European Companies and the Bengal Textile
Industry in the Eighteenth Century: The Pitfalls of Applying Quantitative Techniques', Modem
Asian Studies, 27 (1993), 321-40; and the overviews of Arasaratnam, Maritime; and Prakash,
EuropeanCommercialEnterprise.This is despite the continued existence of relatively little detailed
scholarship concerning particular south Asian or Gujarati merchant networks in tire Indian Ocean
prior to the nineteentlr century. Exceptions include the works of Ashin Das Gupta, and Machado,
'Gujarati'.
PedroMachado
Merchant groups from different parts of the subcontinent, such as Chettis

and Chulias, maintained commercial networks that were spread across the
ocean. Though their relative importance in the waters of the Indian Ocean gen-
erally, and in those of the western Indian Ocean in particular, changed over time
(in relation to Hadhrami and Armenian merchants, for example), south Asian
merchant networks played a key integrative role in the economy of the Indian
Ocean and also contributed to its cosmopolitanism. 77 Gujarat especially served
as a 'linchpin' of the Indian Ocean commercial system through to the nineteenth
century. 78 Highly mobile Gujarati merchant networks were active throughout
the ocean during the period under review but from the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries until the mid-seventeenth century these networks focused on trade
with South-East Asia. From then, they came to focus on the western Indian
Ocean for reasons which have been well documented. 79
In East and east central Africa, Gujarati merchant networks were found along
the coast before the sixteenth century, 80 but it would appear that their contact
with the region became more regular and sustained only from this period. These
merchants were comprised predominantly of Vaniya and they were overwhelm-
ingly from or based in the coastal island entrepot ofDiu. 81 Vaniya networks came
to exert control over the textile trade from Gujarat to east central and south-east
Africa from the seventeenth century, and it was these merchants who organized
and financed the large importation of textiles in the eighteenth century that was
discussed previously. They dominated this trade and out-competed rivals with
77 Sugata Bose, 'Space and Time on the Indian Ocean Rim: Theory and History', in Leila
Tarazi Fawaz and Christopher A. Bayly (eds.), Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean
to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002), 374; Philip D. Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World History
(Cambridge, r984).
78 Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Oflmiirat and Tijiirat: Asian Merchants and State Power in the
Western Indian Ocean, r400-r750', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 37/ 4 (1995),
750-80.
79 For an elaboration, see for example the many writings of Ashin Das Gupta collected in Das
Gupta (ed.), World of the Indian Ocean Merchant; and also Arasaratnam, Maritime; and Om
Prakash's chapter in this volume. It is worth noting that these Gujarati networks were present in
the western Indian Ocean prior to the seventeenth century, as correspondence in Fustat from the
twelfth century indicating the presence of Hindu merchants there, Arabic sources from Yemen
referring frequently to the appearance of Indian merchants in the territory, and reports of
Gujaratis in Massawa in the Red Sea, attest.
80 S. I. Mudenge, 'Afro-Indian Relations before 1900: A Southeast Central African
Perspective', in Shanti Sadiq Ali and R.R. Ramchandani (eds.), India and the Western Indian
Ocean States (Bombay, 1981), 40; A. Rita-Ferreira, 'Mos;ambique e os Naturais da India
Portuguesa', in Luis de Albuquerque and Inacio Guerreiro (eds.), II Seminario Internacional de
Historia Indo-Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1985), 6r7.
81 Alpers, 'Gujarat'; Lobato, 'Relas;oes'. A useful recent overview can be found in M. N.
Pearson, 'Indians in East Africa: The Early Modern Period', in Rudrangshu Mukherjee and
Lakshmi Subramanian (eds.), Politics and Trade in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour of
Ashin Das Gupta (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1_998),227-49.
their knowledge of the African markets, their strong cloth procurement networks
in Gujarat and western India more widely, and their access to abundant finance
and credit. 82
Until the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Vaniya appear
to have concentrated their trade in Yemen and Hadramawt. The Vaniya ofDiu
were also active on the Red Sea coast (in Mocha and elsewhere), which provided
them with their principal markets in the early eighteenth century. 83 There was
a bifurcation of Vaniya commerce from Diu in the second half of the seven-
teenth century and one strand was connected to Yemen and Hadramawt while
the other connected to East and east central African coasts. The latter markets,
however, were secondary to those of the Red Sea.
Gujarati merchant trade to the Red Sea was effectively curtailed in the 1720s
with the 'persecution' ofVaniya merchants by the authorities in Mocha. These
merchants withdrew from the Red Sea trade and appear to have remitted to Diu
what money they could. 84 One historian has suggested that these merchants
'turned their money increasingly to internal enterprise. In particular they
invested an increasing proportion of their capital in financing the ruling classes
of the day.' 85 This appears to have been only partly the case, for Gujarati capital
returned to a position of great influence in the commercial worlds of the Red
Sea in the second half of the nineteenth century, which is a reminder of the
dynamism and adaptability of these networks. 86
A number of the Vaniya expelled from Mocha and elsewhere in the Red Sea
in the earJy eighteenth century redirected their trade to east central and south-
east Africa, where their commercial activities grew rapidly from the 173os.87
Vaniya merchants did continue to trade to destinations such as Mecca until the
end of the eighteenth century, 88 but voyages to the coast of present-day north-
ern, central, and southern Mozambique increasingly supplanted these former
destinations. 89 Later political upheavals in Yemen served to undermine its trade
and commercial relations with the hinterland, especially with regard to the
82 See Machado, 'Gujarati'.
83 Das Gupta, 'Indian Merchants'.
84 Ibid.
85 David Hardiman, 'Penetration of Merchant Capital in Pre-colonial Gujarat', in Ghanshyam
Shah (ed.), Capitalist Development: Critical Essays (Bombay, 1990), 38.

86 Richard Pankhurst, 'Indian Trade with Ethiopia, the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', Cahiers d'etudes africaines, 14/ 55 (1965),
455-97. An important Indian community of merchants was noted at Mocha around 1810 but
these merchants were probably Kachchhi Bhatiya. See Calvin H. Allen, 'The Indian Merchant
Community ofMasqat', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 44/J (1981),
39-53.
87 For details see, for example, Alpers, 'Gujarat'.
88 Historical Archives of Goa (hereafter HAG), CD 996; CD 999; and CD 1001.
89 HAG, CD 998; CD 999; CD IOOI.
PedroMachado
coffee trade, as well.90 As a consequence, trade with east central and south-east
Africa became enormously important for Vaniya commercial activities in the
western Indian Ocean in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In these African markets, the Vaniya faced competition from Portuguese state
and private interests. Responding to the growing power of Gujarati mercantile
interests and the expanding presence in western India of the British, who sought
to exert greater control over production centres from the middle of the eigh-
teenth century, Portuguese state officials attempted to establish textile produc-
tion in their territories in western India. These attempts failed for a number of
reasons, including the lack of adequate investment funds, but more important
was the opposition of Gujarati merchants whose independent networks of pro-
curement and supply functioned efficiently to deliver the range of cotton goods
traded to east central and south-east Africa. The large capital resources that the
Gujaratis possessed and the fact that they were entrenched in commercial net-
works in south Asia and Africa, which were underpinned by considerable finan-
cial and social capital, placed them in an extremely strong position in relation
to both state and private Portuguese and British interests in the second half of
the eighteenth century. 91
Vaniya merchants did lose ground in the nineteenth century in the western
Indian Ocean, and in East, east central, and south-east Africa more specifically,
but this was not at first-as is commonly perceived-the result of British (or
American) manufactures making inroads into regional markets. Rather, it was
due to the rapid rise in the western Indian Ocean of other wide-ranging south
Asian merchant networks, particularly the Kachchhi Bhatiya, whose expansion
in these markets from the late eighteenth century was stimulated by commercial
involvement in the expanding Omani economy. 92 These merchants, and their
textiles from Mandvi, proved successful in displacing the Vaniya from African
markets by the 1830s and 1840s. American, and then British manufactures did,
to be sure, undermine these textiles and offer stiff competition in Indian Ocean
markets but this was a later development and one, it is important to stress,
where south Asian capital was not subverted but continued to play a significant,
if transformed, role. 93
90
Michel Tuchscherer, 'Coffee in the Red Sea Area from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth
Century', in William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Steven Topik (eds.), The Global Coffee
Economy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, 1500--1989 (Cambridge, 2003), 57.
91 Details are provided in Machado, 'Gujarati'.
92 Allen, 'Indian Merchant Community', 41-5; and id., 'Sayyids, Shets and Sultans: Politics
and Trade in Masqat under the Al Bu Said, 1785-1914' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University
of Washington, 1978); Lakshmi Subramanian, Indigenous Capital and Imperial Expansion:
Bombay, Surat and the West Coast (New Delhi, 1996), 271-86; Reda M. Bhacker, Trade and
Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar: Roots of British Domination (London, 1992).
93
By pushing his analysis into the later nineteenth century and the period of colonial rule,
Bose is able to begin to show quite how true this was in the western Indian Ocean. Sugata Bose,
CONCLUSION
South Asian textiles-in particular cotton cloths from Gujarat-played a crit-

ical role in the social, cultural, economic, and political life of societies in the
western Indian Ocean. In this chapter I have focused on East, east central, and
south-east Africa, but the widespread 'use' of textiles in the region and more
broadly in the ocean reflects the remarkable utility of manufactures from the
subcontinent. Woven in myriad styles and patterns, these cloths were central
to material exchange in the ocean and were quite literally the threads that bound
consumers to one another on the one hand, and producers, consumers, and
merchants on the other. African consumer tastes affected intra-regional
exchange and influenced productive capacities across the Indian Ocean. This
process was mediated in critical ways by networks of Gujarati merchants whose
mobility and histories of circulation were central features of the ocean's past.
These merchants were integral for the translation of tastes from consumers to
producers throughout the period covered by this essay and they connected the
lives and livelihoods of south Asians, including spinners, weavers, and brokers,
with the lives of people beyond the subcontinent in intricate webs of materiality.
A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 2006).
See also Rajat Kanta Ray, 'Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the
Bazaar, 1800-1914', Modern Asian Studies, 29/3 (1995), 449-554.
9
JAPAN INDIANIZED
The Material Culture of Imported Textiles in Japan,
r550-r850
FUJITA KAYOKO
For the inhabitants of today's Japan, whose culture has been forever trans-
formed with western--or more accurately American-influence, it is difficult
to recall that the kimono (literally 'something worn') was an indispensable part
of Japanese everyday fashion until the 1960s. A portrait of a Japanese woman in
her kosode-style kimono can evoke nostalgia for the vanished tradition of good
old days. A close examination of Illustration 9. 1 reveals that the woman has been
'glamorized' with imported luxuries, including hairpins of tortoise shell from
South-East Asia, fabrics with flower and plant motifs (sarasa) and stripes
(shima) signs oflndian provenance, and cushions with checked patterns (koshi-
jima) again an Indian motif. When this woodblock print was produced in the
late Ed<) period (the end of the eighteenth/beginning of the nineteenth
century), contemporaries must have seen it as representing the height of
fashion.
When it comes to Japanese culture, the term 'Indianization' may appear inap-
propriate since pre-modern Japan, along with other east Asian states and regions,
had been under the potent cultural influence of China. And in the nineteenth
century Europeans and Americans became prominent in the China Sea area.
Nevertheless, an article of clothing with Indian motifs has come to be seen as a
'traditional' Japanese garment. By examining the import and consumption of
foreign cotton textiles this chapter investigates how, from the mid-sixteenth
century, trade shaped 'traditional' Japanese material culture. The trade in cotton
textiles in Tokugawa Japan is inseparable from the trade in silk yarn. Therefore,
my chapter considers not only imports of cottons, but also those of silk, wool, and
linen yarn and textiles. These goods were exchanged for metals-mostly gold,
copper, and in particular silver-through the two agencies authorized by the
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Global Economic History Network con-
ference on 'Meanings of Trade: Textiles and the World Economy, 1500-1820' (Pune, India,
18-20 December 2005). I would like to thank Tirthankar Roy, the conference organizer,
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Om Prakash, Giorgio Riello, and Kaoru Sugihara for their comments.
182 Kayoko Fujita
Illustration 9.1. 'La Femme Exotica' - On'atsuraeema zukushi Fukagawa sanjilsangend6

no gaku no uchi. Woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada. Early nineteenth century. Tobacco
and Salt Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
shogunate to trade with Japan, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and
Chinese maritime traders. An analysis of cotton goods in Japan shows that they
contributed to the shaping of Japanese 'traditional' cultural and social norms,
which continued to be influential until the modern period. I will focus on two
types of textiles: the shima-mono(striped or checked fabrics) and the sarasa(Indian
chintz and its imitations produced in Japan, South-East Asia, and Europe).
FOREIGN TRADE AND THE BEGINNING OF COTTON CULTIVATION
By the end of the sixteenth century, the cultivation, spinning, and weaving of
cotton had spread to various parts in the Kyushu and Honshu islands of the
Japanese archipelago and cotton began to replace ramie and hemp as the clothing
Imported Textilesin Japan 183
of common people. 1 Still, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,

cotton textiles from south and South-East Asia, and later Britain, continued to
be imported into Japan by European and Chinese traders. These foreign goods
influenced Japanese tastes in colour and design even while the consumption of
home-grown cottons slowly penetrated the daily lives of ordinary people both in
urban and rural areas, as Masayuki Tanimoto's chapter in this volume shows.
The strict trade policy introduced by the Tokugawa regime in the 1630s (which
is now seen as a variant of the Chinese haijinsystem or a state-controlled system
of foreign trade and diplomacy) 2 set Japan upon a peculiar path of cultural and
economic development until the mid-nineteenth century. From 1635 overseas
navigation by ordinary Japanese was strictly prohibited and contacts with foreign-
ers were permitted only through the 'four mouths' or gateways of Nagasaki (with
the Chinese and the Dutch), Tsushima (with the Kingdom of Korea), Satsuma
(with the Kingdom ofRyukyu), and Matsumae (with the Ainus in Ezo-chi). Only
Nagasaki was under shogun control. At the other three gateways, practical matters
concerning diplomacy and commerce were regulated by local lords, as a service
to the Tokugawa shogun, which made it difficult for the central government to
maintain tight control of commercial affairs in the peripheries. This chapter will
focus primarily on the trade at Nagasaki, which was the largest in volume, and is
mainly based on the analysis of Dutch commercial sources.
I THE END OF THE 'SILVER CENTURY':ESTABLISHING

AN INDIAN CONNECTION
Japan's overseas trade from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries

can be divided into two periods. In the first period, Japan was firmly incorpo-
rated into the early modern global trading system. Initially Japan exported silver
in exchange for Chinese silk. From the late 1630s the Dutch East India
Company introduced a new pattern in which Japanese silver was traded for
Indian and Persian silk yarn, which was followed by a large-scale import of
Indian cotton and silk fabrics into Japan. In the late seventeenth century the
Tokugawa state promulgated a series of edicts to reduce the outflow of silver,
beginning with the silver embargo of 1667. As a consequence, in the second
1 Nagahara Keiji, Choma, kinu, momenno shakai-shi (Tokyo, 2004), 216--17, 220-1, 230-62.
2 The set of strict regulations on foreign relations in Tokugawa Japan used to be called the
seclusion policy or sakoku in Japanese historiography up to the 1980s, in which the closed nature
of Japan to the outside world was overemphasized. Arano Yasunori's Kinsei Nihon to HigashiAjia
(Tokyo, 1988) successfully argues for a reconsideration of the nature of the sakoku policy in the
context of east Asian tradition and inter-state relations of the time. In English, see Arano
Yasunori, The Formation of a Japanocentric World Order', InternationalJournal of Asian Studies,
2/z (2005), 185-216.
Kayoko Fujita
l\00,01.10
500,000
•=ur..
D1iflrp1m
.fil(l,000 ---------------- ••UJ?ff
erd.i-c,
.l00,000 I------{
200,000
!00,000
1641 1650 lWl 167{1 l(fl'l 16MJ 1696 1706 PlO 1--rz" PJ-7 1747 !1.56 tTM 1776 PU 1197 Hmn
v.. ,
Figure 9.1. Value of the major items imported into Nagasaki by the VOC, 1641-1800.
Source:Teigiro Yamawaki, Kaigai Kosho-shi(Tokyo, 1978), Table 36, pp 218-19.
period Japan's foreign trade gradually contracted both in value and in volume
and the central government succeeded in reducing the outflow of metals. At the
same time the import-substituting production of primary and secondary com-
modities advanced in the country. In this second period, textile· imports
increased in importance because imports of silk yarn declined (Figure 9. 1).3
In the sixteenth century Japan was, alQngwith Spanish America, one of the
world's two major suppliers of silver. Mass production of Japanese silver
appears to have commenced in the 1520s, and much of the metal flowed to
China, the world's largest silver absorber, via an exchange of Chinese silk for
Japanese silver.
The Dutch East India Company introduced a new element into this trading
world. From the late years of the 1630s, and coinciding with the close of
the Potosi-Japan cycle of global silver flows,4 the VOC devoted its attention to
3 Figures 9.1 and 9.2 are based on Yamawaki Teijiro's analysis of account books, which is for
the moment the most comprehensive research on the VOC's fibre product trade in Tokugawa
Japan. Yamawaki Teijiro, Kaigai kosh6-shi(Tokyo, 1978), tables 35 and 36. The statistics here,
however, leave room for revision. For example, silk and cotton mixes do not form a separate cat-
egory in his tables. As for Bengali textile exports, see Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company
and the Economyof Bengal, 1630-1720 (Princeton, 1985), table 5.3. I am currently conducting a
long-term statistical analysis of the VOC'sJapan trade based on the commercial correspondences
of the VOC executives and account books, and will present updated statistics in the future.
4 Flynn and Giraldez argue in their recent works that all heavily populated continents became
deeply connected by the flows of silver during the 'Potosi/Japan Silver Cycle' (1540-1640) and
that the high price of silver in China finally..neclined to world levels at the end of the cycle due to
ImportedTextilesinJapan
establishing a market for Indian silks and cottons in Japan. The VOC shipped
Japanese silver from the Hirado and Nagasaki factories (1609-40; 1641-1859)
to the Taiwan factory (1625-62), its base for commercial activities in east Asia.
From there a considerable portion of the silver was forwarded along with
Chinese gold to the west of Malacca to finance the Company's intra-Asian
trade. 5
This represented a departure from the China-centred economic system of
east Asia, which was based on the Chinese world order and the tributary trade
system, and which Japan had been a part of for centuries. It also represented a
departure in terms of trade items. Since the opening of the Iwami silver mine
circa 1526 the staples of maritime trade in the East China Sea had been Chinese
silk and Japanese silver.6 Although the Portuguese had imported Indian cottons
into Japan from the mid-sixteenth century, Japan's textile industry remained
largely independent of the Indian Ocean economic trading world until the
beginnings of this new voe trade in the second quarter of the seventeenth
century. 7
In 1655, the Tokugawa government introduced direct trade (aitai shihfJ)
between Japanese and foreign traders, which resulted in higher import prices
and a larger outflow of metals. The immediate effect was a rapid growth in
imports of high-quality Bengali silk yarn in the period between 1656 and 1672.
At the same time, textile imports also rose by 78 per cent between 1650 and
the influx,ofthe metal from the world into China. See Dennis 0. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez,
'Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century', Journal of
WorldHistory, 13/z (2002), 391-427.
5 Silver exports were standardized as choginor schuijtzilver with So% of purity in 1636, and
the prohibition of silver exports was promulgated by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1667. According
to my calculations, 71.9°/oof the total amount of silver (558 out of777 tons) exported by the VOC
between 1636 and 1667 was directed to Taiwan. Kayoko Fujita, 'In the Twilight of the Silver
Century: A Re-examination of Dutch Metal Trade in the Asian Maritime Trade Networks',
Global History and Maritime Asia Working and DiscussionPaper (published by the Research
Cluster World System and Maritime Asia, Osaka), 1 (2005), table 1.
6 For the theoretical frameworkcofQing China's tributary trade system.and its silvl!.rabsorp-
tion, see, for example, Hamashita Takeshi, 'Chugoku no gin kyushuryoku to choko boeki kankei',
in Takeshi Hamashita and Heita Kawakatsu (eds.), Ajia kfJeki-kento Nihon kfJgyfJka1500---1900
(Tokyo, 1991), 33-41.
7 For a more comprehensive analysis of the changes in the places of origin of silk yarns that the
VOC brought to Japan (namely China, Tonkin, and.Bengal), see P. W. Klein, 'De J.'011kinees-
Japanse zijdehandel van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie en het inter-Aziatische verkeer
in de 17e eeuw', in Willem Frijhoff and Minke Hiemstra (eds.), Bewogenen bewegen:de historicus
in het spanningsveldtusseneconomieen cultuur (Tilburg, 1986), 152-78. Om Prakash, in his inves-
tigation of the various intra-Asian trade routes, demonstrated a close correlation between the
VOC's silk yarn and textiles exports from Bengal and precious metal and copper exports from
Japan, both of which grew rapidly between 1656 and 1672. Prakash, Dutch East India Company,
nS-41.
186 Kayoko Fujita
TABLE 9.1. Textile Imports to Nagasaki by the VOC in 1672 (in taels)
Cotton Silk Wool Total
Bengal Taels 28,034 9,424 0 37,458
Pieces 15,304 4,950 0 20,254
Coromandel Taels 98,064 0 0 98,064
Pieces 31,270 0 0 31,270
Gujarat Taels 7,163 0 0 7,163
Pieces 17,171 0 0 17,171
Cochin Taels 3,903 0 0 3,903
Pieces 1,315 0 0 1,315
Tonkin Taels 0 29,146 0 29,146
Pieces 0 9,886 0 9,886
Netherlands Taels 0 0 9,153 9,153
Pieces 0 0 133 133
Total Taels 137,164 38,570 9,153
Pieces 66,060 14,836 133
Source: Yamawaki, Kaigai k6sh6-shi,table 34, pp. 210-12.
1672. This increase was due primarily to the ninefold increase in imports of
cotton textiles, mainly from the Coromandel Coast (Figure 9.1 and Table 9.1).
The novelty of this trade cannot be overemphasized. For the first time Indian
textiles were sold in sizeable quantities in Japanese markets and at prices that
made them accessible to a wide range of inhabitants of the archipelago. A list of
VOC textile imports for 1672 shows that the bulk of cotton and silk textiles from
India consisted of striped or checked patterns (27,207 pieces out of 81,029
pieces; 33.6 per cent) and printed and painted textiles such as chintz (16,819
pieces; 20.8 per cent). 8 This is a remarkable contrast from the textiles imported
from China. In 1682 more than 90 per cent of the Chinese cloth imported into
Japan was plain or ribbed fabrics, gold or silver brocades, and fabrics with
inwrought figures,9 In that same year, thirteen Chinese ships brought silk or
cotton textiles with striped or checked patterns (11,171 pieces) and diverse sorts
8 Yamawaki, Kaigai kosho-shi,table 34, 210-12.
9 No records of Chinese import goods between 1666 and 1682 are available. The production
places of sarasathat Chinese ships imported cannot be identified. Nagazumi Yoko, Tosenyusyut-
sunyu surytJichiran, 1637-1833nenfukugen tosenkamotsu-aratame-chtJ I kihan nimotsu kaiwatari-
chtJ(Tokyo, 1987), 96-roo. In 1711, Chinese ships brought 403,008 pieces of textiles in total
(366,9 ro pieces of silk textiles, 7,342 pieces of cotton and linen textiles, 29,556 pieces of woollen
textiles, and 6,200 mixed cotton and woollen textiles) along with 502.76 piculs of diverse sorts of
silken threads. There were also one striped cotton textile (gigan-jima;Indian gingham cloth?),
1,680 printed cotton textiles (katatsuki momen)and 395 sarasa(Indian chintz or its imitation pro-
duced in South-East Asia?). These were most likely produced in India and forwarded via China.
Yamawaki Teijiro, Nagasaki no tojin boeki (Tokyo, 1964), 109-12.
Imported Textiles in Japan
of sarasa(8,478 pieces) in total. A VOC report on the China trade reveals that
the striped and checked textiles were manufactured in India, mainly in
Coromandel and Bengal, and these items were purchased by Chinese traders at
one of the emporia in South-East or east Asia (i.e. Batavia and Guangdong). In
one case, Indian Muslim merchants brought Indian textiles via Ayutthaya on a
Siamese ship. 10 The Dutch and Chinese merchants provided a diversity of cloth
choice for Japanese consumers in the mid-Edo period, which came to shape the
cloth preferences of all social strata under the Tokugawa regime. This issue will
be discussed in greater detail in a subsequent section.
CLOSING THE DOOR: THE SIL VER EMBARGO AND

THE RECOINAGES OF CURRENCIES
The year 1667 was pivotal for both foreign and economic policy in late early
modern Japan. The stemming of the outflow of silver and the promotion oflocal
manufacturing to replace imports were of fundamental importance from that
year. For the first time, the central government in Edo became aware of the
importance of silver supplies for domestic economic activity. In addition, the
production of silver in Japan began to decrease from the mid-seventeenth
century, if not earlier.
To curb the outflow of silver in 1667, the Tokugawa government prohibited
exports of the metal by both Chinese and Dutch traders. The VOC managed
the tran'sition smoothly and switched to the export of gold and copper from
Japan. Unlike the Chinese, who made a plea to Japanese authorities for the
resumption of silver exports (which was permitted some years later), the voe
had already in the 1640s and 1650s shifted the focus of their commercial activ-
ities from the silver-oriented China to markets west of Malacca, where the sales
of gold and copper were profitable.
In 1672 the trade system in Nagasaki was completely reformed and a new
one, called shihfJshfJhfJor taxation trade, was instituted in which the prices of all
imports were decided by the office of the Nagasaki governor. The price of gold
was raised 11 which led to a decline in the Japanese export of the metal to Bengal.
In 1674 Japanese gold coins accounted for 90 per cent of the value of precious
metal imports to Bengal. In 1676 this figure had fallen to 42 per cent. 12 These
reforms also led to a steep decline in imports ofBengali silk yarn to Japan, which
can be seen in Figure 9. 1.
In 1685, the Tokugawa government placed a quantitative restriction of
10 John Guy, Woven Cargoes:Indian Textilesin the East (London, 1988), 165-6.
11 Suzuki Yasuko, Kinsei nichiranboekino kenkyu (Kyoto, 2004), 240.
12 Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 132.
188 Kayoko Fujita
900,000 taels on Japan's foreign trade (600,000 taels for Chinese traders; 300,000
taels for the VOC; and 40,000 taels for the VOC personnel) in order to reduce
the export of precious metals, which increased after the Q!ng officially permit-
ted Chinese overseas navigation and trade in 1684. Additional restrictions on
trade also effectively reduced imports of costly sil~ yarn, including the well-
received Bengali silk. In 1695, the Tokugawa government reduced the purity
of gold coins from 84.29 per cent to 57.36 per cent 13 and in 1697 forced the
Dutch to purchase these coins at the same price as the older purer coins which
led to voe losses. 14 In 17I 5, additional restrictions were issued on the com-
merce of the Chinese and the Dutch: the number of Chinese trading vessels that
could call on Japan every year was limited to thirty and Dutch ships were set at
two per year.
Because of these regulations, Om Prakash has argued, Japan's role as a sup-
plier of precious metal to the voe ended for all intents and purposes in the sev-
enteenth century. 15 In the eighteenth century, the voe extracted meagre
profits from textiles, Javanese sugar, and dyewood (sappan) from Sumbawa
Island (Figure 9. 1 ). And the last recorded Dutch sale of Bengali silk at Nagasaki
was in 1747. The trade of Chinese merchants also suffered in the eighteenth
century as the demand for silk declined due to expanding Japanese production
of silk yarn. A decline in Japanese copper production, which paid for Chinese
imports, compounded the difficulties of Chinese traders. The last export of
silver to China was recorded in 1763.
At the same time, the Chinese government in Beijing set tighter regulations
on foreign trade. The Qing government issued a prohibition on maritime nav-
igation to South-East Asia in 1717 (which was lifted in 1727). In 1757, the
Chinese authorities restricted western vessels to the province of Guangdong,
which led to greater government control over China's maritime commerce as
well as the reconfiguration of overseas trade routes. Ningbo and Shanghai
became the gateways for the trade with Japan, Xiamen with South-East Asia,
and Guangdong with the European traders. As a result imports of South-East
Asian sappanwood (a typical natural dye for red colour), which had to transit
Xiamen or Guangdong and then Ningbo or Shanghai in the Lower Y angzi,
dropped sharply and the VOC supplemented short falls of sappan supply with
stuff purchased from Chinese traders. 16
Another visible change in the trade of east Asia in the eighteenth century was
the growing quantities of woollen textiles from Europe that were carried to
13 The purity of silver currency was at the same time reduced from 80 to 64%. In the recoinage
in 1706, it was debased once more to 50%.
14 Suzuki, Kinsei nichiranb6eki no kenkyu, 242.
15 Prakash, Dutch East India Company, 135-41.
16 Shimada Ryuto, 'Tosen raiko ruto no henka to kinsei nihon no kokusan daitaika', Waseda
EconomicStudies, 49 (1999), 65-7.

Imported Textiles in Japan 189
Nagasaki on board Chinese vessels. 17 Despite this new development, cotton and
silk textiles were consistently the most popular import items in eighteenth-
century Japan because of their quality and variety. Imports of these goods con-
tinued, even after the increase in their manufacture in Japan.
SHIMA: INDIAN MOTIFS IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Tokugawa Japan's policies on foreign trade at Nagasaki sought to restrict the

outflow of metals and the inflow of silk yarn. Seen from this perspective, cotton
textile imports were a very minor matter when it came to the trade imbalances
of the nation. Figure 9.2 shows that although there was steady demand for
cotton textiles through the whole of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
they became a leading item in the VOC's textile import trade only in the latter
half of the seventeenth century. In contrast with silk yarn and textiles, which
were primarily consumed by the ruling class (aristocrats and samuraior warrior
class), cotton textiles brought revolutionary changes in the material culture
of non-elite Japanese. Two types of imported cotton textiles, the shima-mono
160,000
140,000
•silk
120,000 1--- o-
I •wuul
1---
- 9tm.m
80,000 ~
-
6l~UUO ,-...
-
40,000 >-- - -
20,000
'
I Il
..._ ...._ -
II
- '--
I
-- •
I I I l
•
n1 IJ
I
~
•
1641 1050 1660 1670 16"1'2 1636 H.t<Jl), 1706 1716 11"21 17)7 P47 1'"'56 1766 1776 HM 17'tJ1 HIOO
Y=
Figure 9.2. Value of the VOC's textile imports into Nagasaki, 1641-1800.
Source: Yamawaki,Kaigai Kosho-Shi, Table 35, pp 216-17.
17 Ishida Chihiro, Nichiran b6eki no shiteki kenkyu (Tokyo, 2004), 150. This book offers a
detailed analysis of the VOC's textile import trade in late Tokugawa Japan from the end of the
eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. It should make a major contribution to the study of
global textile trade and its meaning for local societies after it has been translated into English.
190 Kayoko Fujita
(textiles with striped or checked patterns) and the sarasa(Indian cotton textiles
printed and painted with exotic motifs, and similar textiles produced in South-
East Asia as well as England under the Indian influence), became the most
widely demanded among Japanese common folk in the Edo period.
Inspired by cotton and silk textiles with stripes and checks imported by the
Portuguese and later the Dutch, inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago experi-
enced unprecedented changes in the design of their daily clothes. As industrial
designer and art historian Kinoshita R yuji observed, until the early Edo period,
clothes with broad horizontal stripes were depicted in Japanese visual art works
more than those with vertical stripes. 18 The Namban by6bu,or folding screens on
which the N amban-jinor the Portuguese missionaries and traders were painted in
Japanese style, are known for their lively depiction of towns and harbours full of
foreign traders, Catholic priests, exotic trading items and animals, galleons, and
the like. Hundreds of foreigners in the screen, many of whom wear European-style
clothing made oflndian fabrics with stripes and checked patterns, reveal the deep
impression that these exotic designs made upon the people of Japan. Stimulated
by the example of imports, Japanese farmers and craftsmen started producing
cotton and silk textiles in a variety of striped and checked patterns from the sev-
enteenth century. 19 In 1736, striped cotton textiles (706,600 ry6 in silver for
698,747 pieces) were the second most important commodity in terms of value
shipped from the central market in Osaka (9,579,900 ryo).20
Like 'china' (porcelain) and 'japan' (lacquer ware) in English, striped textiles
imported to Japan bore their place of origin in their names. The Japanese in the
Edo period called luxury foreign-made cotton textiles and their home-made
imitations with stripes (shima) bengara-(-jimaor -g6shi) (the striped or checked
cloth from Bengal), santome(-jima) (the striped cloth from Sao Thome), and
matafu(-jima) (the striped cloth from Madras). When the production of
santome-style cloth (wa-santomeor Japanese santome)was initiated in Kyoto and
other places, people called genuine santometextiles from India t6-santomeor t6-
zan-literally 'Chinese santome' (To or Tang China symbolized a far place in
the Japanese language). These terms were applied to British-made striped tex-
tiles in the nineteenth century as well. 21
The term shima itself has an exotic provenance. Researchers generally agree
18 Kinoshita Ryuji, Nihon no mon'yo: Sono rekishi(Tokyo, 2006), 317-18.
19 For the cultural stimuli of imported striped cotton textiles on the emerging Japanese cotton
industry, see Sanpei Koko, Senshoku no rekishi (Tokyo, 1966), 155.
20 The list of commodities transported from the Osaka market is as follows: rapeseed oil
(27.1%), striped woven cotton textiles (7.4°/o), copper for exportation from Nagasaki (6.9°/o),
white cotton textiles (6.5%), cotton seed oil (6.4%), and second-hand clothing (6.3%). Shinbo
Hiroshi and Hasegawa Alcira, 'Tokugawa keizai no kozo', in Hayami Akira and Miyamoto Mataro
(eds.), Keizai shakai no seiritsu(Tokyo, 1988), 240--45.
21
Ishida, Nichiran boekino shiteki kenkyil, 156---7.
Imported Textiles in Japan
that it was only after the arrival of the Portuguese that the term shima, which
meant an 'island', acquired a new meaning of'stripes'. 22 Taking taffachelas(in
Dutch) or certain types of striped textiles produced in Coromandel as an
example, Ishida Chihiro explains the process through which the word shima
took on the second meaning of'stripes'. 23 In pre-modern Japanese usage, oku
implied a very remote part of the world such as India, which was far beyond the
borders of Sino-centred east Asia. Thus when tajfachelasfabrics, which were
brought from India by European trading ships, started to arrive on the market
in unprecedented quantities, Japanese consumers called the striped cloths
okushimaor 'a distant island', probably with admiration for the place of produc-
tion where they were never allowed to travel.
From the mid-eighteenth century, an urban culture flourished in Edo (today
Tokyo). Edo was the shogunal capital city of a million inhabitants and it sur-
passed the old emporium of Osaka to become the economic centre of Tokugawa
Japan. In the capital, a new form of visual art, ukiyoeor multicoloured woodblock
printing, was established to meet the aesthetic demands of the prosperous urban
population. In a ukiyoeprint by Suzuki Harunobu which depicts the latest mate-
rial condition of the floating world or ukiyo (Illustration 9.2), we can observe that,
for both men and women, kimonos of home-made cotton fabrics with narrow
vertical strips began to occupy a central place in the fashion culture of the city. 24
The Indian motifs of stripes were not found only in the urban societies of
merchants and craftsmen in the Edo period, however. A doll that once belonged
to a Japanese farming family, which comes from the collection of Philipp Frantz
von Sie~old who was physician to the VOC factory in Nagasaki between 1823
and 1830, is attired in a checked cotton textile (Illustration 9.3). Tanimura
Masayuki's chapter in this volume reveals that in some regions of the archipel-
ago cotton accounted for a surprisingly small fraction of peasant clothing as late
as the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the doll suggests that from a cul-
tural point of view striped and checked cottons were considered part of peasant
material culture in the time of von Siebold. His collection contains hundreds of
other samples of cotton textiles (Illustrations 9.4, 9.5), which indicates that
stripes and checks oflndian origin had been integrated into the everyday life of
Japanese commoners on the eve of the opening of the country to western
powers. These cotton fabrics must have been produced in rural areas and con-
sumed by townspeople and upper-class farmers as clothing and as coverings for
22 According Shinmura lzuru, the earliest case in which the term shima was used for the
meaning of 'stripes' can be found in NippoJisho or the Portuguese dictionary of the Japanese lan-
guage compiled by Jesuit missionaries published in 1603. See Ishida's etymological analysis of
the term okushimain Ishida, Nichiran biJekino shiteki kenkyu, 158----<).
23
Ibid. l 57----9.
24 Kinoshita, Nihon no mon'yiJ,322-35.
192 Kayoko Fujita
Illustration 9.2. 'The new urban fashion culture of the mid Edo period' - Uchiwa-uri
[A fan seller]. Woodblock print by Suzuki Harunobu, Mid-Edo period (the mid-eighteenth
century). Edo Tokyo Museum, Tokyo, Japan. Image: Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for
History and Culture Image Archives.
Illustration 9.3. A stereotypical image of the peasant oflate traditional Japan: 'Dranken Boer'
(Drunken farmer). Doll, 1823-30. Collection of Philipp Franz von Siebold,
© National Museum ofEnthology, Leiden I. 1595.
Illustration 9-4- Sample pieces of hand-woven cotton fabrics with various striped and
checked patterns. 1823-30. Collection of Philipp Franz von Siebold.
© National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden 1.3119.
194 Kayoko Fujita
Illustration 9.5. A sample piece of hand-woven and chemically-dyed cotton

fabric with striped patterns. Second half of the nineteenth century.
The Takahashi family collection, Warabi City Museum.
cushions and futons. Some of these textiles may have reached rural areas as
second-hand goods and been used in the households of ordinary farmers.
SARASA: DOMESTICATION OF EXOTICS AND A NEW PATTERN OF

INTER-ST ATE TRADE
Illustration 9.6 depicts how Japanese people were fascinated by the sarasa or
multicoloured Indian textiles with exotic motifs brought by the Portuguese
traders who first arrived in the archipelago in the mid-sixteenth century. Along
the busy street, shops of imported goods stand side by side and a young Japanese
saleslady-proudly dressing up in imported fabrics from top to toe-is selling
textile fabrics of the sarasastyle while curiously watching foreigners on the busy
street. After the expulsion of Catholic Portuguese traders in 1639, the
Protestant Dutch of the VOC succeeded to the position of providers of these
sorts of consumer goods from lndia,Java, and Europe, whose trade they almost
completely monopolized along with their Chinese business rivals.
Due to its shorter supply, higher price, and the greater technical difficulty of
imitation, sarasacloth was used in different ways from shima-style textiles. In
addition, sumptuary laws prohibited ordinary people from wearing upper gar-
ments of colourful imported fabrics. As a consequence, sarasawas often valued
in small pieces, not as a whole kimono garment, and was carefully hidden to
Illustration 9.6. 'Selling textile imports'. Part of the Namban byobu (folding screen with
scenes with the Portuguese), by Kano Naizen. Late sixteenth century.
Idemitsu Museum, Tokyo.
avoid attention. For example, little sarasa pieces were commonly used for
making pouches, such as a wallet (kamiire), a purse (kinchaku), a medicine or
seal case (inr6),or a tobacco pouch (tabako-ire).25 A kimono of a dark seemingly
solid colour (as the vertical stripes on it were microscopically small), accented
with small but colourful imported textile goods, was the chic style of the late
Edo period.
The sarasa textiles were also introduced into the sad{}(literally 'the way of
tea'), the Japanese tea ceremony shaped by Zen Buddhism, which was estab-
lished as an art by Sen-no-Rikyu in the late sixteenth century. Eye-catching
sarasafabrics were used for making pouches (shifuku), crepe wrappers (fukusa),
and mounting hanging scrolls (kakejiku). Although today the tea ceremony
is considered a Japanese traditional art in which wabi or elegant and quiet
25 Ogasawara Sae (ed.), Sarasa (Tokyo, 2005), 130--3.
Kayoko Fujita
simplicity is prized, in earlier periods the ceremony rooms were colourfully

appointed. 26
Tie-dyeing and embroidery were the most common techniques for produc-
ing designs in textiles at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The impor-
tation oflndian printed and painted textiles reshaped the art of dyeing in Japan.
Although a direct connection is difficult to establish from the documentary evi-
dence, Kinoshita Ryuji has suggested that the Yuzen-zome (Yuzen dyeing)
in Kyoto, a hand-painted dyeing art that arose in the first half of the Tokugawa
period, was stimulated by the encounter with printed and painted Indian
textiles. 27
As in many parts of the globe in the early modern period, the Japanese also
tried to copy colourful Indian cotton textiles. As early as 1638, the sarasa,along
with other vegetable-dyed monotone fabrics, was reported to be a speciality
product of the Yamashiro (today a part of Kyoto) and other provinces in the
Kinai region (roughly Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara). In the seventeenth century this
region was home to the most technologically advanced weaving and dyeing
industries inJapan. 28 The process of imitation and adaptation was not smooth,
however.Japan had long benefited from the cultural and technological achieve-
ments of China. With the haijin policy of the 1630s only select diplomatic
envoys and traders were allowed to set foot in the territory of the Tokugawa
shogunate. As a consequence, Japan could no longer rely upon Chinese crafts-
men to transfer advanced technologies and skills. Direct technology transfer
from India was unprecedented and, under these circumstances, out of the ques-
tion. Therefore, the transfer of weaving and dyeing technologies relied upon
manuals imported from China and their more popular Japanese translations, as
well as on the inventiveness and unrelenting efforts ofJapanese manufacturers,
craftsmen, and farmers. 29
A major Japanese invention, which highlights a difference between
Japanese sarasa and Indian chintz (and its imitations produced in diverse
places in the early modern world), was the use of paper stencils. Multi-layered
papers bonded by persimmon tannin were cheap, light, suitable for fine pat-
terns, and reusable, which made them perfect for mass production. 30 Paper
26 In China, where the tea ceremony was first established, the sarasa textile was never used for
ritual tea making. Tsukuda Ikki, 'Cha to sarasa', in Ogasawara (ed.), Sarasa, 110--21.
27 Kinoshita, Nihon no mon'yo, 301.
28 Ibid., based on volume iv of Kefuki-gusa, published in Kan'ei 15 (1638).
29 Christian Daniels examined the patterns of the transfer of manufacturing technology from
pre-modern China to east and South-East Asian countries, taking sugar production as an
example. See Christian Daniels, 'Jushichi hachi seiki Higashi Teman Ajia ikinai boeki to seisan
gijutsu iten: seito gijutsu o rei to shite', in Hamashita Takeshi and Kawakatsu Heita (eds.), Ajia
koeki-ken to Nihon kogyoka 1500-1900 (Tokyo, 1991), 69-102.
°3
Kinoshita, Ni hon no mon'yo , 31 S.
stencils were not just used for the manufacture of sarasa but also applied to
other styles of dyeing in Japan. Kinoshita suggests that sarasaproducers chose
inexpensive paper stencils for mass production of cotton prints for common-
ers, while the labour-intensive technique of resist dyeing with hand-drawn
colours was incorporated in the Yuzen-style silk dyeing for the upper ranges
of society.
In his Wakan sansaizue (literally 'Japanese and Chinese illustrations of the
three worlds'), a Japanese encyclopedia published in 1712, Terashima Ryoan,
a physician of Osaka, describes the quality of sarasaof his time:
It may be assumed that sarasa is a textile made with western cloth with flower motifs
coloured with madder. It was initially derived from India and Siam. Nowadays we call
this kind of textile from China kara-sarasaor Chinese sarasa.Many sarasa-style dyed
prints are produced in Japan today, but flower motifs easily fade when washed. 31
Fixing vegetable dyes on the cotton cloth was a difficult technique and Japanese
manufacturers had still not achieved success at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. Nevertheless, through trial and error, Japanese craftsmen strived for
better quality and greater quantity of production to satisfy the growing demand
for inexpensive sarasa-styletextiles from the rising social stratum of townspeo-
ple who possessed purchasing power and refined taste. Sarasa benran (Sarasa
Manual), the first technical guidebook to sarasa production which was pub-
lished in 1778, gives the use of persimmon tannin in the finishing process as an
effective method to make colours more permanent. 32 One of the four sarasa
makers in fhe capital of Edo proudly declared in an advertisement in the shop-
ping guide Edo kaimonohitori an'nai (literally 'Edo Shopping Guide for Lone
Travellers', 18m) that 'our products never fade'. 33 In reality, however, surviv-
ing sarasa textiles of the late Edo period reveal that inferior-quality cotton
fabrics were used for mass-produced home-made sarasaand that printed and
painted colours lost their brightness. 34 At the end of the Edo period, anyway,
the 'domestication' process of the once exotic sarasawas completed and its pro-
duction became widespread in the Japanese archipelago, as can be seen from the
term wa-sarasaor Japanese sarasawhich appeared for the first time in Morisada
manko, a book on customs and habits in the late Tokugawa period (1853).
It is said that copying foreign sarasawas initiated in the Nabeshima domain
in north Kyushu, as were several other new manufacturing industries, such as
the porcelain industry in Arita, which was set up with craftsmen abducted from
Korea in 1597 by the Japanese ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Tsuranuki Hidetaka
31 Terashima Ryoan, Wakan sansai zue, vol. xxvii, Silk Textiles, article 36, 'Sarasa', in Endo
Shizuo (ed.), Nihon shomin seikatsu shiryo shusei (Tokyo, 1980), xxviii. 433.
32 Kinoshita, Nihon no mon'y, 302.
33 Nakagawa Hozando (ed.), Edo kaimono hitori an'nai (Tokyo, [1810] 1972), 289.
34 Kinoshita, Nihon no mon'yo, 302-3.
Kayoko Fujita
identifies eleven production centres of wa-sarasaestablished from the 1630s to

the 1860s. Most of the centres were located in provincial capitals and populous
cities such as Osaka, Sakai, Edo, Hiroshima, and Tottori where there was
demand from discerning city dwellers. By contrast, the production of Shibori-
zome (tie dyeing), which utilized simpler techniques, developed mainly in towns
and villages in rural areas. 35
Nagasaki, a port city that had long attracted European and Chinese traders,
is also identified as the birthplace of Japanese sarasa. It is not known exactly
when this manufacturing was set up in Osaka, but the hand-painted kin-sarasa
(golden sarasa)of the city was well known in the Meiwa era ( 1764-72 ). In addi-
tion, sarasadyeing thrived in four out of the five gokashoitowappucities (the five
governmental cities that were permitted the monopoly ofraw silk imports).
These were Edo, Kyoto, Sakai, and Nagasaki. 36 This fact indicates that access
to imported raw materials and manufactures, as well as continuous cultural
stimuli, were the crucial factors for the development of the cotton industry. For
example, the characteristics of Nagasaki sarasareflect the city's unique position
in Japan. The material is a Chinese cotton cloth made of thick and coarse yarn.
Its brownish red colour is from South-East Asian sappanwood, a red dye which
was one of the most important import cargoes on the Dutch and Chinese ships
of the latter half of the eighteenth century. The colour resulted from the crafts-
men's efforts to imitate the bright madder red oflndian chintz. In the detailed
lacy square motif, we see a strong reminder oflndian sensibilities, which were
also incorporated into European-made calicoes. However, the motif in the
middle, two facing dragons, reveals the influence of the Chinese artistic tradi-
tion (Illustration 9. 7).
It is noteworthy that semi-processed cotton fabrics imported from China
were used for textile manufacturing in Nagasaki. In 1711, Chinese ships
brought to Nagasaki 7,342 pieces of cotton and linen textiles including 3,989
undyed cotton textiles (su-momen).Yamawaki Teijin) assumes that the unfin-
ished cotton goods were produced in Suzhou, Jiangsu, and brought for dyeing
and then sale in Nagasaki. The finishing process was not done in the manufac-
turing districts of China, which possessed more advanced technology, because
the tastes of Japanese consumers were volatile. 37 Some fraction of the plain
Chinese cotton cloths was sent to dye houses in the city centre to make sarasa
prints. It should also be noted that Nagasaki sarasawas in general not qualified
as first-rate sarasaby contemporaries. Because of the low quality of the cotton
35 Tsuranuki Hidetaka, Nihon kinsei senshoku-gy6hatten no kenkyu (Kyoto, 1994), 525-6 and
541-2.
36 Ibid.
37 Yamawaki, Nagasaki no t6jin b6eki, 232-3. Unfortunately, Yamawaki does not provide the
source for this information.

Illustratiop 9.7. 'Nagasaki sarasa:the fusion of Indian and Chinese styles'. First half of the
nineteenth century. Collection ofKonjaku Nishimura Corporation, Kyoto.
material and the dark colours used in the dyeing, it was distributed mainly in
Nagasaki and its vicinity, and was used not for clothing but for decorative uses,
including furoshiki (wrapping cloth) and covers for a futon or a zabuton
(cushion). It is not clear why sarasa makers in Nagasaki used Chinese textiles
instead of cotton cloth produced in the Kyushu district. The use of Chinese
cottons for Nagasaki sarasa was exceptional, however, since the eighteenth-
century Tokugawa shogunate maintained strict limits on its foreign trade and
an almost autarkic economic system.
As fashion-conscious consumers in urban Japan relentlessly sought new
trends, there was a constant demand for Indian cotton textiles as top-end lux-
uries. The import of such cotton textiles continued even after the establishment
of a domestic cotton manufacturing industry in the eighteenth century. 38 By
the 1830s, however, changes in Dutch trade with Japan led to the end of the
import oflndian chintzes (sarasa)and silk textiles (kaiki).39 Increased imports
38 Ishida, Nichiran boekinoshiteki kenkyu, r56.
39 Even after the bankruptcy of the VOC in r799, the Dutch were the only Europeans who
200 Kayoko Fujita
Illustration 9.8. Bunsei ku-nen, !nu ku-gatsu, !nu Komo mochiwatari tanmonokirehon-cho
(Sample book of textiles imported by the Dutch in the Year of the Dog, the ninth month of
the ninth year of the Bunsei era). 1826. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
of European woollen textiles and from 1813 imports of British cotton textiles
led to further shifts in Japanese textile consumption. 40 The importation of
British textiles stemmed from the handover of Dutch settlements in India,
Malacca, and the Malay Peninsula to Great Britain under the conditions of the
Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. From that point, Dutch traders sold larger quan-
tities of British textiles to the Japanese market. This shift from Indian to
European cottons is evident in sample books of textiles imported by Dutch and
Chinese ships to Nagasaki (Tanmonokirehon-cho), which were compiled between
1799 and 1859 (Illustration 9.8). 41
A ukiyoe print by Kubo Sh unman illustrates the textile culture of the late Edo
period: young men and women are dressed in light summer cotton clothing of
varieclshima textiles and sarasa-type and tie-dyed prints for a banquet at the
were officially allowed to navigate to and trade in Japan until the Treaty of Amity and Commerce
between the United States and Japan was signed in 1858, following the USA-Japan Treaty of
Peace and Amity in 1854.
40
Ishida, Nichiran boeki no shiteki kenkyil, 222-7.
41
Ogasawara Sae, 'Yunyu tanmono ga kataru Indo sarasa no seisui', in Nagazumi Yoko (ed.),
'Sakoku' o minaosu (Tokyo, 1999), 151-4.
Imported Textiles in Japan 20I
Illustration 9.9. 'The height of urban fashion culture oflate traditional Japan' -A party in
'Shikian' Restaurant at Nakasu. Woodblock print by Kubo Shunman, 1787-88.
. British Museum, London.
I
Shiki-an ('four seasons pavilion'), which was located on the Sumida River in
the city of Edo (Illustration 9.9). The wealth of the capital is reflected in the
rows of warehouses that are visible in the background. In the eighteenth
century, Edo consolidated its position as a thriving hub of commerce, handi-
craft, and fashion and it began to overtake Osaka as the economic centre, and
Kyoto as the cultural centre, of Japan.
The Japanese fondness for sarasa did not disappear with the arrival of
western technology and fashion in the second half of the nineteenth century.
For example, a man's undergarment of the Meiji or Taisho periods (1868-
1926), made from thirteen sorts of European sarasa-style fabrics which were
probably imported in the late Edo period (c.r83os-185os), reveals the care with
which a Japanese art lover in the modern period treasured small pieces of exotic
textiles, much as his eighteenth-century ancestors had (Illustration 9.rn). 42
42 It is known that several under-robes of this type were tailored for the same client, an owner
of a western antique shop in Kobe during the Meiji-Taisho periods. These items were made of
dozens of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century imported and home-produced shimaand sarasa
pieces. They are now preserved at the Kobe City Museum. See also Guy, Woven Cargoes,169,
ill. 233.
202 Kayoko Fujita
Illustration 9. IO. Kikko ni rokuryosei-monnuiawasesarasa shitagi (Sarasa print undergarment

with patchwork stars on hexagons). Second half of the nineteenth/first half of the twentieth
century. Kobe City Museum, Kobe, Japan.
CONCLUSION
At the very end of the 'silver century', during which flows of silver criss-crossed
the globe, Dutch traders established a new trade pattern in Asia by linking the
East China Sea maritime zone and the Indian Ocean zone through the medium
of Japanese and Chinese metals and Indian and Persian silks and cottons.
Japanese domestic markets thereby received a large and stable supply oflndian
textile products such as silk yarn from Bengal, cotton and silk textiles from
Coromandel and Bengal, along with Chinese silk from the domain of Tsushima.
Japanese consumers of the Tokugawa period associated exotic Indian textiles
with stripes, checks, and various sarasamotifs with the names of (seemingly)
production areas, such as Bengal, Madras, and Surat. What they consumed
were textiles not only as material artefacts, but also as sources of design and dec-
oration. Sarasa-style textiles found their way into the spiritual and material cul-
tures of prosperous urban and rural areas in the Edo period. By the beginning
of the eighteenth century, domestic cotton textiles with striped patterns became
affordable for ordinary townspeople and wealthy farmers, thanks to the
commercialization of cotton cultivation and the popularization of high-status
patterns of consumption. This process led to the assimilation of Indian aes-
thetic, artistic, and material influences into the clothing culture and art of
Tokugawa Japan, and was to be an enduring feature of the Japanese culture of
consumption.
I
10
REVISING THE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
India, Europe, and the Cotton Trade, c.I300-I800
BEVERLY LEMIRE
In recent decades, few topics have received more attention than the interaction
of Asia and Europe, a relationship that has extended over millennia. Global his-
torians are re-evaluating these contacts, rethinking relations between East and
West, recasting historical narratives that were first formalized by Europeans
with the professionalization of the academy in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries at the apogee of western imperial power. This dynamic exercise chal-
lenges many assumptions. Certainly the unthinking assumption of perpetual
western dominance has long passed. 1 As Jack Goody observes: 'the superior
achievements of the West can no longer be seen as permanent or even long-
standing features of those cultures but as the result of one of the swings of the
pendulum that has affected these societies over the millennia.' 2 Underlying
much of the history of western industrialization and modernization was the
implicit pfemise of Asian backwardness as a counterpoint to western exception-
alism, articulated by theorists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and many of their
heirs in the humanities and social sciences. In this context, it is not surprising
that many histories of the Indian cotton trade were understood solely within the
context of western industrialization, with India cast as the stand-in before the
principal actors arrived on the world stage.3 The history of European and Asian
interactions through the Indian cotton trade is more complex and more inter-
esting than would be supposed from this trope.
This chapter will revise the narrative of East-West commerce, with Indian
cottons as a case study. First, synthesizing selected studies of India's textile
1 William A. Green 'Periodizing World History', History and Theory, 34/z (1995), 99----111;
Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250----IJSD(New
York, 1989); William H. McNeil!, 'The Changing Shape of World History', History and Theory,
34/z (1995), 2----26;
Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley,
1998). Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in the Eighteenth
Century: Britain and South India', Past and Present, 158 (1998), 79----109.
2
Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge, 1996), 7.
3 In the classic study, A. P. Wadsworth and Julia de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and
Industrial Lancashire, I600----I780(Manchester, 1931), 116---19.

206 Beverly Lemire
trade, I will sketch the parameters of this mercantile venture over centuries.
Next, I will suggest the significance of the early impact of the direct trade
between Europe and the Indian subcontinent, refocusing the chronology to give
a fuller picture oflndian/European interactions-in this regard, material evi-
dence plays a key part. The role of Asian commodities in the genesis of a fashion
system in Europe has been largely unexamined and will be introduced here as
a preliminary study of a broader work. I define the fashion system, not in the
twentieth-century context devised by Roland Barthes, so dependent for its
articulation on a fashion press. 4 Rather I look for the appearance of fashion as a
cultural catalyst to consumption, with fashion figuring as a self-perpetuating
dynamic force, urban in origin, diverse in expression, where the economic and
cultural stimuli to demand were manifest. This evolving force directed material
practice among communities defined by age, social rank, religion, ethnicity, or
other cultural attributes. Fashion flourished in societies with robust economies
and great metropolitan trading centres, from classical Rome to Ming China.
The expressions of this phenomenon varied, as did their longevity, until their
most recent iterations. 5 In this long chronology, Indian cottons played a unique
role in world history as an agent of new consumer tastes, a stimulator of con-
sumer appetites for goods with generally standardized forms. As Maxine Berg
observes, 'global trade did matter to European industrialization, but not in ways
that have been set out in the standard accounts of the Industrial Revolution and
of imperialism'. 6 The global trade in Asian commodities demands a rethinking
of categories and a questioning of causation.
COTTON, CONSUMERS, AND INTERNATIONAL MARKETS BEFORE 1500
Janet Abu-Lughod brilliantly describes interlocking systems of trade about

1300, stretching from the East China Sea to the coast of East Africa and from
the Red Sea to the far reaches of Europe. Along well-travelled sea lanes and over
diverse terrains, merchants and sailors, caravan porters and pedlars carried
4
Roland Barthes, The FashionSystem (New York, 1983).
5 A history of fashion in the Roman Empire has not yet been attempted; however, there is evi-
dence that fashions evolved, with influences circulating in many directions. Personal communi-
cation, Professor Brent Shaw, Andrew Fleming West Professor of Classics, Princeton University,
August 2005. G. Baker, CalicoPrinting and Painting in the East Indies in the XVIIth and XVII Ith
Centuries(London, 1921), 2; Grant Parker, 'Ex OrienteLuxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman
Experience',Journal of the Economicand Social History of the Orient, 45/i (2002), 4<>--95;E. H.
Warmington, The Commercebetweenthe Roman Empireand India (Cambridge, 1928), 212-13. See
also Craig Clunas, SuperfluousThings:Material Cultureand Social Status in Early Modern China
(Cambridge, 1991).
Eighteenth Century', Past and Present, 182 (2004), 86-7.

India, Europe, and the Cotton Trade 207
cargoes of raw materials and manufactures, along with information and ideas.
The focus of this commerce was not the kingdom or principality prominent in
national histories, but the great port or metropolis which drew necessaries and
luxuries from near and far. What has been called 'an archipelago of towns' 7
linked shipping routes and overland trails, which in turn funnelled Asian man-
ufactures into these urban oases. The hinterlands served by these cities showed
varying levels of development; but the cities stood as nodes of urban dynamism,
where merchants congregated, where work was relatively plentiful for the
labouring classes, and where the middle ranks found opportunities. These
centres anchored trade routes, attracting and dispersing goods from far afield;
the collective demand of their residents drove international commerce.
Certain commodities consistently found eager consumers. Indian cotton tex-
tiles were widely traded along the established medieval networks from the China
Sea through central Asia, from Cairo to Canton. More varied in quality than
Chinese and Indian silk, and usually less costly, cotton textiles came in a range
of qualities that included the most gossamer muslins and heavyweight cotton
checks. The Indian materials travelling along these channels fed consumer
needs in disparate regions of the world, gradually transforming their material
culture. This commerce persisted over many hundreds of years and we may
never discover all its complex facets, although surviving records confirm its
longevity. Diaphanous muslins were treasured in classical Rome, and centuries
later in medieval Old Cairo a wider array of printed and plain cottons from
Gujarat 'Yere routinely sold. In the same period, merchants from the
Coromandel Coast carried cottons eastward to Indonesian and Chinese
markets. 8
The significance of this commerce is immense, both in terms of the wealth
created as well as the cultural conversation it fostered across great distances. K.
N. Chaudhuri notes that 'long-distance trade subsumes an exchange of infor-
mation on cultural values and interpretations, social systems, technology, and
artistic sensibilities', adding that this trade 'transcends far beyond its immediate
economic value and hence by association long-distance trade is instrumental in
7 Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, 13. The phrase was coined by Richard Haepke
and also adopted by Fernand Braudel. See also Scott Levi, 'India, Russia and the Eighteenth-
Century Transformation of the Central Asian Caravan Trade',Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient, 42/ 4 (1999), 522-4.
8 Warmington, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, 212-13; Parker, 'Ex
Oriente Luxuria', 48 and n. ro; Michael Loewe, 'Spices and Silk: Aspects of World Trade in the
First Seven Centuries of the Christian Era', Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society ( 1971), 166---79;
S. D. Goitein, 'From the Mediterranean to India: Documents on the Trade to India, South
Arabia, and East Africa from the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', Speculum, 29/z (1954),
and id., A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed
181----<)7;
in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, iv: Daily Life (Berkeley, 1983) 170; Abu-Lughod, Before
European Hegemony, 269-72.
208 Beverly Lemire
the creation of a language of signs with an immense range of significance'. 9

Trade made manifest the desires of generations and of civilizations, whether
from our perspective we might describe these wants as ephemeral or profound.
Indian printed and painted fabrics also facilitated iconographic communication
in a largely unlettered world, where signs and designs resonated with diverse
peoples steeped in visual literacy. Through the diffusion of these printed pat-
terns-incorporating flora, fauna, geometric and heraldic forms-a multi-
faceted discourse enriched the visual and material aesthetics of much of the
world, a process Andrew Sherratt defined as 'consumption as communication
and performance'. 10
Within Asia, Indian merchants supplied large and diverse communities. The
Indonesian archipelago, for example, had a long-standing appetite for block-
printed cottons, the patterns of which held social and ritual significance. 11
Traded for spices in many parts of this region, Indian cottons were an essential
cultural medium in gift exchange in South-East Asia. John Guy notes the
'importance of non-utilitarian uses to which Indian textiles were put in
Southeast Asian societies ... the sheer volume of the trade ... far exceeded the
needs of the region, given that much of the clothing of the people was provided
by inexpensive locally woven goods'. 12 Thus, utility alone did not drive this
commerce; rather, cultural attributes integral to the cotton textiles themselves
appealed to rich and poor, male and female (Illustration IO.I). Indeed, Indian
cottons were imbued with different meanings by different societies and peoples.
Desire, not necessity, directed trade with these South-East Asian customers;
desire rooted in the cultural contexts of those societies where the requirements
of self-definition, hierarchical display, ,and ritual gift giving shaped the flow of
cottons. In whatever context, whether to sustain customary cultural forms or to
feed powerful new consumer forces, culture shaped markets.
At the western edge of the Indian trade nexus, Cairo flourished as an entrepot
for the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa; important material evi-
dence survives from this region that suggests the complexity of the cotton trade
and cotton markets. Textiles decay more rapidly than most other artefacts,
leaving too few traces of their use. However, when they survive from centuries
gone by, they put life and breath into human endeavours long past. The
Newberry Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, represents dramatic,
9 K. N. Chaudhuri, 'Trade as a Cultural Phenomenon', in Jens Christian V. Johansen et al.
(eds.), Clashesof Cultures:Essays in Honour of Niels Steensgaard(Odense, 1992), 2IO.

10 Andrew Sherratt, 'Reviving the Grand Narrative: Archaeology and Long-Term Change',
Journal of EuropeanArchaeology,31/I (1995), 14.

11 John Guy, Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (London, 1998), 14-18; K. N.
Chaudhuri, Asia beforeEurope:Economyand Civilisationof the Indian Ocean.fromthe Rise of Islam

to 1750 (Cambridge, 1990).
12 Guy, Woven Cargoes,IO.
Illustration 10.1. Gujarati block printed cloth traded to Indonesia and detail, c. 1400 AD.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1995.61.
visible testimony of the trade in Indian fabrics through the Middle East. This
collection is composed of approximately 1,200 fragments of cottons, dyed and
block printed, uncovered during excavations outside Fustat (Old Cairo) about
1900. Catalogued and selectively carbon dated by Ruth Barnes, they span the
medieval to early modern era and are of outstanding historical importance.
Though t:4esescraps of fabric were unearthed in considerable numbers, it is rare
to find such extensive survival of materials employed in everyday life. 13 These
cottons clothed the poor as well as wealthier tradesmen or merchants, serving
as wraps, bedding, curtains, and cushions, bought in city districts known for
stocks of cotton wares. 14 Flowered, plainly dyed, with patterned stripes or
borders, the coarse and medium-quality Indian cottons served practical and aes-
thetic functions (Illustration 10.2). 15
For centuries prior to 1500, before plague and politics reduced Cairo's com-
mercial standing, 16 local and regional consumers had at their disposal an array
of cotton fabrics, of different costs, coloured rich red or blue, with many types
of border decorations, flowered or patterned, with motifs consistent with the
cultural preferences of a heterogeneous population. Their random survival
speaks to the vigour of this trade and to the quantities routinely shipped to this
13 Among the other museums which hold cottons excavated from Fustat, Old Cairo, are the
Victorian and Albert Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and the Textile Museum,
Washington, DC.
14 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 170, 332-3.
15 Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford, 1997), i. 1.

16 Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, 236---44.
2IO Beverly Lemire
Illustration 10.2. Gujarati block printed cotton, excavated at Fustat, Egypt, c. 1400 AD.
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1990.250.
city. Termed by Barnes 'the foremost surviving examples of the pre-European

Indian fabric', these commodities 'catered both for the luxury market and for
general distribution and common consumption'. 17 The variety and qualities
evident in the remnants suggest the characteristics of factory-made products of
a later era. The symbolic, aesthetic, and cultural significance of these cottons
varied with each market, as did some of the uses assigned these goods. Yet,
Indian manufacturers served different regions with some similarly patterned
fabrics, leaving the recipients to interpret and value them as they saw fit. Barnes
carbon dated two cotton fabrics of very similar design featuring geese, one from
Old Cairo and the other from an Indonesian site: both were dated about 1400,
produced for consumers thousands of miles apart (Illustrations 10.1 and 10.3).
The sacred goose (or hamsa)was a popular motif in Indian culture, one that was
evidently valued in other settings: in Cairo the fabrics were cut for household
use, in Indonesia kept whole for ceremonial purposes. 18 In different ways the
cloth contributed to both societies.
This trade attracted the interest of rising medieval trading states such as
Venice and Genoa, whose merchants yearned for control of this commerce.
However, cottons were slow to penetrate Europe as a whole, with a limited dif-
fusion beyond medieval Mediterranean markets. 19 The full impact of Asian tex-
tiles would only come after 1500. However, the evidence is clear that the makers
oflndian cottons were responsive to a wide consumer base and sensitive to the
nuances of culture that shaped demand. The ultimate interaction of Asian man-
ufacturers and European markets would transform both parts of the world.
17 Barnes,Indian Textiles in Egypt, i. I.

18 Ibid., plates 13 and 40. See also Mattiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World: Technique
and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles (Washington, 1982), 52.
19 Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, 239-41. For the impact of the medieval cotton
trade in Europe see Maureen F. Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages
(Cambridge, 1981).
India, Europe, and the Cotton Trade 2II
Illustration 10.3. Gujarati block printed cotton, excavated at Fustat, Egypt.

Carbon-dated to 1460 AD+/- 70. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1990.807.
EUROPEAN CONTACT, INDIAN COMMODITIES, AND NEW PATTERNS

OF WORLD TRADE
Direct trade with India was momentous for Europe, and Portugal was vital in the
early circulation of Asian goods-although the Dutch and English ventures are
more widely celebrated. 20 Initially, Portuguese trade benefited the monarch and
his chosen coterie of merchants; but within a generation opportunities were
extended w wider groups, among the most prominent being the New Christians--
members of the Iberian Sephardic Jewish community forcibly converted to
Christianity, they possessed extensive global trading ties. As James Boyajian
shows, this dynamic network profited from trade in goods like 'cotton and silken
cloth, precious stones, indigo, furnishings, drugs, as well as spices'. 21 Within
Europe, merchants great and small moved Indian cottons through well-used chan-
nels, among the most prominent new entrepots being Lisbon and Antwerp.
Cargoes also arrived at the myriad small ports that dotted Europe's coastline and,
though legitimate and legal commerce was a mainstay, smuggling also propelled
shipments from sellers to buyers. It is impossible to calculate the quantity oflndian
20
For example, the classic W.R. Scott, Constitutionand Financeof English,Scottish and Irish
Joint-Stock Companiesto I720 (New York, [1912] 1951); and K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading
World of Asia and the EnglishEast India Company, 1660--1760 (Cambridge, 1978); Desai Tripta,
The East India Company:A Brief Survey from 159g-1857 (New Delhi, 1984). For the Dutch East
India Company (VOC) see Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch SeaborneEmpire (London, 1965); Orn
Prakash, The Dutch East India Companyand the Economyof Bengal, 1630--1720 (Princeton, 1985).
And for Portugal seeJames C. Boyajian, PortugueseTradein Asia underthe Hapsburgs,1580--1640
(Baltimore, 1993); Anthony R. Disney, Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in
Southwest India in the Early Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1978).
21 Boyajian, PortugueseTrade, 14.
212 Beverly Lemire
textiles arriving in the first few decades of the sixteenth century as they were
carried predominantly as private trade; but there is no doubt that the early voy-
agers returned with quantities of fabrics. The attention paid to these goods and
the esteem accorded them was immediate. In Lisbon, as early as 1508,church vest-
ments and accessories were being made of patterned fabrics from Calicut and
Cambay.22 Portugal directed cottons initially to well-established markets, and
Boyajian notes that 'Iberian, West African, and Mediterranean markets consumed
between one-third and one-half of the carreira cloth shipments .... [whileJ The
American tropics consumed the finer cottons.' 23Trade, once established, persisted
for centuries across the Atlantic and Pacific-its significance remains to be fully
explored. 24 In addition, Lisbon-based merchants carried goods to northern Spain,
the coast of France, and as far as southern England before 1550.
The historiography of East-West trade, especially in the English language,
has understandably been weighed towards the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, following the establishment of the great Dutch and English trading com-
panies and the visible eruption of commerce between north-west Europe and
Asia. The assumption that followed was that prior to the launch of these compa-
nies Asian goods were rare in northern Europe. However, it is critical to put the
process of formalized East-West exchange into a fuller context, recognizing the
cycles of interaction that took place over centuries, including those that pre-dated
the official launch of the Dutch and English trading companies. The sixteenth-
century European traffic in Indian cottons represents the first phase of this early
modern process, the first era wherein Europeans of the northern and western
regions routinely encountered these products and reacted both to the form and
qualities of these goods. Over the 1500s,Indian cottons percolated through elite
and non-elite European markets, though this traffic left fewer traces than the
later ventures. While kings and queens, dukes and nobles, assembled collections
of exquisite luxuries from Asia, including embroidered and painted Indian
cottons, 25more pedestrian painted and printed cottons were also being bought
and treasured in other circles. These textiles carried new designs to disparate
communities as new practical and aesthetic uses were being devised for calico or
pintado-a traffic too little documented with many elements still unknown.
22
Guy, Woven Cargoes,9.
23
Boyajian, PortugueseTrade, 141.
24 Ibid. 140. Robert DuPlessis is currently researching the Atlantic trade in textiles to
Argentina, a project which will provide further insights into this sector of the global traffic. See
also Marta V. Vicente, Clothingthe Spanish Empire: Familiesand the Calico Trade in the Atlantic
World, r700-r8r5 (Basingstoke, 2007) and her chapter in this volume.
25 For examples of these collections see: Exotica: PortugalsEntdeckungenim Spiegelfartlicher
Kunst----underWunderkammernder Renaissance(Mainz, 2001); Filipe II: un monarcay su t!poca.

La monarquia hispdnica (Madrid, 1998); Las sociedadesibericasy el mar a finales de siglo XVI
(Lisbon, 1998).
Laurence Fontaine has revealed the extensive pedlar networks that enveloped
all regions of Europe, the medieval origins of which arose in the mountain com-
munities of the Alps, Pyrenees, and Scottish highlands. The 'family networks'
she describes doubtless included the Portuguese enterprise that moved calicoes
through parts oflberia during the 1500s.26 The Basque region was visited early
and often by sixteenth-century Portuguese pedlars selling Indian calico. They
found ready buyers. So extensive was this trade that by mid-century, local
Basque officials from the province of Guipuzcoa instituted regulations to try to
eradicate, or at least limit, the calico trade. One witness from the town of
Renteria testified 'that many Portuguese men were going in this Province selling
some clothes that they called calicus'.27 These records point to a land-based dis-
tribution, far from Lisbon, throughout Iberia; they confirm as well the ready
acceptance oflndian cottons far from major urban markets.
England was also visited by Portuguese traders, seagoing in this instance-
Alvero Nonnez and Jaspar Diaz, to name but two-who landed in
Southampton in 1541 with 'Callicowte Clothe ... expecting to have been as free
to sell the same as formerly'. 28 This seems a routine commercial venture that in
this instance caught the attention of officials. That year calicoes were also the
cause of a grievance when 'On 12 March, James Crane, captain of the block-
house next Gravesend, took Calicut cloth out of a ship called the Johne
Arthur'. 29 Collectively, these cases suggest the flow of goods in the first half of
the sixteenth century, sometimes eliciting bureaucratic remark and otherwise
passing l\flSanctioned. A survey of trade, prepared between 1575 and 1585 for
a senior court official, reveals further evidence of the availability oflndian tex-
tiles through regular and irregular venues. Lisbon was cited as the source of'cal-
licowe clothe, all kinde of spices ... and all other Indews wares whatesoever
[including] ... yndewes cobbard [Indian cupboard] clothes called paintohos
[pintado]'. 30 In addition, the west-coast port of La Rochelle in France, long a
thriving hub of trade with Spain, England, and the Netherlands, figured as
another source for Asian wares. The author observed that as 'all the pirates of
Fraunce doe discharge here ... You shall have man ye thinges of the Indews of
26 Laurence Fontaine, History of Pedlarsin Europe(Cambridge, 1996), 8-9, 11-12.

27 L. M. Diez de Salazar Fernandez and M. R. Ayerbe Iribar,Juntasy diputacionesde Gipuzkoa
[ 1554-7] (San Sebastian: Juntas Generales de Gipuzkoa, Diputaci6n Fora! de Gipuzkoa, 1990),
ii. 477,487,498. My sincere thanks to Renato Barahona for providing this information and to
Prasannan Parthasarathi.
28 Lettersand Papers,Foreignand Domestic,of the Reign of Henry VIII (London, 1898),xvi. 241.
29
Ibid. 491.
30 'A speciall direction for divers trades of marchaundize to be used for soundrie placis unpon
adverticements, as well for the chusinge of the time and wares for every of those placis.'
Transcribed in Conyers Read, 'English Foreign Trade under Elizabeth', English Historical
Review, 29 (1914), 519.
214 Beverly Lemire
portingall [Portugal], Better cheape then in Portingall. ' 31 Little wonder that the
Tudor Book of Rates which summarizes dutiable commodities in England for
the second half of the sixteenth century included calico under the category of
'Linnen cloth', confirming its well-known status in mercantile circles and
beyond. 32
Sixteenth-century English consumers embraced these new domestic items,
leading William Harrison to observe in 1577 that 'the furniture of our houses
... exceedeth and is grown in manner even to passing delicacy; and herein I do
not speak of the nobility and gentry only but likewise of the lowest sort in most
places of our South Country'. 33 Cottons came first to southern England, and
Southampton probate inventories from the 1550s include merchants with calico
stocks, while Southampton's affluent commercial and middling classes had East
Indian textiles among their home furnishings. Cushions, cupboard cloths, cur-
tains, and yards of coarse and fine calicoes appear before mid-century, with some
goods described as old in 1566.34 This pattern of consumption was mirrored in
Somerset. In 1545, Dame Elizabeth Fitz-James, of Wells, widow of Sir John
Fitz-James, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, left her son-in-law a pair of calico
sheets among other things; while in 1554, the cleric William Walbee of Taunton
bequeathed '3 fine pillowbers ofCallacowe' to Alice Baily.35 The significance of
the early, steady penetration oflndian cottons laid the groundwork for new wants
and needs in regions of Europe increasingly dynamic, invigorated through closer
contacts with the most advanced manufacturing regions of Eurasia.
FASHIONING THE HOME: NEW PATTERNS OF MATERIAL CULTURE
Quilts were another of the imports listed in the Tudor Book of Rates and quilts
were also a notable export good from India. 36 Quilted and embroidered deco-
rative bed coverings found immediate favour in elite Iberian markets and exam-
ples from this and later eras are now housed in major museums. 37 In the early
31
Read, 'English Foreign Trade under Elizabeth', 521.
32
T. S. Willan (ed.), A Tudor Book of Rates (Manchester, 1962), 38.
33 Quoted in Edward Roberts and Karen Parker (eds.), Southampton Probate Inventories,
1447-1575 (Southampton, 1992), i, p. xvii.

34 Ibid. i. 65-70, 150---2,159--62,and 165-7; ii. 244-52, 346----7,
and 358--g.
35 F. W. Weaver (ed.), Somerset Medieval Wills (3rd Series) 1531-1558 (London, 1905), 86
and 157.
36 Willan, Tudor Book of Rates, 38 and 49.
37 EmbroideredQuiltsfrom the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga Lisboa- India, Portugal, China-
c.16th-18th Century (London, 1978). Examples of quilts of this sort can also be found in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Museum of Fine
Art, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Royal
Ontario Museum, Toronto.
1600s, Frarn;ois Pyrard travelled on a Portuguese ship to India and described

typical trade goods including 'pillows, counterpanes, and coverlets, pinked with
much neatness, and cleverly worked ... Then there are quilts stuffed with
cotton, painted and patterned exceeding prettily'-also standard merchandise
in the sixteenth century. 38 The enhanced use of textile furnishings represents
an important step in augmented consumerism in Europe, as Lorna Weatherill
proved in her quantitative study oflater English probate records. 39 The pattern
of purchase and use oflndian fabrics to adorn beds and couches, windows and
walls, attests to the wider distribution of Indian manufactures, both in the
Iberian context and more widely throughout north-west Europe. 40
The surviving examples of the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Indo-
Portuguese quilts blend imagery of the European newcomers to India with dis-
tinct local iconography. In some cases, Portuguese military and naval motifs
intermingle with Hindu mythological figures: beasts, birds, fish, sailing ships,
artillery, and the flowers of the Indies mixed with European figures, unique
expressions of cultural exchange. 41 Thereafter more common floral embroi-
deries on cotton, silk, and cotton/silk blends became more prominent. 42
Imitation began almost immediately among European embroiderers and a
survey of needlework styles from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century
shows a distinct change in form (Illustration 10.4). Despite the cultural dis-
tance, both societies shared a familiarity with botanic subjects at a time when
the agrarian idiom was a common part of the metaphoric and visual vocabulary
of both c9mmunities.
Specific Asian motifs were unfamiliar to Europeans, but communication
through this visual vernacular bridged great distances and linked societies, both
through the actual trade in flora as well as the adoption and adaptation of Asia's
hybrid motifs. 43 A material dialogue took place, as the forms of one culture were
38 Fran~ois Pirard, The Voyageof Franfois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the
Moluccasand Brazil, ed. Albert Gray (London, 1888), ii, pp. i. and 246.
39 Lorna Weatherill, ConsumerBehaviourand Material Culturein Britain, r66o--r760 (London,
1988), 88.
40 John Guy notes that by the late sixteenth century, 'painted cottons (pintados)and embroi-
dered silks in Western taste and adapted to European domestic needs were in wide circulation as
wall hangings and bed covers'. Guy, Woven Cargoes,9. See also KristofGlamann, Dutch-Asiatic
Trade, r620--r740 (Copenhagen, 2nd edn. 1981), 133-4.
41 See, for example, Cyril G. E. Bunt, 'An Indo-Portuguese Embroidery in the Bargello',
BurlingtonMagazine, 81/ 476 ( 1941), 276--8; and Barbara Karl, 'Indo-Portuguese Textiles of the
16th and 17th Centuries', unpublished paper presented at the CIET A Conference, Lisbon, 2003.
42 John Irwin and R. Schwartz, Studies in /ndo-European Textile History (Ahmadabad, 1966),
19, 23-4, and 63.

43 Jack Goody, The Culture of Flowers(Cambridge, 1993), chs. 6 and 7, and Beverly Lemire,
'Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c.1600-
1800', Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1/I(2003), 82.
216 Beverly Lemire
Illustration 10.4. English crewel-work bed curtain (linen/ cotton twill, wool embroidery),
1690--1700, showing the influence of the Indian flowering tree motif.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 72c-1897.
introduced to another, a discourse visible today in surviving sixteenth- and sev-

enteenth-century European needlework. Some European examples suggest a
struggle to understand and interpret this new idiom; yet, over the years, needle-
workers expertly translated an Indian vernacular into embroidered curtains,
hangings, and coverlets or finer silk cushions and chair covers. 44 The positive
reception and the translation to European forms were critical in the develop-
ment of trade communication between India and Europe over the centuries.
Thus, the domestic material culture of Europe was in transition long before the
44 Therle Hughes, EnglishDomesticNeedlework, 1660--1860(London, 1961), 34.
largest East Indiamen unloaded their cargoes of Indian cottons in Amsterdam

and London and long before European artisans began to try to print cottons in
a systematic way.
The wealthy bought Indian quilts or commissioned equivalent embroideries
and genteel women turned their needles to new designs; but other variants soon
became available as European artisans worked on painted facsimiles. In the six-
teenth century, a type of decorative hanging, much cheaper than woven or
embroidered hanging, was produced by painting on coarse canvas. Called
'painted cloths', there are numerous examples noted in probate inventories from
Southampton, Oxfordshire, and elsewhere for the sixteenth century, and
painted cloths also appear in the Tudor Book of Rates, suggesting a trade in a
decorative commodity heretofore unstudied. 45 Of the surviving examples in the
Victoria & Albert Museum, most depict stiff, rudimentary images; but in one
seventeenth-century example, the painter adopted the newest Asian floral
motifs, including exotic birds within a sinuous herbaceous design. 46 This
example stands out among the other rigid, rather naive subjects. Did the ones
listed in the mid-sixteenth-century Southampton probate inventories also show
the influence of Asia-and what of the painted cloths traded throughout
Europe? Without the artefacts themselves, we can never know. However, mate-
rial evidence in at least one case confirms the impact of Indian forms on local
artisans working on coarse canvas for middle-ranked consumers. Buying for the
home was the first and most important entry point for Asian textiles, a signifi-
cant stag9 for plays of fashion.
Part of the initial reception oflndian textile goods in Europe was shaped by
the powerful Hapsburg courts, by the reaction to these novelties by the courtiers
and functionaries. It is interesting to note that the Basque region provided the
greatest number of middle-ranked men serving in Philip II's court-were they
also ardent consumers of the calicoes sold in their homeland? 47 Henry VIII's
court shows some interest in Indian cottons as well: one piece of embroidered
calico was in Jane Seymour's possession and Henry himself owned an embroi-
dered calico shirt. 48 Despite a later breach with Spain by England and the
Netherlands, both national elites displayed a taste for Asian commodities that
45 Willan, Tudor Book of Rates, 45. A Somerset will from 1554 also includes a bequest of'a
pece ofpaynted clothe'. Weaver (ed.), Somerset Medieval Wills, 157. And for examples from
Oxfordshire, see selected examples in M.A. Havinden (ed.), Householdand Farm Inventoriesin
Oxfordshire,I550-I590 (London, 1965), 48, 53, 55, 57, 59, and 60. For Devon, see Margaret Cash
(ed.), Devon Inventoriesof the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries(Torquay, 1966), 3, 4, and 7.
46 Victoria and Albert Museum, Textile Department, 7 5A 1880.
47 I would like to thank Ana Cabrera of the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas, Madrid,
for her observation on this point.

48 DavidR. Starkey(ed.), The Inventory of King Henry VIII(London, 1998), vol. i. My thanks
to Maria Hayward for this information.

218 Beverly Lemire
superseded politics. The earl of Leicester included a piece of calico among his
gifts to the Moroccan ruler in an abortive trade venture in 1585. Queen
Elizabeth had a dress made of calico in the spring of 1595 and the vines,
branches, and flowers in the tapestries adorning Elizabeth's 'presence chamber',
depicted in a watercolour painting of 1570--5,suggest Indian embroidered (or
Indian-influenced) tapestry. 49 Indian embroidered hangings and coverlets were
listed in Bess ofHardwick's inventory in 1603 and a Bengal-made embroidered
quilt had been acquired some years earlier. Prominent nobles in Elizabeth's
court like Bess of Hardwick, who was Lady of the Privy Chamber, had excep-
tional access to the luxuries and novelties of the age.50
The sale of calicoes in the Basque region, the traffic in Indian wares in a
western French port, and the apparent routine commerce in the southern
regions of England all point to a sixteenth-century circulation oflndian cottons
that has gone largely undetected. Little surprise, then, that a foreign dealer was
fined for selling 'callacow' on the streets of London in the 159os.51 England's
elite and even middle-ranked families, in proximity to metropolitan markets,
along well-used pedlar routes, and by the great south-coast ports, could buy the
newest and most desirable fabrics from India during the sixteenth century. This
occasional practice became more habitual as trade increased.
The 'calico craze' is a phenomenon usually associated with the early decades
of the eighteenth century; evidence of the heated consumer craving for Indian
cottons survives in the pamphlet wars that pitted hack writers in England for and
against these imports at the behest of their interest groups. The 'calico craze' also
elicited anti-calico riots supported by the English wool and silk trades along with
London and provincial weavers' guilds seeking to disrupt the sale and wear of
calico and to secure formal political redress. 52 But these emblems of consumer
conflict reflect a political eruption that was preceded by a long-running fever.
Political agitation around the imported Indian cottons arose from the earliest
years of the trade when consumers first evinced symptoms of their new material
allegiance. The reaction of Basque authorities to these imports illustrates what
became a characteristic response. Hostility to Indian calicoes ebbed and flowed
within European commercial and political circles wherever those with vested
interests in regional textile trades felt their disadvantage in the marketplace.
49 Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's WardrobeUnlock'd (Leeds, 1988), 7, 10, and 185. See also
'Queen Elizabeth Receiving the Dutch Ambassadors in the Presence Chamber', watercolour
drawing by an unknown artist, c.1570--5.Staatlich Kunstsammlungen, Kassel, GS 10430.
50 Santina M. Levy, Elizabethan Treasures:The Hardwick Hall Textiles (London, 1999), 9-15
and 28--g;Rosemary Crill, 'The Earliest Survivors? The Indian Embroideries at Hardwick Hall',
in Rosemary Crill (ed.), Textilesfrom India: The Global Trade (Calcutta, 2006), 245-58.
51 Lien Bich Luu, Immigrants and the Industriesof London r500--r700 (Aldershot, 2005), 186.
52 Beverly Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumerin Britain, r66o-
r8oo (Oxford, 1991), ch. 1.

Though London records from the sale of East India cargoes are incomplete
before 1641, the passion for Indian wares that pre-dated 1600 continued through
the next century. A 1610 inventory from the family of the earl of Leicester
included a cupboard cloth of 'lndyan stuff', along with cushions, and 'fower newe
curteans, never used' of the same. 53 In the winter of 1618, a Bengal quilt 'embroi-
dered all over with pictures of men and crafts in yellow silk' was auctioned for
£20, causing the Company to write to their servants urging larger supplies
'stitched with birds, beasts or work very thick'. About 1620, a factor in Bengal
promised joy to the London office from the gorgeous quilts he had acquired. A
decade later Charles I permitted Company servants to trade lawfully in quilts
embroidered with silk (suggesting a previously sanctioned traffic), and in the
years to follow sums from £5 to £40 were spent by customers eager to own quilts
and hangings 'imbroidered with sundry colours' or 'imbroidered upon Callicoe
with sundrie silks'. At one such auction Alderman Corkaine bid more than £5 to
acquire a 'callicoe hanginge imbroydered' despite the fact that it was also listed
as 'somewhat defective and stayned', so intense was the acquisitive fervour. 54
During the first half of the seventeenth century the combined efforts of the
Portuguese, Dutch, and English moved impressive quantities oflndian textiles,
more and more of which remained in Europe. The 1618 probate inventory of
the Dutch prince of Orange reflects an enthusiasm for Indian soft furnishings
that is not surprising; bed curtains and full sets of bed furnishing appear in great
numbers, as well as embroidered Indian table coverings and decorative Indian
furniture 55 It is unlikely that the prince waited until the return of the first VOC
1
fleet to begin buying these items, but he gathered more as supplies increased.
The wealthiest buyers turned to embroidered or fine painted textile goods, but
the growing quantities of printed Indian cottons were another important
element of this commerce. 56 The new consumer patterns of domestic furnish-
ings remind us that material transformations took many forms and in this case
the imports refashioned standards of taste and concepts of decency over several
generations. Interior spaces were remodelled at the same time as trade acceler-
ated (Illustrations 10.5 and 10.6).
53 James Orchard Halliwell (ed.),Ancient Inventoriesof Furniture,Pictures,Tapestry,Plate, etc.
Illustrative of the DomesticManners of the English in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. ..
(London, 1858), 78.
54 John Irwin and Margaret Hall, Indian Embroideries:Historic Textiles of India at the Calico
Museum (Ahmedabad, 1973), 29-30 and 35-6.

55 S. W. A. Drossaers and T. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, Inventarissen van de Inboedelsin de
Verblijvenvan de Oranjesen daarmedegelijk te stellenstukken 1567-1795 (The Hague, 1974), vol. i.

56 For a further discussion see Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, 'East & West: Textiles and
Fashion in Early Modern Europe',Journal of Social History, 41/ 3 (2008), 887-916.

Illustration 10.5. Bed curtain, Indian cotton
painted and dyed, c.1700. IS.121-1950.
Reproduced with the kind permission of the
Victoria·and Albert Museum, London.
Illustration 10.6. Hanging, cotton painted

and dyed. Possibly Coromandel Coast.
c.1700.
Reproduced by kind permission of
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
IS.156-1953.
The significance of these household innovations was confirmed by Daniel

Defoe, writing much later in the early eighteenth century, observing that Indian
calicoes first 'crept into our houses, our closets and bedchambers; curtains,
cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves were nothing but Callicoes or
Indian stuffs'. 57 Defoe wrote as a critic, fearing for the English woollen indus-
try, and it is doubtful that he knew of the long process of market penetration by
Indian cottons-but he saw the results. What he identified were the consumer
sensibilities among householders great and small. In addition, calico had also
been adopted for clothing. And while domestic fashions demanded Indian
quilts, bed hangings, cushions, and the like, calicoes found a ready and growing
acceptance as an element of apparel. The draper in Thomas Dekker's comedy
The Honest Whore(1615) offered three gentlemen 'fine calicoes too for dublets,
the only sweet fashion now, most delicate and courtly, a meeke gentle calico, cut
upon two double affable taffataes, ah most neate, feat, and unmatchable'. 58
Cheap cottons, called Guinees, sold by Europeans in West African markets
since the sixteenth century, were also being bought by Netherlands shoppers in
greater volumes by the 1620s, further building on the taste shift of the previous
century. 59
The Indian cotton trade exemplifies important elements in the relationship
between East and West, inaugurating profound changes in the European
economy, industry, and material cultures of elite and commoner alike. The
desire for Asian commodities and the depth of this demand sparked a more gen-
eralized consumerism for new categories of goods, with unexpected repercus-
sions. Tifirty years ago Joan Thirsk identified the importance of small niceties,
English-made, many the by-products of projects employing the poor. As the
poor were employed, they were also better dressed, their houses better
equipped. Speaking of the late sixteenth century, Thirsk observes that 'Elegant
clothes and ornaments about the house were catching on rapidly as money cir-
culated more freely ... Worse than this was another complaint: London fashions
were not confined to foolish, light-headed Londoners. The craze had spread to
the provinces. ' 60 Thirsk highlighted the expanding manufacture of cheap
niceties: buttons, buckles, ribbons, lace, combs, and pins. But Asia also figured
57 Daniel Defoe, Weekly Review, 31 January 1708, quoted in Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite, 16.
58 Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore: The Humoursof the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife
(London, 1615), Act 1, Scene 1.
59 Glamann, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 133-51; G. V. Scammel, 'England, Portugal and the Estado
da India, c.1500--1635', Modern Asian Studies, 16/z (1982), 177---92;Boyijian, PortugueseTrade,

appendix A, 247-57. For the expansion of exports from the Coromandel Coast see Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, The Political Economy of Commerce:Southern India r500-r650 (Cambridge,
1990), 171.
60 Joan Thirsk, EconomicPolicy and Projects:The Developmentof a ConsumerSociety in Early
Modern England (Oxford, 1978), 15-16.

222 Beverly Lemire
in the genesis of this consumer society. The qualities and characteristics of Asian
imports set a standard to which Europeans aspired. 61 Moreover, the character-
istics of commodities like cotton established a template for the expression and
development of fashion. Cottons were affordable, uniquely attractive, and made
in the widest range of prices, unmatched by European manufactures. Thus, eco-
nomic and cultural dynamism in Europe arose on two fronts: through the gen-
eration of small luxuries indigenous to Europe and as a result of Asian imports
which unleashed an unprecedented sequence of events. The arrival in north-
west Europe of one of the most important global consumer commodities was
critical to Europe's economic and cultural development, essential for the stim-
ulus of early modern consumerism and the articulation of popular fashions.
Expressions of material desire can take many forms. However, societal accept-
ance of novel, foreign, or exotic artefacts which could be incorporated into exist-
ing hierarchies of goods was critical for new forms and formulations of fashion.62
The ferment of fashion in Europe transformed culture, dress, and decor, and
the economy grew further as a result. Asian goods are celebrated as sources of
inspiration and imitation for later British industries, as the epitome of popular
luxuries. 63 However, in the eighteenth century, at the same time as chinoiserie
flourished, and as European artisans struggled to replicate the range and quality
of Asian goods, Asia was being characterized by Europeans as the unchanging
'other', antithetical to fashion. Braudel insisted that the East is not subject to
fashion; but this claim originated in an earlier period and gained credence over
the eighteenth century and beyond. 64 Commentators were well aware of the
rage for all things Oriental. Yet, when many authors employed geographic
metaphors for fashion and novelty they spoke of France, the Low Countries, or
Italy, along with England. 65 Prasannan Parthasarathi recently observed a similar
obscurantism in representations of Asian technology in the late eighteenth
century; where once references to India's superior techniques were common-
place (especially in writings by British manufacturers), by the late eighteenth
century references to Indian technological expertise had disappeared. 66 These
61 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005).
62 Mary Douglas, Thought Styles: Critical Essay on Good Taste (London, 1996); Georg
Simmel, 'Fashion', International Quarterly, IO (1904), 136.
63 Berg, 'In Pursuit of Luxury'. See also Lemire, Fashion's Favourite; Wadsworth and Mann,
The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 111-24.

64 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism r5th-r8th Century, i: The Structures of
Everyday Life (New York, 1985), 316-23.

65 Examples of such verse include: The Phantastick Age: Or, The Anatomy of England's Vanity,
in Wearing the Fashions of Several Nations, With good exhortations, Against transmutations . ...
(1640); Fashion: An Epistolary Satire to a Friend (London, 1742).
66 Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'The Sources of Wealth in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain: John
Kennedy, Adam Smith and the British Cotton Industry', unpublished paper presented at the
Anglo-American Conference, London, July 2004.
misrepresentations of Asia and its role in Europe's transformation distort the

path of this process. Fashion was a critical contextual and cultural agent in these
changes. A generally dynamic system of material representation flourished and
spread in the era following direct trade with Asia and the social and commercial
reverberations this entailed. 67 The arrival of Asia's manufactures in Europe was
inseparable from the dynamic of the western fashion system and integral to the
shaping of popular consumerism. Indian cottons exemplified these changes
most dramatically.
Over the course of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the full
potential of Asian manufactures became apparent, particularly cotton which
became an ever-larger component of dress and furnishings, a vehicle for stylish
tastes and functional utility across social ranks. For Indian merchants the
growth of new European markets represented one more series of negotiations
on the colours, patterns, and textures most in demand. 68 Braudel observed that
'Fashion is also a search for a new language to discredit the old', 69 and in this
respect the merchants and manufacturers oflndia acted as 'linguistic' interme-
diaries, bringing a new visual language to Europe and helping nurture the craze
for Indian textiles that ensued. The Dutch and English East India Companies
landed ever-larger cargoes of cottons from 1660 to 1690, while local artisans
laboured mightily to replicate the imports. 70 By 1700, merchants and trades-
men, great and small, from London and surrounding counties, draped vibrant
calicoes over beds and windows. 71 However, the rage for Indian cottons precip-
itated po)itical crises throughout Europe, much like that in the sixteenth-
century Basque region, as governments struggled to defend local manufactures
and local interests. In response, printing industries were established by regional
entrepreneurs who embellished plain Indian cottons and locally made linens.
The success of calicoes in France worried those keen to protect the local
silk industry and more used to seeing fashion employed to their commercial
67
Consumerism itself is being redefined from China to East Africa. See, for example, Clunas,
Superfluous Things; Antonia Mary Finnane, 'Yangzhou's "Modernity": Fashion and
Consumption in the Early Nineteenth Century', Positions, 11/z (2003), 395-425; Jeremy
Prestholdt, 'On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism', American Historical
Review, 109/3 (2004), 755-81.
68 Prasannan Parthasarathi makes the important point that the European market was one of
many served by India in the eighteenth century. 'Cotton Textile Exports from the Indian
Subcontinent, 1680--1780', unpublished paper presented at the Global Economic History
Network, Cotton Textiles as Global Industry Conference, University of Padua, November 2005.
69 Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, i: Structures of Everyday Life, 324.
°
7
K. N. Chaudhuri states that one million pieces of cotton were imported in 1684 by the
English East India Company, making up 84°/oof English trade. Chaudhuri, Trading World of
Asia, 9f>-----7
and 282. Private trade and smuggling make absolute precision impossible.
71
The National Archives, Kew, PROB 5, 2268, 3731, 3790, 3961; GL, Ms 9174128; OA, W
P 25 May 1704. See also Lemire, Fashion's Favourite, ch. r.
224 Beverly Lemire
advantage. As Fernand Braudel observed, the authorities tried every conceiv-

able measure beginning with a ban on cottons in 1689: 'Nothing worked, super-
vision, inspections, confiscation, imprisonment, fines.' The most extreme
measure passed in 1717 condemned those buying and selling calicoes to life
servitude in the French galleys.72 Yet, no matter how draconian the laws, they
did not achieve the changes desired. What opponents described as a 'calico
craze' was actually a long-run revolution in tastes that could not be overturned
by the legislative interventions attempted in much of Europe. By the early eigh-
teenth century, as general bans on Indian cotton were applied in one region after
another, contraband fabrics continued to drape the beds and bodies of men and
women, to the frustration of legislators. I have argued elsewhere that Asian
cottons became 'naturalized' over this time period, domesticated in much the
same way that exotic flowers took root in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century
European gardens. 73 Over several centuries the complex and varied motifs of
Indian textiles had been integrated into European material culture. At the same
time, entrepreneurs from Marseilles to Barcelona, Amsterdam to London, rec-
ognized the broad market for these goods and struggled to replicate the colours,
patterns, and price. The British cotton/linen industry was part of this natural-
ization practice, working to imitate Indian calicoes and chintzes, protected by
the legislative ban of 1721 which barred Indian cottons from the market, striving
for years to produce reasonable facsimiles, ultimately with some success. 74
Mixed cotton/linen fabrics were manufactured throughout Europe, with the
most successful technologies applied first in Britain.
By the 1800s, the material world of plebeian and middling consumers was
transformed, with dramatic changes visible in the ownership of cotton goods
among working men and women. This group routinely pawned their property
for short-term loans, providing a record of shifting consumer patterns. The
increased ownership of cotton clothing and soft furnishings is evident in pawn-
brokers' records, reflecting a new material sensibility: printed gowns and waist-
coats, white cotton handkerchiefs round the neck, white cotton stockings on
men's and women's legs, and cotton sheets, coverlet, and curtains became
general (Illustrations IO. 7 and rn.8). 75 Yet, even as the British cotton industry
72 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism r5th-r8th Century, ii: The Wheels of Commerce
(London, 1985), 178-80.

73 Lemire, 'Domesticating the Exotic'. For the impact of the prohibition oflndian cottons in
France see Olivier Raveaux, 'Space and Technology in the Cotton Industry in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries: The Example of Marseilles Printed Cottons', Textile History, 36/2
(2005), 131-45.
74 Stanley D. Chapman and Serge Chassagne, European Textile Printers in the Eighteenth
Century (London, 198l ); Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, l 1l -44.
75 Beverly Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons: Asian Trade, Domestic Industry and Consumer
Demand 1660--1780', in David Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles
(Cambridge, 2003), ii. 493-512.
Illustration 10.7. (left) British-made muslin apron, 1785-90. Reproduced by kind permission
of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, T.219-1966.
Illustration 10.8. (right) British block-printed glazed cotton gown, 1795-1800. Reproduced by
kind permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, T.286-1968.
grew, Indian muslins remained the benchmark against which British technical
ingenuity was tested. Only when British manufacturers could equal the quality
oflndian goods were British goods more secure in international markets. The
domestication oflndian cottons was complete when Europe claimed the right
to make its own cottons.
CONCLUSION
Western industrialization is justly celebrated as a milestone in human

experience; and Asian goods, when mentioned, typically appear as the source
226 Beverly Lemire
of inspiration for European ingenuity. However, the iconic history of western

industrial triumph should not obscure the productive genesis oflndian manu-
facturers and the profoundly important role they played in supplying con-
sumers across the world. Indian merchants cultivated global markets for
centuries. The capacities of the West to copy Asian wares and approximate their
prices and designs, using new techniques, has been privileged, undervaluing
the signal role oflndian manufacturers and traders in the creation of worldwide
markets. Indian fabrics set the standard against which all successors were meas-
ured. Indeed, Indian cottons were the first global consumer commodity manu-
factured for global markets. The historical narrative must be revised to more
fairly reflect the weight of such historical processes.
Foreign sales were essential for the growth of Britain's cotton industry in the
early nineteenth century, the world's first industrial trade. Indeed, Lancashire
factory owners depended on exports to those places accustomed to buying
Indian cottons. One of the critical elements underpinning western industrial-
ization was the existence oflong-established markets for Indian cottons. The
worldwide appetites for these fabrics, long served by India, were essential for
the growth of industrial output; and regional demand was subsequently met by
a succession of industrializing nations, from France to America, Spain to
Russia, and Japan to Brazil to India.
Surviving materials from the early modern trade in Indian cottons paint a
telling story of its importance, not least of which was its impact on Europe.
Direct trade with Asia transformed Europe, reshaping the economic and cul-
tural context of the West-its economy and its material culture-a singular
phenomenon in the rise of consumer society. By 1800, the balance between East
and West shifted in favour of the latter. 76 However, the tremendous importance
of export markets for Britain after 1800 signifies the importance of established
global consumer demand. Indeed, the world markets constructed through the
centuries-old trade in Indian cottons are surely as important as the various
national histories of industrialization which followed. In shaping markets and
serving fashion, Indian cottons prepared global consumer markets for the
modern industrial age.
76 Lynda Shaffer, 'Southernization' ,Journal of World History, 5/r (1994), 1-21.

11
COTTONS CONSUMPTION IN THE
SEVENTEENTH- AND EIGHTEENTH-
CENTURY NORTH ATLANTIC
ROBERT S. DUPLESSIS
The long debate over the relative contributions of foreign and domestic demand
to European industrialization remains unresolved. In recent years, however, schol-
ars have emphasized the dynamism anµ growing prominence of Atlantic markets
in the eighteenth century. Ralph Davis's seminal articles reveal that total English
exports (including re-exports) rose some two and a half times in value between
169<,-1701 and 1772-4, but those to Africa and the Americas jumped sixfold, with
exports of English manufactures multiplying by a factor of nearly 8+ 1 In the case
of France, foreign trade grew fivefold. French trade with Europe quadrupled, but
that with the Atlantic world increased tenfold. The Atlantic's share of French
exports rose from 4 per cent to 17 per cent in the eighteenth century. 2 Fuelled by
the slave trade, exports to Africa grew impressively. By the late eighteenth century,
more than' IO per cent of French exports, and nearly 5 per cent of British, went to
West African markets. But European trade achieved its greatest gains in the New
World. France's exports to the West Indies and North America increased by eight
times in the eighteenth century; the Caribbean alone took thirteen times more
manufactures in 1787-9 than in 1716--20.3 The expansion of Britain's American
trade was even more dramatic, with a twentyfold increase in exports to the West
Indies and North America in the eighteenth century, again with domestic manu-
factures in the lead. By 1797-8, the Americas took nearly 60 per cent of English
exports, as opposed to just IO per cent in 1700-1. 4
1 Ralph Davis, 'English Foreign Trade, 1700-1774', EconomicHistory Review, 15/z (1962),
285-303.
2 Pierre Leon, 'L'Elan industriel et commercial', in Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse
(eds.), Histoireeconomique et socialede la France(Paris, 1970-80), ii. 503-5; Paul Butel, L'Economie
franraise au XVII!e siecle(Paris, 1993), 88.
3 Butel, L 'Economie franraise, 116-17.
4 Robert Paul Thomas and Donald McCloskey, 'Overseas Trade and Empire 1700-1860', in
Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain since r700
(Cambridge, 1981), i. 91; Davis, 'English Foreign Trade'; Stanley Engerman, 'Mercantilism and
Overseas Trade, 1700-1800', in Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey (eds.), The Economic
History of Britain sincer700 (Cambridge, 2nd edn. 1994), i. 191.
228 Robert S. DuPlessis
The textile industries of Europe benefited handsomely from the growing

Atlantic trade. English textile exports and re-exports to the Americas and West
Africa rose more than 500 per cent from 1699-1701 to 1772-4. Apart from
woollens, the non-European Atlantic became far and away the leading market
abroad for domestic fabrics: exports of British textiles jumped ninefold, more
than three times the gain registered by re-exports. 5 Even after nearly a century
of expansion, manufactures comprised a lower proportion of French exports
(34 per cent in 1787) than of English (54 per cent in 1772-4). Nevertheless,
exports of both French and foreign textiles-notably cottons, linens, and
silks-to West Africa and most of all to the Antilles grew smartly. 6
The claim that Atlantic demand was important for the emergence of modern
European cotton textile industries, which Wadsworth and Mann argued long
ago, has lately been revived. 7 Atlantic markets took eleven times as many
English cottons in 1772-4 as in 1699-1701, an expansion rate second only to
linens (an astounding 31 times starting from 1722-4), and well ahead of wool-
lens (6.2 times) and silks (3.7 times). Yet in contrast to the attention that has
been given to the contours of cotton consumption in Europe, 8 remarkably little
is known about the reception and appropriation of cottons in the other parts of
the Atlantic. Who bought cottons? When, where, and how? For what reasons?
With what other fabrics did they compete? What were the similarities and dif-
ferences in cotton cloth consumption between Europe and other regions?
This essay seeks to answer these questions in six British and French North
American and Caribbean colonies from the late seventeenth century to the 1760s,
which was the eve of imperial transformations and the industrialization of cotton
manufacturing. In this period the Atlantic system linked formerly separate
markets and created new ones, challenging existing producers and products while
encouraging new entrants and new goods. Cottons' advance took place within a
dynamic and unsettled environment that affected all consumers and all textiles.
5 Davis, 'English Foreign Trade'; Robert DuPlessis, 'Cloth and the Emergence of the Atlantic
Economy', in Peter Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries:Organization,Operation,Practice,and Personnel(Columbia, SC, 2005), 84-5 (appen-
dices A and B).
6 Fran~oise Bayard and Philippe Guignet, L 'Economie franraise aux XVle, XV/le et XVI/le
siecles (Gap, 1991), 166-7; Butel, L'Economie franraise, rr6-17; DuPlessis, 'Cloth and the
Emergence of the Atlantic Economy', 8 5 (appendix B).
7 A. P. Wadsworth and Julia de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Tradeand IndustrialLancashirer600--
r780 (Manchester, 1931), 145-69; Paul Butel, 'France, the Antilles, and Europe in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Renewals of Foreign Trade', in James Tracy (ed.), The
Rise of MerchantEmpires:Long-DistanceTradein the Early Modern World,r350--r750(New York,
1990), 169;Joseph lnikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002).
8 See Beverly Lemire, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumerin Britain,
1660--1800(Oxford, 1991);Daniel Roche, The Cultureof Clothing:Dressand Fashionin the 'Ancien

Regime' (Cambridge, 1994), rr8-50.
Cottons Consumption in the North Atlantic 229
COTTON CLOTH CONSUMPTION
As may be seen in Table 11.1, in the late seventeenth century cottons accounted
for a small fraction of merchant stocks of textiles, lagging far behind woollens
and linens (and silks as well in Jamaica). 9 In this period, cotton textiles found
their way into the homes and onto the bodies of European settlers, but rarely
those of indigenous peoples. In the Montreal area, cotton was the primary mate-
rial of some 4 per cent of colonists' garments in 1680--99, and also formed a
modest share of their curtains, bedspreads, and table linens (Table 11.4). Lists
TABLE I I. I. Textiles in Merchant Stocks, I68os and I69os (percentages of total

textile values)
Type of Textile New France Pennsylvania Jamaica
Cottons 4.85 8.71 4.23
Linens 19.29 38.43 44.53
Miscellaneous 0.06 4.69 3.54
Mixed fibers 2.76 0.87 4.07
Silks 6.83 6.04 22.27
Woolens 66.11 41.17 21.08
Unknown 0.10 0.08 0.29
Total 100.00 99.99 100.01
Sources:New ];'ranee (r r merchants): Archives Nationales du Quebec, Montreal, Not. A. Adhemar, Basset,
Bourgine, Malige. Pennsylvania (13 merchants): Registrar of Wills, Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia,
Pa. Jamaica (47 merchants): Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Inventory Books 2, 3, 5.
of individual items of clothing in British colonial inventories are too incomplete

to permit quantitative analysis, but they make clear that Pennsylvanians
acquired only limited quantities of calico, cotton, and fustian carpets, coverlets,
and curtains. If several Philadelphia merchants strutted about in calico and
fustian waistcoats, amidst their fellows' mainly linen and woollen attire, they
stood out mainly for their eccentricity. In Jamaica, households often had some
cotton furnishings on their beds, floors, or windows and a minority of testators
had a calico or fustian or muslin garment in their wardrobes. But as elsewhere,
these items were anomalies, so it is not surprising that in the late seventeenth
century four of five Jamaican tailors whose shops were inventoried upon their
deaths possessed no cotton textiles. At this time, in all three colonies cotton
9 The low percentages of cottons in merchant stocks in all three late seventeenth-century
colonies are consistent with evidence from two Charleston merchant inventories from 1692 and
1694 (the only ones extant from late seventeenth-century South Carolina): cottons (7% by value)
trailed woollens (52%), linens (29%), and even silks (10%). Charleston Public Library,
Charleston County, South Carolina (henceforth CPL), Wills and Miscellaneous Records, WPA
Transcriptions, liii. 117-32, 199-204.
TABLE II.2. Textiles in Merchant Stocks, 1730-39 (percentages of total textile values)
Type of Textile New Penn- South Louisiana Saint-
France sylvania Carolina Domingue
Cottons 10.77 14.68 9.45 21.03 30.58

Linens 30.18 32.16 26.ll 59.16 39.53
Miscellaneous 0.38 1.90 0.46 2.35 1.90
Mixed fibers 0.69 7.95 0.74 0.85 0.00
Silks 6.52 13.97 5.37 2.24 10.17
Woolens 51.42 28.17 57.82 14.15 17.58
Unknown 0.04 1.17 0.03 0.22 0.24
Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sources:New France (9 merchants): Archives Nationales du Quebec, Montreal, Not.J.-B. Adhemar, Danre
de Blanzy, Lepailleur de LaFerte, Porlier, Raimbault. Pennsylvania (33 merchants): Registrar of Wills,
Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, Pa .. South Carolina (19 merchants): Charleston Public Library,
Charleston County, S.C., Wills and Miscellaneous Records, WPA Transcriptions, vols. 62, 64-68, 7r.
Louisiana (6 merchants): Louisiana Historical Center, New Orleans, La., French Superior Council Records,
Inventories, 1730-39: New Orleans Notarial Archives Research Center, New Orleans, La., Inventories.
Saint-Domingue (4 merchants): Archives Nationales de France, Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-
en-Provence, Not. Delinois, Martin, Saunier.
items provided accessories and accents in a textile culture dominated by linens

and woollens.
By the 1730s this situation had changed dramatically. Cotton cloth was found
in greater abundance in North America and the Caribbean, particularly in the
French colonies of Louisiana and Saint-Domingue where they ranked second
only to linen stuff (Table 11.2). There is very little usable information about
textile preferences in early South Carolina, but the expenditures of Sarah
Lindley's guardians in the two years up to and including her wedding in 1720
indicate that cottons-at 24 per cent of outlays-were second only to silks (54
per cent) and had become one of the standard materials for the gowns, petticoats,
and undergarments of well-to-do urban women. 10 Inventories show that cotton
fabrics had achieved even greater acceptance among free colonists in Louisiana
and Saint-Domingue, And in Montreal cotton's share in garments had quadru-
pled (Table 11.4). In these places, such quotidian apparel as culottes, vests,
gowns, petticoats, mantelets, and underclothing were now frequently fashioned
from cotton cloth, along with the neckwear, kerchiefs, and other accessories that
had been the main cotton items in earlier Montreal. Judging by planters' textile
holdings, cheap cottons helped clothe slaves in Saint-Domingue, though there,
as in Louisiana, linens were pref erred for that purpose.
By the 1760s, cottons were readily accessible throughout the British and
French New World colonies. They comprised one-fifth of merchant textile
10 South Carolina Historical Society (henceforth SCHS), Lindley Papers, 34-355.

TABLE11.3. Textiles in Merchant Stocks, 1760-69 (percentages of total textile values)

Type of New Penn- South Louisiana Jamaica Saint-
Textile France sylvania Carolina Domingue
Cottons 20.20 19.78 20.43 30.36 22.63 37.78
Linens 36.46 28.15 36.28 59.57 61.67 50.96
Misc. 1.41 4.83 0.82 0.00 0.34 0.00
Mixed 0.15 5.05 3.77 1.10 4.17 0.76
Silks 8.95 9.14 5.87 2.20 4.66 4.80
Woolens 32.66 32.87 32.82 6.77 6.13 5.51
Unknown 0.16 0.02 0.01 0.00 0.40 0.19
Total 100.00 99.99 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00
Sources:New France (19 merchants): Archives Nationales du Q!iebec, Montreal, Not. Chatellier, Duvernay,
Hodiesne, Mezieres, Panet, Racicot, Simonet, Vautier. Pennsylvania (60 merchants): Registrar of Wills,
Philadelphia City Archives, Philadelphia, Pa.; Records of Wills, Surrogate's Courts, Burlington County,
Cumberland County, and Hunterdon County, all in New Jersey State Library and Archives, Trenton; Reg-
ister of Wills, Cecil County, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis; Wills and Inventories, Chester County
Archives and Records Services, West Chester, Pa.; Wills and Inventories, Lancaster County Historical So-
ciety, Lancaster, Pa.; Register of Wills, York County Archives, York, Pa. South Carolina (19 merchants):
Charleston Public Library, Charleston County, S. C., Wills and Miscellaneous Records, WPA Transcrip-
tions, vols. 90-94, 98. Louisiana (7 merchants): Louisiana Historical Center, New Orleans, La., French Su-
perior Council Records, Inventories, 1760-69; New Orleans Notarial Archives Research Center, New
Orleans, La., Inventories; Natchitoches Parish Court House, Louisiana, Conveyance Record Book 1.Jamaica
(41 merchants): Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Inventory Books 1B/ 11/ 3/ 41, 43-50. Saint-Domingue
(16 merchants): Archives Nationales de France, Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, Not.
Beaulieu, Belin du Ressort, Bugaret, Daudin de Bellair, Laroque, Legendre (Cayes), Legendre (St Louis).
holdings ii, New France, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Jamaica, one-third
in Louisiana, and two-fifths in Saint-Domingue (Table 11.3). Cotton had not
become the leading textile in any colony. Linens held that position, except in
Pennsylvania where it is likely that only part of an extensive domestic linen pro-
duction entered merchant distribution networks. 11 Nevertheless, in Saint-
Domingue,Jamaica, and Louisiana, cottons were second only to linens, and the
two fibres together accounted for 85--90 per cent of all merchant cloth. In New
France, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, by contrast, woollens retained a stronger
position; yet even there linens and cottons were about half of merchant stocks.
Inventories from the three French colonies reveal that cottons were the fabric
of choice for about a third of decedent garments in the 1760s. In New France
cotton's share doubled between the 1730s and the 1760s, but had risen only mod-
estly above the 1730s' levels in Louisiana and had fallen in Saint-Domingue
11 Adrienne Hood, The Weaver's Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania
(Philadelphia, 2003); Martha Halpern, 'Germantown Goods: A Survey of the Textile Industry
in Germantown, Pennsylvania', Textile History, 29/z (1998), 157-76; Andrew Burnaby, Travels
through the Middle Settlements in North America, in the Years I 759 and I760, with Observations
upon the State of the Colonies (London, 3rd edn. 1798), 63; [Lord Adam Gordon] 'Journal of an
Officer's Travels in America and the West Indies, 1764-65', in Newton Mereness (ed.), Travels
in the American Colonies (New York, 1916), 412.
TABLE r r .4. Cotton Garmentsin Three French New World Colonies(percentage of

garments with known fabrics)
1680-99 1730-39 1760-69
New France 4.36 15.98 31.70
Louisiana 29.16 30.78
Saint-Domingue 45.27 31.40
Sources:New France 168o-g9 (505 garments): Archives Nationales du Qy.ebec,Montreal, Not. A. Adhemar,
Basset, Bougrine, Mauge, Moreau, Pottier. New France 1730-39 (1,208 garments): Archives Nationales du
Quebec, Montreal, Not. J.-B.Adhemar, Barette <litCourville, Chore! de Saint-Romain, Comparet, C.-F.
Coron, F. Coron, Cyr de Monmerque <lit Dubreuil, Danre de Blanzy, Guillet de Chaumont, Jenvrin-
Dufresne, Lepailleur de LaFerte, Loiseau <lit Ch:1.lons,Porlier, Raimbault, S. Sanguinet pere, Senet dit
Laliberte, Simonnet. Louisiana 1730-39 (1,958 garments): Louisiana Historical Center, New Orleans, La.,
French Superior Council Records, Inventories, 1730-39; New Orleans Notarial Archives Research Center,
New Orleans, La., Inventories. Louisiana 1730-39 (1,958 garments), 176o-69 (3,265 garments): Louisiana
Historical Center, New Orleans, La., French Superior Council Records, Inventories; New Orleans Notarial
Archives Research Center, New Orleans, La., Inventories; Natchitoches Parish Court House, La., Con-
veyance Record Book r. Saint-Domingue 1730-39 (1,268 garments): Archives Nationales, France, Centre des
Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, Not. Carier, Casamajor, Delinois, Delorme de Roissy, Laville,
Martin, Saunier, Vieilhomme. New France 1760-69 (4,593 garments): Archives Nationales du Qy.ebec,
Montreal, Not. Blanzy, Bouvet, Chatellier, Cherrier, Coron, Courville, Deguire, Duvemay, Foucher, Grise,
Hodiesne, Jehanne, J. Lalanne, P. Lalanne, Loiseau, Mezieres, Panet, Racicot, Sanguinet, Simonnet,
Soupras, Souste, Vautier. Saint-Domingue 1760-69 (5,899 garments): Archives Nationales, France, Centre
des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, Not. Beaulieu, Belin du Ressort, Berton, Bugaret, Daudin de
Bellair, Dupuis de Lavaux, Duval, Flanet, Guilleau, Ladoue, Laroque, Legendre (Cayes), Legendre (St
Louis), Le Jeune Duparnay, Mallet, Rivet.
(Table 11.4). Taken together, the 1730s data from Louisiana and Saint-Domingue
(where cottons had comprised a higher proportion of individual free decede11ts'
garments than of merchants' textile stocks), and the 1760s data, demonstrate that
garments drove cottons' advance. A comparison of clothing lists from the three
colonies indicates that accessories had opened the door to cottons, but basic gar-
ments such as gowns, skirts, petticoats, trousers, vests, waistcoats, and the like
had secured for cottons a substantial presence in the textile cultures of North
America and the Caribbean. The growth in cottons' market share continued
beyond the 1730s with continuing inroads into garments and accessories and
helped by the appearance of cotton outerwear--even overcoats in Montreal.
In this final period, a few pieces of 'homespun' cotton cloth were found in
rural Pennsylvania and New France. Despite important new research, it is still
not possible to determine what fraction of the cloth available in North America
was locally produced (none is known to have been made in the Caribbean).
Scholars agree, however, that the fabrics manufactured in the colonies consisted
overwhelmingly oflinens and woollens. 12 Cottons, therefore, remained quin-
tessentially imported fabrics.
12 Arthur H. Cole, TheAmerican WoolManufacture(Cambridge, Mass., 1926), vol. i; Florence
Montgomery, Printed Textiles: English and American Cottonsand Linens 1700-1850 (New York,
1970); David-Thierry Ruddel, 'Domestic Textile Production in Colonial Quebec, 1608-1840',
Material History Bulletin, 31 (1990), 39-49; A. B. McCullough, The Primary Textile Industry in
PATTERNS OF COLONIAL COTTONS CONSUMPTION: PERSONS,

LOCATIONS, OCCASIONS
In late seventeenth-century Montreal and its environs, cottons were most likely
to be found in bazin, calico, or mousseline undergarments and accessories. Their
Canadian owners were usually urban male officials, merchants, and professionals
whose homes also boasted the odd cotton curtain, table linens, and bedspread.
Very rarely did men and women from other social and occupational groups, not
to mention country folk, own cotton fabrics of any type. More fragmentary data
from Philadelphia and Jamaica in the last quarter of the seventeenth century
reflect a similar preponderance of male accessories as well as a few fustian and
calico waistcoats, cotton petticoats, and muslin aprons. Jamaican inventories also
show that cottons were unequally distributed by legal status: not only were they
rare, they were for free settlers, while rough linens clothed slaves. 13
The rapid and broad adoption of cottons as material for basic clothing during
the early eighteenth century complicated cottons' identity. Account books and
inventories from 1730s New France, South Carolina, and Louisiana confirm
cottons' marked association with free urban dwellers. Cottons comprised 16per
cent by value of the textile stocks of merchants operating in the immediate
Charleston, South Carolina, area, but just 3.5 per cent of the textiles on rural
traders' shelves. In the same period, while about a quarter of the textile stocks
of New OrJeans merchants were cottons, they constituted just 6 per cent of the
holdings of traders operating on the Louisiana frontiers. 14 Nevertheless, cotton
fabrics had broadened their social range. Rather exclusively for the well-to-do
in the later seventeenth century, by the 1730s they were owned by colonists of
middling wealth and perhaps even by the less affluent.
In the early eighteenth century cottons were consumed increasingly by
women, and the gender identity of the fibre came to be reversed, as reflected in
family expenditure records. 15 In Louisiana, between a third and a half of a small
Canada: History and Heritage (Ottawa, 1992); Mary Schoeser, 'Colonial North America (1700--
199os)', in Jennifer Harris (ed.), Textiles 5,000 Years: An International History and Illustrated
Survey (New York, 1993), 250--63;S. D. Smith, 'The Market for Manufactures in the Thirteen
Continental Colonies, 1698-1776', Economic History Review, 51/ 4 (1998), 676--708;Hood, The
Weaver's Craft.
13 See Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and
Jamaica (London, 1707, 1725), i, xlvii and Iv.

14 Louisiana Historical Center, New Orleans, French Superior Council Records, docs.
1737081405, 1737081501, 1739031002(two invoices), 1739070701.
15 See SCHS, Lindley Papers, 34-355, expenditures for the orphaned Lindley children;
Historical Society of Pennsylvania (henceforth HSP), Ms. Am 909,James Bonsall Account Book
1722-8; HSP, Morris Papers, Deborah Morris Account Book; HSP, Collection of Business,
Professional, and Personal Accounts, Thomas Coates Ledger, family expenditures.
number of distinctively male garments (notably culottesand vests) were tailored

from cottons; in contrast, half to three-quarters of nearly every type of women's
basic garments were cotton. In Montreal, women owned nearly two-thirds of
cotton garments, while for men it was just over a third.
By the 1760s, cottons extended their reach into outerwear and their social
ambit expanded in the populace, 16 though they were always more common on
the bodies of the affluent than of those with modest incomes. For this reason,
mousseline/muslin, a more expensive cotton, consistently remained a top seller.
From the 1760s it was rivalled by calico/indienne, which appealed to a broad
spectrum of consumers because of the variety of qualities, finishes, and prices.
At the same time, cottons became more firmly female.17 On average, a Montreal
woman of any class would have three or four times as many cotton garments as
a man of the same social order. Her Louisiana sisters owned about twice as many
cottons as men, who for their part held half again as many linens and at least five
times as many woollens, while woollens had all but disappeared from women's
wardrobes. Very incomplete data from the Illinois country (Upper Louisiana)
suggest that the cottons that made their way inland in the packs of voyageurs
and pedlars were likewise largely destined for women's wear. 18 Analysis of free
colonists' garments in Saint-Domingue inventories paint much the same
picture: about a quarter of men's wardrobes was fabricated from cottons, as
against a half of women's, and woollens in particular were heavily male. In both
Louisiana and Saint-Domingue, finally, both male and female slaves were
issued increasing if unquantifiable amounts of cottons, particularly cheap
siamoise, check, and blue and white stripes; in addition, in both colonies female
slaves-participating in the prevailing gendered consumption pattern-used
their own resources to purchase calico and muslin headscarves and skirts. 19
The legal status correlates of cottons probably began to blur in Jamaica, too,
where the proportion of cotton textiles in planters' holdings jumped ninefold
between the late seventeenth century and the 1760s. To be sure, cottons con-
tinued to lag far behind linens and were only half as common as among Saint-
Domingue planters. Still, some of the check, Bengal stripe, and other
inexpensive cottons found in slaveowners' storehouses must have been destined
for slave garments, even iflinens remained the mainstay for that purpose. 20
16 In advertisements for runaway servants and (a minority) slaves in the Pennsylvania Gazette,
4°/o of garments were specified as cottons in 1731-3, 13% in 1762.

17 See Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina,James Poyas Account Book, 1760---5.
18 Kaskaskia Manuscripts, Randolph County Courthouse, Chester, IL, docs. 21:9:13:1,
63:6:19:r, 63:6:20:1, 67=10:20:1, 70:6:25:2.

19 Mederic Louis Elie Moreau de Saint Mery, Descriptiontopographique, physiquecivile,politique
et historiquede la partie franfaise de /'isle de Saint-Domingue (Philadelphia, 1797-8), i. 59-60;
DuPlessis, 'Cloth and the Emergence of the Atlantic Economy', 76 (tab. 10, col. 3), and 82-3.
20 See]. R. Ward, British West Indian Slavery, 1750---1834 (Oxford, 1988), 151, 154.
Slaves' own funds also may have been spent on cottons, as in Saint-Domingue
and Louisiana. And of course cottons' presence on plantations in all three
colonies qualified their close association with urbanity.
The surviving sources do not allow us to determine whether in Jamaica race
also shaped the consumption of cottons as it did in Saint-Domingue or whether
the different proportions of free people of colour on the two islands were
reflected in their respective textile cultures. In Saint-Domingue all classes of
whites favoured woollens and silks to a much greater extent than all classes of
free people of colour, who wore considerably more clothing made of cottons and
linens. 21 These racial differences in material identities among the free popula-
tion intersected with differences derived from gender, profession, and legal
status. On plantations nearly all woollen and silk garments belonged to male
planters, irrespective of race, while their wives, daughters, and female slaves
held disproportionate amounts of cottons. In fact, as cottons took on pro-
nounced gendered and racialized identities in Saint-Domingue, their consump-
tion began to decline (Table 11 .4), a development accentuated by the high
proportion of men among colonists. 22 The cottons that formed a growing share
of merchant stocks were increasingly directed toward bondswomen rather than
to their free sisters.
These developments indicate the emergence of a distinctive West Indian-
Gulf of Mexico cottons consumption model. Though all evidence points to
greater use of cottons in Louisiana and Saint-Domingue than in Jamaica, in all
three colopies cottons were consumed by women and by groups lower in the
socio-economic hierarchy. While this was true of the other North American
colonies examined in this essay, the West Indian-Gulf of Mexico centres fol-
lowed divergent territorial, legal-status, and, at least in Saint-Domingue, racial
vectors. On the Atlantic coast of North America, marked urban-rural and free-
unfree differences in the adoption of cottons lessened only slightly. Thus rural
South Carolina traders doubled the proportion of cottons in their inventories
between 1730-<) and 1760-<), while those in Charleston rose by only a half; yet
the latter's holdings (24 per cent) still exceeded the former's by a factor of three
and a half. Inventory data from New France similarly reveal that the average
city resident owned nearly four times as many cotton garments as country folk,
a pattern confirmed by purchases recorded in retailers' accounts. 23 A clear and
substantial if unquantifiable distinction between the cottons consumption habits
of townspeople and of their rural compatriots is also manifest in account books
21 See Moreau de Saint Mery, Description,i. 93.
22 James E. McClellan, Colonialismand Science:Saint-Dominguein the Old Regime(Baltimore,
1992), 48----g,56-67.
23 Archives Nationales du Qµebec, Montreal (henceforth ANQM), Fonds Chateau de Ramezay
P 345; Universite de Montreal, Collection Baby, G2/ 34, Registre 3, Etienne Auge et Pierre Guy,
Grand livre de comptes 1740-56; Archives Canada, Mf. 852, Etienne Auge,Journal E.
Robert S. DuP/essis
from the British colonies.24 In the booming settlement of Lancaster, a transport

and commercial hub 100 km west of Philadelphia, merchant stocks suggest a
textile consumption profile midway between those of rural farming country and
the thriving port city of Philadelphia. In all likelihood, Lancaster's merchants
sold the bulk of their cottons to townspeople. 25 By the late eighteenth century
there had emerged a specifically urban apparel regime, in which city folk
dressed in lighter and more colourful clothing, more often made of cotton
fabrics, than their free country cousins, whose garments remained more rooted
in linens and woollens.
Limited purchases of cotton textiles by the Amerindian population indicate
that the fibre was most strongly associated with Euro-American urban residents
in colonial North America. Amerindians obtained cotton cloth from both com-
mercial and gift exchanges. Presents may have expressed official norms more
than Native wishes, but traders probably hewed closely to Amerindian prefer-
ences, since competitors were usually near at hand. Heavy and durable woollens
and linens always remained clearly dominant in traders' assortments through
the 1760s, although cottons did make some inroads.
Late seventeenth-century cargoes from Montreal to the fur-trading posts in
the Great Lakes region did not contain much cotton cloth or garments. Those
sent in 1715-39 contained only 2 per cent cottons by value and those in 1740-
8 barely 3 per cent. 26 Flows of cottons to British-allied Native Americans from
Philadelphia were also minimal. In 1722-8, for example, cottons formed just 2
per cent of the fabric that the leading wholesaler James Bonsall sold to Indian
traders. 27 Calico petticoats and pieces of 'course flowered Calicoe' were men-
tioned when South Carolina's Commissioners of the Indian Trade established
prices of trade goods in 1716, and both were also offered as gifts, but their quan-
tities paled in comparison with those oflinens and woollens. 28
By the middle of the eighteenth century, cottons were more available to
24 Charleston Museum, James Poyas Account Book; SCHS, 34/ 613, Kershaw Account Book.
25 Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware (henceforth HML), MS, Acc. 890,
vol. 3, Unknown Lancaster merchant Daybook 1765-6. Cf. HML, MS, acc. 1338, Potts family
accounts, vol. 4; Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pa., [Peter Buffington] Store
Account Books IO, 14.
26 Universite de Montreal, Collection Baby, docs. G1/ 5, G1/6, G1/8 (1685 cargoes); George
Irving Qyimby, Indian Culture and European Trade Goods (Madison, 1966), 65 (1688 cargoes).
For eighteenth-century cargoes, I am grateful to Dean Anderson for Great Lakes data, drawn
from the 'Montreal Merchants Records Project. Research Files, 1971-1975. Microfilm edition.
Minnesota Historical Society' (St Paul, Minn., 1985). See Dean Anderson, 'Documentary and
Archaeological Perspectives on European Trade Goods in the Western Great Lakes Region'
(unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1992).
27
HSP, MS Am 909, Bonsall Account Book 1722-8.
28 W. L. McDowell (ed.), Journals of the Commissioners of the Indian Trade, September 20,
1710-August 29, 1718(Columbia, SC, 1955), 89,104,269.

Amerindians. Indeed, many Native Americans had evidently come to expect

them in assortments of goods that they received. During the 1750s, for example,
when war disrupted supplies from France, voyageurs reportedly stopped at the
British Oswego post to obtain printed cottons among other 'prohibited goods' .29
In the late 1730s, private traders in Louisiana bartered cottons, though French
officials disdained them-perhaps because they could not obtain the cloth-so
they were very rarely found in gift distributions. 30 South Carolina's Governor
Glen was bolder and cottons totalled 6 per cent by value of his 'Invoice for goods
given to South Carolina and Georgia Indians' in 1748.31
The increasing sale of cottons to Amerindians did not take place at the same
pace across North America, however. In the mid-175os, the value of cloth and
clothing held by western Pennsylvania Indian traders included 73 per cent
woollens, 25 per cent linens, just I per cent cottons. 32 In the 1760s, cottons
accounted for only a few per cent of the cloth distributed by George Croghan,
both in his private trade and as gifts on behalf of the Crown. Croghan was based
at Fort Pitt, which lay on the western edge of Pennsylvania. 33 Nevertheless,
Native American cottons consumption grew in the eighteenth century. The
goods stocked at a Susquehanna Valley, Pennsylvania, frontier store in 1763
contained 12 per cent cottons and calicoes by value; the Indian traders supplied
by Macartan and Campbell at Augusta in 1762-4 and in the late 1760s by
George Galphin at Silver Bluff (both trading posts were on the Savannah River
between South Carolina and Georgia) regularly bought lengths of calico, striped
cotton, a¥1 cotton romals, as well as cotton handkerchiefs and cotton check
shirts, that together amounted to IO per cent of their total outlays; and cotton
fabrics and garments composed from less than 5 to perhaps 15 per cent of total
ellage in cargoes sent from Montreal to the Great Lakes in the early 1770s.34 In
29 Joseph Peyser (ed.), On the Eve of the Conquest:The Chevalierde Raymond's Critiqueof New
Francein IJ54 (East Lansing, Mich., 1997), 70.
30 Dunbar Rowland, Albert G. Sanders, and Patricia Galloway (eds.), MississippiProvincial
Archives, French Dominion Gackson, Miss., 1927-84), passim;Archives Nationales de France,

Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (henceforth CAOM), C13a, vol. 43, fos.
406---407v.
31
National Archives, Kew, London (henceforth TNA), CO 5/ 389, fos. 9-14, 19, 25, 30, 32,
72-73v, 75v-76, 77, 78, 87. See W. L. McDowell (ed.), DocumentsRelating to IndianAffairs, I754-
I765 (Columbia, SC, 1970), 457-8.
32 HSP, Etting Collection, vol. 40, dossiers 7, 17, 29, 30.
33 HSP, George Croghan Account Book. See HSP, Etting Collection, vol. 40, dossiers 36, 37
(1761).
34 HSP, Gratz Collection, box 10, case 14, 'Invoice ... from the Trading House at Fort
Augusta', 22 August 1763; South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia,
Microfilm of original at Clemson University Library, Clemson, SC, Macartan and Campbell,
Augusta Account Book; Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, File 269, Mf. GHSorn, George
Galphin Account Books from the Silver Bluff Trading Post 1767-72; ANQM, not. Panet 2737,
Jacques Gagnier; ANQM, not. Mezieres 2413 #1962.
Robert S. DuPlessis
short, throughout most of the mainland colonies of both France and Britain, the
flow of cottons to Indians was coming to resemble that prevailing among settlers
on the frontier (Illustration I I. 1 ).
According to the evidence of official South Carolina clothing distributions,
which are the best documented, among Amerindians as well, cottons were
female fabrics from at least the early eighteenth century. When Indian Peggy
delivered a captive Frenchman to colonial officials in November 1716, she was
voted a reward of'a Suit of Calicoe Cloaths, for herself (together with a suit of
woollen stuff for her son), and a few years later Governor-select Nicholson was
informed that 'course calico gowns and petticoats' were appropriate gifts for
women, while only woollens and linens were specified for men. 35 Similarly,
when the Savanna Indians received allotments on 6 September 1749, Itchcoe's
daughter got (together with woollens) two yards of calico for herself and her two
children, whereas her brother was given woollens and a check linen shirt. 36
These gifts may reflect settler stereotypes rather than Amerindian usages,
however. In the 1740s, Montreal manifests for Great Lakes trading posts
suggest that the consumption of cottons was less linked to sex. Because many
chemiseshad no gender stipulation, women's blouses as well as men's shirts may
have been among the cotton chemisesthat were displacing the linen version.
Strikingly, the only cotton chemisesthat did carry a gender label were for men
and the only chemisesdefined as women's were made oflinen. And while the
lengths of cotton and muslin cloth listed in the cargoes may have been destined
for Amerindian women to form their characteristic short wrap-around skirt
called the machiciJte, men's breeches were the only other cotton garments explic-
itly cited. 37 If the few 'cotton shirts' that Hudson's Bay Company representa-
tives began to trade for beaver in these same years were intended solely for
men, 38 then Amerindians and their French and British suppliers were probably
the first challenge to the gendered consumption of cottons in North America.
Among Europeans, cottons began to recover their earlier role as a male signifier
as they began to form the material for shirts, displacing linen in the process.
With this shift, male garments repeated a process of 'cottonification' that
35
McDowell (ed.),Journals of the Commissioners, 127-8; TNA, CO 5/358, fo. 3 (1720).
36 TNA, CO 5/389, fos. 177---go:'An Account of the distribution ofHis Majesty's Presents'.
For other examples W. L. McDowell (ed.), Documents Relating to Indian Affairs May 21, 1750-
August 7, 1754 (Columbia, SC, 1958), 376; id. (ed.), Documents Relating to Indian Affairs 1754-
1765, 282 and 475. French officials, who distributed virtually no cottons, gave out linens and
woollens to both genders.
37 Anderson data from MMR.
38 Manitoba Archives, Hudson's Bay Company, Winnipeg, B.3/d/69-78, Fort Albany
Account Books 176o---g.The great majority of cotton shirts sent to Fort Albany were acquired by
(male) English employees rather than Indians, who remained loyal to linen for all but 8% of their
shirts. Moreover, no cotton shirts at all were on offer at the larger York Factory. I would like to
thank Beverly Lemire for suggesting I look at the HBC records.
Illustration 11.r. Sir John Caldwell, anonymous artist, c. 1774-80. Reproduced courtesy of
the National Museums, Liverpool, 58-83-1b.
Caldwell was an officer in the British 8th Foot Regiment assigned to Niagara and Detroit between
1774 and 1780. His position demanded frequent official visits to Indian villages, and he took
part in several Indian councils. It was during these trips that he amassed a superb collection of
Native objects, which he took back with him to Ireland in 1780.His ruffled shirt is made oflight
cotton printed with rows of two sizes of small figures.
Robert S. DuPlessis
women's clothing had already experienced, but with one significant difference.
The rise of cotton in the dress of women had come at the expense of silks and
woollens. In the case of men, it was linens that started to lose out.
WHY COTTONS?
The cotton napkins, tablecloths, curtains, towels, sheets and pillowcases, even
blankets that began to supplement (but not seriously to challenge) household
linens enlivened the domestic environment of free settlers of both genders. But
consumers of cotton garments-the foundation of cottons' advance-were
most likely to be settler women. On the Atlantic coast of the mainland they
were also likely to be Euro-American, urban, and free, whereas in the
Caribbean and Gulf they were increasingly likely to be mulattas or of African
ancestry and might be enslaved as well as free. All women were likely to own
cotton kerchiefs, but what most distinguished female dress were the cotton
gowns, skirts, petticoats, and other basic garments that proliferated over the
course of the eighteenth century. In fact, it was women's sweeping adoption of
cottons for these items of clothing from the early eighteenth century that trans-
formed cotton fabrics from curiosities found mainly in male accessories into
the ordinary quotidian material from which a third of the garments of all free
settlers-and half or more of the typical free woman's wardrobe-were fash-
ioned. Men also wore cotton garments. But only among Amerindians did men's
ownership of cotton clothing rival that of women, thanks to their early acqui-
sition of cotton shirts. Even then Native Americans were more committed to
woollens and linens than the settler population.
Did marketing play a role in the adoption of cotton cloth? Certainly, evidence
attests to a multiplication in the numbers of shops, markets, and auctions in
town and village alike, becoming especially numerous in cities; in rural areas
they were complemented by pedlars, who served both settlers and native
people. 39 Some specialization accompanied the expansion of urban retail
39 See Richard L. Bushman, 'Shopping and Advertising in Colonial America', in Cary Carson,
Ronald Hoffman, and Peter Albert (eds.), Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth
Century (Charlottesville, Va., 1994), 233-51; Louise Dechene, Habitants and Merchants in
Seventeenth Century Montreal (Montreal, 1992); Sylvie Depatie, 'Commerce et credit a!'Ile Jesus,
1734-75: le role des marchands ruraux dans l'economie des campagnes montrealaises', Canadian
Historical Review, 84/z (2003), 147-76; Sophie White,' "A Baser Commerce": Retailing Class &
Gender in French Colonial New Orleans', William and Mary Quarterly, 63/3 (2006), 517-50;
Eirlys M. Barker, 'Indian Traders, Charles Town and London's Vital Link to the Interior of
North America, 1717-1755', in Jack Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks (eds.),
Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina's Plantation Society (Columbia,
SC, 2001), 141-65; Anon., 'Peddlers and Indian Traders License Papers, 1722-1866 Chester
County, Pennsylvania', Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, 35/ 4 (1988), 283----90.
Illustration 1.5.
A nobleman seated smoking on
a terrace, attended by two
servants. Gouache on paper,
c. 1750-1754. 40.7 x 34.2 cm.
Illustration 1.6.
Cloth merchant seated in his
shop selling chintz to a
customer. Opaque water-
colour, c. 1800.
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ii
r!
:1
i
1
I
J
d
Illustration 1.7. Skirmish between Mughal and Rajput forces from theAkbarnama.
Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 1590-95. 38.r x 22-4 cm.
Illustration j.2. (above)
'Perugia' towel, fifteenth-sixteenth
century, Italian, woven linen and cotton.
Illustration s+ (top right) Detail, women's

cotton head cloth, plain weave check (treadle
loom).
Illustration 6. 1. (right) Detail, Block-printed,

mordant-dyed and painted long cloth
produced in Gujarat,
C. 1680-1720.
Illustration 7.1. Painted cotton cloth produced in the Coromandel Coast, near Madras and
representing a Dutch sailing ship. Late seventeenth century.
Illustration 7.3. Mordant-dyed and painted cotton produced on the Coromandel Coast,
eighteenth century.
Illustration 9.2. 'The new
urban fashion culture of
the mid-Edo period' -
Uchiwa-uri [A fan seller].
Woodblock print by
Suzuki Harunobu, Mid
Edo period (the mid-
eighteenth century).
I
Ii
Illustration 9-4- Sample
pieces of hand-woven
cotton fabrics with various
motifs and patterns.
1823-30.
~,
r,;r ,_
·1 0 e 0 /J"
!~.xg $ i
•
I-~
0 ~'t:, 0
"
I
I
:~ l
Illustration 9. 5.
An early sample of
hand-woven and
chemically-dyed
cotton fabric with
striped patterns.
Second halfof the
nineteenth century.
Illustration 9.7.
'Nagasaki sarasa:
The fusion oflndian
and Chinese styles'.
First half of the
nineteenth century.
Illustration 9.8. Bunsei ku-nen inu ku-gatsu, inu K11m/Jmochiwataritanmonokirehon-ch/J.
(Sample book of textiles imported by the Dutch in the Year of the Dog, the ninth month of
the ninth year of the Bunsei era). 1826.
Illustration 9.9. 'The height of urban fashion culture oflate traditional Japan' -A party in
'Shikian' Restaurant at Nakasu. Woodblock print by Kubo Shunman, 1787-88.
Illustration 10. 1. Detail of
Gujarati block printed cloth
traded to Indonesia, c. 1400
AD.
Illustration 10.2. (below)

Gujarati block printed
cotton, excavated at Fustat,
Egypt, c.1400 AD.
Illustration 10.3. (bottom)

Gujarati block printed
cotton, excavated at Fustat,
Egypt. Carbon-dated to
1460 AD+/- 70.
Illustration 10.6. Hanging, cotton painted and dyed. Possibly Coromandel Coast. c. 1700.
Illustration r r. r. Sir John Caldwell, anonymous artist, c. 1774-80.
,;JJe
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Illustration
, ~
12.l
JDoscEde '-!\.Ic1'b ar (attrib)
·
e spanoly Ne .,
Mulato , c. 17 60 gra,
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canvas ' 88 x97.2
.' · cm.1 on
Illustration r2
Nliguel C,a b rera
.2. D I
Y Barsina . z b, e ndio
' am a"g
I·1on canvas J a, r763.
0
l35·5 X 103·:,.' Cm.
Illustration 13.3. (left) A Dutch
woman, from The Costume of the
Netherlands after drawings by
Miss Semple, London, 1817.
Illustration 13+ (below) Hat-brim

lining. Printed and Painted cotton.
India. Eighteenth century.
Illustration 13.5 (right). Block

printed, painted and resist- and
mordant-dyed cotton textile called
Kalamkari, c. 1850.
Illustration 13.7. (bottom right) Piece

of a checked handkerchief, block
printed cotton, Manufacture Feer &
Huguenin, Mulhouse, 1760.
Illustration 14.I.
Chafarcani produced in
Provence or imported into
Marseilles before1759.
Illustration 15.2.
'Flowered Lining', 1759.
A swatch of linen fabric
printed in blue, cut from
the gown of a baby boy left
at the London Foundling
Hospital.
-···-i~1ou.-r----,
.Rdl1'¢~
~cd',
Waifcoat !i
/ S~t .fi·~~l
• ~' I
I t;f~ut pt?<.-j
/ J>ilch
..
·Stoc~rrg,,,
tf>~
ihoes1,,,.
I
L'
I
Illustration 15.3 Central panel of a cotton counterpane, Bolton, Lancashire, 1809.
Victoria and Albert Museum T. 12-1935.
Illustration 17.1. The Louisbourg/Britannia Flag, 1745. Cotton. Carried at Siege of
Louisbourgh under the expedition of Sir William Pepperell; command of St Lawrence River.
outlets. FrancisJeyes, for example, opened a 'London ware-house for printed

calicoes, cottons, and linen' in Philadelphia in late 1761. Very occasionally, an
inventory suggests that a deceased merchant concentrated on cottons, but,
judging from inventories, specialists in woollens and especially in linens were
more common. And pedlars as well as the overwhelming majority of shops in
North America and the Caribbean sold all the major types of fabrics. Jeyes
himself found it prudent to add woollens and silks to his offerings after a few
months. 40 Similarly, cottons were advertised in the growing numbers of news-
papers that appeared in the British colonies, as were woollens and linens and
silks. Most advertisements, indeed, were unsystematic, heterogeneous listings.
Women shopkeepers contributed to the growth of textile retailing, but their
numbers seem to have become substantial only from the 1740s, which was after
the big increase in cottons consumption and cotton's repositioning as a female
fabric. 41 Some historians argue that women retailers made 'gendered appeals'
through advertisements as arbiters of taste and fashion to women shoppers. 42
Whatever the truth of this contention-evidence for it is very hard to find in
either Philadelphia or Charleston newspapers-it appears to have had no par-
ticular influence on cottons consumption. All the advertisements from the 1750s
that trumpeted fashionability named fabrics of all sorts, and when they did asso-
ciate fashion with a particular material it was usually with silk. In Philadelphia,
where a large number of female merchant inventories have survived, male and
female retailers stocked the same proportion of cottons. If they were serving as
fashion guides, female shopkeeper recommendation must have benefited silks,
which we/e three times more numerous on their shelves than on those of their
male counterparts. 43
The spread of retailing and advertising does not seem to have benefited
cottons disproportionately. But what about the proliferation of new varieties of
cloth, which is evident from manifests as well as advertisements? Between the
late seventeenth century and the 1760s, the number of cotton fabrics at least
doubled in every colony except Louisiana where war and the chaotic end of
French administration disrupted commercial networks and cut in half the types
of cloth that were available. The growth in cloth varieties was not unique to
cottons, however. The assortment oflinens on display in the colonies-already
40 Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 December 1761 and 4 March 1762.
41 Patricia Cleary, "'She Will Be in the Shop": Women's Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-
Century Philadelphia and New York', Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 99/3
(1995), 181-202; Kathryn Young,"' ... saufles perils et fortunes de la mer": Merchant Women
in New France and the French Transatlantic Trade, 1713-46', Canadian Historical Review, 77/ 3
(1996), 388-407; Louise Plamondel, 'Une femme d'affaires en Nouvelle-France: Marie-Anne
Barbel, veuve F ornel', Revue d' histoire de l'Amerique franraise, 3112 ( 1977), 165-86.
42 Cleary, "'She Will Be in the Shop"', 188.
43 See White, ' "Baser Commerce" ', for similar findings.
considerably larger than the array of cottons-expanded by about 75 per cent

and the number of silks rose by about 50 per cent everywhere but Jamaica.
Nevertheless, despite the across-the-board increase in varieties of cloth,
cotton textiles steadily increased their share of merchant cloth stocks. Merchant
cotton stocks increased between 8 and 68 per cent per decade; in contrast,
linens' share grew just I to 13 per cent and even dropped 4 per cent per decade
in Pennsylvania. Silks did even worse, falling 17 per cent per decade in Saint-
Domingue and IO per cent in Jamaica, remaining stable in Louisiana, and pro-
gressing just 4 to 7 per cent elsewhere. Woollens did worst of all: even though
the selection of woollens doubled or more in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and
Saint-Domingue, their proportion of total textile stocks fell sharply in these as
in every other colony. In fact, Saint-Domingue merchants, who almost tripled
their array of woollens, experienced the sharpest decline (22 per cent per
decade). Widening selection signalled both gain and loss of market share,
though in terms of merchants' shelves the proliferation of choice aided cottons
far more than any other fabric type.
With respect to garments, too, greater choice of fabrics bore no clear relation-
ship to changes in consumer preferences. The availability of additional varieties
may have helped cottons in New France, but did not in Louisiana or Saint-
Domingue. Linens, too, received little benefit from more options: their share
of garments declined in both New France and Louisiana and barely inched
ahead in Saint-Domingue. In fact, it was silks and woollens that improved the
most. The former held their own in New France while doubling their presence
in Louisiana and Saint-Domingue; woollens maintained their place in New
France and Louisiana and doubled it in Saint-Domingue.
Though scholars continue to debate the reasons, there is consensus that the
price of most European and Asian textiles in the Atlantic world, including
cottons, fell between the late seventeenth century and the eve of factory indus-
trialization. 44 It is not clear whether the relative price of cotton fell, however.
Cottons prices declined relative to silks everywhere, and cottons' share of mer-
chant stocks soared, while those of silks stagnated or, in Jamaica and Saint-
Domingue, decreased. Nevertheless, though the proportion of silk garments in
individuals' wardrobes declined in New France, it rose in Saint-Domingue,
where, as in Jamaica, the lower proportion of silks in merchant stocks stemmed
from lower re-exports to Spanish America rather than declining demand by
local consumers. 45 Cotton cloth prices rose on average compared to linens,
44 For an excellent introduction to this vast topic, see Carole Shammas, 'The Decline of
Textile Prices in England and British America Prior to Industrialization', EconomicHistory

Review, 47/3 (1994), 483-507.
45 See Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An EconomicHistory of the British WestIndies
162J-1775 (Baltimore, 1974), 316---18,459-60.

which probably explains the nearly universal increase in linens in merchant

stocks. In Saint-Domingue, rising relative cottons prices may also account for
declining demand among planters. Yet in New France, decedents' holdings of
linen garments decreased, but domestic linens, reflecting higher levels of
domestic comfort, were more abundant. By the 1760s, checks (especially pure
cottons and mixed cotton-linens) started to find favour in both South Carolina
and Jamaica, despite costing a third, a half, or even more than the ozenbrig
linens with which they competed.
The situation with respect to woollens was even more complicated. No clear
pattern of relative price movements obtained between cottons and woollens.
Woollens became less expensive in New France, South Carolina, and Jamaica,
more expensive in Louisiana and Saint-Domingue, and remained the same in
Pennsylvania. Yet without exception, merchant holdings of woollens plunged.
Even more perversely, while woollen garments became less popular among set-
tlers in New France, they were more in vogue in Saint-Domingue-just the
reverse of what the relative price movements would suggest. Data on particular
cotton textiles also indicate that prices played a minor role in the spread of
cottons. In Pennsylvania, calicoes became on average 50 per cent more expensive
in current pounds between 1680-99 and 1760-9 but their share of merchant
stocks more than doubled. By contrast, the average price of calimanco (French
calamande),brightly dyed glazed worsteds that competed with calicoes, dropped
by more than 50 per cent, but demand for them fell dramatically relative to that
of their rivpls. The fears of the light worsted producers, who had bitterly fought
imported calicoes in the late seventeenth century, appear to have been justified.46
Data on ready-made garments are scanty because nearly all cloth was fash-
ioned into clothing by the purchaser or by professional tailors. What does exist
indicates that cottons' gains cannot be attributed to more favourable prices. In
1770, the price of a cotton check shirt in the Kingston, Jamaica, shop of Esther
Mella was three times that of a linen equivalent. Three years later in Simtia
Mendels's Kingston shop the price of striped cotton men's trousers was 13 per
cent more than a counterpart made from checked linen. 47 Similarly, calico shirts
were always more expensive than those made of dowlas, and fustian waistcoats
more costly than those tailored from ozenbrig. Consumers surely did not ignore
price, but it appears to have been a major consideration mainly when planters
in British colonies clothed slaves.
If cottons did not become less expensive, did rising incomes account for
their burgeoning popularity? According to Marc Egnal, per capita income in
46 See Patrick O'Brien, Trevor Griffiths, and Philip Hunt, 'Political Components of the
Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660--1774',Economic
History Review, 44/3 (1991), 395-423.
47 Jamaica Archives, Spanish Town, Inventory Books, 1B/r1/3/ 51; 1B/r1/3/ 53.
244 Robert S. DuP!essis
British North America grew some o.6 per cent per year between 1713 and
1775. The Lower South, which included South Carolina, grew at twice the
overall rate. All parts of New France prospered from the mid-172os until the
mid-175os. 48 In the eighteenth century Jamaica and Saint-Domingue became
by far the richest colonies in their respective empires. 49 These rising incomes
could have benefited cottons. Growing inequalities of wealth, which historians
have identified in the plantation colonies and in urban areas along the Atlantic
°
coast, may also have boosted cottons consumption. 5 Cotton garments were
always more prevalent among affluent professionals and merchants than
among artisans. In addition, settlers in frontier areas, where inequality was
much lower, also bought many fewer cottons. Still, Saint-Domingue data indi-
cate that burgeoning incomes and concentrated wealth did not necessarily turn
consumers' fancies to cottons. Free settlers' holdings of cotton apparel
dropped from 45 to 31 per cent of the total between the 1730s and the 1760s,
while silk and woollen attire doubled (from 3.5 to 7 per cent and 6.5 to 13 per
cent respectively).
CONCLUSION
A variety of shipping, commercial, and communications improvements facili-

tated greater access to Indian and European cottons for consumers in the
Atlantic basin. More frequent personal and epistolary contacts, as well as the
exchange of samples, pattern cards and books, and fully dressed dolls, transmit-
ted taste and fashion as well as price and market information and constructed a
more intense transatlantic commercial conversation. 51 As a result, many of the
consumption trends visible in the French and British New World mirrored
broad Atlantic developments. The diffusion of the fancy for cottons throughout
48 Marc Egnal, New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada
(New York, 1998), 146-65, 42-4; David Galenson, 'Settlement and Growth of the Colonies', in
Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the United
States (Cambridge, 1996-2000), i. 190-5.
49 T. G. Burnard, '"Prodigious Riches": The Wealth of Jamaica before the American
Revolution', Economic History Review, 54/ 3 (2001), 506-24; McClellan, Colonialism and Science,
64-70.
50 Galenson, 'Settlement and Growth of the Colonies', 202-6.
51 John Smail, Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the
Eighteenth Century (London, 1999); Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British
Economy, 1660-1800 (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 5; Ian Steele, The English Atlantic 1675-1740: An
Exploration of Communication and Community (New York, 1986); Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing
Empire acrossthe Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 171J-176 3 (Montreal,
2002); David Hancock, 'Commerce and Conversation in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic: The
Invention of Madeira Wine',Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 29/2 (1998), 197-219.
Cottons Consumption in the North Atlantic
society echoed the experience of Europe and West Africa. 52 In Europe, too,
those changes occurred first in cities, though in Britain the urban-rural gap nar-
rowed considerably after the mid-eighteenth century. 53 And if cottons may not
have had a gendered identity in England, on the continent they were especially
associated with women. 54
From the late seventeenth century to the third quarter of the eighteenth,
across a variety of climates and societies from the Caribbean to the St Lawrence,
cottons became the fabrics of choice for one-third of the clothes which free
Euro-American settlers wore and half or more of women's dress. The critical
shift to cottons took place in the early eighteenth century, long before the pur-
ported colonial consumer revolution of the 1740s and 1750s, when women en
masse discarded woollen and silk basic garments in favour of cottons. In a word,
fashions changed. 55 As in Europe, in the Americas as well, cottons were well
suited to meet the demand for lighter, brighter, more gaily patterned materi-
als.56 The proliferation of new varieties of cottons with new finishes proved to
be critical. The popularity of cottons for women flowed from the appearance on
shopkeepers' shelves of checked, flowered, multi-hued, and striped calicoes,
chintzes, copper plates, and other figured cottons. The evidence on the sources
of these cottons is limited, but it suggests that many of these new fabrics were
manufactured or finished in Europe: in Provence and Lancashire, Manchester
and Rauen, but also in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Yet a large propor-
tion-perhaps even the majority and certainly those noted as 'fine' -always
came frorv.the Indian subcontinent.
Despite the force of fashion, however, the North American and Caribbean
adoption of cottons did not follow a uniform path. The taking up of cottons was
52 Roche, Culture of Clothing, 118-50; Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite; Lidia Torra Fernandez,
'Pautas de Consumo Textil en la Catalufia de! Siglo XVIII', and Maximo Garcia Fernandez, 'Los
bienes dotales en Ia ciudad de Valladolid, 1700--1850', in]. Torras and B. Yun (eds.), Consumo,
condicionesde vida y comercializacion:Cataluiiay Castilla,siglosXVII-XIX (Valladolid, 1999),
89--105, 133-58;Johan A. Kamermans, Materiele cultuur in de Krimpenerwaardin de zeventiende
en achttiendeeuw(Wageningen, 1999), esp. 135, 228-32. TNA, T70/ 1222, T70/ 927-9; Archives
Departementales de la Loire Atlantique, Nantes, 8J/10; Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg,
Middelburgsche Commerciale Compagnie 20/399, 519,524,528,533,802,824,930, 1009, 1014,
1019.
53 Roche, Culture of Clothing, 118-50, 263-8; Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite, 159-60, 166---7.
54 Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite, n3-14; Roche, Cultureof Clothing, 128, 144 n. 61, 146 nn. 63
and 65; Kamermans, Materie1ecultuur,228.

55 See T. H. Breen, '"Baubles of Britain": The American and Consumer Revolutions of the
Eighteenth Century', Past and Present, 119 (1988), 73-102. Bruno Blonde and Ilja Van Damme,
'Consumer and Retail Revolutions: Perspectives from a Declining Urban Economy: Antwerp in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', paper presented at the XIV International Economic
History Congress, Helsinki, August 2006, likewise date the main rise of cottons and decline of
woollens and silks to the 1680--1730period.
56 See Roche, Culture of Clothing, 134-48; Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite, 3-17, 164--6.
Robert S. DuP/essis
shaped by residence, legal status, race, as well as gender. At least three broad
models can be discerned: in the West Indies-Gulf of Mexico, on the Atlantic
coast of the Euro-American mainland (with a further rural-urban distinction),
and in Native America (which over time came to resemble rural settler Atlantic
North America). The fact that lighter fabrics--cottons and linens-always were
more abundant in the Caribbean and Gulf region than in colonies further north
indicates that climate influenced consumption. But the striking contrast in
cottons' appeal on the neighbouring islands ofJamaica and Saint-Domingue
demonstrates that climate was hardly determining. Consumers in similar places
made different choices.
Differences between Euro-Americans in town and country remained salient
in Atlantic North America across the colonial era, perhaps because urbanites
had easier access to new imported goods, but mainly because farmers favoured
durable linens and woollens. Local linens and woollens production in New
France and Pennsylvania probably reflected and reinforced this preference. In
all the plantation colonies, however, the most important factor leading to diver-
gent patterns of cottons consumption was masters' choices of fabrics to clothe
slaves. Though slaveowners everywhere most often opted for linens, in
Louisiana and Saint-Domingue cottons were a close second, but in South
Carolina second place went to woollen plains or 'Negro cloth'.
So cottons hardly constituted a fixed signifier. By the 1760s, they had
reversed gender valences and were in the process of shedding their racial and
status personalities. And the outlines of future changes were already beginning
to take shape. Cottons' appeal across multiple social groups had enriched textile
cultures around the Atlantic. At the same time, adorning one's body with cotton
had come to denote an orientation to a cosmopolitan but particularly female
Atlantic style. Throughout the North Atlantic world, and before1:IM'ind~
revolution, cottons became a regular, substantial, and expected part of the
everyday world of goods.
12
FASHION, RACE, AND COTTON TEXTILES
IN COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA
MARTA V. VICENTE
In 1788 New Spain's Board of Trade warned the Spanish king that a fashion
craze was sweeping the viceroyalty. Despite prohibitions on the sale of foreign
goods, travelling salesmen were still peddling fancy European wares in the vil-
lages of New Spain. The foreign fabrics enticed even the poor and the humble,
who gladly went into debt to acquire the fashionable clothes worn by wealthier
Europeans. 1 Those who could not wait for the arrival of the pedlars asked mer-
chants and shopkeepers to procure the forbidden fabrics. In 1791 Eusebio
Ventura Belen.a, judge of Mexico's Audiencia (Royal Court of Appeals),
reported that upon seeing a foreign lady arrive in Veracruz wearing a white
'dress from Cologne' made of an exquisite foreign fabric, the local women
rushed to buy the same stuff. They longed to wear it not just on special occa-
sions, but daily. This voracious appetite for foreign cloth led to a flood of
imported ctotton textiles. To the judge, the trade in textiles in the whole of the
Spanish colonies could fall prey to women's capricho,or fickle whim. 'How long
will [this] women's craze (entusiasmo)last?' the judge asked. 'God only knows',
he responded in despair.
When studying the import of cotton textiles into colonial Spanish America,
accounts like these have invited historians to focus on royal policies to eliminate
the smuggling of foreign goods. Such a focus tends to leave out royal efforts to
promote the importation and consumption of Spanish products in place of
illegal imports from other nations. The existence of widespread contraband in
the Americas is attributed to the inability of the Spanish to compete against
English, Dutch, and French traders and manufacturers. However, many con-
temporaries recognized that Spain satisfied an enormous demand in the colonies
for manufactured goods. The coexistence of smuggling and large-scale imports
from Spain suggests that there was not a preference in the colonies for illegal
textiles. Rather, there was a thirst for fashion, which was satisfied with goods
from diverse sources.
1 'Informe de! Consulado de Comerciantes de Mexico al Rey sobre la situaci6n de! comercio
y la economia en Nueva Espana (1788)', in Enrique Florescano and Fernando Castillo (eds.),
Controversiasobrela libertadde comercioen Nueva Espana 1776-1818 (Mexico, 1975), i. 105.
Marta V. Vicente
In the eighteenth century, a boom in the consumption of textiles, particularly

cottons, had created a ready market in the colonies for European products of dif-
ferent qualities and prices. Mexican consumers had become so accustomed to
buying fine fabrics that a Veracruz merchant declared even 'the most wretched
black woman wears her underskirt of good embroidered [cotton] muslin'. 2 In
the viceroyalty of New Granada (today Colombia, Panama, and parts of
Ecuador), consumers could choose from a long list of imported fabrics, both
legal and illegal, including damask, taffeta, silk, flannel, linen, calico, and serge.
At the end of the century, buyers in Mexico could purchase some thirty different
kinds of printed cotton fabrics, while in Spain twelve types were available.3
In New Spain stores selling a variety of fabrics abounded in the main cities
of Veracruz, Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Durango. Inpulperias, tiendasmes-
tizas, alacenas(small stores selling used items), and cajones(imported-merchan-
dise retailers) customers could buy on credit and pay in instalments; they could
even pawn items as a form of payment. 4 Buyers could also purchase fabrics,
from cotton textiles to silk fabrics, through travelling salespeople who bought
the items either directly from the merchant or from the shopkeeper. Buyers
looked for fashionable printed cottons, known as indianas(calicoes), which had
conquered the European world of fashion from the late seventeenth century. 5
In 1784 the Spanish Board of Trade reported that these travelling salespersons
were largely responsible for popularizing calicoes in the Spanish American
colonies. While ten years earlier calicoes were known only in the coastal towns
and populous cities, in 1784 they had 'spread to the bowels of the Kingdom, and
the most unknown town and the remotest village dress in calicoes'. 6
The consumption of cotton textiles was not a novelty of the eighteenth
century. The versatility of the cotton fabric had already made it attractive to
2 Museu-Arxiu Historic de Calella (Spain), Fons Alsina, capsa 6055: Miquel March to his
associates, Veracruz, 15 October 1801.

3 Lance Grahn, The Political Economy of Smuggling (Boulder, Colo., 1997), 27.
4 John E. Kicza, Colonial Entrepreneurs: Families and Business in Bourbon Mexico City
(Albuquerque, N. Mex., 1983), 8and115.

5 The word indianas referred many times to the general calico fabric. See James K. Thomson,
A Distinctive Industrialization: Cotton in Barcelona, 1728-1823 (Cambridge, 1992), passim, and

Marta V. Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern
Atlantic World (New York, 2006), 56----<J.
6 Biblioteca de Catalunya (hereafter BC), Junta de Comer<;:,LIii, 29, 1784, fos. 41-2: 'Los
directores de la Compafiia de hilanza de algod6n de las fiibricas de indianas y otros pintados

exponen el estado de las citadas fabricas.' The question remained whether these pedlars would
sell Spanish calicoes instead of foreign ones if given the choice. Such a goal proved a strong argu-
ment in favour of granting Spanish traders the freedom to trade directly with New Spain, which
had been excluded from the 1778 decree. Eventually royal authorities gave in, and the freedom
of trade was extended to Veracruz in 1789. John Fisher, Commercial Relations between Spain and
Spanish America in the Era of Free Trade, 1778-1796 (Liverpool, 1985), 87.
Cotton Textiles in Colonial Spanish America 249
natives of America long before the arrival of the Spaniards. Indigenous peoples
had treasured fine cotton garments as symbols of wealth and status, but in the
eighteenth century Spaniards claimed the use of fine cotton cloth, including cal-
icoes, chintzes, and taffetas, as symbols of Spanishness. By the late eighteenth
century the monarchy was not so much concerned that non-Spaniards in the
American colonies wanted to wear the same cotton cloths as Spaniards, but that
these cloths would be purchased illegally from other European countries. When
subjects in the colonies consumed foreign fashion they embraced values and
engaged in economic activities that Spanish moralists and authorities consid-
ered inappropriate for their Catholic empire. Therefore, the monarchy sought
to make Spanish fashion the first and only choice for consumers, which would
yield both economic and moral benefit for the empire. Satisfying women's
caprice with Spanish products would not only make manufacturers rich, it
would also spread the Spanish court's fashion, tastes, and, it was hoped, moral
values to the furthest regions of the empire. The appropriate clothing, in imi-
tation of Spanish styles, could even dispel racial tensions, it was believed, and
reinforce political links between America and the motherland. 7
COTTON TEXTILES IN COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA: FROM

CONQUEST TO REVOLUTION
Writings qn consumption in colonial Latin America have emphasized the rev-

olutionary implications of the import oflight, luxury textiles from Europe and
Asia ever since the arrival of European settlers. As early as the sixteenth century,
the native inhabitants of the Spanish American colonies slowly began to adopt
new patterns of consumption that somehow were to mimic those of Europeans.
Over time, natives of the colonies came to prefer fabrics of cotton and silk over
those of wool. This was part of a larger preference for European goods over
local, which included metal instead of wood for tools, ornate designs instead of
plain for shoes, and wheat bread in place of cornbread. Although Spaniards con-
sumed many more European products than Indians, blacks, and criollos, the
growing presence of new material goods reshaped race relations.
A number of scholars have shown that the introduction of European goods
into America was intimately connected to the Spanish monarchy's 'civilizing
agenda'. 8 This civilizing agenda came to be interwoven with a global trading
7 Rebecca Earle, '"Two Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!" Clothing, Race and Identity in the
Americas, 17th-19th Centuries', History WorkshopJournal, 52 (2001), 175----95.

8 George Foster, Cultureand Conquest:America'sSpanish Heritage (New York, 1960); Arnold
Bauer, Goods,Power,History: Latin America'sMaterial Culture(Cambridge, 2001), Earle, ' "Two

Pairs of Pink Satin Shoes!!"'.
250 Marta V. Vicente
system that connected the major centres of the Spanish empire. Trading from
their home ports, Spanish merchants introduced cotton textiles into the Spanish
American colonies where local merchants exchanged silver for textiles. Mexican
silver mines fed this trade not only via Europe but also through the Asian route.
Since the establishment of Manila in 1571 fifty tons of silver annually reached
China via the Pacific Ocean route. Manila galleons also transported new
American crops such as sweet potatoes and maize to Asian lands. In turn China
exported to Spanish Latin America silks and ceramics. 9 As important as the
Asian trade route became throughout the colonial period, the introduction of
cotton fabrics from Europe had a far greater influence on the economic and cul-
tural encounter between Spaniards and Americans.
When Spanish conquerors arrived in the Caribbean and Central and South
America, cotton, which was indigenous to Latin America, was used to manu-
facture ordinary and high-status cloths. Taino islanders grew their own cotton
and used it to make hammocks, fishing nets, ropes, and women's cotton skirts.
They also regarded cotton as a coin of currency, and they offered cotton along
with parrots and spears to trade with Christopher Columbus on his first trip to
Guanahani (San Salvador) in October of 1492. 10 Mayas used the cotton plant
to cure diseases and combined it with wood and feathers to make elaborate
shields. 11 The chronicler Guaman Poma reported that cotton was harvested by
the Incas. 12 Aztecs regarded fine cotton garments as treasures worthy of pres-
entation to distinguished visitors. In 1520 Hernan Cortes wrote to Emperor
Charles V reporting that the Emperor Moctezuma had given him 'many gar-
ments of his own, which even considering that they were cotton and not silk
were such that in the entire world there could be none like them'. 13 Cortes
praised the colour and texture of the cloths as well as their many uses: 'there
were bedspreads which could have compared even with silk ones. There were
also other materials, like tapestries which would serve for hallways and
churches, and counterpanes for bed, of feathers and cotton, in various colours
and also very wonderful.' 14 Cortes reported that Aztec women knew 200
9 Dennis 0. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, 'Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through
the Mid-Eighteenth Century',Journal o/World History, 13/z (2002), 391-427.

10 Christopher Columbus, Journal of Christopher Columbus, ed. L. A. Vigneras (London,
1960).
11 Aztecs also use plain white cotton cloths (quachtli) as a form of money exchange. Frances
F. Berdan, 'Cotton in Aztec Mexico: Production, Distribution and Uses', Mexican

Studies I Estudios mexicanos, 3/z ( 1987), 239. See alsoJose Luis de Rojas, La moneda indigenay sus
usos en la Nueva Espana en el siglo XVI (Mexico, 1998).
12 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva coronica y buen gobierno (1615-16);
<http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/es/frontpage.htm>, n15-16, u25-6. ,

13 Cit. by Dilys E. Blum, 'Textiles in Colonial Latin America', inJosephJ. Rishel (ed.), The
Arts in Latin America (New Haven, 2006), 147.

14 Ibid.
Cotton Textiles in ColonialSpanish America
methods of manufacturing cotton. 15 Among them was the use of clay stamps to
print designs on cotton cloth, a technique similar to those used in India and later
Europe in the printing of calicoes.
After the arrival of the Spaniards, silk-not cotton-became the luxury
fabric in the cities of Spanish America, as in Europe. Outside urban centres,
Indians continued to wear their own textiles and seemed 'indifferent con-
sumers of manufactures' . 16 From cotton they made their own tunics, dresses,
and skirts, and did not always wear what criollos, individuals of Spanish
descent born in the colonies, and Spaniards wore. While the Spanish style of
dress was encouraged for npn-Spaniards, only criollos were permitted to
closely imitate the Spanish style. Local authorities could publicly strip non-
Spaniards for imitating the Spanish style of dress. In 1615 Guaman Poma
stated that the ordinances of Don Francisco de Toledo (viceroy of Peru, 1515-
72) dictated that 'Indians wore their natural dress (trage natural)' and that
Spaniards, mulatos (half African-half Spanish), and mestizos (halflndian-half
Spanish) could not live in the same villages with lndians. 17 Nonetheless, by
the 1600s the colonial system had already begun to erode these distinctions.
Although still dominated by an Indian population and despite the limitations
imposed by transport difficulties, rural communities and distant villages pro-
gressively became part of an Atlantic trade in textiles. 18
In the sixteenth century indigenous people continued to manufacture and wear
cotton and to use cotton fabrics for their households. Spaniards received cotton
as tribute and used the fibre to pay natives for services.19 However, by the late six-
teenth ceu'tury cotton cloth production in the colonies was largely a domestic
industry with indigenous women making coarse plain white cotton, such as the
patterned cotton xilotepec,for household use and local trade. In Mexico women
manufactured typical cotton shirts (huipil)for sale to merchants who in tum dis-
tributed them south to Guatemala and its surroundings, where they exchanged
°
them for cacao and other goods.2 From 1570large textile workshops, or obrajes,
manufactured plain cotton with an indigenous workforce. However, by the sev-
enteenth century imports of cotton textiles from Asia, reaching America on the
Manila galleons, pushed obrajesinto an increasingly marginal role.21
15 Lorene A. Garloch, 'Cotton in the Economy of Mexico', EconomicGeography,20/ 1 (1944),
7<>----7.
16 Alan Knight, Mexico: The ColonialEra (Cambridge, 2002), 156.
17 Guaman Poma de Ayala, Primer nueva cronica.
18 Mark Burkholder and Lyman L.Johnson, ColonialLatin America (Oxford, 1990), 153-5.
19 Rojas, Moneda indigena.Francese Berdan states that in early sixteenth-century 'conquered
provinces [in New Spain] natives gave 14,400 loin cloths, 20,800 women's tunics and 1,600 tunic
and skirt sets [to the Spaniards] in one year'. See Berdan, 'Cotton in Aztec Mexico', 240.
20 Berdan, 'Cotton in Aztec Mexico', 258.
21 D. A. Brading, 'Bourbon Spain and its American Empire', in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The
CambridgeHistory of Latin America (Cambridge, 1984), i. 389-441. See also John H. Elliott,
Marta V. Vicente
In Quito, a major cotton textile and manufacturing centre, the number of

obrajesfell from 169 in 1700 to 125 in 1780. In places such as Tucuman, Cuzco,
and Trujillo obrajessupplied inexpensive cotton and wool textiles to the large
population of temporary labourers working in mines. 22 In Mexico and Peru
obrajesproduced inexpensive cotton cloth for mulatosand mestizos.23 Sebastian~
de Isla, an Ecuadorian woman of African descent, owned several kinds oflocally
made cotton textiles (lienzo de la tierra) which she used for shirts, shawls, and
bedding. 24 In 1641, the shop of Juan Agudo, in San Jose del Parral in northern
Mexico, sold to white, Indian, and black miners and labourers basic white
cotton fabric, particularly blankets, which were probably from Campeche, a
place known for its cotton blankets (mantas).25 Most of these cloths were locally
made although some cottons were imported from Europe through Spain,
including bretanas,cotton from Brittany, cotones,cotton cloth 'in imitation of
Chinese fabrics' used for bedsheets, and cotonias(Flemish cotton fabric). Cloth
imported from Europe, regardless of the fabric, was considered more of a luxury
item than what was locally produced. 26
In the late eighteenth century, the cotton textile industry in places such as
Qµito and Puebla de los Angeles witnessed modest but sustained growth.
Puebla, in particular, owed its prosperity to a specialization in the manufacture
of fine cotton shawls. A small group of merchants dominated the Puebla shawl
industry. They bought inexpensive cotton yarn, put it out to independent
weavers, and sold the final product in Mexico City. Between 1790 and 1805,
Puebla's merchants supplied Mexico City with more than a million pounds of
cotton cloth. 27 Simultaneously with local efforts such as those of Puebla to
increase cotton cloth production, there were renewed interests from the monar-
chy to make all inhabitants of the colonies wear the cotton prints from Spain
and in the Spanish way. In 1740 the political economist Jose Campillo recom-
'Spain and America in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century', ibid. i. 325. Obrajes focused on
production of textiles using local resources; in areas where wool was prominent such as the Peru
viceroyalty they did not manufacture cotton textiles but wool fabric only. Neus Escandell-Tur,
'El comercio de "ropa de la tierra" en los obrajes y chorrillos de! Cuzco: fuentes documentales,
1650--1820',America Latina en la historia econ6mica, 2 (1994), 37-54.
22 Burkholder and Johnson, Colonial Latin America.
23 Kenneth Andrien, Kingdom of Quito, r690-r830: The State and Regional Development '
(Cambridge, 1995), 57. ,
24 Ross Jamieson, 'Bolts of Cloth and Sherds of Pottery: Impressions of Caste in the
Material Culture of the Seventeenth-Century Audiencia ofQpito', The Americas, 60/3 (2004),
438-9. '
25 Peter Boyd-Bowman, 'Two Country Stores in XVIIth Century Mexico', The Americas,
28/2-3 (1972), 237-51.

26 Peter Boyd-Bowman, 'Spanish and European Textiles in Sixteenth-Century Mexico', The
Americas, 29/3 (1973), 334-8.

27 Brading, 'Bourbon Spain', 430--3.
Cotton Textilesin ColonialSpanish America 2 53
mended assimilating Indians into the imperial economy by 'persuading them to

speak Spanish and wear European-style clothes'. 28
Making Indians wear Spanish clothes was meant to 'dignify the figure of the
Indian', as the Economic Society of Guatemala expressed it. 29 In the early years
of the empire royal policies did not see the assimilation oflndians and slaves as
desirable, but in the eighteenth century the monarchy and colonial elites seri-
ously considered the possibility that Indians became economic actors. Thus, in
the late 1700s cotton regained its meaning as a luxury fabric that held the poten-
tial of unifying all inhabitants of the empire. This, however, required a debate
over the moral consequences of profiting from luxury, regardless of its benefits
to the Spanish empire.
FROM VICE TO PATRIOTIC VIRTUE
The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed a series of seemingly

endless debates among government ministers, commercial associations, and
factory owners over the policies the royal government should pursue to encour-
age trade and industry in the Spanish empire. King Charles III of Spain (r.
1759-88) took a keen interest in such policies, including the establishment of
commercial companies such as the Cotton Yarn-Thread Company, which it was
hoped-unsuccessfully as it turned out-would resolve shortages of cheap,
high-quali~ yarn for Spanish cotton manufactures. 30 In addition, between 1768
and 1778 t'b.eCadiz monopoly over the American trade was dismantled. The
Aragonese economist and theologian Antonio Arteta de Monteseguro argued
that freedom of trade with the colonies, together with the suppression of tariffs
and taxes on local production, would allow Spanish factories to sell as much as
half of their production to the Caribbean. 31 Yet manufacturers insisted on the
prohibition of imported fabrics that would protect Spanish manufactures, par-
ticularly the cotton textile factories. Efforts to prevent contraband in Spain and
in the colonies proved in reality largely ineffective. Nevertheless, the Spanish
cotton industry prospered even during periods when foreign fabrics legally
reached Spanish consumers.
28 Jose Campillo Nuevo sistemade gobiernoeconomicopara la America (Madrid, [ 1789) 1993),
part ch. 9, sec. 25.
1,
29 Elisa Luque, La SociedadEconomicade Amigos de!Pais de Guatemala (Seville, 1962), 152.
30 The company was established to supply cotton manufacturers, many of whom served as
company officials.
31 Antonio Arteta de Monteseguro, Discursoinstructivosobrelas ventajas quepuede conseguirla
industriadeAragon conla nueva ampliaciondepuertosconcedidapor S.M. para el comerciodeAmerica

(Madrid, 1783). On the composition of this work, see Marcelo Bitar Letayf, Economistasespaiioles
de!sigloXVIII: sus ideassabrela libertadde! comercioconIndias (Madrid, 1968), 163-8.
Spanish economic writers, government authorities, and merchants wanted

to meet demand from colonial consumers with products from Spain. By offer-
ing Spanish products they were hoping to preserve wealth within the empire
and to promote national values. Designing fashions that would appeal to women
in America was therefore absolutely critical for the success of Spanish industry.
'In commerce all is art; commerce has its own rhetoric to persuade with its
inventions and to attract the fair sex', the mayor of the Spanish town of
Puigcerda noted in 1777.32 It was essential to learn what appealed to consumers
in Spain and its American possessions, and the members of Barcelona's royal
Junta de Comer<; (Board of Trade)-mainly merchants and owners of large
calico factories-repeatedly sought to collect 'more reliable facts on which to
base their commercial speculations' in the Spanish colonies, particularly regard-
ing those products that enjoyed 'the greatest appeal in those countries'. 33
Ministers and writers disagreed on what satisfied the people of the American
colonies. The central question was whether supplying the American subjects
with luxury items, even if it enriched the empire, was morally correct.
Merchants and political and moral writers had long denounced foreign fashion
as a threat to the wealth of the empire and to the moral well-being of its inhab-
itants both in Spain and in the colonies. Money spent on imported goods
enriched traders from nations that were often the enemies of the :ipanish
Crown. Not only did this send work to other nations, but also the contraband
ofluxury items generated moral degeneracy and weakness, particularly among
women. 34 On the other hand, there were those who saw in the irresistible attrac-
tion of fashion an excellent opportunity to increase both their own wealth as well
as that of the nation. The same year that New Spain's Board of Trade issued
the warning that opened this chapter-that a fashion craze was sweeping the
viceroyalty-the Discursosobreel luxo de las senoras(Discourse on the Luxury
of Ladies, 1788) predicted great profits to be made from the sale of calicoes, par-
ticularly in the American colonies. 35 The anonymous author of the discourse
calculated that 5.5 million women would readily spend II8 million realesde
vell6n 'in fashion and luxury goods'. If Spanish products replaced foreign
imports, then Spain would keep that wealth within the kingdom. Although
fashion had once threatened the social order by disrupting traditional distinc-
tions expressed through clothes, the manufacture of Spanish calicoes offered an
opportunity to reassert social order. The business of fashion also fostered a work
32
BC, Junta de Comers;, LI, 68, 8 July 1777.
33 Qyoted in Isabel Miguel Lopez, El comerciohispano-mexicanoa traves de Gijon, Santander
y Pasajes (1778-1795) (Valladolid, 1992), 73.
34 Rebecca Earle, 'Luxury, Clothing and Race in Colonial Spanish America', in Maxine Berg
and Elizabeth Eger (eds.), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates,Desiresand DelectableGoods
(Basingstoke, 2003), 219-27.
35 Discursosobreel luxo de las senorasy proyectode un tragenacional (Madrid, 1788), 22.
ethic among Spanish families that would create wealth for the monarchy.
Moreover, their industriousness provided a possible way to tackle the problem
of contraband in America, which would reinforce the dependence of the
colonies on the motherland.
The Catalan Francisco Roma y Rosell, well known for his defence ofluxury
as a source of wealth for the monarchy, provides a succinct statement on the
need to increase trade between Spain and its American territories. 'The
common happiness of the metropolis and its colonies', he wrote in 1768, 'lies in
that the former provides the latter with manufactures ... and the latter gives in
exchange its products. ' 36 Royal policy was to support and protect those activities
that would encourage economic dependency on Spain, which was 'the most
powerful law and still the only one with which contraband can be avoided in
America'. 37 Protectionist policies were important, but they alone could not end
the demand for foreign products. Spanish industry also had to be capable of
meeting demand in the colonies. The promotion of luxury industries would
therefore encourage production to meet needs at home and for export to the
American colonies, which according to Roma y Rosell would 'lead to greater
wealth'. 38
In addition to encouraging industriousness, the business of fashion used vice
to foster virtue in a second way, namely by strengthening the bonds between
the Spanish monarchy and its colonies in America. Diverse individuals, organ-
izations, and institutions presented three arguments on how the export of
Spanish clpth to America would benefit the empire. The first two arguments
were largely economic in nature and clearly inspired by contemporary mercan-
tilist principles. First, by increasing the traffic of goods between the metropolis
and the colonies the Spanish monarchy would increase its wealth and generate
the resources to defend the kingdom from powerful enemies. Second, an
increase in Spanish textile exports would help to stem the flow of contraband
goods. The final argument appealed to different interests: Spanish, as opposed
to foreign, fashion would instil Spanish values among subjects in the American
colonies, which would forge a closer relationship between colonies and the
motherland. This argument may have emerged from the premiss that econom-
ics was the science of the patriot. In this case the Latin American subject would
become a patriot by adopting the proper economic values.
36 Francisco Roma y Rosell, Las seiialesde felicidad de Espana y mediosde hacerlaseficaces
(Madrid, 1768), 260--1.

37 Ibid. Romay Rosell would become a judge, and later president, oftheAudiencia of Mexico.
In Mexico, he also served as acting viceroy. He died in 1784. ·

38 Ibid. 44. Romay Rosell, a defender of guilds against proposals to abolish them, envisioned
that this production intended for the colonies would be carried out by families working in small
factories that were more like artisanal workshops. Ibid. 181.
Marta V. Vicente
FASHION AND RACE
Established at different periods in Cuba, Monpox (Colombia), Veracruz,

Merida de Yucatan, Lima, Quito, Havana, and Guatemala, the Sociedades
Econ6micas de Amigos del Pais (Economic Societies of Friends of the Country)
shared a belief that economic reforms were needed to hold the empire together.
By 1820 seventy Economic Societies had been formed in Spain and at least four-
teen in the Spanish colonies. The Economic Societies' position on the con-
sumption of Spanish textiles in the American colonies reflected a broader
Spanish Enlightenment thinking that illegal imports were inconsistent with the
moral, Christian goals of the empire. Most importantly, one of the Economic
Societies' major goals was to instil in colonial subjects the habit of making
Spanish fashion their own.
The Economic Societies defended the moral benefits of fashion. Cotton tex-
tiles from Spain would bring the ideal combination of economic and moral ben-
efits and make Americans worthy subjects of the monarch. Moreover, the
importation oflarger quantities of Spanish cotton textiles would make Spain,
rather than England or France, the point of reference in the search for status in
the colonies.39 Spaniards, criollos, and even Indians throughout the American
colonies would keep to the Spanish attire and inculcate those preferences in
their children. 40 The Societies' ideal was to make Spanish cotton textiles an
indispensable part of the domestic life of the colonies' inhabitants, from the
material which covered their bodies-dresses and petticoats for women, coats
and shirts for men-to the cushions, upholstery, and bedcovers that adorned
their homes.
A belief in the power of clothing to instil moral values across racial lines is
reflected in eighteenth-century castapaintings, which were idealized depictions
of interracial couples with their offspring. These paintings, which were pro-
duced in Mexico, depicted the castasystem, a taxonomy of the different racial
types that resulted from the mixing oflndians, blacks, and Spanish. These por-
traits were usually comprised of sixteen different combinations of couples and
their offspring on separate canvases painted for wealthy Spaniards. The casta
system had been created to maintain a social hierarchy and the clothes worn by
the subjects of these portraits were key markers of ethnic and racial identity. 41
39
Rebecca Earle, 'Consumption and Excess in Spanish America (1700-1830)', Working
Paper, University of Manchester, Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies, no. 15. Woodruff
D. Smith, Consumptionand the Making of Respectability,I6oo-I8oo (New York, 2002), 58.
40
See Felix de Azara's recollection of the customs of the criollos based on his travel to Buenos
Aires and Montevideo in 1785, although it was published twenty years later. Felix de Azara, Viajes
por la America Meridional (Madrid, 1969), 283.
41
Ilona Katzew, CastaPainting:Imagesof Racein Eighteenth-CenturyMexico (New Haven, 2004).
Cotton Textiles in ColonialSpanish America 2 57
Illustration 12. 1. Jose de Alcibar

(attrib.), De Espanol y Negra,
Mulato, c. 1760. Oil on canvas, 88 x
97.2 cm. Denver Art Museum,
Collection of Jan and Frederick R.
Mayer.
Illustration 12.2. Miguel Cabrera,

De Indio y Barsina; Zambayga, 1763.
Oil on canvas, 135.5 x rn3.5 cm.
Museo de America, Madrid.
Marta V. Vicente
For instance, the father in Illustration 12.1 may be identified as a Spaniard not
only by the colour of his skin but also by the outfit he is wearing: a banyan coat,
made of fine cotton chintz, which art historians believed was probably imported
from India via Manila galleons. 42 By the 1770s and 1780s such coats would
come directly from Spain. By contrast, Illustration 12.2 depicts an Indian family
wearing plain-and torn, although clean-cotton shirts, which were probably
local products. 4 3
Art historians have seen casta paintings as one way in which Spaniards con-
trolled their colonial population. For Magali Carrera the castapainting created
an 'orderly and disciplined colonial body'. 44 However, casta paintings are also
an expression of anxiety about a population that did not conform to Spanish
racial and social expectations and might develop their own distinctive,
American identity. Ilona Katzew has stated that the 'disruptive performances
of dress' served as 'early indicators of a cultural crisis that would bring about
the subsequent fragmentation of the Spanish empire'. 45 The 1788 report by
New Spain's Board of Trade, cited at the start of this article, noted that vestir
a la espaiiola(to dress in the Spanish style) was key to combating the threat of
contraband before the growing thirst for fashion. At the same time, the greater
availability of cotton textiles in the colonies posed a threat to the racial hierar-
chy. Against the advice of some of the enlightened members of the Economic
Societies who argued that all inhabitants of the Americas should embrace
Spanish textiles and style, the monarchy ruled that only Spaniards and criollos
were to wear the finest cotton fabrics imported from Spain. Indians expected
to dress a la espaiiolawere to wear the ordinary cotton textiles produced in the
obrajes.
On 21 October 1795 Charles IV created La Real Sociedad Econ6mica de
Amantes de la Patria de Guatemala (The Royal Economic Society of the Lovers
of the Country of Guatemala) to promote local production of cotton textiles. A
few months later the Guatemalan Society invited essays for a contest on the
appropriate Indian dress. For the Economic Societies clothing was another way
to encourage Spanish Americans to value their Spanish identity. The members
of the Society knew well that Indians could be sensitive to fashion and good
taste. In 1798 the schoolteacher Matias de Cordova stated that 'if anyone
stopped the Indians of Ciudad Vieja from going out for a stroll with their wigs
42 Ibid. rn6--8. See also Donna Pierce, Rogelio Ruiz Gomar, and Clara Bargellini, Painting a
New World: Mexican Art and Life, r521-1821(Austin, Tex., 2005), 244-5. This type of printed
cotton chintz was already in fashion in Spain in the 1760s.
43 Teresa Castello Yturbide, 'La indumentaria en las castas de! mestizaje', Artes de Mexico: la
pintura de castas,8 (1990), 73-8.

44 Magali M. Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the ColonialBody
in Portraitureand CastaPaintings(Austin, Tex., 2003).

4 s Katzew, CastaPainting, 83.
and coats (casacas)we could fear a riot'. 46 To Spaniards, Indians were keen on
clothing a la espaiiolaon special occasions because it was a mark of self-esteem
and civilized behaviour. In the early 1800s, during what were to be the final
decades of the empire, Spanish textiles continued to be a marker of European
civilization. The Mexican Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi, writing after
independence, thought it quaint to satirize such aspirations. The protagonist of
his comedy Anita la respondona(The Impertinent Anita) (1821) asserts that
'husbands and fabrics are best when [they come] from Spain'. 47 Spanish cloth
as the norm and the ideal remained powerful even in the closing days of the
empire and reflected the strenuous efforts of the Spanish monarchy to maintain
and profit from the empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
CONCLUSION
From the moment Spanish conquerors and settlers arrived in America, cotton
textiles marked differences between Spanish and non-Spanish ways. With the
arrival of Europeans, cotton lost its association with rulers, from Taino caciques
to Emperor Moctezuma. The new Spanish ruling class wore wool and fine silk
cloths imported from Europe. Cotton became the fabric oflndians and black
slaves, often in the form of inexpensive and low-quality garments made in
family workshops and obrajes.Spaniards who wore locally made cotton cloths
were thought to be poor or to lack access to 'Spanish clothes'.
The asso~iation of cotton with non-Spanish and non-European ways changed
in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the importation of fine
Indian calicoes. During the first half of the eighteenth century, these brilliantly
coloured cotton prints, whether made in India or increasingly in European man-
ufactories, were desirable and fashionable throughout Europe and even in the
American colonies, where Dutch and English sold them illegally. Spaniards
demanded these cotton textiles, which now posed a double threat to Spanish
domination over its colonies. First, in addition to the commercial and fiscal
losses from the contraband, foreign calicoes threatened to instil a taste for
foreign fashion that might cool the ties that bound the colonies to the Spanish
metropolis. Second, even though silk remained the fabric of the elites, cotton
no longer belonged exclusively to the subjugated. Even if the Spanish replaced
foreign calicoes with their own, everyone in cities and in the countryside who
46 Fray Matias de Cordova, Utilidades de que todos los indiosy ladinos se vistan y calcena la
espafiola. .. (Nueva Guatemala, 1798).

47 El Pensador Mexicano,Al/d van esasfrioleras(Mexico, 1821), cited in Earle, 'Consumption
and Excess', 13. See also Columba Galvan and Maria Esther Guzman, 'El pensador mexicano,
Anita la respondona y una mujer ignorante: participaci6n y cambio', Literatura mexicana, II II
(2000), 45---60.
could afford to buy calicoes did so, regardless of race. Efforts to promote appro-
priate Spanish cotton clothes for Indians as opposed to Spaniards and criollos
sought to maintain the old social hierarchies, which could also bolster the com-
mercial and cultural links between the motherland and her far-flung territories.
Ultimately these efforts failed, and the eventual independence of most of the
vast Spanish American empire opened the floodgates to foreign fashion and
English cottons.
13
THE GLOBALIZATION OF
COTTON TEXTILES
Indian Cottons,Europe,and the
Atlantic World, 1600-1850
GIORGIO RIELLO
Historians have long debated when 'globalization' really began. Economists like
Williamson and O'Rourke use price convergence as an indicator of market inte-
gration and find no sign of a global market or of a process broadly defined as
globalization before 1800. 1 Historians like Gunder Frank and McNeil! define
globalization as a cultural and economic process and trace it back to the begin-
ning of the age of exploration in the second half of the fifteenth century, if not
earlier. 2 Others push this date back to pre-historical times and to the first
exchanges of man. 3 It is the exchange of commodities that is central in the def-
inition of a social, economic, and cultural process that connects people living in
the most remote parts of the globe. And as it is problematic what 'global' and
'globalization' mean, so it is nearly impossible to provide a unilateral definition
of what a 'global' commodity might be.
This chapter does not intend to tackle such a problem of definition, but
rather to reflect on the possible ways in which the production, exchange, and
consumption of one specific commodity-cotton textiles-came to influence
vast areas of the world. I ask why and how cotton textiles became a textile fabric
used across the globe, reaching out of the sphere of the Indian Ocean that for
centuries had been the cradle of this fibre. This chapter also asks which of
cotton's material properties made this type of textile more suited than linen,
silk, or wool to become a cloth used across the globe. It argues that the global-
ization of cotton textiles should be explained also in the light of a shift of its
manufacturing core from Asia to Europe and considers the process of reinter-
pretation that cotton textiles went through over the eighteenth century. To
1 Kevin H. O'Rourke, and Jeffrey G. Williamson, 'After Columbus: Explaining Europe's
Overseas Trade Boom, 1500-1800', Journal of EconomicHistory, 62/z (2002), 417-56 and their
'When Did Globalisation Begin?', EuropeanReview of EconomicHistory, 6/I (2002), 23-50.
2 Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: GlobalEconomyin the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1998).
3 David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introductionto Big History (Berkeley, 2004).
262 GiorgioRiello
claim that European (or better to say British) cotton textiles became a global
commodity, while their Indian antecedents did not, is to ignore that the very
definition and material form of cotton textiles at the end of the eighteenth
century was different from what it had been just a century earlier. It was not
just a matter of selling more of the same stuff across a larger area of the globe,
it was also a case of physically and conceptually reshaping this commodity to
make it a successful global product, appreciated not just in European markets
but also in North and South America and in Africa.
HOW SUCCESSFUL WERE COTTON TEXTILES IN REALITY?
Before the fifteenth century, the 'world' of global textiles could be roughly said
to be divided into two large areas, which I call 'spheres'. The Indian Ocean was
a vast expanse from the Horn of Africa to Japan and South-East Asia where
cotton textiles were widely exchanged for spices and other products. India had
emerged already in the early part of the millennium as the geographical area that
could boast better products, sophisticated mercantile techniques, and a higher
productivity that ensured competitiveness in most markets of the sphere.
Europe, conversely, was a sphere dominated by the double system oflinen and
woollens, though the latter had a much more profound mercantile importance
than the former. Different regions of the continent acquired strong specializa-
tions in the production of woollen textiles, such as the municipalities ofltaly or
several regions of England.
In due course the European sphere- of wool expanded over the Atlantic to
incorporate North and South America, but showed insurmountable difficulties
in expanding eastwards beyond the borders of Anatolia. Woollen and worsted
textiles never became global fabrics. 4 Historians have blamed respectively their
limited adaptability to warmer climates, the little favour encountered by Asian
consumers, and the unsuccessful marketing strategies of European traders. For
reasons of brevity, this chapter will not address the issue of the failure of wool
textiles, but rather the mirror story of how cotton textiles became a global com-
modity. By global here we mean a commodity that was commonly adopted by
vast strata of society across the globe. It is worth remembering that the overall
narrative of the global success of cotton textiles did not mean the triumph of
Indian manufacturing, but coincided with the emergence of a new global centre
of production located in the unlikely world region that had failed to make its
own elective fibre a global commodity. Why did this happen?
4
On this issue see Huw V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and
Imperial Britain, r756-r833 (Cambridge, 2006) and Pat Hudson's chapter in this volume.
The Globalization of Cotton Textiles
Established interpretations see the opening of the Cape route at the end of the
fifteenth century as a turning point in the material and economic contact between
western Europe and Asia. What followed was a continuous, direct, and strength-
ening contact that had enormous repercussions on the spread of cotton textiles
well beyond the perimeter of the Indian Ocean. Such a new phase was not
directed by the dynamic merchant communities that had been active in the trade
of cotton textiles within the Indian Ocean. European merchants saw an unprece-
dented opportunity to venture into unknown waters. It was the Portuguese, with
the establishment of the Carreira da India, and later the English East India
Company (EIC-founded in 1600), the Dutch VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie founded in 1602), and the even later Danish (1616), French (1664),
and Swedish (1732) East India Companies which inaugurated a new and 'revo-
lutionary' phase in the history of cotton at a global level.
The exact nature, extent, and importance of such direct trade, however, are
debated. For instance, Immanuel Wallerstein remains sceptical about the
impact of direct trade via the Cape route and underlines the restricted scope and
scale of commercial contacts between the two continents in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. 5 Tea, silk, spices, and cotton textiles were luxuries within
reach of the European elite but they had limited effect either on the overall
pattern of consumption or on the structure and growth of the economy of early
modern Europe. This position is supported by quantitative analyses that claim
either that trade via The Cape was very small (five modern super-tankers could
transport eyerything that was traded between Europe and Asia during the
period from 1500 to 1800) or that internal European trade remained qualita-
tively and quantitatively more relevant than trade with Asia. 6 Transcending
precise quantification, K. N. Chaudhuri and Andre Gunder Frank emphasize
instead the importance of market integration that followed the replacement of
a series of Middle Eastern intermediaries with direct routes connecting distant
parts of the Eurasian continent. 7
A third position, based on a demand-side interpretation, emphasizes how the
commodities imported into Europe from Asia (including cottons) became sig-
nificant in cultural (as well as economic) terms because they profoundly shaped
5 Immanuel Wallerstein, Modern World System, ii: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the
European World-Economy, r600-r750 (New York, 1980).

6 Jan de Vries, 'Connecting Europe and Asia: A Quantitative Analysis of the Cape-Route
Trade, 1497-1795', in Dennis O'Flynn, Arturo Giraldez, and Richard von Glahn (eds.), Global
Connections and Monetary History, r470-r800 (Aldershot, 2003), 35-146; Pieter Emmer, 'The
Myth of Early Globalization: The Atlantic Economy, 1500---1800',European Review, 11/ 1 (2003),
39; David Ormrod, 'Consuming the Orient in Britain, 1660---1760', paper presented at Session
25 on 'Luxury Production, Consumption and the Art Market in Early Modern Europe',
International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 21-5 August 2006.
7 K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760
(Cambridge, 1978); Gunder Frank, ReOrient.

GiorgioRiello
European innovations, imitations, and taste. They changed not so much the
grammar of trade, but the vocabulary of material culture. 8 In the case of cottons,
it is claimed that their importance went well beyond the occasional palampore
or Indian cushion. Cotton textiles were one of the most traded commodities
between Asia and Europe well before the classic date for the take-off of trade in
the middle of the seventeenth century. Beverly Lemire argues against the estab-
lished idea that 'only small quantities [of textiles] were brought to Europe on
the Portuguese carracks in the sixteenth century'. 9 Already in the first decade
of the seventeenth century the Portuguese imported 770,000 pieces of cottons
and silk each year, equivalent to c.8 million yards. 10 The quantities of textiles
traded by the EIC and the VOC were, in the early seventeenth century, rather
small, but it is worth remembering that throughout the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries substantial imports oflndian textiles continued to arrive in the
Ottoman Empire and parts of these were re-exported to western Europe
together with Ottoman silks. This was the case with the famous indiennes arriv-
ing in the port of Marseilles. 11 Here again, their importance was not just based
on quantities traded. The influence of Asian textiles in Europe pre-dated the
seventeenth century: restricted imports through the Iberian Peninsula, for
example, had considerable effects on the embroidering motifs of the fifteenth
century. 12 Such trades with India going back to the early sixteenth century facil-
itated the full adoption oflndian textiles when they became more widely avail-
able from the second half of the seventeenth century (Table 13.1). 13
Debates over the chronology of trade and the relevance of the quantities of
Indian cotton textiles exchanged across Eurasia point out a deeper problem:
why and how were cotton textiles so successful in Europe? This is a question
that implies long discussions over the nature, cost, and use of textiles in early
8 Maxine Berg, 'New Commodities, Luxuries and their Consumers in Eighteenth-Century
England', in Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (eds.), Consumersand Luxury: ConsumerCulturein
Europe, I650-I850 (Manchester, 1999), 63-85; id., 'From Imitation to Invention: Creating
Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Britain', EconomicHistory Review, 55/i (2002), 1-30;
W oodruffD. Smith, Consumptionand the Making of Respectability,I6oo-I 800 (New York, 2002),
46---62.
9 Niels Steensgaard, 'The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade of England
and the Dutch Republic before 1750', in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires:
Long-DistanceTradein the Early Modern World,IJ50-1750 (Cambridge, 1990), 123. See Beverly
Lemire's chapter in this volume.
10 James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs,1580-1640 (Baltimore,
1993), 139.
11 R. W. Goldsmith, Premodern Financial Systems: A Historical Comparative Study
(Cambridge, 1987), 89. On the indiennes see Katsumi Fukasawa, Toilerieet commercedu Levant
d'Alep d Marseille (Paris, 1987); and Olivier Raveux's chapter in this volume.
12 Beverly Lemire, 'Plasmare la domanda, creare la moda: l' Asia, !'Europa e ii commercio <lei
cotoni indiani (XIV-XIX secc.)', Quadernistorici,46/ 122 (2006), 481-508.

13 I would like to thank Beverly Lemire and John Styles for discussing this topic with me.
The Globalization of Cotton Textiles 265
TABLE 13. I. Textiles Importedfrom Asia into Europe by the English, Dutch and French
East India Companies,I665-I834 (in thousand pieces per year)
English EiC DutchVOC French EiC Total
1665-1669 139.7 126.6 266.3
1670-1674 510.5 257.9 768.4
1675-1679 5~8.9 127.5 706.4
1680-1684 973.8 226.8 1.200.6
1685-1689 546.6 316.2 862.8
1690-1694 125.6 156.9 282.5
1695-1699 336.2 364.6 700.8
1700-1704 534.5 310.6 845.1
1705-1709 190.1 387.3 577.4
1710-1714 587.8 372.6 960.4
1715-1719 475.7 435.9 911.6
1720-1724 760.8 475.8 86.8 1.323.4
1725-1729 821.3 399.5 109.2 1.330.0
1730-1734 727.8 241.1 302.9 1.271.8
1735-1739 792.5 315.5 297.2 1.405.2
1740-1744 831.4 288.1 370.7 1.490.2
1745-1749 695.5 262.3 200.2 1.158.0
1750-1754 648.8 532.9 114.1 1.295.8
1755-1759 483.1 321.3 29.3 833.7
1760-1764 463.4 395.4 74.7 933.5
1765-1769 746.7 527.3 169.3 1.443.3
1770-1774 907.3 267.6 1.174.9
1775-1779 913.3 378.8 1.292.1
1780-1784 (
546.5 203,3 749.8
1785-1789 916.8 147.1 1.063.9
1790-1794 936.2 936.2
1795-1799 1.567.5 1.567.5
1800-1804 1.529.9 1.529.9
1805-1809 1.127.2 1.127.2
1810-1814 1.067.0 1.067.0
1815-1819 1.229.2 1.229.2
1820-1824 709.4 709.4
1825-1829 268.0 268.0
1830-1834 193.0 193.0
Total 22,754.8 7,635.6 1,754.4 32,144.8
Sources:English EIC (1665-1760): K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India
CompanyI66o-I 760 (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 540-41. EIC ( 1760--1834): Database "The East India Company:
Trade and Domestic Financial Statistics, 1755-1838" compiled by Huw Bowen. Dutch VOC (1665-1760):
Femme S. Gaastra, "The Textile Trade of the VOC: The Dutch Response to the English Challenge", South
Asia, 19/Special Issue ( 1996), 85---<)5;
Michel Marineau, "The Indian Challenge: Seventeenth to Eighteenth
Centuries", in Sushi! Chaudhuri and Michel Marineau (eds.), Merchants, Companiesand Trade: Europeand
Asia in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1999), 273-275; Niels Steensgaard, "'The Indian Ocean Network
and the Emerging World-economy, c. 1500--1750",in Satish Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean:Explorations
in History, Commerceand Politics(New Delhi, 1987), 126. VOC (1760-1789): quantities have been estimated
from auction sales (in value) by using an average value per piece calculated for the period 1665-1760. French
CDI ( 1720-1769): Philippe Haudrere, La Compagniefranfaise desIndes au XVI Ile siecle( I7 I<J-I 795) (Paris,
1989), vol. 1,467.
266 GiorgioRie/lo
modern Europe that I will only try to summarize briefly here. Indian cottons
embodied qualities that could hardly be achieved by worsteds and woollen tex-
tiles, including permanent colour and washability. The fastness (permanence)
of colour allowed them to be exposed to protracted light, but also--what was
even more important-to be washed. 14 This was a feature that fostered a change
in notions of cleanliness from the washing of undergarments to the washing of
both over-garments and undergarments. 15 The true versatility of cotton textiles
perhaps did not relate to the intrinsic properties of the fibre, however. Cotton
textiles were light fabrics that could replace or imitate more expensive silks and
the middle-range 'new draperies' that had originated in the Low Countries in
the late Middle Ages and that established themselves as fashionable in many
parts of Europe in the late sixteenth century. 16 Imported cottons can thus be
seen as exemplifying a transition from heavy to lightweight fabrics that had
started in Europe well before the mid-seventeenth century.
From a price point of view, cottons could be direct substitutes for the low-
and medium-quality worsted and woollen cloth produced in several parts of
Europe. From an 'aesthetic' point of view cottons could replace more expensive
silks and new draperies. In this case cotton was a 'populuxe good' . 17 From a
fibre point of view, cotton behaved like a 'parasite'. It developed not only
through its own qualities or competitiveness but also by 'borrowing' other
fibres' markets, consumers, and technologies. The variety of cottons and their
change over time makes it particularly difficult to identify areas of integration/
competition with other fabrics.
The innovative nature of cotton textiles was not just a function of their mate-
rial characteristics or price. Recent scholarship has underlined their importance
in shaping both new consumer demand and new channels of distribution
(shops, second-hand, and pedlars). 18 The use of sources such as court records,
shopkeepers' ledgers, advertisements, and personal records provides a compre-
hensive account of the integration of cottons within European consumers' prac-
tices that goes well beyond the simple and perhaps erroneous idea that the
success oflndian cotton textiles in Europe relied on their cheapness. 'It is not
14 Sarah Levitt, 'Clothing', in Mary B. Rose (ed.), The LancashireCotton Industry: A History
since1700 (Preston, 1996), 154-5.
15 See in particular Georges Vigarello, Conceptsof Cleanliness:ChangingAttitudes in France
sincethe Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1988).

16 Negley B. Harte, 'Introduction', in Negley B. Harte (ed.), The New Draperiesin the Low
Countriesand England, 1300---1700 (Oxford, 1997), 3.

17 On the concept of'populuxe goods' see Cissie Fairchilds, 'The Production and Marketing
of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris', in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.),
Consumptionand the World of Goods(London, 1993), 228-48.
18 Beverly Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumerin Britain, 1660---
1800 (Oxford, 1991).

their low prices', commented Jacob Nicolas Moreau in his examination of

French trade, 'it is fashion, and it is a certain vanity that makes the women of
the lower classes so curious about calicoes. Dressed in light or printed cottons,
they think themselves no longer at the same level of women of their social
station ... they think themselves superior to their social condition because ladies
of quality too wear calicoes.' 19 The contemporary, but rather more optimistic,
Frenchman Andre Morellet reached similar conclusions when he said that 'this
fashion makes it preferable to wear Persian dress; ifladies at the court wear it,
then everyone wants to own one: and one can see that this fashion does not even
spare the wives of those manufacturers that most protest against these cotton
fabrics, as we find more than one in their own homes on their furniture and as
the material of their clothing'. 20
Asian cotton textiles penetrated into the purchasing habits of European and
later North American consumers for a variety of different reasons, beyond their
cheapness. But what were cottons for? Beverly Lemire has recently demon-
strated that calicoes' success was not initially due to a new 'culture des
apparences' based on bodily adornment. Painted and printed cotton textiles first
penetrated European domestic interiors in the shape of upholstering, but most
commonly as valances, cushions, and bed hangings. 21 Their uses in Europe
were, in all probability, influenced by their employment in India. Here several
travellers noticed the 'architectural use' of textiles in tents and houses. Pyrand
described pillows and sheets of cotton, but also hangings 'composed of pieces
of cotton cl?th of all colours, arranged together in various ways'. 22 Similarly,
Tavernier reports that they were used as bedcovers, tablecloths, pillowcases,
and handkerchiefs. 23 This early association between Indian cottons and domes-
tic interiors is not surprising. Asian textiles penetrated into middle-rank
European houses in close association with other exotic goods and furnishings
such as 'Japan' chests and stands, ivory and Madre pearl Indian tables, cabinets
and screens. The houses of seventeenth-century merchants-surely the social
class most receptive to foreign and extra-European consumer influences-were
(
19 Jacob Nicolas Moreau, Examen des effets que doivent produire dans le commercede France,
!'usage€5lafabrication des toilespeintes: ou Reponsed l'ouvrageintitule ... (Geneva, 1759), 60.
20 Andre Morellet, Reflexionssur !esavantagesde la fibrefabrication et de !'usagedestoilespeintes
en France;pour servir de reponseaux diversmemoiresdes ... (Geneva, 1758), 42-3.

21 Beverly Lemire, 'Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade
with England, u600-1800', Textile: A Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1/i (2003), 65-85. See also
Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images:Patternsof Modern Materialism (New York, 1983), 189-
90, 195.
22 Fram;ois Pyrard, The Voyageof FrancoisPyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the
Moluccas and Brazil (London, 1887-8), 222. Pyrand describes a wooden house that 'within is
hung with cotton or silk cloths of all colours, and of the finest and richest description available'.
Ibid. 146.
23 Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, ed. William Crooke (Oxford, 1925), 4.
268 GiorgioRiello
Illustration 13.1. Dollhouse belonging to Petronella Dunois, 1676 (detail).

200 x 150,5 x 56 cm. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam BK-14656
increasingly dominated by such commodities, not just in bedrooms and bed-

chambers but also in dining rooms, parlours, and drawing rooms. 24 The doll's
house of the Dutch Petronella Dunois, dated c.1675,is perhaps the best example
of the effect of calicoes in seventeenth-century interior design: the doll's house
is lined with bright-coloured dyed and painted cotton textiles from the
Coromandel Coast (Illustration 13. 1 ).
The increasing quantities of painted and printed cottons imported into
Europe in the second half of the seventeenth century reflect an expansion in
their use beyond the domestic sphere. 25 Calicoes were now increasingly used as
apparel, a shift that made Daniel Defoe frown upon the 'persons of quality
dressed in Indian carpets'. 26 While few doubt the importance of cottons in
reshaping the visual, tactile, and design culture of textiles in the seventeenth
24 Adriana Turpin, 'Furnishing the London Merchant's Town House', in Mireille Galinou
(ed.), City Merchants and the Arts 1670-1720 (London, 2004), 59-60.
25 Beverly Lemire, 'East India Textiles and the Flowering of European Popular Fashions,
1660-1800', in S. Cavaciocchi (ed.), Prodotti e tecniche d'Oltremare nelle economie europee: secc.
XIII-XVIII: atti delta Ventinovesima Settimana di Studi, 14-19 aprile 1997 (Florence, 1998),
515-24.
26 Cit. in Arno Pearse, The Cotton Industry of India, being the Report of the Journey to India
(n.p., 1930), 19.

and eighteenth centuries, their degree of penetration into consumers' wardrobes

is the subject of very different opinions. John Styles, for instance, suggests a
later chronology for the popular uptake of cottons and argues that plebeian con-
sumers preferred linens and woollens well into the second half of the eighteenth
century. 27 My own estimates point out that cotton textiles (imported and home
produced) were less than 5 per cent of all textiles in England in 1750, a small
but important figure.28 Beverly Lemire's analysis of garments pawned at a south
London pawnbroker in 1667-71 shows how only 3 per cent of all fabrics were
cottons, compared to 51 per cent linens and 39 per cent woollen and worsteds.
A century later, in the late 1770s, York pawnbrokers showed how cotton
accounted for 18 to 22 per cent of all garments while woollen and linen had
receded to 12 and 6 per cent respectively. 29 In contrast Daniel Roche estimates
that by 1789 nearly 40 per cent of Parisian wage earners' wardrobes were com-
posed of cottons and fustians. 30
We must think about the implications of the use of cotton beyond gross
figures. Cottons impacted on established consumers' ideas of the quality, dura-
bility, and propriety of textiles. The anonymous author of The Tradeof England
Revived ( 1681), for instance, complained that 'instead of Green Sey that was
wont to be used for Children Frocks, is now used Painted, and Indian-stained,
and Striped Calico, and instead of a Perpetuana or a Shalloon to Lyne Mens
Coats with, is used sometimes a Glazened Calico', but suggested dismissively
that this was no real gain as such calicoes were 'not above twelve pence cheaper,
and abundaptly worse'. 31 He continued by observing how hard-wearing textiles
such as perpetuana and shalloon could last twice as long as calico, and even
when worn out 'will serve for one use or other afterwards for children'. 32 By
contrast calico did not last and could hardly be reused. 33 In his view, cottons
were reshaping the overall material culture of clothing, altering established
notions of durability and the recycling of textiles. Our late seventeenth-century
commentator was surely worried also about the hierarchical place of cottons. As
27 John Styles uses the evidence from the Old Bailey for stolen goods. See John Styles's
chapter in this volume and his The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century
England (New Haven, forthcoming 2007), ch. 7
28 Giorgio Riello, 'The Ecology of Cotton in Early Modern Europe: Possibilities and
Potentials', unpublished paper presented at the GEHN Conference on 'Cotton Textiles as a

Global Industry', University of Padua, 17-19 November 2005.
29 Beverly Lemire, 'Transforming Consumer Custom: Linen, Cotton, and the English
Market, 1660---1800', in Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), The European Linen
Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), 189 and 206-7.
30 Daniel Roche, La Culture des apparences: une histoire du vetement (XV!Ie-XVII!e siecle)
(Paris, 1991), 138.
31 The Trade of England Revived: And the Abuses Thereof Rectified (London, 1681), 16.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
270 GiorgioRiello
Illustration 13.2. Painted and dyed cotton banyan, with printed cotton lining, c. 1750-75.
The fabric was produced in the Coromandel Coast and the garment was tailored in the
Netherlands or England. Victoria and Albert Museum T.215-1992
A banyan is a man's informal robe based on that of the Japanese kimono, although the word it-
self is derived from the Indian word, banya, for a merchant or trader.
observed by Sarah Levitt, 'cotton enabled more than just the rich to display
clean shirts and, through its ability to imitate different fabrics, brought the
appearance of satins, velvets and lace within reach of millions'. 34 Its use was not
just confined to substitution for linen. Cotton was used also for hosiery in the
place of silks and woollens, as outwear thus replacing wool and leather, and as
a printed fabric for light dresses. 35 Cottons surely appeared a more 'democratic'
and 'progressive' alternative to woollens and worsteds. 36
34 Levitt, 'Clothing', 155.

35 Ibid. l 56.
36 Beverly Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons: Asian Trade, Domestic Industry and Consumer
Demand, 1660--1780', in David Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles
(Cambridge, 2003), i. 493; id., 'Fashion and Tradition: Wearing Wool in England during the
Consumer Revolution', in Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Gerard Gayot (eds.), Wool: Products and
Markets, 13th-20th Centuries (Padua, 2004), 573---<J4·
REINTERPRETING COTTON TEXTILES: CRAFTING A GLOBAL
COMMODITY FROM LOCAL TASTE
In 1670 Moliere dressed his bourgeois gentleman, Monsieur Jourdain, in a

banyan of calicoes (Illustration 13.2). 'I had this printed cotton made up', says
Monsieur Jourdain with confidence; 'my tailor told me that people of quality
wear them in the morning'. 37 He was not the only one to be charmed by brightly
coloured and richly designed Indian textiles. The contemporary Englishman
Samuel Pepys had fallen for similar fashions, though he had thought better to
decorate his wife's study room with chintz rather than to wear it as done by
Monsieur Jourdain. Pepys was pleased with the result, which he thought was
'very pretty'. If one could not have the original Indian import, one would have
recourse to rather more modest imitations that were increasingly produced in
Europe, in particular in the Netherlands and England towards the end of the sev-
enteenth century. The visual impact of such calicoes can be grasped from the
words of one of the directors of the French Compagnie des Indes when he said
that 'eyes are so much used to it that at present it is impossible to do without
these' .38 And such fashion was increasingly becoming part of general attire with
areas like Frisia incorporating calicoes into their traditional quilted petticoats
(Illustrations 13.3 and 13.4).39
Such perceived or real frenzy for Indian imports was seen with great concern
by the authorities and was thought deleterious for the domestic economy. If
most consu'mption was bad, this had awful effects first on the balance of trade
(causing a haemorrhage of bullion to pay for imported calicoes) and secondly
on the home industries (especially the producers of woollens and silks). It was
claimed that consumers had fallen into a 'calico craze' 40-not dissimilar to the
tulip mania that had swept Holland in the 163os-and that the consumption of
imported cottons and silks had to be stopped. Mercantilist measures based on
protectionism were quickly put in place across Europe starting with the ban on
37 Cit. in Celine Cousquer, Nantes, une capitalefranfaisedesindiennesau XVI/le siecle(Nantes,
2002), 18.
38 Cit. in Indrani Ray, 'The French Company and the Merchants of Bengal ( 1680-1730)', in
Lakshmi Subramanian (ed.), The FrenchEast India Company and the Trade of the Indian Ocean:
A Collectionof Essaysby Indrani Ray (New Delhi, 1999), 77.
39 Margherita Bellezza Rosina, 'La diffusione de! tessuto stampato nell'abbigliamento maschile
e femminile: da fenomeno d'elite a prodotto di massa', in Ranieri Varese e Grazietta Butazzi,

Storia della moda (Bologna, 1995), 228.
40 There is an extensive literature on the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century calico
craze. See: Natalie Rothstein, 'The Calico Campaign ofI7H,-1721', East LondonPapers,7 (1964),
3-21; Audrey W. Douglas, 'Cotton Textiles in England: The East India Company's Attempts to
Exploit Developments in Fashion 1660-1721 ', Journal of British Studies, 8/ 2 (1969), 28-43;
Mukerji, From Graven Images, ch. 5; Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons'.
GiorgioRiel/a
Illustration 13.3. A Dutch

woman, from The Costumeof the
Netherlands after drawings by
Miss Semple, London, 1817.
140.g.20, opposite 10.
Reproduced by Courtesy of the
British Library.
Illustration 13-4- Hat-brim

lining. Printed and Painted
cotton. India. Eighteenth
century. Victoria and Albert
Museum, IS.23-1976.
the use ofimported calicoes in France in 1686 where 'printed or painted cotton
are not allowed into this Kingdom. The only cloths allowed are white cotton
cloths such as Guinea cloth, percales and muslin.' 41 This was followed by
similar laws in Spain and Prussia in 1713. In England a partial ban was enacted
in 1701, followed by a total ban in 1721.42 Colourful reports on the mob chasing
down the streets of London and stripping women wearing calicoes are perhaps
not the best indicators of how the ban on the 'wearing or use of all printed,
painted, stained or dyed calicoes' might have worked. It was claimed that 'for-
bidden' products were still available in large parts of Europe, especially thanks
to Dutch imports that were never banned at home and that were actively sold
around Europe. 43
The ban on the import oflndian cottons and silks had more profound con-
sequences on manufacturing than on consumption. Historians have long
claimed that these protectionist measures facilitated-and perhaps were even
aimed at-fostering a process of'import substitution'. High duties or a straight-
forward ban could facilitate the replacement oflndian products with European
substitutes. This hypothesis, originally formulated by Wadsworth and Mann
for Britain back in 1932, has been recategorized and extended to include notions
of 'imitation', thus capturing the material, visual, but also emotional value of
such goods. 44 Maxine Berg, in her studies of the import of 'exotic' products
from India, China, and Japan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has
argued for a European drive towards the imitation of imported commodities.
The good} themselves with their visual and tactile attributes unleashed desires
that in turn produced attempts to replace them with European-made products.
She notices how so many of the commodities initially imported from the East
were eventually produced at home. They were partially adapted to suit
European tastes and expectations. 45 But in the early eighteenth century the
41 Cit. in Henry Weber, La Compagnie Franfaise des lndes (r604-r875) (Paris, 1904), 504-5,
and Philippe Haudrere, La Compagnie Franfaise des lndes au XV/lie siecle (r7rg--r795) (Paris,
1989), i. 427-8.
42 Historians have explained the mercantilist measures as a temporary loss of political power
by the English East India Company after the change of regime in 1688 and by government con-
cerns about the drainage of bullion that had started with the import of calicoes in the early 1660s.
The debate was particularly intense in England. For a detailed analysis of the legislation on cotton
in England see Patrick K. O'Brien, Trevor Griffith, and Philip Hunt, 'Political Components of
the Industrial Revolution: English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660-1774', Economic History
Review, 46/3 (1991), 395-423.
43 Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons', 403.
44 A. P. Wadsworth and Julia de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire,
r600--r780 (Manchester, 1931).

Eighteenth Century', Past and Present, 182 (2004), u6-23. See also John Styles, 'Product
Innovation in Early Modern London', Past and Present, 168 (2000), 124-69.
274 GiorgioRiello
substitution of imported calicoes and other cotton textiles was mostly confined
to their printing. 46 In Marseilles in the 1650s and 1660s and in Amsterdam in
the 1670s, Armenian workmen were employed to 'draw and colour or dye all
kinds of East Indian cottons, which has never before ... been practiced'. 47 At
Avignon the first calico printers set up in 1677, and workshops appeared also in
Languedoc, Dauphine, Normandy, and Paris. 48 Calico printing spread to
Switzerland and Alsace with the cities of Geneva, Basel, Mulhouse, and
Neuchatel becoming important centres of production. 49 During the long ban
on calico manufacturing in France lasting from 1689 and 1759, production con-
tinued in those cities and small areas that were not directly administered by the
central government and enjoyed autonomous jurisdiction, such as Marseilles,
and later the Arsenal in Paris, Angers, Rouen, and Nantes. 50
'Import substitution' is a key model explaining why and how in the course
of the eighteenth century the global centre of manufacturing of cotton textiles
shifted from India to Europe. The relationship between consumption and the
relocation (from one continent to another) and reorganization (from artisanal
to industrial) of production is at the core of debates over the nature and
working of 'import-substitution' industrialization. The extension of the cotton
sphere to include Europe was thus somewhat different from the established
system existing within the Indian Ocean for two reasons: first the role of
European merchants as examined above; secondly the progressive strengthen-
ing (and in due course overtaking) by Europe as a centre of manufacturing in
its own right. The new system was not just becoming global. It was also finding
a new productive core that increasingly attempted to coordinate the world
trade in textiles.
It must be borne in mind, however, that import substitution was not the pre-
rogative of Europe, let alone Britain. India had exported textiles for centuries
to other areas of Asia and import-substitution effects were evident in many parts
of South-East Asia, in the Arabian Gulf, and in the Ottoman Empire where pro-
ducers specialized in imitating Indian cotton cloth and sold it across the empire,
in the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. What made Europe distinctive? This
46 Giorgio Riello, 'The Rise of European Calico Printing and the Influence of Asia in the 17th
and 18th Centuries', paper presented at the GEHN Conference on 'Cotton Textiles in the Indian
Ocean', Pune, December 2005.
47 Cit. in Ernst Homburg, 'From Colour Maker to Chemist: Episodes from the Rise of the
Colourist, 1670--1800', in Robert Fox and Agusti Nieto-Galan (eds.), Natural Dyestuffi and
Industrial Culturein Europe, r750--r880 (Canton, Mass., 1999), 221.
48 Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, 'Indiennes et mousselines: le charme irreductible des
cotonnades (1650--1750)', in Le Coton et la mode: rooo ans d'aventures(Paris, 2000), 53-4.

49 Franco Brunello, L'arte delta tintura nella storiadell'umanitd (Vicenza, 1968), 215.
so Henri Clouzot, La Manufacture dejouy et la toileimprimeeau XVII le siecle(Paris, 1926), 8-

9; Serge Chassagne, 'Calico Printing in Europe before 1780', in Jenkins (ed.), CambridgeHistory
of WesternTextiles,i. 523-4.
question cannot at present find a satisfactory answer. Some historians have

explained the nature of the import-substitution process by upgrading it to a full-
fledged industrial revolution in which endogenous and exogenous causes of
growth marry each other to support the idea of a certain European (read Anglo-
Saxon) exceptionalism. Technology, institutions, political hegemony, and
control over world markets are some of the general factors characterizing the
economic surge of Europe over the century between 1750 and 1850.
I would like to make a case for the existence of a peculiar relationship
between import and home-produced commodities. The 'foreign' object was
not necessarily received within the material space of early modern Europe as
'extraordinary', that is to say referring to a world estranged from the daily con-
sumer choices and preferences. As previously observed in this volume, many
of the high-quality Indian cotton and silk textiles traded to South-East Asia,
but also to Nepal, Thailand, or the Horn of Africa, remained strictly associated
with customs based on gifts, rituals, and sometimes-but perhaps not as com-
monly as previously thought-religious practices. By contrast, Europe seems
to have 'commodified' such imported products, making them fully part of a
world of trade, monetized exchange, and fashion. From the point of view of
consumers, imported objects-not just from Asia, but also from other parts of
Europe-were conceived to be 'stimulants' in the short term, and became inte-
gral parts of a shifting material culture in the long term. Early modern Europe,
especially in those localities better equipped for protracted contact and
exchangt; with distant places, developed a notion of material culture that was
characterized by change-perhaps even 'progress'. And part of this vision was
based on the idea that influences, objects, shapes, materials, and forms not
endogenous could be adopted, used, and manipulated. This was an optimistic
world of material welfare in which 'foreign' commodities increasingly
impacted beyond the realm of the established elite culture and conspicuous
consumption. As in the case of chinaware, the collector's pieces of the early
seventeenth century came within the reach of the aspiring middle classes and
even changed the material world oflarge parts of the European population who
had no clue where these commodities came from. But the process of assimila-
tion, of making the 'foreign' ordinary, was as much a destruction and denial of
the exotic nature of imports as it was the confirmation of the expectation that
new commodities would enter the material world of a household, community,
city, or nation.
This cultural process also had good allies in Europe both on the manufacturing
and the political economy sides. From the point of view of the political arithmeti-
cian of the late seventeenth century, the substitution of an imported commodity
was the result of an aggressive nationalistic stance in the international economy.
Bans were only the epiphenomenon of wider processes aimed at curbing spending
GiorgioRiello
and reducing the timeframe of dependence upon foreign products. This did not
necessarily mean the exclusion of all new commodities. Manufactures, artisans,
and skilled workmen were called to copy and imitate, actions with few negative
connotations in the eighteenth century as, in the words of John Styles, the
concept of originality, 'in its uncompromising modem sense, was not necessarily
prized'. 51 The French indienne,for instance, was a copy of an Ottoman cotton
cloth imitating an Indian one. 52 The same can be said about the concept of prove-
nance. We have to remember that eighteenth-century culture lumped together
several Asian countries, from India to China to Japan, under the broad category
of 'the East'. There was not just confusion over which was the original product,
but also where it passed through. The 'Perses', for instance, were printed and
painted cotton textiles arriving in Europe through Persia and the Levant. In 1762
Jacques Savary des Bruslons complained that Perses 'are normally defined as cal-
icoes from Persia, where we suppose they have been made and painted; but often
they are Indian calicoes that are passed off as Persians. Perses, however, are the
most sought after among calicos from the Orient and, above all in France, ladies
prefer them to all others,' concluding that 'to make an appreciation of a certain
calico, we simply say that it is a Perse' (Illustration 13.5).53 But such an inaccurate
attitude extended also to the difference between the original products arriving
from Asia and home-produced manufacturers. It was in the interest of domestic
producers to suggest exotic provenance also for products with a much more local
origin. This was true for porcelain, chinoiserie, Japanese beds, and many other
imports. In the case of cottons, technological improvement meant that copies
could be passed off as original products. 54
Europeans started to reinterpret commodities not just by replacing them, but
also though a process of selection and modification in loco.The analysis of the
EIC sale of Indian cottons in Britain reveals how the company had a curious
combination of proactive business practices. So we find that the EIC was careful
to commission palampores with motifs suitable for European consumers by
sending patterns to India as early as the middle of the seventeenth century. 55
51 Styles, 'Product Innovation', 130-1.
52 Fukasawa, Toilerie;Olivier Raveux, 'Spaces and Technologies in the Cotton Industry in
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Example of Printed Calicoes in Marseilles',
Textile History, 32/z (2005), 131-45.
53 Jacques Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaireuniverse!de commerce(Copenhagen, 1762), vol.
iv, cit. in Gorguet Ballesteros, 'Indiennes et mousselines', 48.

54 The often-quoted correspondence of the New York merchant James Alexander, active in
the 1740s, did not distinguish between English and Indian calicoes. Written documents are
seldom so precise, but in this case the physical presence of samples makes the document unique.
Florence M. Montgomery, Printed Textiles:EnglishandAmerican Cottonsand Linens, I700-I850
(New York, 1970), 18.
55 Margherita Bellezza Rosina, 'Tra oriente e occidente', in Marzia Cataldi Gallo (ed.), I
mezzari: tra orientee occidente(Genoa, 1988), 20-1.

Illustration 13.5. Block printed, painted and resist- and mordant-dyed cotton textile called
Kalamkari, c. 1850. Victoria and Albert Museum, 5443(IS)
This type of textiles was produced in Andhra Pradesh in India but derives its name from kalam
(Persian for 'pen'), from which kalamkari ('pen work'). They were especially popular in Persia
where consumers could buy both imported and locally produced copies.
Samples became widely used: 'Now oflate they are here in England come to a
great practize of painting large branches for hanging of Room es', commented a
EIC employee in the late seventeenth century. 56 A similar thinking was in the
minds of the employees of the French East India Company when they consid-
ered the sizes of textiles that could be easily sold and advised the hoarding of
those 'types of cloth which we get painted in ordinary chittes for France,
because of their [suitable] width. I believe nevertheless that we shall be quite
56 Tamezo Osumi, Printed Cottons of Asia: The Romance of Trade Textiles (Tokyo, 1963), 17.
GiorgioRiello
able to sell these coarse narrow pieces there [in France] for common people as
well as for the American islands, since the chittes of Seronge which are hardly
wider than these, are in demand there.' 57 In some cases, the overall aim was to
produce textiles that continued European aesthetic traditions simply by trans-
posing motifs-as in the case of bizarre silks-from more precious to cheaper
materials. 58 In other cases the hands-on approach of the EIC even produced
new products such as the tree oflife, imitated by Indian producers but originat-
ing in Scandinavian myth and marketed in Europe as a quintessential Indian
commodity. In turn, this was copied in Europe, as in the case of the mezzari
produced in Genoa. 59
Once European calico producers perfected their techniques, the 'copy' could
become more appealing than the original. John Holker, the Englishman spying
on the Lancashire cotton production for the French government, reported in
1751 that the commerce of Lancashire-made fustians and mixed linens printed
in London was wide across Europe. He observed that, of course, France was the
main victim of such a trade, but he underlined how part of the problem lay with
consumers: 'They [the English] send large quantities [of printed textiles] to
France, which are sold as Indian chintzes because of the special finish they are
given and also because the purchasers of this type of English goods have but
slight knowledge of them.' 60 This was a worry not just for the French manu-
facturers but also for the East India and other European companies who had ini-
tiated the creation of hybrids that were now capturing their own traditional
markets.
Hybridity was particularly relevant for design and colours. The correspon-
dence of the EIC contains orders from London to factors in India asking for
'lighter' colours. In 1643 it was asked for instance that 'Those quilts which here-
after you shall send we desire may be with more white ground and the flowers
and branch to be in colours in the middle of the quilt as the painter pleases,
whereas now most part of your quilts come with sad red grounds which are not
too well accepted here'. 61 This European preference had important repercus-
sions on import substitution during the next century. The Indian technique of
57 Cit. in Ray, 'French Company', 68.

58 Steven Cohen, 'The Unusual Textile Trade between India and Sri Lanka: Block Prints and
Chintz 1550-1900', in Rosemary Crill (eds.), Textiles from India: The Global Trade (Oxford,
2006), 66.
59 Giorgio Riello, 'The Indian Apprenticeship: The Trade oflndian Textiles and the Making
of European Cottons', in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World:
Cotton Textiles and the Indian Ocean, r500--1850 (Leiden, forthcoming 2009).
°
6 Cit. in Florence M. Montgomery, 'English Textile Swatches of the Mid-Eighteenth
Century', Burlington Magazine, 92 {1960), 243.
61 John Irwin, 'Origins of the "Oriental Style" in English Decorative Art', Burlington
Magazine, 107 (1955), 109.

Illustration 13.6. Bed Curtain. Plate printed cotton in china blue produced by Nixon and
Company, 1770-80. H 304, W350. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.612-1996.
resist dyeing was based on the waxing of the areas that were to remain undyed.
This labour-intensive procedure allowed for the production of'white motifs on
blue backgrounds' rather than 'blue motifs on white backgrounds' (like Chinese
porcelain of the time), which would have meant the waxing of most of the cloth.
We find that the replacement of this product with European-made products
meant the learning of the Indian techniques of waxing and tepid indigo fermen-
280 GiorgioRiello
tation by European producers during the last quarter of the seventeenth

century. But by the early eighteenth century they were already experimenting
with improved techniques, unknown in Asia. The most important of these was
the use of cold vats obtained by dissolving indigo in iron sulphate. This process,
invented in England in 1734, quickly replaced the hot fermentation of indigo
and was followed a few years later by the so-called English blue and China blue,
the ability of printing in blue, again unknown in India (Illustration 13.6). 62
Consumers did not just remodel products but also reshaped the technologies
used to produce them.
MAKING IT GLOBAL: MARKETING COTTON TEXTILES

BEYOND EUROPE
A 'product revolution', as observed by Maxine Berg, emerged in Europe from

the encounter, assimilation, and manipulation of exotic commodities and accom-
panied the process of eighteenth-century economic growth succinctly labelled
as the 'industrial revolution' .63 The expansion of the cotton sphere from the
Indian Ocean to include Europe was not a simple extension based on the finding
of new markets for cotton textiles produced in India. In just three generations,
Europe had effectively superseded its dependence on imported cottons and
created a flourishing industry whose economic importance is well known. It had
used products that were not part of its material culture to catalyse change, spark
imagination, promote invention, and foster fashion. By the 1760s, Europe had
not just dutifully learned all techniques for fashioning textiles that were totally
unknown a century earlier, such as block printing, painting, the use of mordants,
reserve, and reverse staying. It had also built on these processes and modified
them to produce new products, such as copper-printed textiles, by combining
knowledge of dyes and textile printing from Asia with the skills and European
aesthetic vocabulary of printing and etching on paper. 64 Printing and dyeing on
cloth was the most important area of eighteenth-century invention in Europe. 65
62 Peter C. Floud, 'The English Contribution to the Early History of Calico Printing', Journal
of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, 76 (1960), 344-9.

63 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005). See also
her 'Quality, Cotton and the Global Luxury Trade', in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothed
the World.
64 Riello, 'Rise of European Calico Printing'; Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, 'East &
West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe',Journal of Social History, 41/ 4 (2008),
887-916.
65 Berg, 'From Imitation to Invention', 22; id, 'Quality, Cotton and the Global Luxury Trade',
in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World, ch. 15. See also Stanley D. Chapman,
'Quality versus Quantity in the Industrial Revolution: The Case of Textile Printing', Northern
History, 21 (1985), 175-92.
The cotton printers and manufacturers of Lancashire, but also Catalonia,

Orange,Joy-en-Jossa, Mulhouse, Neuchatel, Prague, and many other cities and
towns in Europe, were developing new notions for cotton textiles.66 Europe had
not just been captured into a larger sphere of trade for this commodity, but had
shifted its manufacturing core and altered the very nature of the product. But
this would have been a rather small achievement iflimited to just European con-
sumers. The strength of the process of reinvention of cotton textiles in Europe
did not rely on its domestic market, but on cotton textiles as a global commod-
ity. 67 We are very much aware of how new technologies in spinning, weaving,
and finishing conferred a comparative advantage in manufacturing on Europe
over India and other world cotton textile manufacturing areas. 68 But it would
be a mistake to conceptualize the emergence of cotton textiles in Europe only
as a switch from trade to manufacturing. The new manufacturing core could
not thrive without selling its products well beyond its borders. The reinvention
of cotton textiles was not just for Europe: this was a new commodity to trade in
the Atlantic to West Africa, the North American colonies, and Latin America.
The importance of finding consumers for European cotton textiles beyond
Europe is now seen a necessary condition for the development of the sector.
Import substitution at home would not have been sufficient to generate a phe-
nomenon of the scale and nature that economic historians define as 'revolution-
ary'. Joseph Inikori argues that import substitution could not have supported the
long-term development of cotton textiles and claims that 'the growth of domestic
demand for English cotton textiles after the completion of first-stage import sub-
stitution in the industry was decidedly slow'. 69 In his view foreign markets
played a substantial part in what he calls 're-export substitution' industrializa-
tion. The trade of Asian textiles to Africa had already started in the fourteenth
century and followed the same routes of luxuries and semi-luxuries such as
beads, copper, Islamic earthenware, and Chinese porcelain. 70 It is estimated that
by the early to mid-seventeenth century the Gold Coast of Africa purchased
more than 20,000 metres oflndian and European cotton cloth each year.71 From
66 On calico printing in Europe: Stanley D. Chapman and Serge Chassagne, European Textile
Printers in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Peel and Oberkampf(London, 1981); Chassagne,
'Calico Printing'.
67 This is a point underlined by Berg for many of the goods produced in Britain in the eigh-
teenth century. See Berg, Luxury and Pleasure, ch. 7.

68 Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, 'The Early Modern Great Divergence:
Wages, Prices and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500-1800', Economic History
Review, 59/J (2006), 2-31. See also Patrick O'Brien's chapter in this volume.
69 Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study of International
Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002), 433.

70 N. Chittick, 'East African Trade with the Orient', in D.S. Richards (ed.), Islam and the
Trade of Asia: A Colloquium (Oxford, 1970), 103.

71 John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680
282 GiorgioRiello
Illustration 13.7. Piece of a checked handkerchief, block printed cotton. Manufacturer:

Feer & Huguenin, Mulhouse, 1760.
Musee de !'Impression sur l'Etoffe, Mulhouse, S.314.1.5
the middle of the eighteenth century West Africa became an important market
both for east India cottons re-exported from England and for the growing
English cotton industry. Between 1699 and 1800 'Guinea' cloth (cottons for the
African markets) accounted for 68 per cent of all commodities exported from
England to Africa, 40 per cent of which came from India (Illustration 13.7). 72
Cotton did not become a global commodity because its production was mecha-
nized and industrialized; on the contrary, it became mechanized and industrial-
ized thanks to the fact that it was a global commodity.
British cotton producers and east India merchants could reap the profits from
the African trade only by remaining competitive with other European traders and
with direct exports from Asia to Africa. The mid-eighteenth-century expansion
of the African market enlarged the total number of firms in the industry, making
it more competitive. It was also a major incentive for cost-reducing and quality-
raising innovations. Inikori suggests that this served as an 'apprenticeship' for the
successful engagement of English cottons in the European and Atlantic markets
in the later part of the eighteenth century. 73 Moreover, it was not just England
that traded heavily with Africa. From the 1730s, Rouen combined the production
(Cambridge, 1992), 49. These are estimates by the author based on the number of ships trading
with the area. See n. 22, pp. 49-50. This can appear a large figure but accounted for not more
than 2% of all cloth consumed in the area.
72 Herbert S. Klein, 'Economic Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade', in
James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern
World, r350-r750 (Cambridge, 1990), 292.
73 See also Joseph E. lnikori, 'Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in
England', Social Science History, 13/ 4 (1989), 343-79.

of heavy brocaded chines and lance'swith cheaper and lighter-mix linen and
cotton, in particular stripes, checks, and other Guinea cloths to be sold in West
Africa.74 In the late 1760s and early 1770s, Rouen exported to Africa an average
of 600,000 livres oflndian textiles every year. 75
Inikori's explanation puts forward not just the importance of African con-
sumer markets, but also the development of an Atlantic triangular trade: cottons
were exchanged for slaves who were transported to the American plantations to
cultivate-among other commodities-the very raw cotton that was used to
develop cotton textile manufacturing in Europe. 76 At present this remains a
rather schematic-though suggestive-demand-led explanation that has still
to identify precisely what types of cotton goods were exported to Africa, the
terms of their exchange, who consumed them, and how they interacted with an
already existing tradition of production and consumption of cotton textiles. 77
Inikori's claim that Atlantic markets-and the West African one in particu-
lar-were an area of competition between different European nations forgets
that no Indian or Asian trader was directly trading with this world area. Indian
textiles suffered the disadvantage of indirect trade to the Atlantic, either
through Europe or through a series of intermediaries in East and North Africa.
Effectively the Atlantic was an area protected from world competition. Even
more so was the northern Atlantic area and the British colonies in particular.
Here, as in the case of Europe, cotton textiles' popularity increased in the first
three decades of the eighteenth century, not in spite of but because of their
superior price compared to linens. Robert DuPlessis shows how the increasingly
prosperous colonists actively sought more refined and expensive products.
Imported cotton textiles, especially those from Asia, became an important new
category within a material culture that had traditionally been dominated by fine
woollens imported from England, and homespun coarse woollens and linens. 78
74 W. Wescher, 'The "Rouannerie" Trade and its Entrepreneurs', Ciba Review, 12 (1959), 14.
75 Ann DuPont, 'Captives of Colored Cloth: The Role of Cotton Trade Goods in the North
Atlantic Slave Trade (1600-1808)', Ars Textrina, 24 (1995), 180.
76 Inikori, 'Slavery and the Revolution'. See also id., 'Slavery and Capitalism in Africa', Indian
Historical Review, 15/J-2 (1988-89), 137-51.

77 This hypothesis, suggestively supported by English export and re-export figures, is
however insufficient to explain the role of England in a wider Atlantic context, or the relative
position it enjoyed compared to other European nations. Inikori's model does not discuss the con-
tribution of other European continental producers, and West Indian and North American con-
sumers. Inikori's data exposes a consistent expansion of West African markets between 1750 and
1775 but the market's share of total exports of English manufactured cottons remained fairly
stable at c.35-45°/o during the entire period considered. In the case of printed cottons it was even
lower and declining over time. On the latter point, see Bowen, The Business of Empire, 238-9.
78 See Robert DuPlessis's chapter in this volume. DuPlessis's research shows how cotton tex-
tiles in the Atlantic sphere were initially the preserve of men's apparel, not women's. In North
America, as in Latin America, richly decorated textiles found their way into men's wardrobes
more readily than those of their wives.
GiorgioRiello
Already in 1700 the colonies in North America were supplied with Indian calico
quilts exported from London to places such as New York, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia. 79 By the mid-eighteenth century various types of cotton textiles
('Blue', 'India', 'Negro' as well as printed and painted) were exported from
England to the American colonies. 80
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of cotton consumption in North
America. This is what was in the mind of the anonymous writer of the
Observationson the Means of Extendingthe Consumptionof British Callicoes( 1788)
when he pointed out 'the absolute necessity of finding new channels of con-
sumption, and of devising means by which a more extended sale could be pro-
moted, so as to keep alive those powers of machinery which have been so
beneficially disseminated all over the country'. 81 Britain was fast gaining posi-
tions thanks to its new mechanical applications to the manufacturing of cotton
textiles, but markets were difficult to find. American markets were seen as a
possible solution. 82 In 1770, in the aftermath oflndependence, American con-
sumers still depended heavily on imported cotton textiles from Britain with
nearly 60 per cent of all cotton textiles exported from Britain destined for North
America (Table 13.2). 83 Still, in 1812, Sir Francis Baring, a leading London
merchant, estimated that a quarter to a third of Manchester's trade went to the
USA and probably half of the cotton production of the town ofBury. 84 But by
this date the USA was importing cotton textiles directly from India. During the
period from 1795 to 1805 the trade with India (mostly formed by cotton textiles)
exceeded in value all trade with Europe. 85
Cotton textiles were popular not only in the North American colonies. Latin
America enjoyed high levels of consumption of all sorts of commodities
imported via the Atlantic and the Pacific both from Europe and Asia in
79 Linda Eaton, 'Winterthur's Hand-Painted Indian Export Cottons: Winterthur', Magazine
Antiques Uanuary 2002), 3.

°
8 F. Mason Norton,John Norton €5Sons, Merchants of London and Virginia,beingthe Papers
from their CountingHousefor the Years 1750 to 1795 (Newton Abbott, 1968), 22, 72, 103, 125, 150,
190,218.
81 Observations
on the Means of Extendingthe Consumptionof British Calicoes,Muslins, and other
Cotton Goodsand of Giving PecuniaryAids to the Manufacturers. .. (London, 1788), 2.
82
For a comparative analysis of the textile trade of France and England, and the importance
of North America for the latter, see Javier J. Cuenca Esteban, 'Comparative Patterns of Colonial
Trade: Britain and its Rivals', in Leandro Prados de la Escosura (ed.), Exceptionalism and
Industrialisation:Britain and its EuropeanRivals, 1688-1815 (Cambridge, 2004), 42-3.
83 Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic Tradeand the British Economy,1660-1800 (Cambridge,
2000), 64.
84 Stanley D. Chapman, 'Cottons and Printed Textiles', in Textiles in Trade (Washington,
1990), 33.
85 Susan S. Bean, 'The American Market for Indian Textiles, 1785-1820: In the Twilight of
Traditional Cloth Manufacture', in Textilesin Trade, 43-4.

TABLE 13.2. Destinations of the Textile Exports of Great Britain and France,
1787-1820
1787-1789 1797-1812,1814-1815 1816-1820
Britain France Britain France Britain France
Wool Textiles (£) 6,318 768 9,165 1,406 8,487 2,089

(1) 30.6 21.6 42.9 1.6 40.8 6.0
(2) 15.5 0.3 33.5 1.6 28.7 2.9
(3) 53.9 78.1 23.6 96.8 30.5 91.l
Linen Textiles (£) 991 1,221 1,122 1,557 1,667 1,332

(1) 71.3 49.0 78.0 5.1 59.2 17.4
(2) 23.9 0.2 16.7 3.3 27.7 7.7
(3) 4.8 50.8 5.3 91.6 13.1 74.9
Cotton Textiles (£) 1,629 837 17,135 424 32,162 875

(1) 30.8 79.6 44.3 4.0 40.l 3.9
(2) 22.4 0.4 19.2 1.2 12.5 0.1
(3) 46.8 20.0 36.5 94.8 47.4 96.0
Silk Textiles (£) 1,142 2,244 2,934

(1) 9.1 1.1 3.2
(2) 0.3 9.6 20.7
(3) 90.6 89.3 76.1
( l) to all cpionies, Africa and Asia, in percentage

(2) to the United States, in percentage
(3) to Europe and the Levant, in percentage
Source: J. Cuenca Esteban, Javier, 'Comparative Patterns of Colonial Trade: Britain and its Rivals', in Le-
andro Prados de la Escosura, ed., Exceptionalism and Industrialization: Britain and Its European Rivals,
1688-1815(Cambridge, 2004), pp. 42-3.
exchange for its abundant reserves of silver and other precious metals. 86 The
area was located in a strategic position between the Atlantic and the Pacific
oceans. From the Atlantic cotton textiles arrived with slave cargoes and directly
from Europe. During the seventeenth century cottons from India and the
Philippines, as well as Chinese silks and semi-precious stones from South-East
Asia, found their way to Mexico via the Acapulco route. 87 Travellers and visi-
86 For a more detailed analysis of the cotton textile relationship between Spain and the
Colonial Latin America see Marta Valentin Vicente, Clothingthe Spanish Empire: Familiesand
the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World (New York, 2006); and her chapter in this
volume.
87 Abby Sue Fisher, 'Mestizaje and the Cuadros de Castas: Visual Representations of Race,
and Dress in Eighteenth Century Mexico' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota,
I 992 ), 66---7.
286 GiorgioRiello
tors to Mexico were impressed by the variety of dress worn by the various ethnic
groups, but also by the riches commonly displayed by wide strata of society.
The Spaniard Artemio de Valle-Arizpe reported that in eighteenth-century
Mexico City 'ordinary wear is a silk skirt or printed calico decorated with bands
of gold and silver, with brightly coloured ribboned belts with their fringe of gold
that tumble down behind and in front to border the skirt'. 88 Qµito in Ecuador
used both locally produced cottons and the more expensive imported ruan
cotton cloth, imported from Rouen in France. 89 Unlike North America, where
calico printing and later a full-scale cotton industry developed by the beginning
of the nineteenth century, Latin America's cotton revolution started only later
in the nineteenth century and on a smaller scale. In 1820 Britain exported to
Latin America 56 million yards of cotton cloth, reaching 279 million yards
twenty years later. This was equivalent to ten yards per person, an indicator of
the receptiveness of Latin America to imported cotton textiles. 90
CONCLUSION
By the third decade of the nineteenth century, Europe had become the undis-
puted global producer of cotton textiles. It had also replaced Indiaas the leading
exporter of this fabric after a period of more than five centuries. This shift-
normally encapsulated under the label of the 'industrial revolution'-has been
explained here by underlining the importance of consumer markets, the
processes of reinvention of cotton textiles, and the realignment of consumer cul-
tures and preferences. This is a case study that supports the wider case made by
Maxine Berg 'for a connection between global luxury, European consumerism
and industrialization in the eighteenth century'. 91 The implications were wide
ranging not just in Europe, but also in the vast Atlantic area where cotton textiles
developed markets in conjunction with the established woollen and linen trades.
Cotton textiles sat at the centre of a new global economic system increasingly
dominated by Europe-and Britain in particular. The Lancashire mills were
now selling their products not just to continental Europe, the Americas, and
Africa, but also to Asia, thus reversing a flow that had started in earnest two cen-
88 Artemio de Valle-Arizpe, Historia de la ciudad de Mexico segun los relatos de sus cronistas
(Mexico, 1998), 173-4.

89 Ross W. Jamieson, 'Bolts of Cloth and Sherds of Pottery: Impressions of Caste in the
Material Culture of the Seventeenth Century Audiencia of Qµito', The Americas, 60/ 3 (2004),
440.
90 Arnold J. Bauer, Goods, Power, History: Latin America's Material Culture (Cambridge,
2001), 130. In the case of Peru, cotton textiles accounted for 95°/o of all its imports in the first
decade of independence of the country.
9! Berg, 'In Pursuit ofLuxury', 85.
turies earlier. Lancashire and Alsace were not just the new industrial cotton
centres of Europe, but also among the most global places on earth.
Jeremy Prestholdt has recently suggested that 'global economic systems are
to a great degree determined by the cultural logic of the consumer demand'. 92
But what does it mean? The case of cotton textiles shows how the success of
this commodity was not necessarily determined by its price as economists
would suggest. Cotton textiles came to be widely used across vast parts of the
globe. Their use and meaning was increasingly influenced by Europe, either in
cultural terms as suggested by Prestholdt, or through new economic relation-
ships between Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa. The deindustrializa-
tion oflndian cotton spinning and weaving is one of the best-known cases of
such a novel economic relationship increasingly backed by the political force of
imperialism. 93
92 Jeremy Prestholdt, 'On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism', American
HistoricalReview, 109/ 3 (2004), 755.
93 For an overview: Ian C. Wendt, 'The Social Fabric: Textile Industry and Community in
Early Modern South India' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University ofWisconsin-Madison, 2005).
I
PART III
Cotton Revolutions and their Consequences in
Europe and Asia
I
~
I
14
THE BIRTH OF A NEW
EUROPEAN INDUSTRY
L'Indiennage in Seventeenth-Century Marseilles
OLIVIER RA VEUX
The cotton textile printing industry developed in Europe during the second half
of the seventeenth century as part of a process of substitution for Asian imports.
The centrality of maritime routes has often been employed to explain the birth
of this sector in western Europe. 1 Port cities were better placed to host the new
industry because of their direct and regular commercial relations with India and
the Middle East. It must be observed, however, that this is just one of many pos-
sible explanations. Historians are still unable to answer very simple questions:
why did Marseilles, London, and Amsterdam start producing printed cotton
textiles well before Venice or Lisbon? And why was the diffusion of calico print-
ing so slow in Europe?
To define the logic behind the appearance of this industry in Europe and to
understa!id the chronologies of its development, we need to go further and con-
sider local peculiarities as well as a set of general explanations. Because of its
singular and exemplary characteristics, the case of Marseilles provides some
answers and fruitful lines of enquiry. The birth of calico printing in Marseille
depended on two sources of dynamism. The first was industrial and local in
nature. It allows us to ask three important questions: what kind of technical
skills did western Europe possess to undertake calico printing? How did the
technological transfer from Asia happen? And finally, what were the strategies
of production followed by local producers? The second dynamic force was com-
mercial and relates to the spatial expansion of economic activity: what were the
I would like to thank Gilbert Buri, the late Larry Epstein, Philippe Minard, Patrick O'Brien,
Giorgio Riello, and Peter Solar for their kind suggestions. This paper was translated from French
by the editors.
1 Peter Floud, 'The Origins of English Calico Printing',Journal of the Society of Dyers and
Colourists,76 (1960), 275-81; P.R. Schwartz, 'La Coloration partielle des etoffes', in Maurice
Daumas (ed.), Histoiregeneratedestechniques(Paris, 1968), 704-28;John Irwin and Katharine B.
Brett, Originsof Chintz (London, 1970); Paul Leuilliot, 'Influence du commerce oriental sur l'e-
conomie occidentale', in Michel Mollat (ed.), Sociites et compagniesde commerceen Orientet Jans
!'oceanIndien (Paris, 1970), 611-29.
Olivier Raveux
commercial routes that favoured the emergence of this industry in Europe?

How did the maritime routes related to products, tastes, people, and techniques
overlap? Answers to these questions allow us to observe from a concrete
example the relationship between commercial and production strategies in imi-
tation of Asian manufactured products, a phenomenon now seen as key in the
transformation of European economies in the early modern period. 2
THE LIMITS OF AN OPPORTUNITY
Marseilles is currently considered the oldest centre of calico printing in Europe

and was established some thirty years before London and Amsterdam. 3 The first
stages of the industry in Provence began with a process of substitution for goods
previously imported from the Levant and Persia. What is still unclear, however,
is the beginnings of this process. How important were commercial practices? Or
the richness of artisanal skills? The pioneering position of Marseilles can only
be understood as the exploitation of a conjunctural opportunity.
From the sixteenth century, Marseilles was one of the main European centres
for the import of cotton textiles from India, Persia, and above all the Ottoman
Empire. During the first half of the seventeenth century, the chafarcanisfrom
Diyarbakir and the blue toiles from Aleppo were widely traded in Provence
(Illustration 14.1). From the 1630s, along with Livorno, Marseilles was not
content to limit itself to the trade in these printed textiles for the local market
and the city became the intermediary for other European markets. The Iberian
Peninsula and many regions in northern Europe received cotton textiles pur-
chased in Iskenderun and Smyrna by merchants from Marseilles. 4 This relay
role was essential for the merchants of Marseilles because it made it possible to
obtain the silver coins that were indispensable for the Levant trade. In this
trade, Marseilles continued long-established traditions, underpinned by local
customary consumption patterns and re-export to neighbouring countries.
These two outlets created a market in which commercial and productive strate-
gies were linked at a local level. But should we interpret the rise of cotton textile
Eighteenth Century', Past and Present,182 (2004), 85-142; Liliane Hilaire-Perez, 'Cultures tech-
niques et pratiques de l'echange entre Lyon et le Levant: inventions et reseaux au XVIIJe siecle',
Revue d'histoire moderneet contemporaine,49/i (2002), 89-n4; Beverly Lemire and Giorgio
Riello, 'East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Eurasia in the Early Modern Period' ,Journal of
Social History, 41/ 4 (2008), 887-{)16.
3 Stanley Chapman and Serge Chassagne, EuropeanTextile Printersin the EighteenthCentury:
A Study of Peel and Oberkampf(London, 1981), 6--{).

4 Eloy Martin Corrales, 'La importaci6n de telas de algod6n levantino y los inicios del estam-
pado en Catalufia', Revista de historiaindustrial,6 (1994), 49.

L'Indiennage in 17th-Century Marseilles 293
Illustration 14.1. There are no surviving examples of chafarcani and other indigo cottons for
the seventeenth century. They still exist instead for the eighteenth century, as in the case of this
chafarcani produced in Provence or imported into Marseilles from the Levant after the repeal
of the prohibition on 1759.
© Archives Departementale des Bouches-du-Rhone, serie C.
printing in Marseilles as a consequence of a desire to compete with Asian goods?

Or should we interpret it according to a different logic?
The birth of cotton manufacturing in Marseilles in 1648 came at a time when
there was a general shortage of cotton textiles. And the date is no coincidence.
The middle of the seventeenth century was a difficult period for the commerce
of Marseilles. Troubles had started in the 1630s and grew after 1644. By 1648
the crisis had become a true economic depression with the plague, the revolt of
Catalonia, and the almost total interruption of trade with the Ottoman Empire. 5
5 Paul Masson, Histoiredu commerce franfais dansle Levant au XVI Jesiecle(Paris, 1896), 130-1;
Michel Morineau, 'Flottes de commerce et trafics frans;ais en Mediterranee au XVII< siecle',
XVII' Siecle, 86-7 (1970), 135-71; Charles Carriere, Nigociants marseillaisau XVIII• siecle:con-
tributiond l'itude des economiesmaritimes(Marseilles, 1973), i. 67.
294 Olivier Raveux
The Marseilles merchants received almost no printed textiles and were unable
to supply either the local market or their foreign customers. Out of necessity,
the city established cotton production as a substitute for imports.
Marseilles did not lack the resources to respond to the challenge. The city
already had a substantial and dynamic artisan class. It was a breeding ground
for the skills and knowledge necessary for a calico-printing industry. Above all,
since the middle of the sixteenth century the city had been engaged in the pro-
duction of mixed cotton textiles by spinning and weaving raw cotton imported
from the Levant. 6 The fibre was already domesticated, and suitable for all stages
of dyeing. Marseilles also had a good contingent of engravers and playing card
manufacturers. 7 These artisans were experienced in the two fundamental ele-
ments of calico manufacturing: on the one hand the fabrication and use of
wooden blocks for printing, and on the other the preparation and application of
colours. It is within this rich artisan environment that calico manufacturing first
appeared in 1648.
The initial start appears to have been the partnership between the playing
card manufacturer Benoit Ganteaume and the engraver Jacques Baville. 8 The
strategy of these two entrepreneurs, and of the merchants for whom they
worked, was based on a double logic. In a period of weak competition from Asia,
local artisans betted on the profits to be had from printing calico in Provence.
Merchants and local shopkeepers were keen to be supplied with the goods nec-
essary to keep their business in good order. It was therefore the movement of
craftsmen into neighbouring technical areas that launched the printing of cotton
textiles in Marseilles. But are local artisan decisions sufficient to explain the
development of this new productive activity? To a certain extent, the answer is
yes. One can identify more than a dozen printing workshops between 1648 and
1668. The dynamism was real, but it may have already reached its limits.
Although calico printing was first done in Marseilles, the industry never
became substantial in size. In the long run Marseilles possessed both handicaps
and limitations, the first of which was commercial. The decline in commercial
contacts with the Levant gave birth to calico printing in Marseilles, but difficul-
ties with that trade were also a brake on the growth of printing. The Levant was
the source of raw materials needed for the industry. Until 1659 shipments to
Marseilles of white cotton cloth, madder, indigo, alum, gallnuts, and gum Arabic
were very irregular. During the first ten years of the industry, the production of
6
Raymond Collier and Joseph Billioud, Histoire du commercede Marseille (Paris, 1951), iii.
467.
7 On the playing-cards industry see Joseph Billioud, 'La Carte a jouer: une vieille industrie
marseillaise', Marseille, 36 (1951), 17-24.
8 Hyacinthe Chobaut, 'L'Industrie des indiennes aMarseille avant 1680', Memoirede l'Institut
Historiquede Provence,16 (1939), 92-4. This article was pioneering in its use of notary documents
to trace developments until 1679.
printed cotton textiles in Marseilles must have been quite limited. The situation
improved from 1660, although commerce with the Levant remained poorly
organized. Many difficulties remained, and not just related to the lack of raw
materials. The printers of Marseilles had to fear that the stabilization of the com-
mercial relationship with the Levant would renew competition from imports of
similar goods from Persia and the Ottoman Empire. Because of the inferior
quality and low reputation of the Marseilles products, the revival of trade with
the eastern Mediterranean was not necessarily in the interests of the manufac-
turers of Provence.
The second problem that local producers faced was the very artisanal
dynamism that had contributed to the setting up of calico printing in Marseilles.
The productive strategy that generated the new sector was itself to be a brake
on the growth of printing. Many playing card makers who had entered calico
printing were not keen to abandon their primary business as it was extremely
profitable. 9 Calico printing for them remained a supplementary activity. The
absence of specialization in cloth printing, among the major cloth printers,
stemmed from the continued opportunities in their original activity. The
divorce between playing card making and calico printing also did not take place
because playing card makers were unwilling to leave their original trade to enter
fully into a new sector that was plagued by substantial technical difficulties for
the first twenty years. 10
In Marseilles the knowledge and technical expertise for printing on cotton
was still ipcomplete. The methods used were not the result of a technological
transfer across space within the cotton-printing sector, but ofborrowing locally
from other activities. As a consequence producers in Marseilles struggled to
ensure the permanence of colour on their cottons. Marseilles was well
acquainted with the range of textiles produced through a process of printing,
but the local entrepreneurs did not know how best to perform the process. They
toiled to understand the 'oriental secret' of the 'appretage des toiles', of the
preparation and application of mordants. The techniques used in Marseilles
yielded indiennes that were unable to resist fading from the sun and frequent
washing. The competition between Asia and Europe had not yet started in
calico printing.
How could local producers surmount this difficulty and improve the quality
of their cottons? This was a very serious question in the 166os since the com-
mercial relationship between France and the Levant was fast improving. The
9 Billioud, 'La Carte ajouer'.
10 On the technical aspects of calico printing and colouring see: Serge Chassagne, 'Calico
Printing in Europe before 1780', in David Jenkins (ed.), The CambridgeHistory of WesternTextiles
(Cambridge, 2003), 514-17; Giorgio Riello, 'The Rise of Calico Printing in Europe and the
Influence of Asia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', paper presented at the 8th
GEHN Conference on Cotton, Pune, India, December 2005.
296 Olivier Raveux
printed cotton textiles from Ispahan, Diyarbakir, and Aleppo were now arriving
in Marseilles with greater regularity. If the producers in Marseilles were to hold
on to their markets, they had to produce chafarcanisand indigo-printed cotton
in the same manner as their Asian competitors. There was a clear need for the
transfer of technology and know-how. And in a productive activity that was
above all based 'on empirical knowledge acquired on the shopfloor', only the
arrival of men with technical expertise from the Levant could produce any
benefit. 11 The Levant was no longer just a conceptual and material space of ref-
erence for the development of calico printing, but became a space of expertise
from which specialists with unique technical skills could be attracted to
Marseilles. The type of men Marseilles was looking for were well known for a
long time: they were the Armenian calico printers. They had already been
pivotal in the technological transfer of cotton printing from India to Persia and
several parts of the Ottoman Empire. 12 Their skilfulness in colouring with
madder was lauded by several travellers and their products were held in high
esteem throughout Europe, from France to Poland and Russia. 13
CONSOLIDATION THROUGH TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER
At the end of the 166os, calico printing in Marseilles was still looking for~-way
to ensure a prosperous future through a combination oflocal economic dynam-
ics and external resources in order to remove major commercial and technical
obstacles. Unexpected help came from the political as well as economic policies
of the state. And again, cotton printing in Marseilles was to benefit from a con-
juncture.
From 1660 onwards, more favourable conditions set Marseilles on a positive
path of economic development. The edict of 1669 which freed the port played
a role, but several studies have underlined that the edict alone cannot explain
the industrial and commercial development of the city. 14 In certain cases, espe-
cially for those manufactures whose products were mostly destined for internal
11 Serge Chassagne, Le Coton et sespatrons: France,r760-r840 (Paris, r991), 104.
12 In particular in Ispahan, Istanbul, and Aleppo. See Johannes Artignan, Le Commercedes
Arminiens au XVIJe siecle(Nancy, 1901), 15; G. Baker, 'Indian Cotton Prints and Paintings of
the 17th and 18th Centuries', TransactionsofNewcomen Society, 3 (1922), 52; Patricia L. Baker,
Islamic Textiles(London, 1995), 160; Robert Mantran, Istanbul dans la secondemoitii du XVIJe
siecle:essaid'histoireinstitutionnelle,iconomiqueet sociale(Paris, 1962), 419.
13 Martin Van Bruinessen, 'Economic Life in the 17th Century', in Evliya <;elebi in Diyarbekir
(Leiden, 1988), 36--44; Katsurni Fukasawa, Toilerie et commercedu Levant d'Alep aMarseille
(Marseilles, 1987), 46--5I. .
14 See the analysis of de Gilbert Buti in Xavier Daurnalin, Nicole Girard, and Olivier Raveux
(eds.), Du savon d la puce: l'industrie marseillaisedu XVIJe siecleti nosjours (Marseilles, 2003),
1 9-51.
markets, this edict was more a brake than a catalyst. Calico printing was some-
what of an exception as it adapted itself to the new legal framework which at
first glance seemed unfavourable to its development. In order to make the city
the centre of the European trade with the Levant, Colbert offered the printed
cottons from the east the possibility of monopolizing the Marseilles market. The
dynamics of international commerce could have smothered local production.
As a consequence, the local calico-printing industry sought to obtain maximum
benefits from the 1669 edict. Above all, the industry could not survive without
the supply of raw materials imported from the Levant. White cotton cloths from
the Ottoman Empire, gallnuts from the Diyarbaktr-Van-Mosul Triangle, gum
Arabic, alum from Chios, indigo from Persia, and madder from Armenia and
Georgia were indispensable for the local calico-printing industry. 1 Colbert's
edict permitted this merchandise to arrive in Marseilles unburdened by the
taxes that were formerly paid.
Indirectly, the freedom of the port permitted cotton printers in Marseilles to
acquire the techniques necessary for their growth and development. To under-
stand how technological transfer took place, we need to shift our attention from
cotton manufacturing to the international trade in silk. One of Colbert's political
priorities was the industrial development of the kingdom. The creation of silk
manufactures in France was possible only by encouraging the commerce in raw
silk. This is why Colbert, like Richelieu a few years earlier, was keen to attract
Armenian merchants to France, especially those from New Julfa. 16 As well as
being Chijstians, Armenians had been the undisputed masters of the silk trade
from the mid-sixteenth century and the best qualified people to carry this
Persian product from Aleppo and Smyrna to Marseilles. 17 In Europe, failing to
do good business with France during the reign of Louis XIII, they had offered
their services to Amsterdam and Livorno. 18 To avoid the same setbacks as
15 Chassagne, 'Calico Printing', 514-17; Fukasawa, Toilerie et commerce du Levant; Van
Bruinessen, 'Economic Life', 40; 'Etat general de toutes !es marchandises dont on fait commerce
aMarseille par le sieur Gaspar Carfueil, negociant de la ville de Marseille (1688)', inJ. Savary
des Bruslons, Dictionnaire universe! de commerce(Paris, 1730), iii. 326---471.
16 On the Armenian merchants of New Julfa see Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah's Silk for
Europe's Silver: The Eurasian Trade oftheJulfonArmenians in Safavidiran and India (1530-q50)
(Atlanta, 1999).
17 Sebouh Aslanian, 'From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: Circulation and the Global
Trade Network of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa, Isfahan, 1605-1747' (unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 2007); Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, 'Global Trading Ambitions
in Diaspora: The Armenians and their Eurasian Silk Trade, 1530-1750', in Ina Baghdiantz
McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou (eds.), Diaspora Entrepreneurial
Networks: Four Centuries of History (Oxford, 2005), 27-49; Rudolph Matthee, The Politics of
Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (Cambridge, 1999).
18 In contrast to Marseilles, these cities welcomed Armenian immigrants. Frederic Mader,
'Notes de Chahan de Cirbied sur !es Armeniens d' Amsterdam et de Livourne', Anahit Ganuary-
February 1904), 8---13and 40-2.
298 Olivier Raveux
Richelieu, whose policies fell victim to the opposition of merchants from

Marseilles, Colbert ordered the active collaboration of the local administration
to facilitate the reception and work of Armenian merchants. 19
The project quickly exceeded all expectations. An Armenian merchant
colony was established in Marseilles and by the 1670s the group consisted of
several dozen individuals. 20 Most of them were Choffelins or of Choffeline
origin. 21 Some of them had come from Amsterdam, Venice, and Livorno. This
was the case with Melchion de Nazar, head of the Armenian colony, who
resided in Marseilles from 1669 and was fluent in ltalian. 22 This was also the
case with one of his immediate collaborators, Paul de Serquis, who came from
Livorno in 1673.23 This migration of Armenians was extremely important for
the development of calico printing in Marseilles. This 'internationale armeni-
enne' specialized in silk paved the way for those qealing with cotton and was
critical to cotton's success in the city. 24
In accordance with what theories 0£ chain migration suggest, the A~menian
colony settled in Marseilles conveyed information to all the members of the
community remaining in Asia or living in other parts of Europe about the eco-
nomic opportunities that their host nation offered. The presence of a local
Armenian community was also security for a potential migrant as it decreased
the risks associated with migration. It is not surprising, given the needs of calico
printing in Marseilles, that Armenian calico printers arrived in the city quite
quickly. The first cases that archival sources mention are those ofBoudac and
Martin who arrived in Marseilles in 1672 to work with two locals, Desuargues
and Picard, on the 'painting of calicoes as done in the Levant and Persia'. 25
Others followed rapidly, as in the case of Joseph Simon, who was attracted to
Marseilles with the promise of a high salary.26 Workmen like Simon relied upon
19 Guillaume B. Depping, Correspondanceadministrative sous le regne de Louis XIV (Paris,
1852), iii. 470.

20 The most important are Gregoire de Arnio, Melchion de Cosma, Dominique Ellia,
Melchion de Nazar, and Paul de Serquis. Archives departementales des Bouches-du-Rhone

(hereafter ADBDR), B 138 (May 1694); 201 E; 392 E 103 (1678-79) fas. 38v0 , 55v0 , 561, 1352v0 ,
1024v0 ; and 392 E 104 (1680-1), fa. 310; ACM, recensement de 1695, ilots 89 and 267; BN, Fonds
armeniens, MS 310, fa. 26: 'Rapport de Thomas Alexandre Morant'. Charles-Diran Tekeian,
'Marseille, la Provence et !es Armeniens', Memoires de l'Jnstitut Historique de Provence (1929),
5-65.
21 The Choffelins were Persian subjects.
22 Pierre Clement, Lettres, instructionset memoiresde Colbert (Paris, 1864), iii. 181; Frederic
Mader, Mosai"queorientate(Paris, 1907), 66.

23
Ghewond Alishan, Sisakan (Venice, 1893), 542.
24 This expression is attributed to Katsumi Fukasawa.
25 'peindre d'indiane de la fas;on du Levant et de Perse'. ADBDR, 367 E 161 (1672/ 4), fas.
2551 and 2573.

26 An Armenian calico printer received a salary double that of his French colleagues. ADBDR,
0
351 E 993 (1676/z), fa. 1975v ; and 367 E 161 (1672/ 4), fa. 2573.
L'lndiennage in r7th-Century Marseilles 2 99
Illustration 14.2. Diyarbakir and Kurdistan in 1682, a region between Turkey, Armenia and
Persia, and the place of manufacture of chafarcanis. Collection of the author.
the Armenian community to settle in Marseilles and to find opportunities for

work or partnership. But the opportunities that were available to them did not
depend solely on the Armenian 'nation'. They could also count on the skills and
abilities oflocal workmen who acted as 'cultural mediators', thus facilitating the
expansion of their business. 27 Marseilles did not match Amsterdam or Livorno
27 Two local people assisted in their affairs, a certain Etienne Provance and Alexandre Rascas
'who understand the Turkish language'. ADBDR, 367 E 161 (1672/ 4), fo. 2551; and 392 E 103
(1676---7),fo. 1035.
300 Olivier Raveux
in its capacity to integrate foreign communities into the urban fabric.

Nevertheless, Marseilles was well known for its openness and the diverse range
of national and confessional communities which made it a welcoming place for
foreign workers with technical skills.
We still know little about where these skilled Armenians came from. One
mention in a notarial document gives us some idea. The employment contract
of Martin reveals that he had resided in the town of 'Matially', probably
Malatia, a large Ottoman cotton-manufacturing centre, east of Diyarbakir
(Illustration 14.2).28 Another source suggests a similar geography of migration:
the Armenian calico printer who decided to practise his occupation in the Low
Countries in 1678 came from C::elebi,a small town near Malatia. 29
These Armenians were not satisfied with a simple technological transfer.
They also expanded the printing industry by creating major workshops. The
Armenian merchants who arrived in Marseilles to work on the silk trade quickly
understood the advantages of investing in calico printing. Thus, the merchant
Dominique Ellia was the owner from 1676 of a 'fabrique d'indianes acoleur de
Levant' ('a workshop to make calicoes in the colours of the Levant'). Three
years later, Paul de Serquis, a wholesaler, also became involved in calico print-
ing. 30 These activities of Armenian merchants and technicians in the intensifi-
cation of printing in Marseilles facilitated the participation of local
entrepreneurs in the industry. Thus the son of the watchmaker Etienne
Provance, the interpreter appointed by Dominique Ellia, became a calico pro-
ducer in partnership with the Armenian Joseph Simon. 31
Thanks to the Armenians, the local inhabitants of Marseilles mastered calico
printing 'as done in the Levant and Persia' ('ala fa<;<>n du Levant et de Perse').
This meant in particular the use of mordants, madder, and most likely reserve
printing. It is also logical to think that at this time calico printers in Marseilles
improved their use of indigo thanks to their close links with Aleppo. 32 These
technological successes in turn secured the growth of the sector. To invest fully
in calico printing was now profitable. In the 1670s calico printing became a dis-
tinct occupation and the quality of the products manufactured in Marseilles
28 Diyarbakir had around 12,000 Armenians in the 1650s. Les Six voyages de Jean-Baptiste
Tavernier, ecuyer, baron d'Aubonne, qu'il a faits en Turquie, en Perse et aux Jndes (Paris, 1679), i.
302.
29 Ernest Homburg, 'From Colour Maker to Chemist: Episodes from the Rise of the
Colourist, 1670-1800', in Robert Fox and Agusti Nieto Galan (eds.), Natural Dyestuffs and
Industrial Culture in Europe, r750-1880 (Canton, Mass., 1999), 221.
30 ADBDR, 392 E 104 (1678-<)), fos. 1024v0 ; 1352v0 ; and 392 E 104 (1680-1), fo. 310.
31
ADBDR, 392 E 103 (1676---7),fos. 1035 and 1214; and 392 E 104 (1678-<)),fos. 38v0 , 55v0 ,
77, 561, and 1352v0 •
32 This was the reference point for the production of blue cotton cloth. Suite du voyage de
Levant par Monsieur de Thevenot (Paris, 1674), 65.

L'lndiennage in 17th-Century Marseilles 301
became such that the city lent its name to specific types of printed cottons, most
notably the famous toilespiquies de Marseille(quilts and bedcovers).
As Marseilles benefited from such technology transfer, so did other regions.
Because of its commercial network, Marseilles become a 'connecting space'
between the Levant and the north of Europe. In 1678, two Amsterdam mer-
chants recruited-perhaps with the help of intermediaries in Marseilles-the
Armenian Louwijs and thus probably introduced into Holland the use of mor-
dants for dyeing red with madder. 33 But Marseilles was also a 'space of reference'
for imitators in the south-east of France. Calico printing was established from
1677 in Avignon where 'Persian calicoes' (toillespersianes)were produced with
madder and gum Arabic. 34 The city ofNimes started printing the following year
and Aries in 1680. In all these cases, the role of Marseilles was essential both in
setting up workshops and in diffusing 'oriental' techniques of production. 35
What has just been said is valid not just for the case of France, but for the
entire western Mediterranean. In 1677 the Marseilles calico printer Vincent
Mille started 'colouring and printing calicoes like the indiennes'('colorer et
estamper toilles afac;:ond'indiennes') in Rome in a workshop set up by Antoine
and Clement Barges, two merchants possibly from Marseilles. 36 Marseilles
shifted from being the pioneering centre of calico printing in Europe to being
the centre for the diffusion of such new techniques across the continent.
A SHORT SUCCESS
I
The mastering of Asian techniques allowed calico printing to flourish in

Marseilles, but the death of Colbert and the new political orientations posed
new challenges from 1683. One can say that the future of the sector was not
decided in Marseilles, but in Paris and Versailles. The success of calico printing
was worrisome. In 1686 the state destroyed in just a few months a flourishing
industry, first by imposing a restrictive fiscal policy and then by prohibiting the
manufacture of calicoes.
Calico printing in Marseilles flourished even after the departure of the
Armenians in the 168os. Colbert had insisted that local authorities must protect
to the fullest extent the foreign communities necessary for the vitality of the silk
trade. But this changed with his death in 1683 as his successor, Seignelay, dis-
continued this policy and favoured the merchants of Marseilles who were keen
33 Homburg, 'From Colour Maker to Chemist', 221.
34 Hyacinthe Chobaut, 'L'Industrie des indiennes a Avignon et Orange (1677-1884)',
Memoiresde l'Academiede Vaucluse,3rd series, 3 (1938), 89.
35 Albert Puech, 'Les Nimois dans la seconde moitie du XVIIe siecle', Memoiresde l'Academie
de Nimes, IO (1887), 132-4.

36
ADBDR, 351 E 994 (1677/I), fo. 87ov0 •
302 Olivier Raveux
to curb the competition of foreigners. In October 1687 Armenians were prohib-

ited from taking part in the silk trade and 'most of the colony disappeared'. 37
The silk industry in Marseilles quickly regretted the departure of these very
active merchants. The departure of the Armenians was not as critical for calico
printing as over the years the 'secrets' of their manufacture had been mastered
and a local entrepreneurial dynamism had taken shape.
We know that cloth printing was expanding in this period, but it is difficult
to quantify the growth in production. In an account for the years 1685-6, the
merchant Gaspard Carfueil showed the importance of Marseilles as a market
for white cotton cloth from the Levant. He estimated that 900 bales of textiles
entered the city every year which translated to between 54,000 and 67,500 pieces
of cloth. 38 A part of this quantity was for the local calico-printing industry. But
what proportion? To answer this question we must consider three issues. First,
there is a certain degree of exaggeration in the figures. When Carfueil compiled
them in 1688, his purpose was to force the Board of Commerce to acknowledge
that a prohibition on cottons would inflict great harm on the commercial life of
Marseilles. Second, although the fashion was not for white cloth, some fraction
was not printed and remained in Marseilles. Finally, what was the relationship
between Marseilles and other centres of production both in France and abroad
that received white calicoes from the Levant via Marseilles? Taking into account
these issues, it is reasonable to estimate that around 1685 Marseilles printed
about 10,000-15,000 pieces a year.
For the most part, the white calicoes imported from the Levant were used to
meet the clothing needs of the lower classes: shirts, skirts, aprons, leggings for
the plebeian classes of artisans and seamen. 39 These textiles were consumed in
an area stretching from Provence to Lyon and were also exported to the coasts
of Italy and Spain. Hundreds of pieces of white cloth were also used for the
manufacture of the famous toilespiquees of Marseilles, the value of which came
to 150,000 livres a year, and this cloth was exported to Spain, Portugal, Italy,
Piedmont, the Netherlands, England, and Hamburg. The lack of competition
in the western part of the Mediterranean and in continental Europe ensured
stable demand for Marseilles. The sector also benefited from improvements in
the use of dyestuffs and diversification in sources of supply of raw materials. In
1685 Marseilles received its first cargo ofindigo from the American colonies. 40
In this period attempts to introduce the cultivation of cotton in Provence in the
37 Emile Temime (ed.), Histoire desmigrationsaMarseille (Aix, 1989), i. 54.
38 A bale contains from 60 to 75 pieces. Fukasawa, Toilerieet commercedu Levant, 18-19.
39 Archives Nationales de France, Paris (hereafter AN), B III 234: 'Memoire sur l'estat du
negoce des Frans:ois, Anglois, Hollandois et Venitiens dans le Levant', presented by Jean
Lefebvre in 1682.
°
4 Claude Badet, 'Marseille et le commerce de !'indigo', in Sublime Indigo (Marseilles, 1987),
213-15.
1670s failed, but Marseilles started to spin and weave low-quality cotton tex-
tiles.41This was a slow but potentially revolutionary development. By moving
'upstream' cotton printing in Marseilles was entering into the vertical integra-
tion of cotton textile manufacturing.
It was in this context that royal power intervened to put a stop to the fashion
for Indian textiles. According to Louvois and several industrial and commercial
pressure groups, action was needed to protect the grand industries of the
kingdom, in first place the woollen industry, but also linen and silk, and at the
same time to stop the haemorrhage of bullion, which was used to pay for
imported materials. 42The ban was enacted through two legal actions. In April
,I 686 an import tax of two ecuson cloth of ten aunes and an import duty of four
livreson all quilted cottons were imposed. The cotton cloth imported from the
Levant, especially that oflow quality, was taxed in a less precise manner. As a
consequence, French demand for cloth printed in Marseilles was reduced
because the 'raw material' was more expensive. 43 The only consolation for
Marseilles was the fact that it was a foreign jurisdiction in terms of international
trade so these taxes did not fall on goods that were re-exported. However, the
residents of Marseilles complained about the injustice of the measures. Did not
the white cottons coming from the Levant support a national industry? The
inhabitants of Marseilles fought back and attempted to gain a partial compen-
sation from the king with an exemption from the duty of four livres on the
import of quilts.
Six months later, however, royal power wanted to be finished altogether with
printed ctttons. With an arret of 26 October 1689, the king forbade the com-
merce, manufacture, and use of painted, dyed, and printed cotton textiles. At
first, the people of Marseilles decided to ignore the new legislation. The support
of the local authorities in this was total. Morant and Lebret, the two intendants
for Provence, never missed an opportunity to underline the incoherence and
inconsistencies of the legislation. 44This is evident from the argument devel-
oped by Lebret in May 1688 in response to questions raised by the controleur
general:
I do not believe that the application of this law is of any concern to the City of
Marseilles, as, being a free port, it must be considered a foreign city. Moreover, if we
threaten the freedom of entry for these sorts of goods, two inconveniences will arise:
first, the people of Marseilles will be unable to supply Spain and other foreign countries
41 'Etat general de toutes !es marchandises', 407-8.

42 Edgard Depitre, La Toilepeinteen Franceau XVII' et au XVI//' siecles:industrie,commerce,
prohibitions(Paris, 1912), 11-21.
43 'Etat general de toutes !es marchandises', 449.
44 AN, G 7 460: 'Lettre de Morant au controleur general', 27 May 1686; and 'Lettre deLebret
au controleur general', 3 October 1687.

304 Olivier Raveux
[with cottons] from where they carry back to France the silver that is absolutely neces-
sary for the commerce with the Levant; second, some of the manufactures of this
Kingdom will suffer a considerable decline because in the Levant cotton textiles are
exchanged for French goods.45
The effort was wasted. In February 1689 a new law instructed Marseilles to
respect the new legislation. Along with all other cities in France, and notwith-
standing its privileges, Marseilles was to halt its production of cotton textiles. 46
Three months later, the intendant Lebret announced to Louvois that the
wooden blocks for printing had been destroyed. 47 The ban of 1686 quickly anni-
hilated all the effort that the city of Marseilles had put into calico printing since
1648. For Marseilles, as for other centres of calico printing in France, the 1686
legislation meant the sudden migration of entrepreneurs and skilled workmen
to Switzerland and the Protestant regions of Germany. 48 In the case of
Marseilles, this migration was characterized by a particular geographic pattern:
Avignon, a papal possession and therefore not subject to French law, became a
favourite destination for migrants from the Mediterranean city. Some calico
printers wanting to continue their activity as a group gathered together there,
as was the case with the Desuargues family, one of the pillars in the early devel-
opment of calico printing in Marseilles.
Migration also took place to countries with which Marseilles had strong
commercial links. This may have been the case with the Republic of Genoa,
where we know calico printing was conducted from at least 1690.49 Much more
certain is the case of the Duchy of Tuscany which was underlined by Lebret
himself:
The prohibition of importation into Provence and into the rest of the Kingdom of
printed calicoes in the Indian style that were manufactured in Marseilles has forced
45 'Jene crois pas que !'execution de cet arrest regarde en aucune maniere la ville de Marseille,
car, au moyen de son port franc, elle doit estre consideree comme une ville etrangere; outre que
si on otoit la liberte d'y faire entrer ces sortes de marchandises, ii en arriveroit deux inconvenients :
l'un, que Jes Marseillais seroient prives d'en fournir l'Espagne et autres pays etrangers, d'ou ils
rapportent en France des !ingots d'argent et Jes piastres qui sont absolument necessaires pour le
commerce du Levant, et l'autre que certaines manufactures du royaume en souffriroient une
diminution considerable, puisqu'elles n'ont de debit dans le Levant qu'en echange de ces toiles
de coton.' Arthur Michel de Boislisle, Correspondance des controleursgenerauxdesfinances avec !es
intendatJ,tsdesprovinces(Paris, 1874), i. 579. The manufactures referred to by Lebret are those
producing Levantine caps and Languedoc draperies.
46 Archives de la Chambre de Commerce de Marseille (hereafter ACCM), H 203 : 'Arret du
conseil d'Etat du 1erfevrier 1689'.

47 AN, ms fr. 8.833: 'Lettre de Lebret a Louvois, 20 avril 1689'.
48 Ibid.
49 Riello, 'The Rise of Calico Printing', 33. In 1690, the Armenian Gio Batta de Georgiis
obtained the privilege for the production of printed cottons in Genoa.

L'Indiennage in I 7th-Century Marseilles
many workmen to move to Tuscany where the Grand Duke has granted them extensive
protection. 50
The future of calico printing in Marseilles was difficult to predict. If the city
regained its right to produce printed calicoes, it would face new and strong com-
petition from nearby rivals in Italy and in Avignon. At the same time, Marseilles
had lost its cloth printers, although their proximity could lead to their return
and a rapid revival of the industry.
The situation was rather bleak, especially concerning overseas markets. The
Italians, now developing their own calico-printing industry, could easily exploit
the Mediterranean markets, as could the Spanish. Marseilles waited for more
than a decade, and an arret of IO July 1703 restored to the city-alas with many
limitations-the rights to use, manufacture, and trade printed cottons.
Marseilles, however, only slowly returned to pre-1689 levels of production, in
part due to a bad economic conjuncture in the early decades of the eighteenth
century. There was also a certain degree of uncertainty in the legal position of
calico printing in the city. As a consequence, the industry lacked the stability
necessary for its growth and development.
CONCLUSION: THE FATE OF CALICO PRINTING
After the plague in 1720 the calico-printing industry of Marseilles showed signs
of recovezy.51 This positive development was the fruit of a particular situation
within the kingdom: Marseilles was effectively the only city in France author-
ized to produce and consume printed cotton textiles until 1759. The industry
grew by exploiting some of the strategies and practices developed by local entre-
preneurs during the golden age of calico printing in Marseilles between 1648
and 1689. If it was a question of stocking up on raw materials, managing the
supply of skilled workers, or finding new markets for their products, the cloth
printers of Marseilles were constantly conceiving and developing actions in
concert to try to build or use merchant networks, to overcome constraints due
to multiple or fractured spaces, to learn and assimilate the technical knowledge
from competing areas, and to preserve customers and acquire new ones in
markets near and far.
50 'Les defenses qu'on a fait de l'entree en Provence et dans le reste du royaume des toiles
peintes fac;:ond'indiennes qu'on faisait aMarseille a oblige des ouvriers de passer en Toscane ou
monsieur le grand due leur donne beaucoup de protection.' Bibliotheque nationale de France,
Paris, ms fr. 22.212: 'Memoire sur la Provence' (1698), fo. 172.
51 Olivier Raveux, 'Spaces and Technologies in the Cotton Industry in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries: The Example of Printed Calicoes in Marseilles', Textile History, 36/z
(2005), 131-45; Fukasawa, Toilerie et commerce du Levant.
Olivier Raveux
In a way even these changes represented a continuity of practices and strate-

gies. The number of considerations that went into the trade and production of
printed calicoes in Marseilles increased with the growth in the port's commer-
cial links over the course of the eighteenth century: North America, the West
Indies, and the coast of West Africa joined the Ottoman Empire, Persia, India,
and Europe as trading partners for the city. The strategies that were developed
by the Marseilles calico printers to structure and exploit their markets (around
issues such as the transfer of technology, meeting the demands of merchants,
commercial networks, customer tastes, the power of public pressure) were
expanded with the adoption of new British technologies. Smuggling was also
seen as a way to penetrate both national and international markets such as the
colonies of Spain.
Marseilles is a good example of the profound impact that the calico-printing
industry had on European industrial development and on the perception of the
potential of different economic spaces from the beginning of the seventeenth
century. 52 The history of the birth of calico printing in Europe reminds us of
'the role played by the Mediterranean and Asia in the early stages of Western
industrialization, to emphasize mercantile strategies at the moment when we
are constructing a vision of Asia as the custodian of techniques and a provider
of know-how'. 53 In the world of textiles, and cotton in particular, Asia revealed
the potential and dynamism for a European economy that was being trans-
formed by an opening up to the world. Even if we are dealing with a very limited
case study, the birth of calico printing in Marseilles shows the willingness and
readiness of Europeans to seize opportunities, to imitate Asian textiles under
the pressure of new consumer tastes and new patterns of demand. This story
underlines also---through the case of the technological diffusion from Asia to
Europe-the attraction of Europe for Asians. Individuals or groups of skilled
workmen-mostly Christians from the Ottoman Empire and Persia--created
the conditions for technological transfer. They were seduced by the commercial
and industrial opportunities offered by the large port cities in Europe, including
privileges, high salaries, and an appreciation of their talents. They exemplify a
process that accelerated in the late seventeenth century and became, in the fol-
lowing century, one of the most important factors in innovation and economic
growth for many European economies.
52 On this point Patrick Verley, L'Echelle du monde: essaisur !'industrialisationde !'Occident

(Paris, 1997), ch. 5.
53 'Le role joue par les espaces mediterraneens et orientaux au debut de !'industrialisation occi-
dentale, ala faveur des strategies marchandes en meme temps que s'ebauche l'image d'un Orient
conservatoire de techniques et pourvoyeur de savoir-faire.' Hilaire-Perez, 'Cultures techniques',
II3,
15
WHAT WERE COTTONS FOR IN THE EARLY
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?
JOHN STYLES
Fashion'sFavourite, the title of Beverly Lemire's 1991 book on the cotton trade
and consumer revolution in England, reminded us that in the eighteenth
century cotton was a fashion fabric. 1 During the second half of the century, dec-
orated cottons such as sprigged muslins, printed calicoes, and white tufted
counterpanes established a remarkable currency as desirable fabrics for dress
and furnishing at all levels in the market. They became an indispensable
element of fashion. Of course we can debate exactly what 'fashion' means in this
context. Is it fashion in the economist's sense of regular changes in visual
appearance of any type of good intended to stimulate sales? Is it fashion in the
dress historian's sense of annual or seasonal manipulation of normative appear-
ance through clothing? Or is it fashion in the fashion pundit's sense of those
forms of self-conscious, avant-garde innovation in dress pursued by an exclusive
social or o'ultural elite-the fashion of royal courts, the eighteenth-century ton,
and later haute couture?It is a remarkable feature of cotton's success in the later
eighteenth century that it embraced fashion in each of these three senses. In the
process, cotton challenged the previous supremacy of silks and woollens as fash-
ionable fabrics. At the start of the eighteenth century the complaints of the silk
and woollen producers had secured a prohibition on the import and sale of most
types of decorated cotton textiles, which had initially been sourced largely in
south Asia. The ban was circumvented by smuggling, and more especially by
British manufacturers who produced prints in the Indian manner on linen or
on fabrics combining linen warps with cotton wefts. In 1774 the prohibition was
repealed. Within a decade, producers of other fabrics, including woollens,
linens, and silks, were once again complaining about the damage cottons were
inflicting on their sales.
The material for this essay was gathered as part of a project on clothes, fashion, and the English
economy, 1660---1820,financed by the Pasold Research Fund. The author would like to express
his gratitude to its Governors.
1 Beverly Lemire, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660-
1800 (Oxford, 1991).
John Styles
This is a familiar narrative, a fundamental component of the history of the

English industrial revolution. Yet it is striking that for many historians of these
developments, the success of cotton was not simply about fashion. Over the last
eighty years, a succession of scholars has proposed that cotton's triumph in Europe
extended far beyond the realm of fashionable and decorated fabrics to the market
for unadorned, utilitarian textiles. They have suggested that, in the course of the
later eighteenth century, cottons replaced linens as plain fabrics for everyday uses
like shirting and sheeting just as quickly as they replaced light worsteds and silks
for gowns and waistcoats. Indeed, this assertion has been so widely accepted that
reductions in mortality in the period have been ascribed to the supposed improve-
ments in hygiene that resulted from the use of cotton for these purposes.
M. C. Buer in her 1926 study Health, Wealthand Populationin the Early Days
of the Industrial Revolution argued that:
at first this industry was a luxury one, catering only for the well-to-do, but the rapid
cheapening of its product by the application of machinery, soon led to production for
the masses. Cotton cloth was cheap material suitable for women's dresses andfor body
and householdlinen; it wore less well than stout woollen material but that was advanta-
geous from the health point of view since it could be cheaply renewed. Cotton washed
easily and therefore its use much encouraged cleanliness. 2
Writing in 1967,J. D. Chambers developed a similar argument as he struggled

to account for the fall in mortality he discovered at Nottingham from the 1770s.
He could offer no explanation except the fact that 'Nottingham, of course, was
a cotton town, the first in fact'. He noted that:
By the end of the century cotton hosiery, underwear,calicoes, bed-hangings and sheets
would be ousting those of wool; and cotton can be boiled, which is fatal for the typhus
louse. The change to cotton would be especially beneficial to the poor of the large towns. 3
More recently, in the 1990s, David Landes has noted the importance for
hygiene of:
the introductionof cheapcottonunderclothing... The lack of easily cleaned undergarments
was an invitation to skin irritation, scratching, and thus transfer of pathogens from body
to hands to food to digestive tract. The new underclothing, in combination with new
and cheaper soaps, probably saved as many lives as all the medical advances of the
century. 4
2
M. C. Buer, Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution
(London, 1926), 60. The emphasis is mine.
3 J. D. Chambers, Population, Economy, and Society in Pre-Industrial England (Oxford, 1972),
rn4. The emphasis is mine.
4
David Landes, 'The Fable of the Dead Horse; or, the Industrial Revolution Revisited', in
Joel Mokyr (ed.), The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective (Boulder, Colo.,
1999), 152 n. 27. The emphasis is mine.
Cottonsin the Industrial Revolution
In the same vein, WoodruffD. Smith, in his 2002 study Consumption and the
Making of Respectability, asserts that:
In the last years of the eighteenth century, cotton moved strongly to replace linens and
mixed textiles as the favored material for shirts and undergarments at almost every
income level in Europe and America ... There can be no doubt that the 'revolution' in
cotton technology associated with the names of Hargreaves, Crompton, and Arkwright
made it possible for cotton to become the primary material, not just for outerwear, but
alsofor shirts and underclothingin the last quarter of the eighteenth century, which con-
tributed to the immense expansion of British cotton production during that period. 5
Investigation of this whole issue is dogged with evidential problems. None

of the historians quoted provides direct, quantitative evidence at the level of
consumers and households for the changes described. Some refer to the broad
downward trend in price series for cotton fabrics derived from the records of
institutional purchasers and wholesale dealers. Two of them, Bauer and
Chambers, refer to comments on the spread of cotton clothing among the
labouring poor by the early nineteenth-century radical and inveterate social
optimist Francis Place.6 But Place's comments on the benefits of cotton clothing
referred not to the universally worn undergarments-shirts for men and shifts
for women-but to petticoats and stays, which were worn by women over their
shifts. 7 The key problem here is the shortage of alternative sources of evidence
and the difficulties associated with using those that are available. The recent
boom in studies of consumption in.early modern England has relied either on
the reco!ds of manufacturers and retailers, or on post-mortem inventories,
which survive in huge numbers for the period 1550 to 1740. 8 Inventories have
proved an invaluable and flexible source for studies of changing patterns of con-
sumption, bringing a welcome precision to debates about changes in the own-
ership of goods. 9 Nevertheless, they suffer from severe limitations. Most
damagingly for studies of the era of the industrial revolution, their numbers and
quality decline after the mid-eighteenth century. In addition, the vast majority
5 WoodruffD. Smith, Consumptionand the Making of Respectability, r600-1800 (London,
2002), 61. The emphasis is mine.
6
Buer, Health, 196; Chambers, Population,104-5.
7
Mary Thale (ed.), The Autobiographyof FrancisPlace (1771-1854) (Cambridge, 1972), 51.
Also M. Dorothy George, England in Transition: Life and Work in the Eighteenth Century
(London, 1931), 98.
8 For use of the records of manufacturers and retailers, see Neil McKendrick, John Brewer,
and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a ConsumerSociety: The Commercializationof Eighteenth-Century

England(London, 1982). For inventories, see Lorna Weatherill, ConsumerBehaviourandMaterial
Culturein Britain, 1660---1760(London, 1988) and Peter Earle, The Making of the EnglishMiddle
Class:Business,Society and Family Life in London, 1660---1730(London, 1989).
9 For the most sophisticated recent quantitative analysis of British consumption patterns based
on probate inventories see Mark Overton, Jane Whittle, Darron Dean, and Andrew Hann,
Productionand Consumptionin EnglishHouseholds,1600-r750 (London, 2004).
310 John Styles
fail to provide detailed breakdowns of the clothing owned by testators and their
social reach is highly skewed towards the wealthier half of the population.
The records of the criminal courts offer an alternative source for studying
changes in the ownership of goods. In particular, the tens of thousands of
printed trial transcripts that survive for the Old Bailey, the principal criminal
court for London, from the late seventeenth century, mostly involving the
illegal appropriation of property, offer another perspective on the ownership of
goods. It is a perspective that is wider than probate inventories in its social
reach, its chronological span, and the detail it provides about clothing in partic-
ular. But we should remember that it is also a perspective that is more limited
in scope than inventories. Inventories promise (although they never entirely
deliver) a full listing of the owner's moveable goods. The goods listed in crim-
inal trials reflect the highly selective activity of those who stole. Nevertheless,
for goods like shirts, shifts, and sheets, which were widely owned and used, and
readily and frequently stolen, broad trends in the varieties appropriated illegally
are likely to have reflected wider trends in ownership.
The printed Old Bailey proceedings have been used to study material life by
historians since Dorothy George in the 1920s, but rarely to generate quantita-
tive evidence. 10 Old Bailey ProceedingsOnline,the recent digitization of the trial
transcripts from 1674 to 1913, makes the quantification of this source more fea-
sible. 11 It supplies the principal new body of evidence used in this chapter.
However, as a source it is not without its difficulties. Before 1740 the number
of court sittings for which transcripts survive are fewer and the detail in which
trials and stolen goods are described tends to be less. After about 1800, as the
number of cases increases, the quality of the information provided about mate-
rial things declines precipitously. From that date, for reasons we do not yet
understand, it became rare for the charge against the accused to itemize the
materials from which the stolen goods were made. 12 In other words, the Old
Bailey evidence about material things is at its most extensive and reliable during
the period 1740 to 1800. This is unfortunate for the purposes of this chapter,
because the turn of the century marks only a halfway stage in the growth of the
domestic market for cotton fabrics. Consequently, the chapter supplements Old
Bailey evidence with evidence from criminal trials elsewhere, in particular trials
10 M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1925). Also see
Madeleine Ginsburg, 'The Tailoring and Dressmaking Trades 1700-1850', Costume,6 (1972),
64--9; id., 'Rags to Riches: The Second-Hand Clothes Trade 1700-1978', Costume,14 (1980),
121-35; Beverly Lemire, 'The Theft of Clothes and Popular Consumerism in Early Modern
England',Journal of Social History, 24/z (1990), 255-76.
11 Old Bailey Proceedings Online:<www.oldbaileyonline.org>.
12 This is not just a feature of the printed trial transcripts. It also applies to the corresponding
manuscript indictments. See Greater London Record Office, OB/SR: Old Bailey Gaol Delivery
Rolls (Middlesex), 1800-30, passim.
Cottons in the Industrial Revolution 3II
TABLE 15.1. Old Bailey Cases that Mention Printed/Painted Fabrics, r674-r829
Printed Cottons Printed Linen All Cases (offences)
1670-1679 0 0 408
1680-1689 1 0 2,369
1690-1699 1 0 3,166
1700-1709 1 1 776
1710-1719 13 "7 2,854
1720-1729 3 11 4,811
1730-1739 IQ 22 1,697
1740-1749 18 21 3,935
1750-1759 11 9 4,061
1760-1769 20 16 4,102
1770-1779 68 40 6,155
1780-1789 181 27 7,320
1790-1799 164 4 5,563
1800-1809 185 3 7,058
1810-1819 211 1 10,908
1820-1829 182 0 16,445
For cottons 11eywordsearches on: cotton, calico, calicoe, callico, callicoe, muslin, chintz, chints, chince
(although note that chintzes could be linen).
For linens keyword searches on: linen, linnen, flaxen, harden, hempen, cambrick, holland, lawn.
For both fabrics keyword searches on printed and painted.
Source: Old Bailey Proceedings Online, accessed 30 September 2005. The shaded decades are those where
the data is less reliable, for the reasons set out in the text.
for theft at the Quarter Sessions for the West Riding of Yorkshire, the largest
English provincial jurisdiction. Here information about the materials from
which stolen goods were made continued to be recorded into the 1820s and
beyond. 13
This chapter employs these sources to map some of the uses to which cottons
were put by consumers up to the 1820s. The evidence presented in Tables 15.1
and 15.2 confirms the early and rapid success of cottons in the realm of deco-
rated and fashion fabrics for clothing and furnishing. Table 15.1 addresses both
clothing and furnishing. It provides a decade by decade count of Old Bailey
13 It should also be pointed out that the Old Bailey ProceedingsOnline search engine counts
cases, not stolen items. Numbers of individual items stolen and the values ascribed to them
(usually second-hand values, unless legal technicalities required otherwise) have to be extracted
manually. This has only been done for counterpanes, and the deficiency is again partly made up
with evidence from provincial criminal courts.
312 John Styles
TABLE 15.2. Mean Values of Gowns in Shillings (s) and Pence (d.), 1770--1789
Indictment valuations Indictment valuations Pledge values of
of stolen gowns at of stolen gowns at gowns pawned to
Yorkshire Assizes Oxfordshire and George Fettes,
(North and West Worcestershire Assizes, pawnbroker, York,
Riding cases), 1780-89 1770-99 1777-78
Value Number Value Number Value Number

Silks 7s7d. 7 35s Od. 11 4s Sd. 11
Cottons 7s IOd. 9 12s 7d. 25 4s Sd. 20
Linens 6s7d. 7 Ss 7d. 8 4s0d. 4
Worsted 4s 8d. 4 7s Od. 2 Zs Sd. 14
Stuff
Sources:Yorkshire Assizes: TNA, ASSI 44/95-104, Northern Circuit Indictments, 1780-89. Oxfordshire
and Worcestershire Assizes: TNA, ASSI 5/90--119, Oxford Circuit Indictments, 1770-99. York Pawnbroker:
York City Archives, Accession 38: Pledge book of George Fettes, pawnbroker, York, 1777-8, sample of four
weeks, 29.12.1777 to 3.u778; 30.5.1778 to 4-4-1778; 29.6.1778 to 4-7.1778; 28.9.1778 to 3.10.1778. Pledges
of single items only.
cases which mention printed or painted fabrics, which were commonly used
both for women's outer garments, especially gowns, and a variety offurnishings,
especially hangings and curtains. Not only did the numbers of cases involving
printed fabrics increase hugely, doubling in the 1770s and again in the 1780s,
but that increase reflected the triumph of cotton. Between the 1740s and the
1760s numbers of cases involving cotton prints and linen prints were broadly
similar, but from the 1770s to the 1790s linen prints were eclipsed (Illustrations
15.1 and 15.2).
The success of printed cottons did not reflect the fact that they were cheaper
than printed linens. Table 15.2 shows valuations for gowns pawned in York and
stolen in the Midlands and the north of England in the later eighteenth century.
In all these sources, cotton gowns were consistently ascribed a higher value than
linen gowns, suggesting that the greater popularity of cotton gowns lay in their
superiority in appearance and other functional qualities, not in their cheapness
relative to linen.
Table 15.3 addresses furnishings more narrowly. It provides a decade by
decade count of Old Bailey cases which mention counterpanes. Counterpanes,
usually woven in distinctive tufted decorative patterns, were one of the great
domestic furnishing success stories of the eighteenth century. Gradually replac-
ing quilts, rugs, and coverlets, even in cheap London lodgings, they brought
prosperity to the fancy weavers of Bolton, Lancashire, and an appearance of
crisp, decorative cleanliness to beds. Counterpanes, which were usually
bleached white, could be made from linen as well as cotton. As with printed
fabrics, from the 1740s to the 1760s the numbers of cases involving counter-
panes made from linen and from cotton were broadly similar. From the 1770s,
~~
"Roller
4
Btd
Wrufcoat
( Shirt far4
J ~kmt *6,.,-~
/ Pjlch tfr":-':i
Stockingi "~
Sh~~
Illustration 15.1. 'Flowered

cotten', 1759. A swatch of
cotton or more probably
cotton-linefi mixed fabric
printed in purple, cut from
the gown of a baby girl left at
the London Foundling Hos-
pital. London Metropolitan
Archives, A/FH/ A/ 9/ 1/
139, Foundling no. 12536.
Illustration 15.2. 'Flowered

Lining', 1759. A swatch of
linen fabric printed in blue,
cut from the gown of a baby
boy left at the London
Foundling Hospital. London
Metropolitan Archives,
A/FH/ A/9/I/133,
Foundling no. n877.
...
314 John Styles
TABLE 15.3. Old Bailey Cases that Mention Counterpanes, I674-I8I9

Cotton Linen All All cases
counterpanes counterpanes (offences)
-
counterpanes
· .1,10-1679 0 0 0 408
l6S0-1689 0 0 0 2,369
1690-1699 0 1 1 3,166
1700-1709 0 0 0 776
1710-1719 0 0 0 2,854
1720-1729 0 0 1 4,811
0-173~ 0 2 ~-- 4..,697
1740-1749 1 2 8 3,935
1750-1759 2 3 8 4,061
1760-1769 7 5 17 4,102
1770-1779 21 11 37 6,155
1780-1789 55 7 88 7,320
1790-1799 44 10 81 5,563
1800-1809 10 94= 7,058
. 1810-1819 0 0 130 10,908
Source:Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 30 September 2005. The shaded decades are those where the data
is less reliable, for the reasons set out in the text.
however, linen counterpanes were eclipsed by their cotton equivalents. It was

cottons that accounted for most of the big increase in the numbers of cases men-
tioning counterpanes in the 1770s and 1780s (Illustration 15.3). And as with
printed fabrics, the shift away from quilts made from a variety of materials to
counterpanes made from cotton reflected taste more than price. In the 1790s
the mean value ascribed to quilts stolen from London furnished lodgings with
rents under 6 shillings a week was 2s. 9d., while the mean value given to cotton
counterpanes stolen from the same kind oflodgings was 3s. 4d. 14
Cotton emerges from these late eighteenth-century sources as a hugely suc-
cessful fabric in its decorated forms, both printed and woven, for use in clothing
and furnishing. Wherever appearance was crucial, cotton succeeded. 15 Its
success appears to have depended more on its superior decorative properties
than on its cheapness. It is significant that, at this period, cotton fabrics were
virtually never supplied by overseers of the poor to paupers either for outer gar-
14 For the furnishing of London lodgings, see John Styles, 'Lodging at the Old Bailey:
Lodgings and their Furnishing in Eighteenth-Century London', in John Styles and Amanda
Vickery (eds.), Gender,Tasteand Material Culturein Britain and North America, IJOO-I830 (New
Haven, 2006), 61-80.
15 The number of cases at the Old Bailey mentioning muslins shows a similar pattern to cotton
prints, with an even faster rate of increase after 1770.

Cottons in the Industrial Revolution
Illustration 15.3 Central panel of a cotton counterpane, Bolton, Lancashire, 1809.

f Victoria and Albert Museum T. 12-1935.
ments or furnishings. Paupers went on having to make do with cheap, coarse

linens, woollens, and worsteds. 16
A very different picture emerges if we turn to the question of whether plain
cotton fabrics ousted plain linens in their more mundane uses, especially shirt-
ing and sheeting. Table 15.4 provides a decade by decade count of Old Bailey
cases which mention shifts and shirts. Cotton shirts appear there in tiny
numbers very early, from the 1680s, which is consistent with what we know
about the efforts of the East India Company to promote the use of Indian
cottons for shirting in that decade. 17 In October 1682, the Company's directors
16 John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England
(London, 2007), ch. 16.

17 For detailed discussion of the East India Company's trade in cotton shifts and shirts, see
John Styles, 'Product Innovation in Early Modern London', Past and Present, 168 (2000), 124-
69; also Beverly Lemire, 'Transforming Consumer Custom: Linens, Cottons and the English
Market, 1660--1800', in Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), The European Linen
Industry in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 2003), 187-208; and id., 'Fashioning Cottons: Asian
Trade, Domestic Industry and Consumer Demand, 1660-1780', in David Jenkins (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), i. 493-512.
316 John Styles
TABLE 15-4- Old Bailey Cases that Mention Shirts or Shifts, 1674-1829
Cotton Cotton Linen Linen All All All cases
shirts shifts shirts shifts shirts shifts (offences)
1670-1679 0 0 1 0 3 9 408
1680-1689 1 0 14 1 47 21 2,369
1690-1699 1 0 25 12 66 36 3,166
1700-1709 0 0 25 1 37 3 776
1710-1719 1 0 66 13 118 52 2,854
1720-1729 1 0 75 25 257 90 4,811
1730-1739 4 1 110 38 384 169 4,697
1740-1749 3 1 187 59 416 213 3,935
1750-1759 8 0 210 122 365 222 4,061
1760-1769 6 0 193 112 437 225 4,102
1770-1779 8 2 422 234 588 290 6,155
1780-1789 28 0 384 159 827 355 7,320
1790-1799 29 3 285 130 543 235 5,563
1800-1809 17 2 10 1 646 252 7,058
1810-1819 4 0 5 0 851 293 10,908
1820-1829 3 0 9 2 1,098 446 16,445
~-- =·=-
For cottons keyword searches on: cotton, calico, calicoe, callico, callicoe, muslin.
For linens keyword searches on: linen, linnen, flaxen, harden, hempen, cambrick, holland, lawn, dowlas,
dowlas, canvas.
Source: Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 30 September 2005. The shaded decades are those where the data
ordered its Madras factors to have 200,000 ready-made cotton shifts and shirts
made up for sale in England. This was an enormous initial order for a new com-
modity which appears to have been largely untested in the market. 18 The size
of the order can be judged by the fact that it represented approximately one
cotton shirt or shift for every two adults in London. Indeed this single order
represented 2 per cent of what Gregory King estimated to be the annual English
national consumption of these garments in the 168os. 19 Essentially this was a
18 Shirts of this kind were not an entirely untested commodity. Six hundred and thirty-one,
probably ready-made from cotton, had been offered for sale at one of the Company's auctions in
1676. However, shirts did not feature regularly at the Company's auctions in the 1670s and the
Company's surviving Surat and Madras correspondence does not refer to them in that decade.
Moreover, the number offered for sale at the 1676 auction was tiny compared with the scale of
the Company's orders in the subsequent decade. See 'A Particular of the Goods to be Exposed
to Sale by the East India Company, in September, 1676', printed bill, Bodleian Library, John
Johnson Collection, East India Company, Box 1; also 'For Sale at the East India House,
November 10, 1673', printed bill, British Library, c. 136.g.43.
19 See Negley B. Harte, 'The Economics of Clothing in the Late Seventeenth Century',
Textile History, 22/r (1991), 293.

bold exercise in market manipulation, designed to undermine the established

preference for linens among consumers of shirts and shifts by dumpirt'g vast
quantities of ready-made cotton shifts and shirts onto the London market at
artificially low prices. For Josiah Child, the governor of the Company, it was
'the onely way I know to introduce the using of Callicoe for that purpose in all
these Northern parts of the world'. 20 Indian ready-made cotton shirts and
shifts, wrote the directors, 'may be (being sold cheap in ye drapers shops) a
means to introduce into more general use ye wearing of Callicoe in stead of
French Holland, or Flanders Cloth'. 21
In this new venture, the Company was determined to exploit every major
segment of the market, not just the elite. Its specifications for shifts and shirts
were set out with considerable care:
Lett some of the coursest sort for Seamens and ordinary peoples use be strong blew
Cloath, and some white for the like ordinary use, others white Midling, for Citizens and
Midle sort of People and some fine enough for Ladies, and Gentlewomen ... take espe-
cial care that the sowing be very good and all the Cloth strong in its kind, as well fine as
c~urse. 22
Yet despite all the attention devoted to customizing the product for different
levels in the market, the initiative was a failure. 23 Early in 1685 the directors
wrote to Madras ordering that no more shirts or shifts should be supplied. The
reason for their change of heart emerges in a stock list of goods remaining
unsold in the Company's warehouse in December 1685, which included over
100,000 sM.irtsand shifts, with 'send none' written alongside. 24 By comparison,
the number the Company managed to sell at its regular twice-yearly London
auctions was tiny. Less than 5,000 were sold in 1684 and 1685, and less than
20 H. Dodwell (ed.), Recordsof Fort St George:Despatchesfrom England, 1681-1686 (Madras,

1916), 15: 'Josiah Child, London, to William Gifford, Agent and Governor at Fort St George, 9
Oct. 1682'.
21 Ibid. 112: 'London to Fort St George, 26 Nov. 1684'.
22 Ibid. 15: 'Child to Gifford, 9 Oct. 1682'.
23 The 1682 order for ready-made cotton shifts and shirts has been noted by a large number
of historians, but the problems the Company subsequently faced in selling the new product have
been overlooked. See, for examples, ParakunnelJoseph Thomas, Mercantalismand the East India
Trade(London, 1926), 46; K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading Worldof Asia and the EnglishEast India
Company,1660--1760(Cambridge, 1978), 287; Audrey W. Douglas, 'Cotton Textiles in England:
The East India Company's Attempt to Exploit Developments in Fashion, 1660---1721',Journal
of British Studies, 8/z (1968), 32; Lemire, Fashion's Favourite, 180; John E. Wills, 'European
Consumption and Asian Production in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in John
Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumptionand the World of Goods in the Seventeenth and
EighteenthCenturies(London, 1993), 137.
24 Dodwell (ed.), Recordsof Fort St George,uz: 'London to Fort St George, 26 Nov. 1684';
140: 'London to Fort St George, 19 March 1684-5'; 174-5: 'An account of what Coast and Bay
goods are remaining in the Company's warehouse unsold, 29th December 1685'.
John Styles
10,000 in 1686.2 5 A brief attempt to revive the trade in 1690 with an order for
100,000 shifts 'strong and substantially sow'd for poor Peoples wear' also
failed. 26
The manner in which the whole exercise was conducted suggests the
Company was aware it faced strong resistance to its efforts to remodel consumer
taste in shifts and shirts. Such resistance was to persist for more than a century.
Despite some growth in the numbers of cases involving cotton shifts and shirts
at the Old Bailey in the course of the eighteenth century, they remained very
few compared with those involving shirts and shifts made from linen. Even in
the last two decades of the century, when cotton was trouncing linen in the
market for decorated fabrics, its impact on shirts and shifts was small. As late
as 1802, a London upholsterer told a servant who had claimed some suspicious
cloth he found in her possession was for making shirts, 'this is cotton, this is not
for shirts'. 27 After about 1800, the Old Bailey Proceedings lack information
about the materials from which stolen goods were made. It is possible, however,
to trace the relative fortunes of cotton and linen shirts and shifts after that date
in the Yorkshire criminal records (Table 15.5). For the eighteenth century, the
results are consistent with the Old Bailey evidence, though the number of cases
is far smaller. No cases of stolen cotton shifts or shirts appear at all. It is only in
the nineteenth century that cotton shirts and shifts begin to appear, yet even in
the early 1820s they accounted for only 20 per cent of those that appear in theft
trials in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
The same trend characterized bed sheets. Up to 1800 cotton held an insignif-
icant share of the market for bed sheeting in London. Table 15.6 provides a
decade by decade count of Old Bailey cases which mention sheets. Cotton
sheets, like cotton shirts, appeared early, in the 1700s, but thereafter their
numbers remained tiny, even in the 1780s and 1790s. After 1800 their fortunes
can be traced in the Yorkshire Q!.iarter Sessions records, although, as at the Old
Bailey, there were markedly fewer prosecutions for thefts of sheets than for
thefts of shirts and shifts. In the early 1820s, cotton sheets only accounted for
14 per cent of the stolen sheets identified by material in the West Riding of
Yorkshire Q!.iarter Sessions.
25 Information from Anthony Farrington based on his comprehensive survey of the manu-
script records of the East India Company's London auctions. Many of the shirts and shifts sent
from India may have ended up being sold by private treaty when they failed to sell well at auction.
A small number (about 4,000) was bought by the Hudson's Bay Company between 1684 and
1694, although this may have been simply a case of benefiting from the East India Company's
failure in the domestic market; see Beverly Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce:The English
Clothing Trade beforethe Factory, I66o-I8oo (London, 1997), 36.
26 A. V. Venkatarama Ayyar (ed.), Recordsof Fort St Georg:Despatches from England, I686-
I692 (Madras, 1929), 144: 'List ofCoromandel Coast goods to be provided for the year 1690'.
27 Old Bailey ProceedingsOnline, Sept. 1802, Sarah Powell (tr8020918-27).
Cottons in the Industrial Revolution 319
TABLE 15.5. Stolen Shifts and Shirts, West Riding of Yorkshire Quarter Sessions
indictments, 1750-59, 178o-89, and 1821-25
Cotton Linen
1750-59 0 28
1780-89 0 62
1821-25 8 42
Source:West Yorkshire Archive Service (Wakefield), QS4/ 31-3, / 39-42, I 55-8: West Riding of Yorkshire
Quarter Session Indictment Books, 1750-59, 1780-89, 1821-25.
TABLE 15.6. Old Bailey Cases that Mention Sheets, 1674-1829

Cotton sheets Linen sheets All sheets All cases (offences)
1670-1679 0 0 ) 408
1680-1689 0 43 86 2,369
1690-1699 0 65 110 3,166
C 1700-1709 1 36 47 776
1710-1719 0 79 121 2,854
1720-1729 1 54 205 4,811
1730-1739 1. 74 29'1: 4,697
1740-1749 1 125 309 3,935
1750-1759 0 238 322 4,061
1760-1769 2 182 300 4,102
1770-177,9 0 325 384 6,155
1780-1789 2 285 521 7,320
1790-1799 3 267 450 5,563
l800-I809 4 19 509 7,058
1810-1819 4 4 725 10,908
1820-1829 0 1 962 1~445
For cottons keyword searches on: cotton, calico, calicoe, callico, callicoe.
For linens keyword searches on: flaxen, Russia, holland, harden, hempen, linen, linnen, dowlas, dowlass,
canvas.
Even in the 1820s, therefore, cotton was only starting to gain a foothold in
the markets for plain shirting and sheeting. Historians have been premature in
their estimates of when cotton succeeded in these markets. But why was there
such a discrepancy between the timing of the substitution of cottons for linens
in the markets for fashionable, decorated fabrics and in the markets for plain,
utilitarian fabrics? The obvious answer is price, but, as we have seen, cotton's
early success in the markets for decorated fabrics was not initially a matter ofits
320 John Styles
cheapness as compared with decorated linens. C. Knick Harley has recently

warned us against exaggerating the extent of price reductions in finished cotton
cloth in the twenty years before and after 1800, despite dramatic improvements
in spinning.Zs Price series for linens equivalent to those that Harley has gener-
ated for cottons are lacking, but W. G. Rimmer points out that linen spinners
responded vigorously to the very high flax prices during the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars of 1793 to 1815, when trade with northern Europe was dis-
rupted. They converted to power spinning and improved preparatory processes
to increase dramatically the yarn yielded by each pound of raw flax. After 1815,
when flax prices fell by nearly a third, there was a buoyant market for domesti-
cally woven light household linens, of which shirting and sheeting undoubtedly
comprised a large part. 29
Even if price series were available for cotton shirting and sheeting and linen
shirting and sheeting, direct comparison between yardage prices for the two
fibres might be inappropriate. Linen is stronger than cotton, and one of the
complaints voiced against cotton was that it lacked durability. 30 As early as 1681,
the author of The Trade of England Revived claimed that worsted linings like
'perpetuana or shalloon will wear out two coats', while 'glazened calico will
hardly wear out one coat'. 31 Later Daniel Defoe famously dismissed calico as
'ordinary, mean, low-priz'd, and soon in rags'. 32 A century later, in 1825, Esther
Hewlett, author of Cottage Comfortswith Hintsfor Promotingthem Gleanedfrom
Experience,was still criticizing calico in the same terms, estimating that it wore
out three to four times as quickly as unbleached linen. 33 If these complaints
were justified, cotton yardage prices would have needed to be well below linen
yardage prices to compete successfully in a market segment where durability
was crucial. In 1794 the agriculturalist Arthur Young identified 'strength and
warmth' as criteria by which linen shirting was judged. 34
Consumers at all social levels washed household linen frequently, both for
hygiene and appearance, but they had little choice but to employ ineffective
28 C. Knick Harley, 'Cotton Textile Prices and the Industrial Revolution', EconomicHistory
Review, 51/i (1998), 49-83.
29 W. G. Rimmer, Marsha/ls of Leeds, Flax-Spinners, I788-I886 (Cambridge, 1960), 73-4,
128, 144.
30 Although Michael Edwards argues that in the later eighteenth century workers 'were prob-
ably more impressed by low prices than any claims about durability'. Michael M. Edwards, The
Growth of the British Cotton Trade, I780-I8I5 (Manchester, 1967), 31-2.
31 Anon., The Trade of England Revived (London, 1681), 16--17.
32 Daniel Defoe,A Brief Deductionof the Original,Progress,and ImmenseGreatnessof the British
WoollenManufacture (London, 1727), 50.

33 Esther Hewlett, Cottage Comfortswith Hints for Promoting them Gleanedfrom Experience,
Enlivenedwith Anecdotes(London, 1825), 36.

34 Arthur Young, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Suffolk (London, 1794),
150-1.
soaps and correspondingly aggressive washing techniques. If cottons were less

hard-wearing, they would have needed a price advantage sufficiently great to
cover the cost of more frequent replacement. In the 1820s the price differential,
though substantial, does not appear to have been sufficient to persuade the gen-
erality of poorer purchasers to switch. In 1822 the poor members of the chari-
table clothing society run by the curate in the Northamptonshire villages of
Creaton and Spratton used their weekly contributions to buy 1,540 yards of
linen sheeting at IS. 11/2d.a yard and 1,150 yards oflinen shirting at IS. a yard,
but they bought only 200 yards of calico despite its costing a mere 6d.a yard. At
the end of the 1820s a similar pattern emerges at Farthinghoe, twenty miles to
the south, where the members of the provident clothing society used their
weekly contributions to buy 1,180 yards oflinen at 71/id.a yard, but bought only
767 yards of plain calico, despite its being two-thirds the price at 4 'h.d.and 5d.
a yard. 35
To those who sought to promote the use of cotton, it appeared to be a fabric
ideally suited to shirts and shifts. In their enthusiasm, they found it all too easy
to make overoptimistic prophecies of the imminent displacement oflinen in this
market. A hundred years after Josiah Child expressed the belief that the East
India Company's calico shirts and shifts would replace linens, Samuel Salte,
London agent for the muslin manufacturer Samuel Oldknow, once again con-
fidently predicted that 'the fashion of wearing calico shirting will obtain very
much'. 36 His prophecy did eventually come true, but it took the best part of half
a century. Only after 1825 did cottons really begin to challenge the dominance
oflinens i~ the market for shirts, shifts, and sheets. In 1829, the linen weavers
of Barnsley in Yorkshire were said to be suffering because 'cotton fabrics have
oflate come much into competition with linens, and one article in particular,
cotton shirting is now very much in request'. 37 And only in the 1850s did the
market for domestically produced linens actually collapse. 38
The history of cotton fabrics during the early industrial revolution cannot,
of course, be reduced to a simple contrast between the decorative and the util-
itarian. The rise of cotton manufacturing involved a proliferation of new kinds
of cotton and cotton-mix fabrics, embracing a dizzying variety of qualities which
cannot be captured by a crude division into the mundane and the showy. Cotton
may have been slow to penetrate markets for durable sheeting and shirting, but
35 Thomas Jones, Clothing Societies (Northampton, 1822), 4 and 17; Francis Lichfield, Three
Years' Results of the Farthinghoe Clothing Society (Northampton, 1832), 8. At Farthinghoe the
purchases were for the years 1829 to 1831; the club's members also bought 1,072 yards of sheeting
at 8d. a yard, but the fibre is not specified.
36 Quoted in Michael M. Edwards, The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, r780-1815
(Manchester, 1967), 36.

37 Quoted in Rimmer, Marsha/ls of Leeds, 164-5.
38 Ibid. 239.
322 John Styles
what happened in markets for plain or less elaborately decorated fabrics where
regular, heavy washing was not such an important priority? It is not possible to
provide a comprehensive answer here, but the cotton fabrics commonly used
for men's outer garments offer an instructive case study. The Old Bailey trials
reveal striking inconsistencies in the take-up of such fabrics, confirming the
importance of fashion in establishing the market for cottons.
These male clothing fabrics can be divided into two groups with different
historical trajectories. The first consisted of fustians and thicksets, which closely
resembled one another. They were relatively heavy fabrics, usually plain, some-
times ribbed and cut, and occasionally striped or flowered. Fustians enjoy a
prominent place in the historiography of the English cotton industry. 39 Until
the final decades of the eighteenth century, they were normally made from linen
warps with cotton wefts, and, as such, were specifically exempted from the leg-
islation repealed in 1774 that had previously prohibited the import and sale of
pure cottons. 40 These linen-cotton mixtures were central to the development
of the English cotton industry during the middle decades of the eighteenth
century, the period when the key mechanical inventions were being made in
cotton spinning. Mixed cotton-linen cloths used for printing were included in
the legal exemption enjoyed by fustians, but it is clear from the Old Bailey
Proceedings that cotton-linen printed cloths used for women's gowns were not
termed fustians in everyday parlance. They were normally referred to simply
as cottons. 41 Fabrics with the names fustian and thickset appeared at the Old
Bailey mainly in the form of men's breeches, waistcoats, and frock coats. They
can be found there from the late seventeenth century. The number of cases
mentioning them increased gradually during the first half of the eighteenth
century, but thereafter it stagnated (Table 15.7).
A very different chronology characterized a second group of cotton fabrics
commonly used for men's outer garments, which was made up of jeans,
velverets, and nankeens. Like the fustians and thicksets, these were relatively
heavy fabrics and were used for breeches and waistcoats in particular. Jean was
a kind of twilled fustian, velveret had a pile finish, often ribbed, while nankeen
was plain with a characteristic yellow-tan colour. The limited evidence we have
on the fibre composition of these fabrics suggests Lancashire velvets (including
velveret) and nankeens were already likely to be all-cotton as early as the
39
Although in this literature the word fustian is used to refer to a wider range of fabrics than
its usage in the Old Bailey Proceedings suggests.
40 Although note that thicksets, in particular, were not always cotton-linen mixes at this date.
Some were all linen, some all cotton, others worsted. See Florence Montgomery, Textiles in
America, I650-I870 (New York, 1984), 363.
41 There is only one Old Bailey case in the whole of the eighteenth century that includes a
gown made from a fabric named as fustian, and this may not, of course, have been a woman's
gown. See Old Bailey ProceedingsOnline,April 1744, Jane Morris (u7440404-28).
TABLE 15.7. Old Bailey Cases that Mention Fustians and Thicksets, 1674-1829
Fustians Thicksets All Cases (Offences)
1670-1679 0 0 408
1680-1689 6 0 2,369
1690-1699 6 0 3,166
1700-1709 3 0 776
1710-1719 15 0 2,854
1720-1729 18 0 4,811
1730-1739 11 0 4,697
1740-1749 21 0 3,935
1750-1759 29 1 4,061
1760-1769 22 14 4,102
1770-1779 15 18 6,155
1780-1789 19 16 7,320
1790-1799 14 23 5,563
1800-1809 i 3 7,058
1810-1819 20 0 10,908
1820-1829 91 0 16,445
Source:Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 30 September 2005. The shaded decades are those where the data
175os.42 ~ntirely absent from the Old Bailey Proceedings before 1740, the
number of cases in which jean, velveret, and nankeen were mentioned increased
very rapidly after 1770 (Table 15.8).
How can we explain the contrasting chronological trajectories of these two
groups of fabrics? Part of the explanation lies, almost certainly, in the displace-
ment of the first group-the linen-cotton mixes-by the second-the all-cotton
fabrics-which had similar characteristics and uses, although different names.
It is striking that this substitution of jean, velveret, and nankeen for fustian and
thickset gathered pace in the 1770s, just as machine-spun cotton warps became
available and the prohibition on all-cotton fabrics was repealed. The success of
the all-cotton fabrics probably turned in part on qualitative superiority in terms
of weight and colour, as in the case of all-cotton prints, but fashion also played
a crucial role. 43 It certainly contributed to the astonishing success of nankeen
42 Lemire, Fashion'sFavourite, Bo.

43 In 1776, Margaret Cater, a Bedfordshire gentlewoman, asked a friend in London to get her
a printed cotton 'of the new manufactory which are Cottenboth ways'. She explained: 'It is a great
deal lighter than a Cotton, and the colours look more lively.' Bedfordshire and Luton Archives
and Record Service, Mio/ 4/34: Williamson Muniments, correspondence, letters to Mary
Williamson, 1775-8, Margaret Cater to Mrs Mary Williamson, 17 October 1776.
324 John Styles
TABLE 15.8. Old Bailey Cases that Mention Jeans, Velverets and Nankeens,
1674-1829
Jeans Velverets Nankeens All Cases
1670-1679 0 0 0 408
1680-1689 0 0 0 2,369
1690-1699 0 0 0 3,166
1700-1709 0 0 0 776
1710-1719 0 0 0 2,854
1720-1729 0 0 0 4,811
1730-1739 0 0 0 4,697
1740-1749 0 0 1 3,935
1750-1759 0 0 3 4,061
1760-1769 0 0 13 4,102
1770-1779 1 9 39 6,155
1780-1789 17 68 84 7,320
1790-1799 25 39 60 5,563
1800-1809 9 3 34 7,058
1810-1819 8 0 31 10,908
1820-1829 16 0 15 16,445
during the last three decades of the eighteenth century. Among the group of all-
cotton fabrics, nankeen was by far the most frequently mentioned in Old Bailey
cases. Its popularity was especially marked as a material for breeches, where its
light yellow colour enabled it to mimic the look of ultra-fashionable tight
breeches made from buckskin, while being cheaper and easier to clean.
The influence of fashion can also be observed in the decline of fustian.
During the middle decades of the eighteenth century, fustian is mentioned at
the Old Bailey most frequently as a fabric for men's frock coats. These resem-
bled ordinary coats, but were looser, with a collar, and were associated with
riding, sport, and informal relaxation. When the distinction between frock coats
and ordinary coats diminished in the 1760s, as ordinary coats took on many of
the features of frock coats, including their collars, the fashion for fustian frock
coats ended. As a result, cottons virtually disappeared from the Old Bailey
Proceedings for the next thirty years as materials for men's coats and jackets,
leaving woollen materials supreme. It is only from the 1810s that the
Proceedings begin to register the emergence of the fustian jacket, which went
on to become emblematic of the working man in the Chartist years of the 1830s
and 184os.44 By the 1810s, of course, fustian had become an all-cotton fabric.
44 See Paul A. Pickering, 'Class without Words: Symbolic Communication in the Chartist
Movement,' Past and Present, 112 (1986), 144-62.

Its nineteenth-century popularity as a material for working men's jackets prob-

ably reflected rapidly shifting relative costs of cotton and woollen fabrics in the
decades after Waterloo.
CONCLUSION
There is a tendency in some histories of product innovation in Europe from the

seventeenth century to the nineteenth century to present cotton as if it were a
single product, protean and infinitely substitutable for textiles made from other
materials. There is no doubt that in the long term cotton enjoyed spectacular
success, much of it by capturing markets previously served by other fibres.
Nevertheless, its success was uneven across the various markets for clothing tex-
tiles, especially so in the period up to 1800. Adapting cotton to new uses some-
times required radical and difficult reworking of what defined it as a product.
Harley's argument for changes in the fineness of cotton yarns in the later eigh-
teenth century indicates one of the ways product definitions could be altered. 45
Manufacturers of other fibres were also capable of responding in kind. At issue
here were not simply considerations of price. Much turned on the specific mate-
rial characteristics and qualities of different fabrics, and on the tastes and pref-
erences of those who wore them. Nowhere is this more evident than in the
history of shirts, shifts, and sheets. For well over a century, from the 1680s to
the early I Soos, great efforts were made to promote the use of cotton for under-
garments a9d bedlinen, by organizations and entrepreneurs with proven records
as successful innovators. Yet most consumers of shirts, shifts, and sheets
remained unmoved.
As for the health benefits that historians have often ascribed to cotton under-
garments, any benefits are unlikely to have accrued before the second quarter
of the nineteenth century. Yet it is hard to see that cotton actually had the great
advantage in this respect over linen that has been claimed. Buer and Chambers
believed mistakenly that undergarments were previously made from wool. This
was not the case in the eighteenth century in England. Shirts, shifts, and sheets,
whether made from linen or from cotton, were expected to be washed fre-
quently, even among the poor. Indeed shirts, shifts, and sheets made from linen
may have been kept cleaner, because they could be washed with less anxiety
about wear than those made from cotton. If the cleanliness of body and house-
hold linen was crucial for improvements in hygiene, then the substitution of
cotton for linen was not the key innovation. More important were increases in
the levels of ownership of body and household linen of any kind, which allowed
for more frequent changes of underclothing and bedding, and improvements
45 Harley, 'Cotton Textile Prices',passim.

John Styles
in the effectiveness of soaps. Inventory studies suggest ownership oflinen sheets

underwent a long-term increase in several parts of England from the sixteenth
to the eighteenth centuries. 46 Soaps, by contrast, changed relatively little before
the introduction of chemical soda made by the Leblanc process, which became
widely available in England only after the repeal of the salt tax in 1824.
The life-saving power of cotton undergarments and bedlinen has been a cher-
ished story, repeated again and again in accounts of the English industrial rev-
olution, but it is unsound. Cotton was undoubtedly the leading fibre of the
industrial revolution, its dazzling rise the textile phenomenon of the eighteenth
century, but it did not carry all before it. The spectacular early triumph of
cotton depended most of all on its visual, decorative, fashionable qualities.
Where appearance was crucial, cotton succeeded. Where utilitarian durability
counted, cotton sometimes lagged behind.
46Overton et al., Productionand Consumption,108---n; Christopher Husbands, 'Standards of

Living in North Warwickshire in the Seventeenth Century', WarwickshireHistory, 4/6 (1980-
1), 203-15.
16
THE LIMITS OF WOOL AND
THE POTENTIAL OF COTTON IN THE
EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH
CENTURIES
PAT HUDSON
Why did wool textiles, so prominent in the textile production of western

Europe, particularly Britain, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fail
to become the focus of the globalization of the textile trades during the great
divergence? Why did cotton, an insignificant industry in mid-eighteenth-
century Europe, succeed where wool did not? Was it a question of the con-
straints on wool supply, or were rigidities in cloth production and distribution
more important? Did state policy toward wool differ from that toward cotton
or were cotton cloths simply more suited to socially and culturally differentiated
global markets? What role did merchants and consumers, as well as manufac-
turers, pla),in the relative dynamics of wool and cotton? What were the limits
of wool?
We know that cotton manufacturing in Europe, in Britain in particular, ben-
efited from the elastic and cheap transatlantic supply of slave plantation cotton
and from the innovation of the Whitney gin. We also know that cotton fibres
were more suited to mechanical handling, steam-powered mass production, and
colourful printing than wool. We know that western-produced cotton cloths
appealed in a range of world markets and climates that were often already used
to indigenous supplies of similar fabrics. And we know that both plain and
printed cottons were becoming much cheaper, particularly as a result ofincreas-
ing productivity following the innovations of the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries. Cottons even travelled better and more cheaply than
woollens-they held less moisture and were not so susceptible to mould and
insect infestation during shipment. The answer to the question 'Why cotton
rather than wool?' seems pretty straightforward, particularly with the benefit
of hindsight, but is this the case?1
1 This question is perhaps easier to address than the relative success of cotton versus linen.
Europe as a whole was much more geared to flax and linen production than to wool or cotton in
the eighteenth century, and linen was more directly comparable with cotton in functional terms.
Pat Hudson
THE SUCCESS OF WOOL
To use cotton as a yardstick against which wool can be judged to have failed is
to mis-specify the problem and to distort our understanding of the dynamics of
the textile sector as a whole. The European, and particularly the British, wool
textile industry continued to be extraordinarily successful between the seven-
teenth and the early twentieth centuries, finding markets across the globe and
proving innovative and responsive to competition and fashion changes.
Processes of restructuring, regional concentration, and technological innovation
allowed diversification, specialization, and cheapening of production. If wool
was not the global textile industry of the nineteenth century, it certainly had that
role, alongside cottons and silks in the previous century. In the late nineteenth
century it continued to vie with cotton as the leading global textile sector
because the globalization of cotton waned. 2
Wool was always afront-ranking global industry. It is hard to sustain the
notion of a crisis or decline of wool manufacture in Britain or Europe in the
face of competition from cotton, as implied in some of the literature. 3 And
perhaps one should not expect this, as the two industries were only directly
competitive with each other, in terms of the end uses of the fabrics that they
produced, in a small proportion of their respective ranges. Such market overlap
rose from around IO per cent in the early eighteenth century to perhaps 30 per
cent a century later, with the development of lighter and figured worsteds.
Cotton and woollen industries often boomed in unison from the 1780s because
both could produce a variety of styles and patterns for luxury and also mass
markets.
The fabrics were often not in direct competition in the Atlantic, European,
and other global markets, because they were used for different purposes, and
added to the variety of consumer goods available for different seasons and occa-
One thus might more reasonably ask why linen lost out (eventually) during cotton's rise.
Although that question remains outside the scope of this chapter, the relative elasticity of raw
cotton supply was probably a determining factor. See Leslie Clarkson, 'The Linen Industry in
Early Modern Europe', in David Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles
(Cambridge, 2003), i. 473-92.
2
For a detailed definition and explanation of the concept of the global reach or globalization
of a sector, and of the circumstances of cotton and wool textiles in the late nineteenth century,
see the longer version of this essay in Cardiff Historical Papers 2007. Certainly the global reach of
the British cotton industry was declining after 1870. In France, for instance, the cotton industry
never exceeded the importance of the wool or silk manufactures. Douglas Farnie, 'Cotton
1780-1914', in Jenkins (ed.), Cambridge History of Western Textiles, ii. 2, 738---9.
3
This is a common implication in most textbooks. See for example Leandro Prados de la
Escosura (ed.), Exceptionalism and Industrialisation: Britain and its European Rivals, r688-r8I5
(Cambridge, 2004) which contains nothing on wool textiles.
Limits of Wool and Potential of Cotton
sions. Cotton and wool fibres were also increasingly mixed in fabrics. Many
manufacturers switched between cotton and wool and cotton/wool mixes in
response to swings in the market and the two industries had a significant
overlap. Wool often benefited from markets forged or opened up by cotton and
vice versa, whilst technological innovation spilled from one sector to the other-
from cotton to wool, but also from wool to cotton. Cotton's gains were by-no
means always made at the expense of wool: there was significant complemen-
tarity as well as competition.
The wool sector generated an increasingly differentiated array of products
from the later seventeenth century, often lighter and cheaper than many of the
earlier woollens, more suited to design innovations in weaving and dyeing, and
to a range of domestic and overseas markets for both clothing and household
fabrics. Crucially, the industry readily adopted cotton warps from the late eigh-
teenth century, in worsted manufacture in particular, and incorporated an
increasing variety of wools and silk from the early eighteenth century onwards.
In Britain, worsted manufacture was only a decade or so behind cotton in its
take-up of Arkwright-type steam-powered spinning, and in mechanized
weaving from the 1840s. The size and nature of worsted, and some woollen, fac-
tories of the nineteenth century paralleled those of the cotton sector: the pro-
ductivity growth and price fall of worsted yarns and cloths from horizontally
specialized firms had a similar impact in extending the social and the global
reach of sales. Worsted cloths became increasingly important, accounting for
some 40 pe 7cent of wool textile output in Britain by the 1770s with a further 30
per cent of output in mixed woollens-worsteds. 4
By the middle decades of the nineteenth century the delicate patterns that
could be woven into worsted fabrics put them on a par with printed cottons
for many purposes, particularly for dress. In other products (upholstery, hang-
ings, and carpets) there was little or no competition from cotton. 5 Woollen (as
opposed to worsted) production also adapted itself to serve both domestic and
external markets more effectively in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
even though (or because) it was not so directly troubled by the stiff winds of
competition from cotton. Fortunes were made in military contracting in the
later eighteenth century and Napoleonic War period when British firms con-
tributed to clothing North American and most European armies. If slaves wore
cottons and linens for working, they were supplied with woollen blankets
(mostly from Yorkshire) for sleeping. And, like their west European brethren,
North American and Caribbean colonists and planters were as fond of wool-
4 Estimate of Thomas Wolrich, in James Bischoff, A Comprehensive History of the Woollenand
WorstedManufacture (London, 1842), 187----9.
5 John James, History of the WorstedManufacture in England,from the Earliest Times(London,
1857), 304.
330 Pat Hudson
lens as cottons for outer garments. 6 Innovations in cloth finishing at the fine
end of the spectrum, in broadcloths and overcoatings, stimulated the market
in fine woollen goods, for both clothing and household use, by the growing
middling and upper classes of the Atlantic and European worlds. The fine
woollen producers of the region of Aix-la-Chapelle and Verviers benefited
particularly from this trend. And at the cheaper end of the market for wool
textile output, catering for the needs of workers, for occupational durability
and warmth, both woollens and worsteds (along with linens) held their own
well into the nineteenth century, aided by the falling prices of mixed cloths
and mass production. 7
The wool textile sector was buoyant and adaptable: its limits can easily be
exaggerated if we focus solely on the success of cotton. However, the sector did
face some obstacles relative to cotton as a globally expansive industry in the early
nineteenth century and it is useful to rehearse and to evaluate the arguments
that have been made in this regard.
WOOL SUPPLY
The issue of rigidities of wool supply, in contrast with the elasticity of cotton,
is prominent in the literature, but was it the prime determinant of cotton's
success? If the cheapness of raw cotton and its efficient supply were the main
drivers of cotton as a global commodity, one would have to explain why and
how the manufacturing sector was able to respond to cheap imports of raw
cotton into Europe. What was the incentive structure in terms of markets,
potential profits, state support? Economic history is replete with examples sug-
gesting that 'the mere existence of resources does not explain the capacity to
exploit them'. 8 Cheap raw material supply can be shown to have retarded
mechanical innovation in other sectors and cannot provide an answer, in itself,
to the question of cotton's success.
The ease of cotton supply has been contrasted with the ecological constraints
6
Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal
America (Williamsburg, Va., 2002); John Styles and Amanda Vickery (eds.), Gender, Taste and
Material Culture in Britain and North America, IJOO-I830 (New Haven, 2006); Peter Maw,
'Anglo-American Trade during the Industrial Revolution: A Study of the Lancashire and
Yorkshire Textile Industries, 1750--1825' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester,
2006).
7
Beverly Lemire, 'Fashion and Tradition: Wearing Wool in England during the Consumer
Revolution, c.1660--1820', in Giovanni Luigi Fontana and Gerard Gayot (eds.), Wool: Products
and Markets, I 3th-20th Century (Padua, 2004), 573--94;John Styles, 'What were Cottons for in
the Early Industrial Revolution', in this volume. For extended treatment of these issues see John
Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 2007).
8
Parsannan Parthasarathi, 'The Great Divergence', Past and Present, 176 (2002), 275--93.
Limits of Wool and Potential of Cotton 331
facing wool production in Britain and continental Europe, 9 but calculating the
acreage required for levels of wool production competitive with those of cotton
supply only makes sense, as a counterfactual exercise, if the industries were sub-
stitutable. In addition, such calculations tend to ignore variation in types and
qualities of wool and changes in breeding and yields. Above all, they assume
that domestic wool is the sole source of raw material supply to the industry.
Sheep can be raised on marginal and infertile land at zero opportunity cost and
they require little labour except during the clip. The elasticity of domestic
supply was not therefore constrained, as implied in these calculations, by a
(hypothetical) inability to double the amount of agricultural land in Britain by
1840. If Britain had required six times as many sheep as it had in 1840 for the
wool textile industry to rival the amount of cotton cloth produced at that time, 10
it would not have been impossible to arrange. Certainly France had the under-
utilized grazing capacity to respond in this way, had the incentive structure
demanded it. However, it was increasingly desirable, particularly in Britain, to
use imported wools. Imported fine, short-stapled wools were essential for finer
broadcloths and coatings, and mixes of foreign and domestic wool were pre-
ferred for many purposes. Imported wool in England came partly from Ireland,
long the main source of imported agricultural produce and with much grazing
land underemployed, but the finer wools came, increasingly, from Spain and
Germany in the later eighteenth century. 11
The rigidities of British and European wool supply were eased by superior
breeding, b>7the global spread of merino breeds, and by the growth, especially in
Britain, of a worsted industry able to make best use of the plentiful supplies of
long-stapled, fine-quality domestic wool.12 So plentiful were supplies oflong wool
that Lincolnshire growers agitated for permission to export their stockpiles in the
1780s, and Irish exports to England dropped to such an extent that the manufac-
ture of worsted cloth in Ireland was enlarged to absorb the surplus wool there. 13
9 As attempted by Riello following a methodology explored first by Kenneth Pomeranz with

respect to cotton in China: 'A World of Endless Possibilities? Cotton and the Ecology of Textiles
in the Long Eighteenth Century', unpublished paper presented at the Economic History Society
Annual Conference, University ofLeicester, 28-30 March 2005.
10
Ibid. 5.
11 For the best contemporary estimates see James Bischoff, 'Statistical Tables for the House
of Lords Report, with Additions', c.1834, Leeds City Library (hereafter LCL). These show that
by 1816---20around 65% of all wool imports came from Spain and Germany, Spain being the
main provider in most years. In the 1820s Germany became more dominant, providing two or
three times the weight of wool imports from Spain in most years. Less than 10% came from
Ireland by the early nineteenth century.
12 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 225. See also Observations on Wool and the
Woollen Manufacture, by a Manufacturer of Northamptonshire (London, 2nd edn. 1739).

13 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 302; Pat Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial
Capital (Cambridge, 1986), II o- 11.

332 Pat Hudson
Contemporaries such as James Bischoff loudly lamented the decline in quality

of the British wool clip, and agitations for repeal of the tax on imported wools were
persistent in the post-Napoleonic War period, eliciting Privy Council examina-
tions of the wool supply. But it seems most likely that there was no absolute short-
age of English wools, and the temporary difficulties of the fine woollen trade, of
Leeds and elsewhere, upon which laments and agitations focused, particularly
during the post-war boom, were accompanied by a boost for worsteds. 14 Some
shortfalls and pressure undoubtedly occurred because of dependence upon
European suppliers of fine wools who were not always able to respond at a time
when English wools had become coarser. Worsted producers were largely unaf-
fected, however: not only did they have plentiful supplies of domestic long wool
but improvements in wool sorting, combing, and spinning made it increasingly
possible to produce worsted with wools of a wide variety of staple lengths. Wool
shortages experienced by some manufacturers in the early nineteenth century thus
did not arise from a shortfall of domestic wool supply or from ecological con-
straints, but from temporary difficulties in obtaining sufficient fine wools, aggra-
vated by taxation on their import.
In the four decades up to 1820, although wool output growth had decelerated
compared with the earlier eighteenth century, the number of sheep in Britain
had 'vastly increased' along with the proportion oflong wool to short in the new
breeds. 15 After this, improving domestic supplies were supplemented by
increasing imports of short-stapled wools, subject only to a nominal tariff (1d.
in the pound) after 1824. With the abolition of restrictions on the export of
British wool in the same legislation, an increasing proportion of the English long
wool clip was exported, without destructive impact on wool prices. 16 Additional
elasticity of wool supply, especially for woollens, was provided from the later
eighteenth century by the growth of primary production in the Iberian
Peninsula. In the 1830s and 1840s a significant proportion of the industry's wool
began to come from countries specializing in producing this primary product
on the basis of comparative advantage. Australian, South African, and, to a
lesser extent, South American and New Zealand clips ensured growth of the
wool textile industry in the nineteenth century as a hub around which many
trades revolved, and with a global reach exceeding that of cottons. 17
14 British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter EPP), House ofLords, 1820 (56), XII: Examinations
of Petitionsbeforethe Privy Councilagainstthe Tax on WoolImported;BPP, House of Lords, 1828
(515), VIII: Report of Select Committeeof the House of Lords on the State of the British Wool Trade
with Minutes of Evidence, particularly evidence of James Bischoff, merchant, London; John
Sutcliffe, woolstapler, Huddersfield; John Varley, woollen manufacturer, Stanningly.
15 James, History of the WorstedManufacture, 299; Phyllis Deane, 'The Output of the British
Woolen Industry in the Eighteenth Century',Journal of EconomicHistory, 17/z (1957), 207-23.

16 LCL,James Bischoff, 'MSS Statistical Tables', 4-5, 9-11.
17 By the early 1830s wool from the antipodes exceeded that imported into Britain from Spain,
Equally important, in terms of the elasticity of raw material supply, was the
increasing production of mixed cloths incorporating cotton, linen, and silk
threads. This not only increased the flexibility of the industry, making it less
dependent upon the vagaries of wool supply, but it had the added bonus (indeed
this was often the main motivation behind the development of mixed cloths) of
making the industry more adaptable to mechanical handling and to steam-
powered innovation, particularly in spinning. By the 1820s cotton accounted
for a large proportion of the warps used in the British wool textile sector (in
woollen 'union cloths' and in a range of worsteds). The use of cotton warps with
woollen wefts was hastened by the introduction of bichromate of potash as a
mordant for dyeing, allowing animal and vegetable fibres to be dyed together
with good results. 18 By 1850 almost all Yorkshire worsteds were made with
cotton warps, which helped to secure the success of the industry in that county.
Indeed the trade in cotton yarn for warps, both domestically and within Europe,
underpinned the development of horizontal specialization in both cotton spin-
ning and cotton weaving. 19
By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and continuing into the
twentieth century, the rigidities ofraw wool supply were further eased by a
growing use of skin or slipe wool and recycled wool. Skin wool already
accounted for around 12 per cent of British wool supply by the 1830s, but took
off in importance in Europe as a whole with the growing inter-regional and
international trade in sheep pelts. 20 At the same time, the national and interna-
tional tradf in rags grew to sustain some of the most successful textile regions
of continental Europe, including Yorkshire, Belgium, and northern Italy.
As early as the mid-182os many Yorkshire firms used a significant proportion
of recycled wool, including imported rags.John Nussey, woollen manufacturer
of Birstall and a Trustee of the Leeds White Cloth Hall, was making druggets,
paddings, and calmucs in 1828 using rag wool, whilst low duffils used around
50 per cent rag wool. It was estimated that 12 per cent of the rags used in the
region were imported, largely from Germany. 21 By the 1840s specialized firms
although Germany remained the primary source of wool imports until the early 1840s: LCL,
James Bischoff, 'MSS Statistical Tables', 38; James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 37
appendix.
18 David Jenkins, 'The Western Wool Textile Industry in the Nineteenth Century', in Jenkins
(ed.), Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 766.

19
Hudson, Genesis of Industrial Capital, 131-2, and 245; Farnie, 'Cotton', 731-2.
20 Jenkins, 'Western Wool Textile Industry', 768----9.
21 BPP, House of Lords, 1828 (515), VIII: Evidence of Varley and Nussey; Edward Baines, 'The
Woollen Manufacture of England with Special Reference to the Leeds Clothing District', paper
read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Leeds, 1858, and published
by Thomas Baines in Yorkshire Past and Present (Leeds 1875), 11; LCL,James Bischoff, 'MSS
Statistical Tables'.
334 Pat Hudson
depended upon shoddy and mungo (treated rags) for between 20 and 60 per
cent of their raw wool supply, and by the late nineteenth century the British
woollen industry was using as much recovered wool as new wool.22 Other raw
material mixes were introduced in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
These aimed less at cost cutting at the lower end of the market than at extending
the range and variety of the finest cloths. Mixes of wools from mohair (as early
as the 1690s), alpaca, and vicuna and including cashmere and angora all featured
in the development oflustres and fine worsteds. 23
If we sum up the role of recovered wool and of cotton, linen, and other fibres
within the wool textile sector it is clear that by the mid-nineteenth century, in
Britain at least, the sector was dependent upon virgin sheep's wool (whether
home produced or imported) for less than 50 per cent of its raw material needs.
Moreover, value-added on average was significantly higher in woollen and
worsted production, particularly the latter, than in cotton, meaning that raw
material supply and prices played a less important role in the fortunes of the
industry than was the case in cotton. 24
There is no quantitative evidence supporting the notion that the British wool
supply had reached its limits during the period of the rise of cotton, or even that
it was under strain. 25 Figures of the domestic wool clip show an uninterrupted
rise before plateauing in the 1870s at a time when almost unlimited and superior
Australasian supplies were assured, accounting for two-thirds of wool imports,
and amounting to twice the domestic clip. 26
Had the constraints o! raw material supply really started to bite in thf crtTdal
decades 9f the late eight~th and early nineteenth centuries when ccftton was
overtaking wool in Britain irl'.,output levels and exports, this would have been
reflected in prices. Figure 16.1 shows relative indices of imported American raw
cotton prices compared with wool prices represented by Lincoln half hogs and
Kent long (reasonable proxies for the longer-stapled wools used in worsted
manufacture) and Southdown wool (the main domestic source of short-stapled
wool for the woollen sector). The high prices of cotton supply during the
Napoleonic War period are the most obvious feature. Less dependent upon
imports, wool supply was under no such strain. And there is no marked diver-
gence between the movement of wool and cotton prices before the mid-183os.
22 Jenkins, 'Western Wool Textile Industry', 768.
23 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 179-80; Hudson, Genesis of Industrial Capital,
ch. 5.
24 Although prosecuting their case, worsted manufacturers claimed in 1821 that the process
of manufacture added up to 15 times the value of the raw material compared with only two or
three times in woollens and cottons. James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 193,210, and 394.
25 Bischoffs import, export, and price evidence is useful here: LCL: James Bischoff, 'MSS
Statistical Tables'.
26 B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), 336---40.
350 ... · ......................... · · ·
0
1780 1785 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850
----- Southdown -- Kent Long -- Lincoln Half-Hogg -- American Cotton
Figure 16.1. Raw wool and cotton price indices (average 1821-25 = 100)
Given the lower value-added in most cotton compared with wool textile man-
ufacture, o~e might suggest that wool textile manufacture was at no great dis-
advantage from raw material price rises, compared with cotton, until the 1840s,
by which time imported wools were coming to the rescue.
The price of Southdown wool (the shorter-stapled wool most likely to feel
the pinch of tight domestic supplies and limitations on imports) was markedly
lower 1820 to 1845, in all years except four (1833-6), than had been the case in
the 1790s. This may indicate a decline in quality and have been both cause and
consequence of a turn to mutton production domestically, but such prices are
hardly indicative of a domestic wool supply reaching its ecological limits.
Further evidence of this is provided by comparing wool price indices with the
domestic price index from the estimations of Gayer, Rostow, and Schwartz
(Figure 16_2).27 Wool prices show no marked divergence from the domestic
price index during the whole period to mid-century and beyond. Of course this
may have been partly because demand pressures on wool prices were eased by
purchases of cotton rather than woollen goods where the markets for the two
fabrics overlapped. However, the overlap can be exaggerated, as argued above_
27 B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane,Abstract of British HistoricalStatistics (Cambridge, 1962),
470,491, 494-5.
336 Pat Hudson
r:
,,
300
!\
''
!\
250+-------------l/'-+:-------~------------i
' '
' '
'
200 ! ·,_.~\
50
0+------------~-~-------~-------1
1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815 1820 1825 1830 1835 1840 1845 1850
--Domestic - - - Southdown -Kent Long -Lincoln ------American Cotton
commodities Half-Hogg
Figure 16.2. Kent long raw wool and raw cotton indices compared with the Gayer, Rostow
and Schwartz price index (average 1821-25 = 100)
The amount of cotton in worsted (and many woollen) fabrics, and the mix of
sheep's wool with'other fibres, is likely to have been much more important in
keeping wool cloth prices stable in the face of rising demand than direct substi-
tutability between all-cotton and all-woollen cloths.
Thus, the supply of raw wool appears to have responded well to the increas-
ing demands of expanding industry aided by the growing incorporation of fibres
from other sources. Raw wool prices were nevertheless three to four times
higher than cotton prices per pound by the second quarter of the nineteenth
century. Even allowing for the higher percentage of waste in cotton fibres, the
relatively high elasticity of raw material supply was clearly one factor in cotton's
success where cloths using the two different fibres came into direct competition.
This was particularly the case for a growing range of dress fabrics by the 1840s
and 1850s largely because the worsted industry extended its range to compete
with cottons. During the cotton famine, the price differential between raw
cotton and virgin wool prices was eliminated for several years, causing a dis-
cernible shift away from cottons and mixed woollens/ cottons to all-wool
worsteds in Europe during these years (much favouring the French industry).
This gives one a taste of the market share (in the ranges of more directly sub-
stitutable fabrics) that might have been captured by wool textiles if raw wool
prices had been closer to those of cotton, but it also emphasizes that the overlap
between the two sectors that was responsive to price competition was restricted
to particular ranges. Wool responded to more direct price competitiveness with
cotton in the 186os by increasing production of softer mule-spun fabrics, a shift
that bore fruit long term, particularly for French manufacturers who adopted
mule spinning and associated design innovations to a greater degree than their
British counterparts. 28 Raw material supply was undoubtedly one factor of
several in accounting for the success of cotton but not one with the causal
primacy that has sometimes been assumed.
IMPORT-SUBSTITUTION INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE POLITICAL

ECONOMY OF COTTON
Cotton can be seen as the classic exemplar of the import-substitution industrial-

ization (ISi) that characterized many sectors in Britain in the eighteenth century.
As with the most successful examples of ISi in recent times (in South Korea,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) vigorous import-substitution policies stim-
ulated industrial success. This in turn resulted in export-led growth as the limits
of the domestic market were reached. This ISi, coupled with competitive export
promotion, was underpinned by state support, tariff structures, militarism, and
imperialism. 29 Although the process of state protection and promotion was con-
tingent and partly accidental, brought on by lobbying from the woollen, linen, and
silk interests more than from cotton manufacturers themselves, driven at times
by purely fiscal motives, and partly successful because of the need to promote
political stability by protecting the Celtic linen interests, cotton benefited dispro-
portionately and it was a major key to the sector's success. The political economy
of cotton ensured that, by the 1750s, and long before mechanization, 'the British
economy produced a greater volume of yarn, cloth, and finished textiles, manu-
factured wholly or partly from cotton fibres, than any other economy outside
India'. 30 It was this that provided the platform for later successes.
As Beverly Lemire demonstrates in a chapter included in this volume, from
the early decades of the seventeenth century east Indian cotton piece goods
became increasingly popular amongst English consumers, particularly amongst
28 Jenkins, 'Western Wool Textile Industry', 773-4.
29 ISI is discussed and employed as a tool of analysis in the context of eighteenth-century
Britain by Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002).
30 Patrick K. O'Brien, Trevor Griffiths, and Philip Hunt, 'Political Components of the
Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660-1774', Economic
History Review, 44/3 (1991), 395.
Pat Hudson
the upper classes and wealthy bourgeoisie, who much prized the texture, bril-
liance, and colourfastness of patterned wares in particular. Imported cottons,
along with Chinese silks, made serious inroads into domestic markets, substi-
tuting for domestic woollens and silks in household furnishing fabrics and in
elite dress clothing materials. 31 The penetration of imported cottons and silk
lower down the social scale was much more limited, but such was the outcry
from domestic woollen, linen, and silk producers that protective action was soon
taken. A law of 1701 stipulated that no imported silk goods or coloured calicoes
could be worn in England and Wales. It allowed such goods to be warehoused
in Britain for re-exportation and allowed white Indian calicoes to be printed in
England for domestic and export markets. This prohibition stimulated the
growth of calico printing in Britain in the early eighteenth century. White
cotton imports from India rose commensurately. One estimate suggests that
these imports increased fourfold to over two million pieces by 1719, 32 creating
further pressure for protection which resulted in import duties on white calicoes
plus export duties upon printed calico manufactures that are estimated together
to have amounted to a tax of 82 per cent ad valorem. 33
An Act of 1721 effectively closed the British market to Asian textiles: the pur-
chase in England of all printed calicoes made from imported Indian white goods
was prohibited and the printing of all-cotton British cloths was also restricted,
although neckcloths, muslins, and fustians were exempted from this prohibi-
tion. The exemption of fustians was particularly important as it allowed for the
manufacture and printing of cloth made from linen warps and cotton weft. Such
cloths became the mainstay of the Lancashire industry in the middle decades of
the eighteenth century, provided a market for Celtic linen warps and cloths, and
left the woollen and silk industries exposed to competition in the fancy and
figured areas of the fustian trade, a feature endorsed in the Manchester Act of
1736 which further promoted fustians. 34 Thus, although the 1721 Act was pri-
marily designed to protect the woollen and silk sectors, it was the fustian indus-
try (and later cottons) that benefited most. Wadsworth and Mann place
particular stress upon the role of the 1721 tariff in providing the incentive for
English producers to mass produce plain white cloths at a satisfactory and
uniform standard for the calico-printing sector. 35
31 Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005), 46--84;
Beverly Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons: Asian Trade, Domestic Industry and Consumer Demand',
in Jenkins (ed.), Cambridge History of Western Textiles, 493-512.
32 J. Thomas, Mercantilism and the East India Trade: An Early Phase of the Protection versus
Free Trade Controversy (London, 1926), 125 and 162, cited by lnikori, Africans, 432.
33 Thomas, Mercantilism and the East India Trade, 125--6.
34 O'Brien, Griffiths, and Hunt., 'Political Components', 409.
35 A. P. Wadsworth and Julia de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire,
1600--1780 (Manchester, 1931), 144.

The evidence of retained raw cotton imports suggests a doubling of cotton

manufacture in Britain in the period 1711 to 1760. By the 1750s this used an
average of 2.76 million pounds of cotton per year. 36 This was not a spectacular
growth and probably did little more than replace Indian white cloths, suggesting
that domestic demand for cottons was limited. 37 By the mid-177os 'political
imperatives no longer required the conciliation of Celtic linen interests', 38 and
in 1774 manufacturers were freed to make and finish all-cotton cloths for the
domestic and export markets. By this time the mechanization of spinning had
also started to reduce the cotton industry's dependence upon linen warps, cre-
ating enormous potential elasticity of supply. But even with the abolition of
restrictions on all-cotton cloths the preference in the mass domestic market was
for linens, fustians, and wool textiles. Thus, despite significant state support,
only in the upper end of the market for figured cottons and expensive dress
fabrics did cottons succeed in domestic markets over linen and cotton mixes
before the end of the eighteenth century. 39
As the domestic market for cottons at this time appears to have been
restricted, the major growth of cotton, when it came, was focused upon exports.
Export markets, with political support, grew more quickly than any domestic
market would have been capable of doing. By the time that cotton overtook
woollens in Britain as an export commodity, just after 1800, exports provided
over 60 per cent of the market for British manufactured cottons but less than 40
per cent of the market for wool products. 40There is abundant evidence that the
innovatioqs resulting in export growth were driven by the need to out-produce
Indian textiles in global as well as domestic markets, and 'there is much to
suggest that the manufacturers themselves saw their activities in this light' .41
Design and product innovation was driven, for example, by the need for British
manufacturers to substitute their wares for Indian checks and printed calicoes
that found favour in exchange for slaves in the African seaboard and that later
penetrated the transatlantic markets. In the third quarter of the eighteenth
century cotton checks accounted for around two-thirds of English cotton
exports and these went largely to West Africa and to the American slave plan-
tations.42 The Manchester calico-printing sector that mushroomed at the end
36 B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, Abstractof British HistoricalStatistics(Cambridge, 1962),

177.
37 A fact borne out by evidence from court records and poor law accounts: Styles, 'What were
Cottons for?'
38 O'Brien, Griffiths, and Hunt., 'Political Components', 412.
39 Styles, 'What were Cottons for?'; and id., The Dressof the People.
40
N. F. R. Crafts, BritishEconomicGrowthduringthe IndustrialRevolution(Oxford, 1985), 143.
41 Parthasarathi, 'Great Divergence', 288. See also Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons', 493-512;
Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 116---44.

42 Inikori, Africans, 435.
340 Pat Hudson
of the eighteenth century built its success upon conscious copying of the colours
and designs oflndian competitors. If the pressures of global competition were
an important impetus for European industrialization, then cotton manufactur-
ers were much more exposed to this, including in their domestic markets, than
their counterparts in wool. 'Born out of trade in Asian cloth, English cottons
grew up with an in-built sensitivity to the demands of the metropolitan and cos-
mopolitan markets. '43 This also resulted in a drive to imitate, the need to protect
domestic markets, and a desire to expand exports in competition with Asian
cloths. New growth theory emphasizes the importance of comparative market
size as cause rather than effect of industrial transition. 44 Given cotton's rapid
export success, relative to wool, even before the favourable impact of spinning
innovations upon cloth prices became fully apparent, 45 the dynamic of combin-
ing import substitution with aggressive export promotion must be considered
a vital ingredient in the success of the sector relative to wool.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WOOL
The context of state regulation and promotion of the wool textile industry in
Britain was very different from that of cotton because British woollen cloths
were already superior to the external competition in domestic and in many
global markets by the eighteenth century. By the 1770s not only did wool tex-
tiles, alongside linens, dominate the home market, but huge export success had
been achieved: two-thirds of woollen output and four-fifths of the worsted
output of Yorkshire were exported at that time. 46 However, the state-promoted
pattern of import substitution and an aggressive expansion of overseas markets
was by no means irrelevant for wool because loss of domestic markets for all
fabrics was the feared outcome of allowing substitutable imports. Wool manu-
facturers were the strongest in lobbying for protection against imported cloths
and shared the benefits of military involvement in the extension of overseas
markets. The most important difference in the political economy of wool, and
not present in the pattern oflobbying, regulation, and state support in favour
of cotton, is that there was often conflict and controversy between domestic
wool growers, strongly identified with the landed interest in Parliament, and
the wool textile manufacturing interests. The Select Committee Report on
Woollen Manufactures of 1806 commented in understated terms that there had
43 O'Brien et al., 'Political Components', 413.
44 N. F. R. Crafts, 'Exogenous or Endogenous Growth? The Industrial Revolution
Reconsidered',Journal of Economic History, 55/ 4 (1995), 745.
45 C. Knick Harley, 'Cotton Textile Prices and the Industrial Revolution', Economic History
Review, 51/i (1998), 49-83.

46 Estimates ofThomas Wolrich, cited in Bischoff, Comprehensive History, 187---<).
been in the eighteenth century a 'Class of Laws which bear some traces of a jeal-
ousy of the Manufacturing in favour of the Landed interest of the Country'. 47
It would be easy to suggest that the political economy of the industry, the
much lower impact oflSI, and the strength of the wool growers' lobby made
state policy less favourable to wool textile manufacturing interests than to cotton
and that this in turn helps to explain cotton's relative success. However, the
picture is more complex not least because the wool manufacturers' lobby was
powerful in the eighteenth century, and was supported by the growers where
they also stood to gain. In addition: policy making regarding both sectors was
driven by revenue raising and broader political considerations; European pro-
tectionism was generally stronger against wool textiles than against cottons,
restricting the effective use of tariffs without fear of retribution; the impact of
taxes and tariffs was felt unevenly across the varied wool textile sector (the inter-
ests of woollen as opposed to worsted manufacturers was a major cleavage); and
the cotton, linen, and woollen industries were, to a degree, interdependent eco-
nomically and politically, rather than in competition.
The 1666 statute requiring all to be buried in wool was a signal that the state
recognized the importance of the industry but it was not strongly enforced. The
outcry against the influx of east Indian stuffs in the 1680s and 1690s came
largely from the lobbyists of the woollen industry, including wool growers, and
brought efforts to prohibit, to substitute, and to emulate across the textile sector.
It was widely understood that east India wrought silks were 'chiefly to the prej-
udice of tJ:iewoollen manufacture: for then the better sort of women scorned
them, and they were mostly used instead of serges, tammies and Norwich
stuffs' .48 The ban on wearing imported Asian silks and stuffs and coloured cal-
icoes of 1701 was thus universally approved across the textile sector. 49
From 1700 the wool textile sector was liberated by the repeal of all earlier
duties payable on the export of woollen cloth. However, protectionism for wool
textiles in much of Europe was strong, more so than for cotton, because of the
established wool textile manufacture on the continent. Although favourable
access to the Portuguese market was secured by the Methuen Treaty of 1703
and remained in place until 1831, the French market imposed tariffs of between
20 and 30 per cent following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.50 In 1774 the linen
manufacturers oflreland agitated for duties on imported linen from Germany
and Russia but this was opposed by woollen manufacturers because of fears of
tit-for-tat increases in duties (already high) on all British textiles imported into
47 BPP,House of Commons, 1806 (268), vol. iii: Report of the Select Committeeon the Woollen
Manufacture of England with Minutes of Evidence, 5.

48 England's Advocate in a Letter to a Member of the House of Commons(n.p., 1699), 5 and II,
cited in James, History of the WorstedManufacture, 178---g.

49 James, History of the WorstedManufacture, 181.
so Ibid. 203-5.
342 Pat Hudson
those countries. To a greater degree than in cotton, dependence upon European

continental markets and European protectionism for all of the eighteenth
century restricted the degree to which tariffs and regulation could assist wool
textile manufacture in Britain.
On the supply side, a ban on the export of English wool had been in place
since the mid-seventeenth century, and the Act of Union in 1707 closed the
door to illicit English wool exports via Scotland. Despite these measures, the
eighteenth century was marked by complaints about the extent and ease of
smuggling raw wool out of the country leading to domestic shortages but also
resulting in easier supplies of English combing wool reaching European com-
petitors, particularly the French. 51 From its establishment in 1777, the Worsted
Committee (representative of manufacturers in all areas) provided an important
lobby petitioning against plans to free the export of English wool, arguing not
so much on the basis of a shortage of English wools for the home trade, but that
it would promote rival manufacturing on the continent. They won the day and
obtained a punitive regime to prevent illegal exportation of raw wool and yarns.
Again, the worsted lobby was strong in opposition to allowing Ireland to import
English wool and to export its cloth manufactures following the Act of Union
in 1800 because it was feared that this would give an advantage to Irish manu-
facturers of serges and stuffs. On this occasion the English manufacturers were
unsuccessful but the Worsted Committee continued its strong lobbying against
the illegal export of worsted wools and yarns especially to Portugal and
Germany and against the threatened imposition of soap duties in 1802.
England began to import wool from around 1770. In 1800 a duty of 5s. 3d. a
hundredweight was levied on the import, raised to 6s. 8d. per hundredweight in
1813 and to an excessive 6d. per pound in 1819. 52 This hike reflected both the
power of growers and the revenue needs of the British state and was opposed by
all branches of the wool textile industry. It impacted most severely upon the price
of short wools for the cloth trade but worsted manufacturers also opposed it
because European manufacturers could now obtain their wool on very favourable
terms, enabling them to extend their markets in America and in Russia. Despite
the concerted efforts of manufacturers to get the duty repealed this was strongly
opposed. By 1821 lobbying on both sides was so powerful that the government
developed a stratagem intimating that the tax would be repealed but only if
English wool was allowed to be exported. This split the industrialists' lobby
because short wool manufacturers were unconcerned about what happened to
51 See for example, Observationson Wool and WoollenManufacture ... (London, 1739); The
Consequences of Trade, (Sc., and of the WoollenTracein Particular,by a Draperof London (London,
1740); A Short Essay upon Trade in General cSc., by a Lover of his Country and the Constitutionof
Great Britain (London, 1741);James, History of the WorstedManufacture, 210-11, 225, and 231.
52 Hundredweight is an imperial unit formed of 112 pounds, or 8 stones, and is equivalent to
50.8kg.
surplus stocks of English combing wool whilst worsted manufacturers feared that
allowing the export oflong wools would give a spur to continental competition.
The 1824 bill lowered the tax on imported wool to 3d. per pound and allowed
the legal export of English wool (after a lapse of almost 200 years), subject to a
duty of 2d. per pound, and yarn subject to a 16 per cent duty: 'a strong instance
of the influence of the agricultural interest in the Councils of the nation, and their
determination to use it for what they believed to be their own benefit.' 53
It could be argued that just when cotton was triumphing vis-a-vis wool, the
agricultural interest won out in allowing the export of English wool, seriously
disrupting raw material supply to the industry, providing English long wools
to rivals, and hampering the wool textile sector's ability to compete with cotton.
However, the quid pro quo was cheaper raw wool imports, essential for the
growth of the industry and to its export success because mixes of domestic and
foreign wool were vital to achieve the quality and ranges of cloth demanded. 54
In addition, there is little evidence that fears oflong wool shortage were realized
or that continental rivals were decisively buoyed by the easier supply of English
combing wool. We have seen that wool prices did not rise in the wake of 1824.
In fact short wools saw a 50 per cent or greater reduction by 1827, following a
flood of imports, and prices were not restored to their pre-1823 level until
around 1833 with the growth of stronger demand for short staples on the con-
tinent. 55 By this time improvements in machinery, particularly in combing
machinery, allowed cheaper, shorter staples to be used even in worsted manu-
facture. 56 {'Y the 1840s the availability of Australian wools and the development
of merino, and other shorter wool used in worsteds, came strongly to the rescue
on the supply side of the industry.
It is likely that the complex, sometimes unintended, consequences of policy
concerning the wool trade were not as injurious for the wool textile sector as
contemporaries feared. The worsted sector benefited from an easy supply of
English long wools, making the cost structure of that sector rather more
favourable and dynamic than for woollens for several decades and enabling the
sector to compete well with cottons especially during the Napoleonic Wat
period and its aftermath.
53 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, 399.

54 BPP, House of Lords 1828 (515), VIII: Select Committee on the State of the British Wool
Trade, with Minutes of Evidence, in particular, evidence of John Brooke, James Varley. Import
duties on wool were removed entirely in 1844.
55 BPP, House of Commons, 1833 (690), VI: Report from the Select Committee Appointed to
Enquire into the Present State of Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping, especially the evidence of
Henry Hughes, wool broker.
56 BPP, House ofLords, 1828 (515), vol. viii: Evidence of John Brooke;James, History of the
Worsted Manufacture, 399.

344 Pat Hudson
MARKETS AND PRICES
As indicated above, cottons and woollens were rarely directly competitive in

terms either of price or direct substitutability. Their varying fabrics were used
for different purposes, by different groups in the population. As product
markets became more differentiated so also did the range of niches into which
specialist cloths of all kinds could fit. 57 Cotton was perhaps better able than
wool to fit with some of the developing sensibilities of the market for more
individualized needs (through variety of colour and pattern) and with the
demands for greater hygiene that came with growing sophistication in manners
and entertainment. 58 Cotton's success appears to have depended more upon
its superior properties than on its cheapness. In the 1770s, Assize data show
little difference in price between gowns made of cotton and of silk whilst linen
and worsted gowns were half to two-thirds of the price. 59 Overall, British price
and domestic market data suggest that cotton had a restricted penetration in
the eighteenth century beyond the sphere of high-class and high-priced
figured calicoes and woven checks. In mass markets for lower goods and for
the everyday wear of the working population, woollens, worsteds, and linens
held their own. 60
Why was cotton so much more successful in export markets? Clearly its
ability to mimic indigenous patterns and colours in West Africa and Asia was
important and it more easily substituted for domestic manufactures in many
global markets where indigenous production was cotton based. It was successful
not because it was competing with wool textiles or even linens but because it
was promoted in export markets in competition with indigenous cloths that it
had consciously emulated. Here prices could be important. Thanks to the work
of Cuenca Esteban and ensuing debates between Esteban and others-princi-
pally C. Knick Harley-we now know much more about cotton piece goods
prices than hitherto. In 1994 Esteban calculated that the price of cotton cloth
fell dramatically by around one-third between 1770 and 1801 and by 50 per cent
57 For an idea of the varieties of worsteds and worsted mixes in production for different
markets and consumers as early as 1739 see Observationson Wool; and James, History of the
WorstedManufacture, 225-31, 362-5.
58 Daniel Roche, The Cultureof Clothing:Dressand Fashionin the 'AncienRegime'(Cambridge,
1994), 44-63, 503-19; Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process(Oxford, 2nd edn. 1994), 60--160;T.
H. Breen, 'The Meaning of Things: Interpreting the Consumer Economy in the Eighteenth
Century', in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumptionand the World of Goods(London,
1993), 249-60; WoodruffD. Smith, Consumptionand the Making of Respectability,r6oo-r8oo
(New York, 2002); Styles, The Dressof the People,ch. 3.
59 Styles, 'What were Cottons for?'
60 Styles, The Dressof the People,passim;Lemire, 'Fashion and Tradition'.
more by 1815.61 Harley's more modest estimates of the price fall based upon
price data provided by American importers, for a range of counts of wefts and
warps, especially of the coarser cloths and of cotton/linen mixes, suggest that
the decline was much less significant. Initially it was only warp yarns and
superfine calicoes that were significantly affected as these felt the impact of
mechanized spinning most directly. Common calico prices were roughly stable
to the end of the eighteenth century and declined much less sharply thereafter.
It was only in the 1820s and 1830s, with the mechanization of weaving, that
coarser cloth prices saw marked decline. 62 Assuming Harley's estimates to be
more accurate than Esteban's, how competitive were wool textile prices in mass
markets for those cloths substitutable with cotton?
Data collected by Harley from the records for American importers can be
supplemented with additional price data from eighty-one importing firms for
both cotton and wool textile imports considered by Maw. 63 Maw's data show
first and foremost the great variability of types and prices of wool textiles, mixes,
and cotton fabrics (as well as linens and silks) in transatlantic trade, suggesting
that competitiveness in variety, function, and fashion was as important as, if not
more important than, price competition between the two sectors. Nevertheless
prices for many of the wool textile and worsted ranges were some 50 per cent or
so cheaper by the 1820s than they had been prior to the Napoleonic War period.
The cheapest fustians and checks in importers' hands were half the price oflow
worsteds in the last third of the eighteenth century but many cotton cloths, such
as sattinefs, velverets, and quilts, were of similar price to the middle ranges of
Yorkshire worsteds. Prints and muslins were slightly cheaper per piece than
middling worsteds by the first quarter of the nineteenth century. High-order
woollen goods were two or three times more expensive than analogous cottons
but were nevertheless represented in considerable quantities.
There is no evidence that woollens were being priced out of the market by
cottons. Cotton shirtings, sheetings, and checks were the cheapest fabrics by
piece and by yardage but these had no easily substitutable equivalent in wool
and neither did cotton handkerchiefs, which were stocked in great variety and
wide price ranges. It is difficult directly to compare price data for different
fabrics by yard or by piece because of different widths and lengths and also
because of big differences in thickness, weight, and purpose. Outside of narrow
overlaps between coarse cottons and low worsteds, and between patterned
cloths in cotton and worsted at the upper end of the market for household fur-
61 Javier Cuenca Esteban, 'British Textile Prices, 1770---1831:

Are British Growth Rates Worth
Revising Once Again?', EconomicHistory Review, 47II ( 1994), 66---rn5;id., 'Further Evidence of
Falling Prices of Cotton Cloth, 1768-1816', EconomicHistory Review, 48/i ( 1995), 145-50.
62 Harley, 'Cotton Textile Prices'.
63 Maw, 'Anglo-American Trade'.
Pat Hudson
nishings, there is a lack of comparability of the cloths. However, the data are
suggestive of two things: first that competition between cotton and wool textiles
was not simply or even largely a question of price, and second that the price dif-
ferentials of substitutable cloths were not marked before the 1830s.64
If price is of only limited explanatory value in the rise of cottons over wool
textiles before the 1830s, perhaps we should focus upon export markets and
market institutions. One might argue simply that cottons were suited to a wider
range of climatic conditions than woollens and worsteds. Certainly in tropical
and subtropical markets cottons had an edge, though there were many niche
markets for woollens such as fine blue Says for the Guinea coast, scarlet cloths
for Turkish turbans, and black fine Says and shalloons for Catholic southern
Europe: 'worn bye friars Jesuits priests and old nuns wich the like these sorts of
base better than brood cloath because itt being slender the can lap itt about them
and comes in cheap. ' 65 But markets for British and European textiles were
found as much in temperate and seasonal as in Mediterranean or tropical
regions. Thus broad white camblets suited mandarin China for winter robes,
and camblets dyed in the yarn were sold for winter wear in northern Europe.
Glazed tammies were also in great demand on the continent in the 179os.66
Wool textiles also had an advantage over cottons in their range from petticoats,
stockings, and shoe coverings through dress goods to outer garments and cloaks
for cold climates and in carpeting and upholstery fabrics.
One might expect that the rise of new entrepreneurial dynasties in cotton
would have been less fettered by traditional and entrenched market institutions
and credit practices than those in wool but there is little evidence to support
this. 67 A good illustration would appear, at first sight, to be the dominant role
of London factors in the wool textile trade of the eighteenth century. They
appear to have flourished at the expense of more direct trade between manufac-
turers and their clients that might better have matched commodities to the
needs of distant markets. Bowen has shown that the East India Company relied
largely upon Blackwell Hall Factors in their late eighteenth-century attempts
to find woollen cloths suitable for the Asian market. The tender system used by
64
A point borne out by the absence of remark about price competition between cottons and
woollens in the contemporary literature before the second quarter of the nineteenth century. For
an early passing remark 'cotton has had a great influence on lowerEnglish cloths' (my italics), see
BPP, House ofLords, 1828 (515), VIII: EvidenceofJames Hubbard, woo/stapler,Leeds,200.
65
Cited in John Smail (ed.), WoollenManufacturing in Yorkshire: The MemorandumBooks of
John Brearley, Cloth Frizzer at Wakefield,I 758-I 762 (Woodbridge, 2001), II 6; for niche markets
for wool textiles, see also James, History of WorstedManufacture, 362.
66 James, History of WorstedManufacture,309-10, citing Senex in the East Anglian Newspaper,
21 February 1832, and Henry Hall, 'Reminiscences of the Worsted Manufacture by an

Octogenarian', c.1850.
67
Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade;Hudson, Genesisof Industrial Capital;Maw, 'Anglo-
American Trade'.
the Company in dealing with the London factors made it vulnerable to combi-
nations of suppliers who could control the price. 68 As Yorkshire manufacturers
and merchants were increasingly bypassing these factors by the later eighteenth
century, the company tended to deal, via Blackwell Hall, in cloths from West
Country and Norwich suppliers, who were not the most competitive-partic-
ularly in the sorts of textiles that might have competed in price and weight with
native Indian producers. As long as the Company's dealing with Blackwell
Factors comprised a near monopoly it was difficult for Yorkshire manufactures
to be accepted in this trade. However, there is no evidence that private or con-
traband traders in wool fared much better in east Asia than the Company. This
suggests that merchanting structures and monopolies are unlikely to have been
the major obstacle to exporting success.
In the late 1780s the East India Company dispatched samples from Halifax,
Manchester, and Norwich to Calcutta, where the authorities were asked to
assess whether such cloths could be sold 'without interfering with or proving
injurious to the interests of the native manufacturers whom we conceive our-
selves likewise bound to protect to the utmost of our power'. 69 In the eyes of the
company it is clear that wool textiles represented a conflict of interest between
the policy of promoting the 'National object' (and profits from trade) and fear
of undermining the native economy and its buoyancy as a tax base. This may
well have been the major explanation for the company's limited success with
wool in India.
As earlJ as the 1780s much of the British export trade in wool textiles, par-
ticularly trom Yorkshire and especially for the transatlantic markets, was being
conducted not through London trading monopolies but through merchants res-
°
ident in the producing regions. 7 Certainly, by the end of the Napoleonic War
period, it is difficult to argue that there were any major differences in the mar-
keting and associated financial and credit practices of British cotton and wool
textile cloths. Success for both sectors was based upon non-metropolitan net-
works of northern manufacturers and merchants and their counterparts in the
Americas and elsewhere. 71
It is important to remember that the same merchants generally handled both
cottons and wool textiles, particularly in the burgeoning transatlantic trade.
Merchants had frequently cut their teeth with woollen and worsted exports in
68 Huw V. Bowen, The Businessof Empire: The East India Companyand ImperialBritain, I756-
I833 (Cambridge, 2006), 256.

69 Directors to Bengal, 12 April 1786, quoted in Bowen, Businessof Empire, 249.
70 Hudson, Genesis of Industrial Capital, 155-81; John Smail, Merchants, Markets and
Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1999); Maw,
'Anglo-American Trade'.
71 For the most recent research on this, using both British and American sources, see Maw,
'Anglo American Trade', chs. 5 and 6.

Pat Hudson
establishing, trading partners, market information networks, and credit prac-

tices, before turning more fully to cotton. The retail-oriented nature of the
North American markets for British textiles from the later eighteenth century
onwards favoured batch sales of assortments of varied textiles (cottons, linens,
woollens, and worsteds) rather than the selling of large lots of undifferentiated
goods. This discouraged the continuation of direct merchanting by specialized
manufacturers of either woollens or cottons and placed much business in the
hands of Liverpool merchants and their agents on the Atlantic seaboard, who
could assemble the desired varieties of cloths in batches of suitable size for pur-
chase by a myriad of American shopkeepers. 72 It also gave a competitive edge
to American importing firms who kept an agent in Lancashire or Yorkshire.
One such firm, W. andJ. Hurd of Boston (who had a partner in Manchester
after 1800 ), ordered woollens from Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, Rochdale, and
Dews bury and cottons from at least twenty firms in Manchester. 73
British cotton exports certainly benefited from transaction costs in the
transatlantic trade that had already been lowered by trade in wool. The wool
trade also shared and helped to pioneer new commercial practices in the early
nineteenth century, such as merchants exporting at their own risk and experi-
menting with the auction system in low cloths. 74 Both sectors took full advan-
tage of the extension of credit via national and international bills of exchange
and of the London as well as provincial capital and credit markets. 75
Maintenance of close links between merchanting and manufacturing was
important in adapting production to suit varied markets, and both cotton and
wool textiles were similarly enmeshed in mercantile networks that were adept
in this respect. 76
CONCLUSION
The brief of this chapter was to discuss the limits of wool in relation to the
success of cotton as a global industry in the period of Britain's industrialization.
There is no evidence to suggest that wool textiles were in crisis, that their
markets were being undermined, or that the limits to wool supply were in
72 Smai1,Merchants,u5-17, 138----9; Maw, 'Anglo-American Trade', ch. 6 and 255---6.
73 Maw, 'Anglo-American Trade', 256.
74 Ibid. 222 and 255; Hudson, Genesisof Industrial Capital, 171-3.
75 For a recent study of this credit revolution in the transatlantic trades and its impact upon
British industrialization see Mina Ishizu, 'Commercial Finance during the Industrial Revolution:
A Study of Local, National and International Credit' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cardiff
University, 2008).
76 Hudson, Genesisof Industrial Capital, 155-81; Smail, Merchants;Maw, 'Anglo-American
Trade'.
danger of being reached. British cotton benefited disproportionately from the

ISI and export promotion that characterized the fiscal military state. Though
protectionism was contingent and focused upon promoting woollens, silks, and
Celtic linens, it was cotton that benefited most from having felt the wind of
Asian competitiveness that provoked the desire to supplant Asian calicoes in
domestic and export markets.
The British wool textile sector was less attuned to ISI than cotton and had a
different political economy. There was no switch from protected domestic
markets to promoted export markets to parallel that in cotton. Difficulties in
fine wool supply were experienced in the post-Napoleonic War period when
the growers' lobby was strong. This may have been crucial in giving cotton a
fillip in Britain at the expense of wool and was certainly important in hastening
the incorporation of cotton warps and in seeing some transfer of activity out of
woollens and into worsteds and cotton. It is however debatable whether the
obstacles to raw material supply in wool were any more important than those
for cotton in the early nineteenth century, and near-free trade in wool (both
exports and imports), from 1824, can be seen to have benefited the manufactur-
ing interests as much as it benefited growers.
Illustration 16.1. A woman spinning and carding wool, from The Costumeof Yorkshire,by
George Walker ofSeacroft, London, 1814.
Kind permission of the British Library, 143.g.1, plate XXIX, opposite 69.
350 Pat Hudson
The wool textile sector was flexible and innovative, seeking to produce new
ranges of cloth to fit markets at all levels. It did well in the bulk of ranges that
avoided direct competition with cotton cloths and held its own through much
of the eighteenth century, certainly in domestic and European markets, in many
ranges where it did compete with cotton. Profit rates and risk levels were no
more testing in woollen manufacture than in cotton. 77 The mechanization of
spinning and of weaving were necessarily somewhat slower in wool textiles
because of the nature of the fibre (Illustration 16. 1 ), but extensive use of cotton
warps and expansion of the worsted and mixed sectors ensured a high degree of
mechanization and of price competitiveness. If cotton was the first industry with
a global reach, this was achieved alongside wool and not primarily, or signifi-
cantly, at the expense of the older-established sector.
77 Hudson, Genesisof Industrial Capital, 235-45; Julian Hoppit, Risk and Failure in English
Business,1700-r800 (Cambridge, 1987).

17
THE GEOPOLITICS OF A GLOBAL INDUSTRY
Eurasian Divergence and the Mechanization of
Cotton Textile Production in England
PATRICK O'BRIEN
Following the publication of three now famous metanarratives by Andre Gunder

Frank, David Landes, and Kenneth Pomeranz (dealing with the global problem
of when, how, and why labour productivity and standards ofliving varied between
economies located in the eastern and western parts of Eurasia), the divergence
debate is now top of the agenda for global economic history. 1 Obviously the
'when' question takes epistemological precedence for historians. They argue that
divergence occurred when western Europe began to mechanize its industries
some time in the eighteenth century. Until recently, research and debate over
explanations concerned with why divergence first became discernible, and then
unmistakable, has taken place at macroeconomic and environmental levels and
with reference to extensive geographical spaces. It has also focused upon dating
divergent'levels and trajectories for real wages and has deployed both mercantilist
and classical growth models to structure the discussion. 2
This chapter attempts to map the issue of divergence onto the classic litera-
ture of the First Industrial Revolution by shifting attention away from the
macro focus on continental economies and analyses of trends in prices and
wages. It concentrates instead on one key industry in the overall trajectory of
divergence between Europe and Asia, namely cotton textiles. The first section
of this chapter suggests that existing methodologies behind the modern debate
1 Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1997); Kenneth
Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy
(Princeton, 2000); David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich
and Some so Poor (London, 1998).
2
Kenneth Pomeranz, 'Is There an East Asian Development Path? Long-Term Comparisons,
Constraints, and Continuities',Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 44/3
(2001), 322-62; id., 'Political Economy and Ecology on the Eve oflndustrialization: Europe,
China, and the Global Conjuncture', American Historical Review, 107/ 2 (2002), 42 5-46; Peer H.
H. Vries, 'Are Coal and Colonies Really Crucial? Kenneth Pomeranz and the Great Divergence',
Journal of World History, 12/ 2 (2001), 407-46; Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'The Great Divergence',
Past and Present, 176 (2002), 275-93. See also Jonathon W. Moses and Torbjorn L. Knutsen,
Ways of Knowing Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research (Basingstoke, 2007).
352 Patrick O'Brien
on divergence (namely Ricardian models of comparative advantage or models

of connections linked to demand and consumption) are not sufficient to explain
either the relocation of one of the world's major industries from Asia to Europe,
or its precocious mechanization and reorganization into a factory-based indus-
try. My approach gives prominence to the geopolitical contexts within which
this industry developed in Europe, and more specifically Britain, over the eigh-
teenth century. This will allow us to reintroduce a neglected element in recent
debates on divergence, namely the role of technology. In short, my argument
suggests that technological change and the rise of Lancashire should be analysed
within an evolving global matrix of resources, market opportunities, and polit-
ical power that were not just the causes but eventually became the outcomes of
European technology as exemplified by the case of cotton textiles.
WAYS OF REPRESENTING DIVERGENCE
While historians are excited at the prospect of writing economic history on a

global scale, they have remained uncertain about the approaches, methods, and
paradigms to employ in order to engage with problems, ostensibly unbounded
by the chronologies and frontiers taken as given for orthodox contributions to
local, regional, and national economic histories. Historians know, however, that
over the centuries locations for many manufacturing industries moved from one
country to another and that the family of models associated with classical the-
ories of trade drawn from Ricardo and Heckscher-Ohlin which have accounted
for changing patterns in the concentration of industry around the world in
terms of regionally or nationally based comparative advantages derived from
evolving factor endowments are unsatisfactory. 3
What remains a problematic issue is that Ricardian-based theory requires
tests based on econometric analysis. So far, only two factors have received suf-
ficient attention: labour and capital. This has produced partial explanations for
intra-regional, international, and inter-continental shifts in the geographical
location of most forms of industrial production. 4 Moreover, the reliance upon
Ricardian models can be seen as constricting as they deal with chronologies that
are too truncated to illuminate forces at work in long-run development.
Furthermore, the lack of quantitative data for the early modern period makes it
almost impossible to construct even conventional measures such as prices and
3 Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World
Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton, 2007).

4
Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, 'Lancashire, India and Shifting Comparative
Advantages in Cotton Textiles, 1700-1850: The Neglected Role of Factor Prices', unpublished
paper, 2007. See also id., 'The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices and Economic
Development in Europe and Asia, 1500-1800', Economic History Review, 59h (2006), 2-31.
The Geopolitics of a Global Industry 353
the number of weavers per loom, or take family structures behind labour inputs
into account, which also qualifies the explanatory power ofRicardian analyses
and the measurement of comparative advantages. 5
Meanwhile the divergence debate has passed on from the Euro- and Sino-
centric acrimony that marked its early days to the investigation of potentially
rigorous ways of qualifying, extending, and deepening explanations that have
contested simplistic geographical reductionism and Weberian categories of cul-
tural exceptionalism as key factors explaining the different economic and social
trajectories of continents throughout history. The heuristic way to conduct
research at this level is to regionalize vast geographical entities like 'East' and
'West' and to deconstruct amorphous and unmeasurable categories like national
output into specific industries and sectors that have been involved in global pro-
duction trade over long spans of time. There are several other examples, but
cotton textiles fulfil all the criteria required for cotton to be a major building
block for the advance of global economic history. The industry's protracted and
(after 1650) accelerated shift from Asia to Europe necessitates-as many of the
essays in this volume show-a history that is spatially wide ranging, chronolog-
ically extensive, and draws upon insights derivable from the natural and several
social sciences, as well as history and economics.
Although factor endowments and relative prices could be central for the
investigation of conjunctures in history, modern historians of material culture
prefer to investigate issues oflong-term divergence by concentrating their analy-
sis on deII]and- rather than supply-side explanations. The role of consumers is
seen as central not just for Europe, but globally, in explaining the trajectories of
success and/ or decline of cotton industries across the world. The adoption of
cotton textiles by households first in Europe and subsequently in the entire
western hemisphere is considered central for the story of the rise of cotton textile
manufacturing in Europe and by extension in the overall narrative of the great
divergence. Demand-led investigations designed to tackle this question are con-
cerned with all the factors promoting the extension, deepening, and integration
of markets. 6 They explore the reasons that led European consumers to relocate
their expenditures away from textiles made from wool, flax, hemp, and their
mixtures produced for millennia in that continent. Thus, recent scholarship in
5 See for instance the debate over cotton textile prices during the industrial revolution: Javier
Cuenca Esteban, 'British Textile Prices, 1770---1831:Are British Growth Rates Worth Revising
Once Again?', EconomicHistory Review, 47/r (1994), 66-ro5; id., 'Further Evidence of Falling
Prices of Cotton Cloth, 1768-1816', EconomicHistory Review, 48/r (1995), 145-50.
6 See for instance Beverly Lemire, 'Fashioning Cottons: Asian Trade, Domestic Industry and
Consumer Demand, 1660---1780', in David Jenkins (ed.), The CambridgeHistory of Western

Textiles(Cambridge, 2003), i. 493-512; id., 'Transforming Consumer Custom: Linen, Cotton,
and the English Market, 1660---1800', in Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), The
EuropeanLinen Industry in HistoricalPerspective(Oxford, 2003), 187-207.
354 Patrick O'Brien
national and global histories elaborates upon the complex anthropology and evo-
lution of taste formation for novel forms of consumption by households in
different parts of an integrating global economy.7
This second approach uses connective methodologies in global history that
link Indian products to European or South-East Asian consumers, and explains
the role oflndian merchants and European chartered companies in reshaping
commodities to suit evolving tastes of specific world regions. It integrates quan-
titative analyses of trade statistics with knowledge of surviving artefacts to
account for consumer preferences and taste formation. Alas, illuminating as
they are, demand-led approaches often fail to identify key variables involved,
and the dynamics connecting consumer taste, demand, and economic develop-
ment are underspecified and rarely quantified. First, the question of why it took
a very long time for Europeans to exploit the potential (realized for centuries in
Asia) to manufacture numerous varieties of cloth from a natural and tradable
fibre that had considerable advantages compared to Europe's indigenous fibres
of wool, flax, and hemp remains unanswered. Second! y, and at a more parochial
level, demand-side explanations face the challenge of accounting for specific
chronologies and geographies of industrialization. Why did England (or rather
Lancashire) take the lead in mechanizing the discrete processes of preparing,
spinning, weaving, and finishing cotton cloth? What exactly was the relationship
between consumption and the transformation of cotton textiles into a mecha-
nized factory-based urban industry?
Western experiments in the consumption and proto-manufacturing of fus-
tians began in Italy and south Germany in the later Middle Ages. 8 Why this
phase of the introduction of cotton textiles into consumption across Europe failed
to diffuse more widely, and why precocious attempts at spinning, weaving, and
finishing in northern Italy and southern Germany never matured to reach a
plateau of possibilities from where mechanization was possible, remain as a coun-
terfactual puzzle. The altogether more traditional question posed by historians-
which is the core of this chapter-concentrates instead on why England
mechanized its cotton textile industry before rival centres of production on the
mainland of Europe, North America, and coastal regions of Asia.
Cultural history and demand-side explanations have certainly exposed
limitations of histories that begin with the import oflndian cottons into London
in the seventeenth century and end with a mechanized English industry domi-
nating world markets for cottons in the 1820s. They expose such explanations
7 Maxine Berg, 'Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution', in
Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (eds.), Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates,Desiresand
DelectableGoods(London, 2003), 228-44; id., 'In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and Ilritish
Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century', Past and Present,82 (2004), 85-142.
8 See the chapter by Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui in this volume.
as provincial in nature and constrained by theoretical and statistical parameters

of international trade theory. Cotton textiles had attained the status of a global
industry in Asia and on the mainland of Europe long before this was taken
forward to become the world's first fully mechanized industry.
That significant conjuncture (to use a Braudelian category) occurred between
the times of Kay and Roberts, that is between 1733 and 1825. The conjuncture
which appeared initially in England cannot be satisfactorily explained by analy-
ses of material culture or consumer revolution that are peculiarly English over
this period of time. Relative prices and incomes must appear in the story.
Demand-led theory neither addresses the significance attached to demand nor
helps with explanations for a conjuncture that was 'English'.
My chapter proposes to remain agnostic on supply- or demand-led explana-
tions for the great divergence. Both are heuristic and limited when it comes to
providing a convincing narrative for the relocation of a major global industry
from Asia to Europe. The mechanization and reorganization of cotton textile
manufacturing cannot be left to languish in endless repetition of accounts that
concentrate on the exceptionalism of Lancashire or a peculiarly English eigh-
teenth-century consumer revolution. My chapter proposes to move on and
reflect on how technological innovation might be reframed on a global canvas
by considering not so much the technologies themselves but the geopolitical
contexts from which they emerged.
I
THE GEOPOLITICS OF COTTON TEXTILES
Perhaps a convincing way to construct a plausible historical narrative of the

reasons behind the lead taken by England in mechanizing cotton textile produc-
tion is to place the island's geopolitical and commercial advantages alongside its
natural and accumulated human endowments available for precocious industri-
alization. 9 Such a narrative might persuade us that England's advantages seem
post hocto form entirely favourable contexts for the mechanization and reorgan-
ization of an industry linked at every stage ofits development to overseas trade.
By the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, Britain had attained the status of Europe's
leading commercial and imperial power with a hegemonic standing navy
required to maintain external security with internal stability. Armed force sup-
ported England's policy of aggressive mercantilism pursued decade after decade
9 On this topic see Trevor Griffith, Phillip Hunt, and Patrick K. O'Brien, 'Political
Components of the Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry,
1660--1774', EconomicHistory Review, 44/3 (1991), 395-423; eid., 'Scottish, Irish, and Imperial
Connections: Parliament, the Three Kingdoms, and the Mechanization of Cotton Spinning in
Eighteenth-Century Britain', EconomicHistory Review, 6I I 3 (2008), 625-50.
Patrick O'Brien
Illustration 17.1. The Louisbourg / Britannia Flag, 1745. Cotton. Carried at Siege of
Louisbourgh under the expedition of Sir William Pepperell; command of St Lawrence River.
© Collection of the New-York Historical Society, USA
in order to increase its share of gains from trade, shipping, and commercial serv-
ices at the expense of European rivals, including their weakly defended colonial
markets (Illustration 17.1). In addition, English mercantilism formed the
context for the regular import of three textiles that appear to have been central
for the development of domestic production: namely, finished cloth from India,
linen yarn from Ireland, and bales of raw cotton cultivated, cleaned, and ginned
on slave plantations in the Caribbean and Americas. All three imports increased
over time and became foundational commodities for the long-term growth of a
factory-based mechanized cotton textile industry.
Their significance as inputs produced by cheap and exploited labour over-
seas has long been clear. For example, for some five decades before they were
gradually excluded by tariffs and bans from legal access to the British Isles,
cheap Asian cotton textiles created, expanded, and integrated a domestic
market for what had been only an alien exotic and marginal textile, compared
to the indigenous woollen and linen cloth and luxurious silks. Prices were crit-
ical, but it also took time and investment by merchants to alter elasticities of
substitution (i.e. shift purchases) in the direction of any novel product. Perhaps
that process of import substitution covers a substantial part of demand-side
elements in narratives constructed to show how the rapid rise of an English

cotton textile industry came to pass.
Another chapter (set in a historical context of internal colonization) would
be the political economy of state-enforced intra-regional division of labour
between the long-established proto-industry for the manufacture of fustian in
Lancashire and the areas oflreland and Scotland producing linen yarn. 10 Prior
to its transformation, the industry in Lancashire imported linen yarns, spun by
cheap and subsidized rural labour living mainly in Ireland but also, on a much
smaller scale, in Scotland. In the second half of the eighteenth century, when
Britain's domestic supplies of cheap linen yarns became less elastic, incentives
intensified to exploit the potential of cotton by producing a commercially viable
substitute for cheap fustian cloth, which could be woven from wefts and warps
spun entirely from imported raw cotton. Fortuitously, as it turned out, cotton
fibres also embodied tensile and other properties relatively favourable for the
spinning, weaving, and finishing of cloth.
The substitution of cotton for linen yarn would have been impossible without
another geopolitical secure source from which English manufacturers could
acquire cheap and abundant supplies of raw cotton. The plantations established
in the Caribbean, Virginia, Georgia, the Carolines, and elsewhere in the
Americas became in the course of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
the centres of production for a variety of produce that include cocoa and coffee,
dyes, and cotton. A coercive system of slave labour was adopted as the most effi-
cient productive organization. Its triangular nature (selling cotton textiles to
Africa in e'xchange for slaves; transporting slaves to the America in exchange
for raw cotton and other produce; and sale of these materials in Europe) is well
known beyond the confines of economic history. Joseph Inikori's contribution
to the debate has been to highlight in what ways the economic, social, and cul-
tural suffering of African nations contributed specifically to a seminal episode
of economic development: the First Industrial Revolution. 11 England, more
than any other nation in Europe, was able to use naval power to reap the benefits
of the global sphere for the cultivation, trade, and human exploitation associated
with cotton.
The matrix of possibilities and opportunities for development of a cotton
textile industry emerged and evolved from prior and sustained commitments
by the state to naval defence for the realm as joint ventures with private enter-
prise for the protection of commercial expansion overseas into the Americas,
10 Griffith, Hunt, and O'Brien, 'Scottish, Irish, and Imperial Connections'.

11 Joseph E. lnikori, 'Slavery and Capitalism in Africa', Indian Historical Review, 15/J-2
(1988---<)),137-51; id., 'Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in England',
Social ScienceHistory, 13/ 4 (1989), 343-79; id.,Africans and the IndnstrialRevolutionin England:
A Study of International Trade and EconomicDevelopment(Cambridge, 2002).
Patrick O'Brien
Africa, India, and China. This facilitated internal colonization and economic
regulation of England's peripheries (Ireland and Scotland); international trade
in raw material and labour; and an expanding commerce in finished products.
Of course, these maritime and imperial opportunities for economic expansion
overseas were also available to the rest of Europe. Nevertheless, it is arguably
the case that the English state seized and sustained advantages for the island's
domestic commerce and industry, and in particular for the long-term develop-
ment of its cotton industry. In retrospect, they matured from the time of the
Commonwealth onwards into a more effective form of mercantilism than any-
thing provided by states for its competitors on the mainland of Europe or in
Asia. Thus, English mercantilism (including colonization and the Atlantic slave
trade) aggregates into a set of necessary conditions for the emergence of a mech-
anized cotton industry that supplemented and complemented long-established
indigenous woollen and linen industries. Along with the propensities of English
consumers, mercantilism provides a context of historical and necessary condi-
tions for a conjuncture of technological transformation.
THE CONJUNCTURE OF TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION: FROM

THE FLYING SHUTTLE (1733) TO THE SELF-ACTING MULE (1825)
Such conditions are not sufficient and any global history of technology demon-
strates that progress occurs over very long periods of time as it is the product of
the accumulation of useful and reliable knowledge that emanates from every
culture and all parts of the world. Nevertheless, discontinuities appear in par-
ticular locations at particular periods. Famous breakthroughs in the form of
machines for the preparation, spinning, weaving, and finishing of cotton cloth
emerged in England over the century after John Kay patented the flying shuttle
in 1733. Alas, such technological innovations remain much easier to describe
than to explain, as will become clear when we discuss the main theories pro-
posed by historians to explain invention and adoption of new technologies in
the eighteenth century.
One general theory continues to make sense to economists who are inclined
to predict that the flow ofinnovations designed to save labour is likely to rise in
economies with relatively high wages. Insofar as relative wage levels are con-
cerned, the incentive to diffuse labour-saving machinery does appear from some
recent datasets to have been stronger in England compared to the mainland of
Europe and far stronger in Europe compared to India and China. 12 But there
12 Wages measured in grams of silver for building workers employed in a sample oflarge cities
across Eurasia can be used to represent levels of wages paid to skilled and unskilled workers across
the global industry for cotton textiles. Robert C. Allen, 'The Great Divergence in European
The Geopoliticsof a Global Industry 359
are caveats. First, the relative levels of silver wages for building workers (com-
monly used to create wage series) are not exactly unambiguous as indicators for
the elasticity oflabour supplies to textile industries across Eurasia. 13 Moreover,
in the case of England, there is no evidence that domestic wage levels diverged
from those on the continent during the conjuncture between 1733 and 1825, or
that employers in the cotton textile industry complained about rising wage costs
over that period of accelerated mechanization. As Maxine Berg has recently
observed, businessmen tended to regard new machinery as the means to cir-
cumvent shortages of skills and to ensure closer control over the qualities of
cotton yarn and cloth. 14 Insights derived from theories of 'induced technical
change' are not irrelevant to the question of why England mechanized the man-
ufacture of cotton ahead of its rivals, but they remain untested.
A second, more popular, but rather controversial theory is the endlessly
repeated 'challenge and response' model which posits that John Kay's invention
of the flying shuttle in 1733 initiated a sequence of challenges and positive
responses to each process in the chain of production from the preparation and
spinning of fibres through to the weaving, dyeing, and printing of finished cloth.
The notion of a reinforcing mechanism, whereby the successful mechanization
of any single process in a sequence of production running from raw material
input to final output, will create shortages, incentives, and opportunities up and
down stream, cannot be validated or invalidated. Yet it just about merits a
mention in histories of the cotton or similar industries where processes could, in
theory, be ;:aken over by machines sequentially. The problem with the model is
that it fits almost every situation and never explains variations in lags between
challenge and response. Furthermore, the machine that is supposed to have ini-
tiated some kind of take-off into self-sustained technological progress (Kay's
shuttle) exercised an entirely limited impact upon overall demand for cotton yarn
and diffused too slowly to be systematically linked to the appearance of machin-
ery for carding, roving, and spinning that came onstream several decades later. 15
Wages and Prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War', Explorations in Economic
History, 38/ 4 (2001), 411-47; Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, 'Early Modem Great
Divergence'.
13 Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness in the Eighteenth
Century', Past and Present, 158 (1998), 79-109.

14 Maxine Berg, 'Quality, Cotton and the Global Luxury Trade', in Giorgio Riello and
Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothedthe World: Cotton Textilesand the Indian Ocean,1500-
1850 (Leiden, forthcoming 2009), ch. 15.
15 Trevor Griffiths, Philip A. Hunt, and Patrick K. O'Brien, 'Inventive Activity in the British
Textile Industry, 1700-1800',Journal of EconomicHistory, 52/ 4 (1992), 881--906.See also Patrick

K. O'Brien, Trevor Griffiths, and Phillip Hunt, 'Technological Change during the First
Industrial Revolution: The Paradigm Case of Textiles, 1688-1846', in Robert Fox (ed.),
TechnologicalChange(Amsterdam, 1996), 155-76. For a test of this model see Griffith, Hunt and
O'Brien, 'Curious History and Eminent Demise'.
Patrick O'Brien
Finally, statistical tests on patent and other records for invention expose no evi-
dence of clustering that would signify research and development concentrated
upon remedying shortages or responding to price signals created by imbalances
in flows of intermediate and final outputs. As and when clustering appears in the
data for textile industries, it centres around improvements to the appearance of
prototype operational models for the preparation of fibres, spinning, and
weaving, as well as finishing processes. The latter added considerable value to
cloth, but for inexplicable reasons dyeing and printing cloth are often missing
from the model.
Finally, such conditions for the rise of an English industry will not complete
a narrative that must account for the appearance of water- and stream-powered
machines that over the course of a century completely transformed the produc-
tion of cotton textiles. Mechanization points historians towards agency or rather
to a remarkable group of proto-mechanical engineers and technicians who
invented, developed, improved, and maintained the machinery that raised the
productivity oflabour employed in the preparation, spinning, weaving, and fin-
ishing (dyeing and printing) of this imported natural fibre into cotton cloth.
There is a rich vein of traditional historiography dealing with agency that
traverses the spectrum from heroic biography to modern social-science accounts
that derogate the role of individuals in technological innovation. It does that,
first, by abandoning notions of invention or breakthroughs in favour of
processes of continuity embodied in taxonomies of development, improvement,
and incremental change which are easier to model and explain than the osten-
sibly random actions of significant individuals. Economic historians who have
studied the English cotton industry will continue to represent its precocious
mechanization as an evolution that was neither inevitable, linear, nor continu-
ous, but proceeded between the times of Kay and Roberts by a series of upward
steps. These were marked by the emergence into the public domain of a
sequence of macro-inventions which, as prototype machines, gave rise to inter-
vals of modification, improvement, and learning-by-using before they became
commercially viable. Secondly, most Anglo-American historians will continue
to 'absorb' innovators into historical, economic, and cultural contexts that fore-
ground economic and social factors such as claims for the exceptionally high
densities of mechanical skills embodied in the English workforce and the
extraordinary support that a peculiarly English 'culture of enlightenment'
accorded to technological innovations of all kinds. 16
Induced technological change has not been and probably cannot be validated
by data. The conjecture looks plausible but the arguments need to be backed by
systematic comparisons with rival and established regions for textile production
16 Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton,
2002); Margaret C.Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (Oxford, 1997).
The Geopoliticsof a Global Industry
in Europe, India, and China. Cultural sympathies for and antipathies towards
innovations are significant, but it is only their suppression that leaves hard evi-
dence for historians inclined to reduce narratives of England's lead to a culture
of enlightenment particularly propitious for mechanization. At present only the
impressions of foreign travellers and industrial spies lend support to the view
that financial entrepreneurial and technical capacities available for mechanical
engineering in the British Isles were somehow embedded within a culture that
looks post hoc to have been evidently superior to cultures surrounding other
locations where textiles were produced on the mainland of Europe or the coastal
provinces oflndia and China.
While the precocious mechanization of English cotton textile production
cannot be plausibly represented as a random walk, it is not easy to construct a
convincing narrative moving from necessaryto necessaryand sufficientconditions
for the rise of the Lancashire cotton industry. Biographies of'the great inven-
tors' (Kay, Paul, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Cartwright, Crompton, and Roberts)
who constructed operational models of prototype machines that generated a
process of technological improvement include a sample of Englishmen from
across the religious, social, educational, and cultural divides of the kingdom.
They resided in one of an advanced range of successful market economies
located along coastal regions of Eurasia. They all grew up in a European culture,
undergoing an accelerated reordering by science which extolled a manipulative
attitude towards the natural world that was present in medieval Christendom,
but entere9 into the values of educated elites and motivated the endeavours of
craftsmen since the times of Copernicus. They all wanted to make money. But
what strikes biographers for case after case is the persistent obsession and con-
fidence displayed by these macro-inventors in seeking a technological solution
to problems of production.
GEOPOLITICS, TECHNOLOGY, AND DIVERGENCE
Technology remains a key but missing variable in explanations for divergence.

Compared either to accounts based on comparisons of resource endowments
(ranging from chea,pprovisions of raw materials to abundant supplies oflabour
and capital) or aceounts resting on the power of demand (with worldwide social
and cultural implications) technological progress is still explained within some-
what narrow, Eurocentric limits and Anglocentric categories. Although framed
as general theories, claims for 'induced technical change' and the 'challenge and
response' model suit the conditions of technological innovation in the British
Isles, but fail to account for the absence of similar mechanisms potentially oper-
ating in other parts of Europe or in China, India, and the Ottoman Empire. It
Patrick O'Brien
is time to move on from a framework based on the cultural exceptionalism of

England, to speculate on that economy's situation in a global context and reflect
how and why this might have affected the trajectory of technological develop-
ment that historians of science and economic historians have eloquently
described and latterly quantified with such exactitude.
Recent scholarship has altogether reframed the issue of hospitable cultures
for technological innovation within the wider category of 'useful and reliable
knowledge'. 17 Such knowledge was both practical and theoretical, and these two
dimensions worked hand in hand to facilitate the existence of a system con-
ducive to the circulation of ideas for practical application and commercial
exploitation. Jacob and Mokyr's suggestions have been supplemented and
extended by historians of science and by economic historians interested in
explaining the precise mechanisms of producing and diffusing knowledge and
the specific role played in the process by artisans and technicians. 18 Their remit
so far has been confined to Europe, and more specifically to Britain. Although
new research is emerging which attempts to create a wider global framework in
which to position useful and reliable knowledge, India and China certainly
played a role in creating a plateau of technical expertise that allowed Europe to
develop cotton and other industries. The generation of useful and reliable
knowledge was never confined to Europe. 19 Maxine Berg has suggested another
connection in relation to the visual and tactile attributes of commodities that
were exported from Asia to Europe. 20
Furthermore, the development of a European cotton-printing industry in the
second half of the seventeenth century was strongly influenced by the knowl-
edge of dyes and printing techniques that Europeans observed in India and by
the technical expertise of Armenian and Middle Eastern artisans who set up
printing workshops in the Netherlands, France, and Italy. England displayed a
precocious ability not just to replicate processes already in use in India and
Turkey (woodblock printing with fast dyes) but also to innovate procedures for
printing by inventing processes of pencilling and printing with indigo and resins
and printing through the use of copper plates. 21 Interestingly, similar processes
17 Mokyr, Gifts of Athena; id., The EnlightenedEconomy:An EconomicHistory of Britain IJOO--
I850 (London, forthcoming 2008).
18 Stephan Epstein, 'Transferring Technical Knowledge and Innovating in Europe, c.1200--
c.1800', unpublished paper, 2006.

19 Joseph Needham (ed.), Science and Civilisation in China, vii/2: General Conclusionsand
Reflections(Cambridge, 2004), esp. 1-42. See also the papers presented at the 4th GEHN con-
ference, Leiden, 16-18 September 2004, especially the papers by Ian Inkster, Prasannan
Parthasarathi, and William Gervase Clarence Smith, and the 9th GEHN Conference, Kaohsiung,
Taiwan, g-rr May 2006, especially the papers by Jerry Liu and Kent Deng.
20 Maxine Berg, 'The Genesis of"Useful Knowledge'", History of Science,45/2-148 (2007),
123-33.
21 Giorgio Riello, 'The Rise of European Calico Printing and the Influence of Asia in the 17th
The Geopoliticsof a GlobalIndustry
of emulation also appeared in France while the two nations were actively com-
peting against each other. 22
COUNTERF ACTUAL SPECULATIONS
The mechanization of spinning and weaving in England and then continental

Europe has been seen as quintessentially a western process. Similar machines
did not apparently appear in India. Historians of China pointed out, however,
that machines comparable to Arkwright's waterframe were in use in China
already by the early fourteenth century. 23 There is no proof that Europeans ever
saw these technologies, and their use remained rather confined and even
declined over time. 24 China poses an interesting counterfactual question about
the exploitation of inventions. Can we envisage a context in which innovations
in spinning failed to lead to the development of a mechanized cotton industry
in England?
This thought takes the argument back to the extension and integration of
domestic and overseas markets. In such a counterfactual scenario, the cotton
textile industry could only rely on an expanding army of spinners across regions
of England in which climatic conditions favoured the activity: in other words a
drastic expansion of the proto-industrial system as described by Jan de Vries. 25
This system could have hit decreasing returns. 26 Thus Lancashire could have
encounter~d the same problems as Italian and southern German fustian pro-
ducers did over previous centuries: namely bottlenecks in supplies of raw mate-
rials and spiralling wages that would lead to the relocation of the industry to less
developed areas of Europe like Ireland where supplies of cheaper labour and
and 18th Centuries', paper presented at the GEHN Conference on 'Cotton Textiles in the Indian
Ocean', Pune, December 2005; George Bryan Souza, 'The French Connection: Indian Cottons
and their Early Modern Technology', in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World,
ch. 12.
22 See Giorgio Riello, 'The Globalization of Cotton Textiles', in this volume.
in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries', in W. E. Willmott (ed.), Economic Organization
in Chinese Society (Stanford, Calif., 1972), 138, 149-50.
24 See Harriet Zurndorfer and Li Bozhong's chapters in this volume.
25 Jan de Vries, 'The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution', Journal of
Economic History, 54/z (1994), 249-70; id., The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and
the Household Economy, I650 to the Present (Cambridge, 2008), esp. 73-121.
26 Craig Muldrew has recently demonstrated how the period from the mid-seventeenth
century coincided with a rise in the average earnings of spinners as linen and wool textile produc-
tion expanded along with cotton. Craig Muldrew, "'The Ancient Distaff' and "Whirling
Spindle": Measuring the Contribution of Spinning to Household Earning and the National
Economy in England, 1550-1770', unpublished paper presented at the Economic History Society
Conference, Exeter, April 2007.
Patrick O'Brien
hemp and flax were still abundant. Diminishing returns did not prevail not
simply because technology eventually appeared like a deus ex machina, but
because Britain's global and geopolitical position allowed for a rapid expansion
of output. Ireland did not become the new Lancashire because English mercan-
tilism favoured English regions over the rest of the British Isles. The state also
operated to maintain elastic supplies of raw cotton from the empire and the
United States and also provided this and other industries with relatively well-
protected domestic and colonial markets in the Caribbean, North America, and
Africa. 27
Counterfactual speculations not only restore markets and demand to a place
in the narrative, but place the traditional image of Lancashire as a key region in
the British industrial revolution in a global context. This does not seek to dero-
gate the importance of that county and its famous cotton industry, but underlines
a dimension ofits rise to prominence that was already present in Wadsworth and
Mann's classic analysis published in 1932.28 Lancashire was not the centre of
British (let alone global) economic change. It was a pivotal site for the unfolding
of a conjuncture in world history that we call 'divergence'. Lancashire became
one of the key economic regions on earth between the times of Kay and Roberts
when it superseded regions like Bengal and Gujarat that had for several centuries
dominated world trade in cotton textiles. Its raw materials came from far away
places and were secured by a system of British colonial rule and naval power over
areas of production for cotton, timber, dyestuffs, and other inputs. Its markets
for outputs ranged from Europe to the Americas and Africa and increasingly to
Asia, which had developed as part of Britain's imperial project. This global
dimension of the development of cotton 1:extiles established, framed, and sus-
tained Britain's path of precocious technological development.
Reciprocal comparisons which have not alas been explored in this
Anglocentric essay are comparisons designed to investigate regions on the con-
tinent and in Asia that could have undergone a similar process of mechanization.
Spain and France were clearly moving in that direction in the eighteenth
century. France, however, lost territory and markets in the Americas and with
that its ability to procure raw cotton supplies. It looked to the Ottoman Empire
for supplies of fine yarn (rather than raw cotton) produced in places like Cairo
which led to a partial deindustrialization. 29 In India, the political activities of
27 See Robert DuPlessis, 'Cottons Consumption in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
North Atlantic', in this volume. See also Florence M. Montgomery, Printed Textiles:English and
American Cottonsand Linens, I 700-I 850 (New York, [ 1970] I 999 ); Inikori, Africans.
28 A. P. Wadsworth andJ. de Lacy Mann, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire,I600-
I780 (Manchester, 1932).

29 Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Cotton Textile Exports from the Indian Subcontinent, 1680--
1780', unpublished paper presented at the Economic History Society Conference, Leicester,
April 2005.
The Geopoliticsof a Global Industry
European powers disrupted production. 30 Proto-industrialization using armies

of cheap female spinners took hold of the Yangzi delta. 31
CONCLUSION
My chapter has attempted to enter the divergence debate with reference to a

study of cotton textiles. Economic historians agree that the shift of the cotton
textile industry from India to Europe and its eventual mechanization are key
episodes in the metanarrative of divergence between Europe and Asia. They
disagree however on the factors and mechanisms explaining that shift. This
chapter has pursued the traditional Eurocentric emphasis accorded to technol-
ogy not by providing a comparative analysis of technological innovation across
the globe (something that has yet to be done), but by repositioning the process
of technological innovation experienced in the British Isles over the eighteenth
century within a global and geopolitical context. Technology was not the antic-
ipated 'gift' from an enlightened culture receptive to innovation, science, and
technological experimentation, but the benefit occurring to a country with
global links that grew stronger and deeper between the times of Cromwell and
Nelson and whose path to mechanization and industrialization was shaped and
directed by the global power of its navy and the global reach of its merchants.
°
3 For a sliort overview see Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, 'Introduction: The World of
South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850', in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothedthe World.
31 See Li Bozhong's chapter in this volume.
18
COTTON AND THE PEASANT ECONOMY
A ForeignFibre in Early ModernJapan
MASA YUKI TANIMOTO
INTRODUCTION
It is well known that Japan began a push to catch up with the 'advanced' western
countries after the opening of the ports in 1859. Efforts to transplant mecha-
nized cotton-spinning mills were one example of the Japanese catch-up, sparked
by the pressure of imported cotton goods made in the factories of the United
Kingdom and British India. Estimates show that in the mid-187os approxi-
mately 40 per cent of the cotton goods consumed in Japan were imported. 1
Cotton was clearly regarded as a main target for import substitution in the
course of Japan's modern economic development.
This was not, however, the first time that the Japanese economy faced the
problem of import substitution in cotton. In common with most parts of
Europe, cdtton was a foreign fibre in Japan before the fifteenth or sixteenth
century. Cotton goods began to be consumed in Japan around 1400, but the
cloth was imported from Korea and China. As a consequence, the consumption
of cotton goods was limited to the upper classes or for special uses such as sol-
diers' battledresses. From the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, there
is abundant evidence that peasants began to use cotton for clothing, but there
is no sign of a dramatic increase in the importation of cotton cloth or cotton-
related goods. A proclamation issued by the Tokugawa government in 1628
restricting the dress of ordinary hyakusho (peasant farmers) to asa (hemp or
ramie) or cotton while allowing the wealthy hyakusho, who occupied high-status
positions such as the head of a village,2 to wear clothing made of silk fabrics is
evidence of the diffusion of cotton.
How did cotton swiftly penetrate into the daily lives of the inhabitants of
Japan? An answer to this question might come easily to many Japanese since
cotton growing had been transplanted successfully onto Japanese soil in the six-
teenth century, which is a well-known historical fact, mentioned even in high
1 Satoru Nakamura, Meiji !shin no Kiso Koza (Tokyo, 1968), table 3.
2 Keiji Nagahara, Choma,Kinu, Momen no Shakai-shi (Tokyo, 2004), 302.
368 Masayuki Tanimoto
school textbooks. However, recalling the experiences of regions and countries

in Europe, cotton cultivation at home was not the only reaction to the importa-
tion of cotton goods. The European way of import substitution was the separa-
tion of manufacturing from the growing of the raw material. This was a simple,
but significant, difference between two regions at either end of the Eurasian
continent.
In light of this fact, this chapter explores the production and consumption
of cotton goods in Japan before the introduction of western technology and
western institutions in the late nineteenth century. As many chapters in this
volume argue, the influx of cotton from outside brought about economic and
social change in Europe and set off a process of import substitution in cotton
goods. Although both Europe and Japan were successful in this import substi-
tution, there were significant differences in the path of change. Most impor-
tantly, Japan's cotton industry in the mid-nineteenth century, unlike its
European counterparts, was not mechanized. Was this simply a reflection of the
backwardness of an Asian economy in the early modern period? This chapter
rejects this common argument and proposes an alternative that roots Japanese
economic development in the dynamics of peasant and merchant strategies and
choices.
It is appropriate to begin with two observations about Japan's economy and
society. First, in the seventeenth century peasant households began to be the
major social group in rural society. 3 The term 'peasant' refers to a farming
household based on family labour under the stem-family system. The standard
peasant household comprised three generations, the head of the household and
his wife, their children, and the parents of the head, 4 and the household culti-
vated an area of arable land on its own account, either as an owner or tenant. 5 It
is notable that cotton growing was transplanted to Japan in the sixteenth to sev-
enteenth centuries at the same time that this peasant society emerged.
Second, cotton cloth had a great variety of uses, from making underclothes
to formal wear. In other words, cotton cloth could be used to make both neces-
sities and luxuries. Because of this, there were two pathways for the diffusion
of cotton goods among the populace, namely, from the top and from the bottom.
3 There is much literature on this topic in Japan. For a brief overview see: Akira Hayami,
'Introduction: The Emergence of "Economic Society"', in Akira Hayami, Osamu Saito, and
Ronald Toby (eds.), EconomicHistory ofJapan, i: Emergenceof EconomicSociety in Japan, r600-
r859 (Oxford, 2004), 1-35.
4 The collateral members of the family, such as siblings of the head, were excluded from the
household.
5 In other words, farming up to this period was considered to be carried out by a larger unit
of workers, including collateral relatives and subordinate labourers. See Osamu Saito, 'Daikaikon,
jinko,shono keizai', in Akira Hayami and Matao Miyamoto (eds.), Keiazai Shakai no Seiritsu: r7-
r 8 seiki (Tokyo, 1988), 171-215.
A ForeignFibre in Early ModernJapan
The former implies the popularization ofluxuries, which encroached upon the
domain of silk, and the latter suggests changes with respect to basic goods. Each
route had a specific source of production and distribution. We shall bear this
distinction in mind in the following sections.
THE DIFFUSION OF COTTON CULTIVATION AND CONSUMPTION
In the initial stages, cotton cultivation spread across most parts of Japan's archi-
pelago with the exception of the Tohoku region, which is the northernmost area
of the main island (Honshu). The cotton plant was cultivated even in relatively
cool areas such as the interiors of the islands of Shinshu and Koshu. This sug-
gests that the diffusion of cotton consumption was closely related to the choices
of farming households, who sought to change their clothing from ramie and
hemp to cotton.
The preference for cotton had implications for both consumption and pro-
duction. A well-known essay by Kunio Yanagita, 6 one of the originators of folk-
lore in Japan, vividly describes how the properties of cotton, such as its texture
or ease in dyeing, appealed to the Japanese and led them to abandon ramie and
hemp for the new fibre. Since the spread of cotton cultivation was the distinc-
tive feature of Japan's import-substitution process, the specific reasons why cul-
tivators adopted the new crop require further elaboration.
The econpmic advantage of cotton over ramie or hemp derived from the
labour it saved. Keiji Nagahara estimated that the labour required for producing
cloth from raw ramie, including spinning and weaving, was almost ten times
more than that needed for producing cloth from cotton.7 The introduction of
cotton, therefore, saved enormous amounts oflabour.
The peasant household became the major actor in agrarian society in the six-
teenth to seventeenth centuries. The distinctive feature of the peasant household
was the combination of production and consumption within a single decision-
making unit. The head could reallocate family labour based on the needs of the
household. The agricultural changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
mainly with respect to the growing of rice in paddy fields, required larger inputs
of labour. The adoption of labour-intensive technologies, such as deep cultiva-
tion or expanded use of manure, promoted this direction of development. 8 In
6 Kunio Yanagita, Momen Izen no Koto (Tokyo, 1939)is a classic study from a folklorist's point
of view: the study discusses how and to what extent the texture of the cotton was attractive to
Japanese consumers.
7 Nagahara, Choma, Kinu, Momen no Shakai-shi, 212. Although ramie or hemp were more
durable than cotton, the labour-saving nature of cotton cannot be disregarded.

8 Manure was usually produced by the peasant on a self-sufficient basis, and it required a large
amount oflabour input.

Illustration 18.1. A cotton-weaving peasant household in the Kawachi region, southeast of

Osaka. A woman (in the centre), probably a daughter of this farming household, is working
at a handloom, while several men including the head of this household are dealing with striped
cotton cloths in the next room. From Ritou Akizato, Kawachi Meisho Zue (Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten
[1801] 1995), pp. 334-35.
short, the introduction of labour-saving cotton matched the higher labour

demand in agriculture, and the peasant household ensured a smooth reallocation
oflabour.
In the peasant economy, cotton cultivation was combined with spinning and
weaving within a single household in the early stages (Illustration 18.1).
However, the growing of the fibre came to be concentrated in specific areas
where climate and soil as well as access to transport were suitable for market-ori-
ented cotton cultivation. For example, the distribution of ginned cotton from the
Nara region, a prominent cotton cultivation area in western Japan, to the regions
ofKanto and Tohoku in eastern and north-eastern Japan was well established by
the seventeenth century. 9 Ramie and hemp had not led to a commercialization
of farming households, 10 which was different from linen in early modern
9
Reiko Hayashi, Edo Tonya Nakama no Kenkyii (Tokyo, 1967), 15-43.
10 There were several districts that produced market-oriented hemp cloths such as Nara
Sarashi (bleached white cloth) or Oumi Sarashi. The district where the latter cloth was produced
was even supplied with yarn made of hemp or ramie by the Tonami region more than 300 kilo-
metres away. However, the volume of these goods was far smaller than that of cotton goods. In
fact, unlike cotton goods, they were not listed as prominent items distributed by way of Osaka,
the distributing centre in the Tokugawa period, in the early eighteenth century. Hiroshi Shimbo
and Akira Hasegawa, 'The Dynamics of Market Economy and Production', in Hayami, Saito,
and Toby (eds.), Economic History ofJapan, i. 176.
A Foreign Fibre in Early Modern Japan 371
Europe. 11 In Japan, it was cotton that made possible the widespread commer-
cialization of textiles beyond luxuries such as silk and at the same time con-
tributed to the creation of a peasant society based on labour-intensive agriculture.
However, the commercialization of the cotton industry did not only imply con-
sumers purchasing cotton cloth from the market. Although a contemporary
record of commodities 12 verifies the existence of cotton cloth-producing areas in
the first half of the seventeenth century, the purchase of finished cloth was not
the only way for households in rural areas, which were the major part of the pop-
ulation, to satisfy their demand for cotton goods. Since there are few mentions of
cotton cloth in the northern part of the Kanto area, for example, it is believed that
at least in the seventeenth century there was little manufacturing of cotton cloth
for the market in this region. Therefore, it is appropriate to assume that the ginned
cotton from Nara sold in that area was not used by weavers but rather by peasants
and others who produced cloth for their own use. The total value of ginned cotton
distributed from Osaka to Edo in the 1720s far exceeded that of cotton cloth,
which also suggests that substantial quantities of cloth did not enter the market. 13
Although additional data on cloth consumption in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries are scarce, some nineteenth-century material from a relatively
backward region can be used for a suggestion of what existed in earlier periods.
The first dataset is trade figures for Akita district, located in the north-eastern
region of Japan, in the early nineteenth century. Since there was neither cotton
cultivation nor cotton weaving 14 for the market in this area, the data on inflows
of cottons t9 the region in Table 18.1 are more or less equivalent to the quantity
the inhabitants of the region consumed. The clothing in Akita district in that
period was made up of cotton, some used cloth from outside the region, and
ramie and hemp cultivated in the area. A remarkable fact revealed by Table 18. 1
is the small proportion of cotton cloth that was brought into Akita district,
which was less than one tan per person (Map 18. 1). 15 Since one tan per year
11 The commercialization of the linen industry in Europe is considered in the copious litera-
ture on proto-industrialization. Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Markus Cerman (eds.), European Proto-
industrialization (Cambridge, 1996).
12 Waka Takenouchi, Kefukigusa (written in 1637, published in 1645; Tokyo: lwanami Shoten
reprints, rev. edn. 1943).

13 Shimbo and Hasegawa, 'Dynamics of Market Economy', 165 table 5.1. The distribution of
lint (ginned cotton) recorded 19,766 kan (unit of silver currency), more than threefold the value
of cotton (white cloth, 5,768 kan).
14 It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the cotton fabric woven in Akita region
appeared in the cotton cloth market as Yamashin-momen. See Shiso Hattori and Seizaburo
Shinobu, Nihon Manyufakutsuashi-ron (Tokyo, 1937), part 1.
15 Tan is the unit for cloth that was widely used in Japan. In theory it was the size of cloth that
was sufficient for making one piece of the traditional Japanese dress, the kimono, and a large part
of the transactions was executed in this unit. One tan was normally approximately 0.35 metres
wide and 11 metres long.
TABLE 18.1. Annual Provision of Clothing in the Region of Akita, 1808-IO

Type of textile Type of Amount Amount in Amount in
data Ian equivalent sqm equivalent
Cotton cloth Inflow 174,397 tan (r) 174,397 697,588

Cotton ginned Inflow 38,394 kan (2) 180,000 720,000
Used cloth Inflow 117,101 mai (3) 117,101 468,404
Ramie and hemp Production 105,161 kin (4) 84,000 336,000
( 1) tan: unit of cloth, approximately equivalent to four square metres.
(2) kan: 1 kan = 3.75 kilogram. Eighty percent of ginned cotton was estimated to be used for cotton cloth.
One tan of cloth was estimated to be made from 170 monme (640 grams) of ginned cotton.
(3) mai: approximately equivalent to one tan.
(4) kin: 1 kin = 600 grams, 1.2 5 kin was approximately equivalent to r tan of woven cloth.
(5) population estimated at 450,000 of which 45,000 samurai (ruling class).
Source: Akitaken (ed.), Akitaken-shi (Akita, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 323-24. The data on production of ramie and
hemp is based on Naimu-sho (ed.), Zenkoku Nosan Hyo (1876). It might be smaller than the amount of
production in 1808- 10.
would not have been enough to meet the demands of the ruling class and the
relatively wealthy merchants or farmers, 16 who were unlikely to manufacture
cotton cloth for their own use, this suggests that the bulk of the population must
not have purchased cotton cloth.
Besides the production of cloth made of hemp or ramie for personal use, this
table shows that purchasing the raw cotton was the major source of cotton cloth
for the majority of households. The spinning and weaving processes were
carried out by females for family use.
The case of Ni'ikawa district shows that this pattern was found even in dis-
tricts where cotton cloth was produced for the market. Ni'ikawa was a major
cotton-weaving district, selling more than one million tan of plain cotton cloth
to other parts of Japan in the first half of the nineteenth century. Since cotton
was not cultivated in the area, ginned cotton was delivered from Kinai and
Setouchi, in western Japan, and was distributed among peasant households.
The female members of the households spun the cotton into yarn, which was
then woven into cloth. These peasant spinner-weavers earned their remunera-
tion in kind rather than in cash, namely, in the form of ginned cotton. As Table
18.2 shows, the quantity of cloth generated from these payments of ginned
cotton was 51.2 square metres (12.8 tan) per household per year. The average
number of household members was slightly less than five. Therefore, the
16 The survey on production and consumption of a relatively backward area in Bocho region,
the west end of the main island (Honshu), reported that the annual consumption of cotton cloth
was two tan for 'upper class', which covered 8.3% of the population, and 0.9 tan for the middle
class, which covered 14.9°/o of the population, respectively in the r83os. See Osamu Saito and
Masayuki Tanimoto, 'The Re-organization oflndigenous Industries', in Hayami, Saito, and
Toby (eds.), Economic History o/Japan, i. 281 for details.
A ForeignFibre in Early ModernJapan 373
SeaofJapan
KANIO
REGION
10NAM! YUKI
sHINsHU IRUMA Edo
MURAYAMA
I
kohama
PacificOcean
Map 18.1. Areas of cotton production in Japan

TABLE 18.2. Production, Payment and Consumption of Cotton Cloth in the Niikawa
District, Mid-Nineteenth Century
Niikawa Individual Annual working
district household ( 1) days per
household (2)
Annual production for sale 4,000,000 sqm 157.6 sqm 157.6

Annual production for
self consumption 1,300,000 sqm 51.2 sqm (3) 51.2
Total annual production 5,300,000 sqm 208.8 sqm 208.8
(r} based on 25,381 households.
(2) based on one working day per square metre of cloth (0.25 days for preparation; 0.5 days for spinning;
and 0.25 days for weaving).
(3) equivalent to 4.8kg of ginned cotton (payment in kind).
Source: Toyamaken (ed.), Toyamaken Daiikkai Kangyo Nenpo (1888)
payment of ginned cotton was sufficient to meet the annual household demand
for clothing. On average a woman spent seven months per year on cloth pro-
duction and supplied 157.6 square metres to the market and 51 .2 square metres
to her own family. 17
The low opportunity cost of devoting female labour to spinning and weaving
in peasant households, relative to the price of finished cloth in the market, was
the rationale behind this choice. The establishment of the peasant economy in
the seventeenth century, the concentration of cotton cultivation in favourable
areas, and the development of a distribution network by cotton merchants
enabled these households to abandon cotton growing and home-made linen
cloth. However they still engaged in the domestic production of cotton yarn and
cloth with the procurement of raw or ginned cotton. In other words, the trans-
plantation of cotton cultivation, which grew along with the establishment of the
peasant society, enabled the swift diffusion of cotton consumption in Japan's
archipelago from the seventeenth century onward, even though the cotton cloth
market was relatively small. The next step was the expansion of the cloth trade
itself based on the market-oriented production of cotton cloth.
PEASANT WEAVERS IN THE COTTON-WEAVING DISTRICTS
The emergence of market-oriented production appeared to follow two differ-

ent paths, either the downward diffusion ofluxuries or the upward diffusion
of basic goods. The production of patterned cloths, which were costly and
17 The merchant that provided the farming households with ginned cotton collected the cloths
as well. This widespread form of transaction in this district was called watagae(cotton changing).
among the best cloths consumed by the upper and middle classes of the non-
ruling elite, was one path. The emergence of the weaving district of Bisai was
one outcome of this type of development. 18 Production in Bisai originated
with the migration of clothmakers in the 1770s after the great fire in Kyoto,
which was the centre of luxury silk fabric production. The skills and hand
loom, originally for silk weaving, were transferred to Bisai and modified for
cotton weaving. Based on this technological know-how, the Bisai district
developed new types of striped cotton cloths, including santome-jima, an imi-
tation of imported Indian cotton cloth described by Kayoko Fujita in this
volume, and Yuki-jima, a silk fabric from the Yuki region. 19 As is evident in
Bisai, the distinctive feature of this path of development was the introduction
of new technologies and knowledge from outside the producing area, partic-
ularly from the silk-weaving industry. With respect to consumption, it may
be seen as the popularization of luxuries. In this sense, the birth of cotton
weaving of this type may be expressed as the expansion of production 'from
the top'.
In contrast to this path, the expansion of market-oriented production of basic
necessities from cotton may be characterized as a route 'from the bottom'. This
path appears to have resulted from surpluses of cotton cloth in peasant house-
holds. The case ofNi'ikawa described in the previous section might present the
original image of this pattern of production, as the peasant weavers mainly pro-
duced simple, non-dyed plain cloth both for the market and for personal use. It
was not a srpall weaving district, made evident by the fact that the volume of
production of the Ni'ikawa district ranked among the top five in the mid-nine-
teenth century, exceeding one million tan annually.
The production of necessities encompassed a variety of cotton cloths. With
regard to quality, in addition to the plain cloths that comprised a major part of
the necessities, patterned cloth was also produced for daily use, such as work
clothes, in this period. The production of simple striped cloth began from at
least the seventeenth century. 20 And the Kasuri-momen, Japanese-style splashed
patterned cloth or 'ikat', 21 which is produced in various regions such as Kurume
or Murayama, accounted for a significant part of cotton weaving in the nine-
teenth century. Any decisive impact from the outside, such as the transfer of
technology or the introduction of specific designs, is rarely found in these cases.
In addition to the gradual increase of per capita incomes, the remarkable devel-
opment of the cotton-weaving districts in the latter half of the Tokugawa
18 Kimio Shiozawa and Kouji Kawaura, Kiseijinushisei-ron (Tokyo, 1957), 147-50.

l9 Yuki region is more than 300 km from Bisai as the crow flies.
20
Hayashi, Edo Tonya Nakama no Kenkyu, 20-3.
21 Hattori and Shinobu, Nihon Manyufakutsuashi-ron, 136-7; Yuya Obayashi, Dainihon
Sangyo Jiseki (Tokyo, [ 1891] 1988), i. 152-3.

Masayuki Tanimoto
period 22 was also due to the existence of a wide-ranging demand for cotton,
from quasi-luxuries to necessities.
What changes took place in production? Was the growth of market-oriented
cotton production accompanied by significant changes in the production
process? In considering these questions, it is necessary to point out that the
Ni'ikawa district did not fully embody the developments of the nineteenth
century. While the combination of spinning and weaving in a single household
characterized the Ni'ikawa district, many weaving districts, including those
concentrating on the production of necessities, experienced a greater division
oflabour. The progress of the division oflabour, which is usually considered a
universal principle of economic development, was strongly shaped by the logic
of the peasant economy.
A survey conducted by a han (feudal clan), the ruling authority of the region,
revealed that traders were connected to various cotton-related activities in vil-
lages located in Izumi district (southern part of present Osaka prefecture) which
produced more than one million tan of plain grey cotton in the mid-nineteenth
century. 23 We can connect each trader with a specific step in the distribution
and production process: namely, the distribution of raw cotton, cotton beating,
spinning, weaving, and the distribution of cotton yarn or cloth. The existence
of spinners and yarn merchants indicates that spinning and weaving were not
executed in a single household and that merchants conducted transactions in
intermediate goods between producers and households. Along with yarn mer-
chants, cloth factors appeared to play a significant role in mediating between
weavers and wholesalers at the local distribution centre, which was the gateway
to the national market. The fact that these merchants resided in farming villages
is also noteworthy. An advanced weaving district was characterized by the
dynamic activities of merchants in the area, who mediated the division oflabour
among producers as well as connecting the traders inside the district with those
outside.
It is notable that there was no clear division oflabour between agriculture and
the cotton industry even in Izumi district. Table 18.3 shows how the cotton
industry was embedded in the peasant economy. Although 189 out of 279
22 Takeshi Abe suggested that the commercialization of cotton weaving had accelerated from
the latter half of the eighteenth century. Takeshi Abe, 'Kinsei Nihon niokeru Men'orimono
Seisandaka', in Konosuke Odaka and Yuzo Yamamoto (eds.), Bakumatsu Meijizenki no Nihon
Keizai (Tokyo, 1988), 74-5. For the historiography of the case studies of the weaving districts in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Masayuki Tanimoto, 'Genmanyu ronso to putoro
kougyoukaron', in Kanji Ishii, Akira Hara, and Haruhito Takeda (eds.), Nihon Keizaishi, i:
Bakumatsu Ishinki (Tokyo, 2000), 207-16.
23 Hideo Ttsuda, 'Bakumatsuki Osaka shuhenniokeru noumin tousou', Shakaikeizaishigaku,
22/ 4 ( 1955), table 1; Mitsuyo Okada, 'Kinsei Senshu chiho niokeru zaigo momen nakagai', in Akira
Fukuyama and Kyozo Takechi (eds.), Shakaikeizai no Shiteki Tenkai (Kyoto, 1986), table 1.
TABLE 18.3. Occupationof Peasant Householdsin Udaoutsu Village,Izumi District, 1843
Area (in hectares) Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of Percentage of Percentage of
of cultivation per households leased land households households households households
family member comprising only engaged in engaged in cotton engaged in
aged 15-60 (1) one member non-agricultural spinning cotton weaving
(aged 15-60) work
::i..
No cultivation 90 0 35 74.4 58.9 28.9 :;i
~
()q'
Less than 0.5 37 91.8 0 91.9 56.8 37.8 ;:;:
0.5-1.0 54 87.5 6 94.4 64.8 24.1 ~

~
1.0-1.5 44 62.6 3 90.9 72.7 18.2 ;i.
1.5-2.0 31 54.6 5 83.9 67.7 9.6 ~

...
2.0-2.5 16 46.7 2 50.0 37.5 6.3 ~
~
2.5-3.0 4 56.5 0 50.0 25.0 25.0 <:,
~
3.0-3.5 1 46.2 0 0 0 0 ~
3.5--4.0 1 50.0 0 0 0 0 ~
~
;;:,
;:;:
More than 4.0 1 62.5 1 0 0 0
Total/ Average 279 63.9 52 82.1 60.0 23.6
-~ ----
(r) The family included annually contracted employees.
Source: 'Murakata Sakutsuketanbetsu Shogyii Torisirabechii' (lzumioutsushi-shi, Vol.3)
w
-..J
-..J
Masayuki Tanimoto
households engaged in farming in Udaoutsu village in Izumi district, over 80

per cent of the households were also engaged in non-agrarian occupations. One-
third of households were not engaged in cultivation, but this was due to a lack
oflabour rather than a choice to specialize in non-agrarian work. One-person
households, often the households of widows, accounted for a high fraction of
non-cultivating households. A sizeable proportion of households combined
manufacturing work with the cultivation of a quantity ofleased land which was
not sufficient to employ all available family labour. The shortage ofland did not
lead to the giving up of cultivation and specialization in non-agricultural occu-
pations, but led to the inclusion of non-agricultural activities in the portfolio of
household work.
Cotton-related activities, such as spinning and weaving, were suitable for this
peasant household strategy. Table 18.3 indicates that households whose land
holdings were of small and medium size--o. 1 to 0.2 hectares per person-were
more inclined to engage in cotton-related work. As with other non-agricultural
occupations, cotton processing was carried out in households that sought to
attain full-time farming status.
How was agricultural work combined with industrial work? We shall examine
a second survey of farming households in this district to obtain a concrete image
of the labour allocation within the households. 24 Even though the survey was
conducted in 1901, several decades after the material in Table 18.3 was com-
piled, the similar operation of the household economy in the two surveys sug-
gests that the later information will illuminate the situation in the 1840s.
The members of one household comprised nine people: an elderly father
(aged 75), an elderly mother (aged 59), a male head of the household (aged 38),
his wife (aged 35), two sons (aged 11 and 9), and two daughters (aged 5 and 3).
At that time, the household carried out farming on slightly more than o.6
hectares of paddy field and approximately o. 1 hectares of dry fields.25 The prin-
cipal crops were rice, barley, and rapeseed, and the planted areas of these crops
were 0.613, 0.453, and 0.2 hectares respectively. Rice growing utilized the
paddy field from spring to autumn and the other two crops were planted on the
same land after the rice harvest. The survey revealed that the head of the house-
hold was completely engaged in agricultural production and his wife and elder
daughter engaged in weaving as a domestic industry.
Their input oflabour for weaving had some limitations, however. To cope
with heavy labour demand in agriculture during the two peak periods of early
summer and autumn, the head of the household had to mobilize the labour of
24 Osakafu Nokai (ed.), Nouka Keizai Chosa(Osaka, 1904; repr. in Izumi Bunka Kenkyukai
(ed.), Nouji Chiisasho(Osaka, 1968) ).

25 The national average of cultivation area per farming household was around one hectare in
those days.
A ForeignFibre in Early ModernJapan 379
his 'wife' and his 'elderly mother'. As a result, the main source of adult female
labour, the wife of the head, could not devote herself to non-agricultural work
full time and the quantity oflabour that the wife and the elder daughter devoted
annually to weaving came to the equivalent of 1.5 years. The labour of the
'elderly mother' relieved the burden of agricultural labour on the daughter, who
was able to devote all her available time (barring that for necessary housework)
to weaving. Even with respect to housework, the 'elderly mother' could take on
a relatively heavy burden of cooking and other tasks to reduce the labour
demands for the wife and daughter. Moreover, the 'elderly father', who was
over 70 years of age, was mobilized to engage in yarn reeling, and the 11-year-
old son was assigned a portion of housework, which consisted of childcare
duties. The members of the household who were least suitable for full-time
labour in agricultural or industrial production, and this category included both
the elderly and young children, were assigned ancillary tasks so that more labour
could be spared for weaving.
It was the female members of the peasant family who carried out the task of
weaving and spinning-the essential steps in the cloth production process. The
distribution system operated by merchants in villages provided peasants with
these opportunities by connecting the village to the nearby distribution centre,
which was the entryway to national markets. The market-enhancing activities
of merchants together with the strategic reaction of peasant households to
market opportunities led to the development of market-oriented cotton-
weaving districts. Local merchants and peasant households played a decisive
role in shaping economic change and development in the Tokugawa period.
This framework may be contrasted with standard accounts of the development
of manufacturing which focus on the role of skilled craftsmen or the establish-
ment of new methods of production such as concentrated workshops or the
factory system.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE FOLLOWING THE OPENING

OF THE PORTS
The expansion of international trade from 1859 had an enormous impact on the
cotton industry in Japan. 26 As discussed earlier, imports of English cotton
increased to such an extent that they constituted nearly 40 per cent of the
domestic market for cotton cloth in the early 187os.27 Considering the scale of
26 The Tokugawa government had banned international trade for about 200 years with the
exception of restricted trade with the Dutch and Chinese via Nagasaki, the port city on the
western edge of Japan. See the chapter by Kayoko Fujita in this volume.
27 Due to the lack of tariff autonomy, the level of import duties for textile goods was restricted
to approximately 5°/oad valorem.

Masayuki Tanimoto
imports, it is reasonable to assume that it had a destructive effect on the indige-

nous cotton industry. However, imported cotton cloth's share of total cotton
consumption began to decrease in the mid-187os falling to around IO per cent
before 1880, and the value ofimported cotton yarn exceeded that of cotton cloth
in the latter half of the I 870s. This transformation, from importing finished
goods to intermediate goods, suggests a structural change in the Japanese cotton
industry.
What took place was a dramatic reorganization of the industry. 28 In the first
phase cotton growing, spinning, and weaving were restructured. The most
serious competitive pressure from imports was on spinning. The importation
of cotton yarn almost eliminated domestic hand-spun yarn from the market. As
it was the input for spinning, cotton cultivation also suffered. However, cotton
cultivation in Japan did not clearly decline until the late 1880s because spinning
and weaving of cotton for personal use continued in some peasant households.
Over time the diffusion of the 'new' cotton cloths manufactured in Japanese
weaving districts, which were relatively cheap as well as suitable for consumers
in Japan, 29 eliminated peasant production of cloths for personal use. The
appearance of these 'new' types of cloths was the consequence of the reorgani-
zation of cotton-weaving districts, which was the second phase in the reorgan-
ization of the cotton industry.
In contrast to imported cloth, imported yarn from England, and then British
India, 30 provided weaving districts with an opportunity to survive and develop.
The relatively low price of machine-made imported yarn enabled weavers to
compete against imported cloth as well as to develop a new type of cloth whose
quality was different from that made from hand-spun yarn. The import substi-
tution in cloth can be attributed to the response of these weaving districts, and
these districts prospered as the market for cloth expanded from the 187os.31
28 This discussion of the reorganization of the cotton-weaving districts is mainly based on
Saito and Tanimoto, 'The Re-organization oflndigenous Industries'.

29 Stimulated by a seminal paper by Heita Kawakatsu, 'Meijizenki niokeru naigaimenkannkei-
hin no hinshitsu', Seijikeizaigakuzasshi, 250/251 (1977), 184-211. In the 1990s, there was a con-
troversy over the differences in quality between imported cotton cloths and domestically woven
cloths in Japan's historiography. While this controversy concentrated on plain cotton cloths, the
recent book by Hitoshi Tamura, Fashion no Shakai keizaishi (Tokyo, 2004), raised an additional
point which is the stimulus of imported woollen cloth to the production of striped cloth in Japan.
See also Takeshi Abe, 'Meijiki zairasangyoukenkyu no mondaiten', in Kindai Nihon Kenkyukai
(ed.), Nenpo Kindai Nihon Kenkyii, x: Kindai Nihon Kenkyii no Kentoii to Kadai (Tokyo, 1988),
rn9-25; and Masayuki Tanimoto, Nihon niokeru Zairaiteki Keizaihatten to Orimonogyo (Nagoya,
1998), ch. 5, for details of the controversy.
30 The peak of the importation of cotton yarn from England was in 1880, and the Indian yarn
exceeded the English yarn in 1887. Yokohamashi-shi Hensanshitsu (ed.), Yokohama Shishi
Shiryo-hen (Yokohama, 1980), 299.
31 For details of the domestic market of cotton cloths, see Tanimoto, Nihon niokeru Zairaiteki
Keizaihatten to Orimonogyo, ch. 1.

A Foreign Fibre in Early Modern Japan
TABLE 18+ Distribution of Imported Cotton Yarn to the Weaving Districts, I878-79
Ranking (1) Region Amount of Type of weaving
imported yarn districts included in the
(in thousand kin) (2) region
1 Yamato 3,866 Plain (3) and various cloth

2 Musashi
(including lruma) 3,000 Plain (3) and various cloth
6 Nagoya
(including Eisai) 1,764 Plain (3) and various cloth
7 Izumi 1,591 Plain (3)
17 Etchu
(including Ni'ikawa) 92 Plain (5)
21 Inaba 11 Plain (4)
( r) Shows the rank by the amount of distributed yarn in 2 r regions.
= =
(2) r kin 120 momme 450 gram. Note that this is different from table 18.r.
(3) Production developed from the 1870s onward.
(4) Production declined in the early I 870s.
(5) Production declined in the 1880s.
Source: Masayuki Tanimoto, 'Who Marketed Imported Textiles? The Japanese Case', in Shinya
Sugiyama and Linda Grove (eds.), Commercial Networks in Modern Asia (London, 2001), table r .6.
The weaving districts took divergent paths, however. A significant number

of areas tha~ were prominent in Tokugawa times declined between 1860 and
1880 and were replaced by new districts. Table 18.4 shows that the fate of
weaving districts was connected to the availability of imported yarn. The table
reveals that Ni'ikawa (=Etchu) district, which produced over one million tan in
the Tokugawa period and preserved its production into the 1870s, utilized very
little imported yarn in the latter half of the 1870s and its output of cloth
decreased rapidly in the 1880s. In contrast, Izumi district, which became a
major weaving district from the 1880s and relied heavily upon imported yarn,
was among the best-performing districts. It is evident that the switch to
imported cotton yarn played a key role in the success of weaving districts. The
diverse responses to the new imported intermediate goods may be attributed to
difference in the structures of peasant cloth production.
As discussed previously, the division oflabour in cotton production differed
between Ni'ikawa and Izumi. Since peasant households in Ni'ikawa combined
spinning and weaving under the same roof, the introduction of imported yarn
led to the elimination of their hand spinning work. This led to loss of income
and jeopardized the livelihoods of these peasants. Not surprisingly, there was
resistance to the adoption of imported yarn. In Izumi the three main steps in
Masayuki Tanimoto
production were carried out by different households. In this case, the transition
to imported yarn may have been a matter oflife and death for households that
manufactured yarn by hand. However, for households involved in weaving, who
held the key to the shift in materials, the switch from local hand-spun to
imported machine-spun yarn had little impact on their incomes and employ-
ment. The gains and losses from the introduction of imported yarn depended
on one's position within the process, and this appears to account for the varied
responses to the new imported good.
Merchants also contributed to the divergent paths of the weaving districts.
A case study of a yarn merchant in lruma district, 32 which belonged to the
'various cloth' producing districts in Table 18.4, illustrates the major role of
merchants. According to the accounting books and other contemporary docu-
ments of the Takizawa family, from the 1860s yarn merchants switched from
dealing in hand-spun yarn made in local areas to imported yarn transported
from Tokyo. 33 The Takizawa family played a key role in the introduction of
new materials from outside the district, judging from the family's accounts. A
sort of balance sheet contained in the documents reveals that the family pur-
chased foreign yarn from several importers in Yokohama and wholesalers in
Tokyo, with cash or even with the provision of advances. At the same time, the
payment from the purchaser, namely the producers of cloth in the villages, was
postponed for a given period. Thus the Takizawa family provided credit to both
large yarn merchants and village weavers, which facilitated the diffusion of
imported yarn. The cotton yarn merchant in the district, therefore, made it pos-
sible for weavers to adopt less expensive foreign yarn which was imperative for
their survival.
Additional information on the cloth producers in Iruma after the opening of
the ports may be gleaned from Table 18.5, which classified the households in a
section (Iwasaki) of Yamaguch village and Kitano village according to their
annual output of cloth. In Iwasaki all the households produced 150 tan or less
of striped cloth per annum. In Kitano 60 per cent of the entire volume came
from households producing 200 tan or less per annum and these accounted for
82 out of the 85 households in the village. As 200 tan could be woven by one or
two looms per year, 34 the bulk of the weaving was carried out as domestic work
in each household.
32 lruma district was located in the south-west of the present Saitama prefecture.
33 Masayuki Tanimoto, 'Who Marketed Imported Textiles? The Japanese Case', in Shinya
Sugiyama and Linda Grove (eds.), Commercial Networks in Modern Asia (London, 2001), 30--2.
The original source is in the documents ofTakizawa Tatsuo family.
34 A contemporary witness stated that a skilled woman could complete weaving one tan in 12
hours. Tokorozawashi-shi Hensan linkai (ed.), Tokorozawashi-shi Kindai Shiryo (Tokorozawa,

1982), 263. Ifwe take other tasks such as preparation for the loom into consideration, the annual
volume of 100 to 200 tan per person appears to be reasonable.
TABLE 18.5. Production of Striped Cotton Cloth in Iruma District, c.1875

Production per Number of Percentage of Total Percentage of
household in tan households households production total village
in tan production
Iwasaki in
Yamaguchi Village
1-50 20 83.3 660 62.9
51-100 3 12.5 270 25.7
101-150 1 4.2 120 11.4
Total 24 100.0 1,050 100.0
Kitano Village
1-50 67 78.8 1,075 23.2
51-100 10 11.8 812 17.5
101-150 3 3.5 450 9.7
151-200 2 2.4 400 8.6
201-250 0 0 0 0
251-300 1 1.2 300 6.5
301-350 0 0 0 0
351-400 1 1.2 400 8.6
401- 1 1.2 1,200 25.9
Total 85 100.0 4,637 100.0
Source:Archives of the Iwaoka Family, 'Yamaguchi-mura Iwasaki Kojin Bussannhyo', 'Kitano-mura
Bussan Torisirabe Kakiage'.
I
Further data for the Kitano village show-contrary to what one might
think- that the output of cotton cloth per household was not inversely related
to the output of agricultural products, which suggests that there was no trade-
offbetween agriculture and weaving or specialization in one of the two activities.
The production of striped cotton cloth in Iruma in the 1870s was dependent on
weavers being embedded in peasant households, which is similar to the case of
Udaotsu in Izumi district in the 1840s.
These observations on Iruma district are summed up in Figure 18.1. Two
merchants in the district-the cloth factor and the cotton yarn merchant-con-
nected the producers with the intermediate and final goods markets. Peasant
weavers, together with the dyers in the villages, carried out production.
Therefore, we can conclude that the path of development of cotton weaving in
the Tokugawa period, which was driven by the market-enhancing activities of
merchants and the strategic reaction of peasant households to the market, con-
tinued to operate under the new conditions that emerged after the opening of
the ports.
Masayuki Tanimoto
Wholesaler of Cotton Cloth

in the Distributing Centre
(Tokyo, Osaka)
. !
.-; Striped Cloth

! ,------~-----;(Iruma District)
-·-~ Dyed Cotton Yam Wholesaler of Cotton Cloth in
the Local Distributin11:Centre
·······~ Cotton yarn
i ·-·-······--· ...-·-·----··-·;
Cotton Cloth Factor in the village
Peasant weaver in the Village ........·.~
Local Cotton Yarn Merchant

(Takizawa etc.)
From the] 860s Up to the 1860s
Imported Cotton Yarn Merchant Hand-spun Cotton Yam

(Yokohama, Tokyo) Merchant (Neighbouring
cotton growing regions)
Figure 18.1. The Organisation of the Production and Distribution of Striped Cotton
in the Iruma District, 183os-188os
CONCLUSION
Cotton had a significant impact on the economy of early modern, Tokugawa

Japan. It increased the productivity oflabour in the manufacture of textiles and
encouraged the development of a market for cloth. It is striking that the intro-
duction of cotton played a role in forming and developing a peasant society
rather than advancing the proletarianization of the countryside. The labour
saving that cotton made possible, by contrast with ramie and hemp, allowed
farming households to reallocate family labour to agricultural work and con-
tributed to the establishment of a peasant society based on labour-intensive agri-
culture. Cotton cultivation, which was carried out in a typically labour-intensive
manner, was also made possible in this context. The profitability of cotton led
peasant households to sell their ginned or unginned cotton on the market. At
the same time the purchase of cotton as material for peasant cloth production
was becoming increasingly common in areas that did not grow cotton, which
was economical for peasants in these areas. Therefore, the introduction of
A Foreign Fibre in Early Modern Japan
cotton encouraged the development of a particular type of market economy,

which was based on the strategic behaviour of the peasant households with
regard to both production and consumption. The market-oriented manufacture
of cotton goods, mainly cloth and in some cases yarn, took place in this eco-
nomic framework. The main producers were peasants who combined manufac-
turing work with agricultural tasks. Merchants in the countryside supported
peasant activities by forming an efficient distribution system. The expansion of
production did not result in a division oflabour between agriculture and the
cotton industry, but an integration of the two. It was the progress of cotton man-
ufacturing that made it possible for 'advanced' districts to respond effectively
to the opening of the ports by switching from hand-spun yarn to imported
machine-spun yarn.
This was why the reorganization of the indigenous cotton weaving in the
1870s implied opportunities and a process of selection for weaving districts, in
contrast with indigenous cotton growing and spinning, both of which declined,
on the whole. Surviving weaving districts, along with new ones, increased their
cloth output from the 1880s based on the putting-out system, namely the effec-
tive combination of peasant households and local merchants. 35 In particular, the
'various cloth' producing districts showed significant growth propelled by the
increasing demand for designed or patterned cloth woven from dyed yarn. 36
We can identify powerful continuities in technology and production organ-
ization as well as a preference for woven patterned cloth in these developments.
The present author has called this type of industrial development 'indigenous
developmerit' to distinguish it from factory-based 'modern economic develop-
ment'. 37 Thus the development of the cotton industry in early modern Japan
led not only to an 'industrial revolution', but also to an 'indigenous develop-
ment' of the economy of modern Japan.
35 Masayuki Tanimoto, 'The Role ofTradition in Japan's Industrialization: Another Path to

Industrialization', in Masayuki Tanimoto (ed.), The Role of TraditioninJapan's Industrialization
(Oxford, 2006), 12-14, briefly discussed a significant role of the putting-out system underlying
the development of weaving districts in modern Japan. For details, see Tanimoto, Nihon niokeru
Zairaiteki Keizaihatten to Orimonogyo,ch. 6.
36 The significance of patterned cloth created by the combination of dyed yarn in Japanese
clothing is worth considering. In fact, the chapter by Kayoko Fujita in this volume exemplifies
in the first place the Indian influence on Tokugawa Japan, by the introduction of specific striped
cotton, shima. Recalling the discussions emphasizing the significant role of printed calico in the
context of the India-Europe relationship with respect to cotton in several chapters of this volume,
the inclination towards striped cotton in Japan appears to deserve further discussion from a com-
parative point of view.
37 In terms of the discussion on 'indigenous development', see Masayuki Tanimoto, 'Role of
Tradition in Japan's Industrialization'.

19
INVOLUTION AND CHINESE COTTON
TEXTILE PRODUCTION
Songjiang in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries
BOZHONG LI
This chapter draws on my work on the economic history of the Jiangnan region
(the Yangzi delta) during the period from the late sixteenth to the mid-nine-
teenth century. 1 The prefecture of Songjiang, located in the eastern part of
Jiangnan, roughly corresponds to the present-day Shanghai metropolitan area
and by the eighteenth century had been the centre of the Chinese cotton indus-
try for hundreds of years. During the second half of the eighteenth and first half
of the nineteenth century, Songjiang was also the major region for the export of
Chinese cotton textiles. Canton, located in the Pearl River delta, was the only
port of China open to legal foreign trade and was surrounded by a rising cotton
industry. However, the bulk of cotton export came fromJiangnan, and in par-
ticular Songjiang, reaching Canton through the Y angzi, Gan, and Pearl Rivers
and their branches, or along China's south-east coast. Because most of the
Chinese cotton textiles for export came from Jiangnan, western merchants in
Canton named them 'nankeen' after the original producing area, Nankeen. 2
THE INVOLUTION THESIS
The view that cotton textiles, China's leading manufacturing industry, could
be represented as technologically backward and economically inefficient, and
1 Most of the work here cited is in Chinese and therefore not readily available to an English-
speaking public. For reason of brevity, I have decided to include only references to my wider
research and publication in this field. Further bibliographical references can be found in my orig-
inal work and in the essay by Harriet Zurndorfer in this volume.
2 Today spelt as Nanjing, the city was the administrative centre ofJiangnan during the Q.ing
dynasty. Bozhong Li, 'Ming qing jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang jiqi duiJiangnan jingji
fazhan de yingxiang', Zhongguojingjishiyanjiu, z ( 1986), 117-34; id.Jiangnan de zaoqigongyehua,
1550--1850(Beijing, 2000), 377-8.
Bozhong Li
that their development over the eighteenth century was marked by a process of
long-run involution (diminishing marginal returns to labour), will be challenged
in this chapter by considering the case of the Songjiang area, China's foremost
production area for cotton cloth exports.
By the sixteenth century cotton spinning and weaving had replaced the
domestic manufacture of cloth made from hemp and ramie fibres. China began
to export cotton textiles in the seventeenth century and its exports increased
rapidly over the eighteenth century peaking in the early nineteenth century, at
which time Chinese cottons had more or less replaced Indian sales to South-
East Asia. Furthermore, and despite the handicap of distance, cotton cloth
became one of China's principal exports to the West before the famous diffusion
of mechanized spinning in Britain, Catalonia, and France.
Philip Huang and other involution historians maintain, however, that China's
position in this global industry rested upon an increasingly elastic supply of rel-
atively cheap rural labour, flowing from accelerated population growth and an
ever-expanding workforce drawn from underemployed female labour in the
countryside. Chinese women worked intensively over long hours and their
average and marginal productivity pushed returns below subsistence levels.
Though the model of involution was widely accepted, it has been questioned by
many scholars such as Kenneth Pomeranz, Roy Bin Wong, James Lee, Feng
Wang, and myself. Our views have diverged considerably from Huang's,
arguing that the model does not fit the historical evidence. 3
The involution thesis has been under attack also by demographic historians
as it presumes the existence of population pressures on local resources. Recent
studies in demographic history have pointed out that population growth under
the Qing dynasty barely accelerated in comparison with earlier centuries and
that the natural rate of increase was not markedly different from rates experi-
enced by north-western Europe and England from 1700 to 1850. As I have esti-
mated in my previous works on the demographic history of Jiangnan, the
population growth of what was one of the empire's most densely populated
areas was maintained at a low rate of 0.3 per cent per year over the period 1620--
1850.4
Since the economy of Jiangnan expanded remarkably and experienced in-
migration from other provinces at the same time, the involution thesis of
surplus labour subject to diminishing productivity and falling returns is hardly
3
Id., 'Model and Reality: The Farm Economy of Songjiang in 1823-34 and the Involution
Model of Philip Huang', lecture given at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan,
15 April 2003.
4 Id., 'Kongzhi zengzhang, yi bao fuyu: qingdai qianqi jiangnan de rekou xingwei', Xin shixue,
3 (1994), 25-71; id., Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620-1850 (London, 1998); id.,
'Duotai, biyun yu jueyu: song yuan ming qing shiqi jiangzhe diqu de jieyu fangfa jiqi yunyong',
Zhongguo xueshu, 1 (2000), 15-20.
Involution and ChineseCotton Production
credible. 5 Compared to most parts of the world, labour in Jiangnan was any-
thing but cheap, and residents of that area (both urban and rural) enjoyed stan-
dards of living that were the highest in China. 6 In this region the wages of
women who spun and wove cotton cloth were comparable to those of men
engaged in farming. Moreover, at least for the earlier part of the seventeenth
century wages were too high for the region's goods to compete in markets in
northern China, an area of the empire that possessed an abundant supply of
cheap labour. 7
THE ORGANIZATION OF COTTON TEXTILE PRODUCTION

IN SONGJIANG
Since Songjiang's success on international markets was not the result of cheap
labour or of low raw material prices, it seems plausible to suggest that it
depended on relatively high levels oflabour productivity and that these pre-
dated the arrival of western industrial technologies in the mid-nineteenth
century. This was the case, despite the repeated assertions of historians that the
multi-spindle spinning wheels that operated throughout Jiangnan from the late
seventeenth century onwards were technologically backward. One machine
with between forty and eighty spindles, invented in north China to spin hemp
and used in south-west China as early as the fourteenth century, was adapted
to spin cottop in the eighteenth century and remained in use till the mid-twen-
tieth century. Another even more widely used non-powered machine (which
also can be traced to hemp spinning in the fourteenth century) was used in
Songjiang and the eastern parts of Jiangnan in the late eighteenth century. 8
Finally, there is also sufficient documentary evidence to show that high levels
of division of labour were well in place in cotton textile manufacturing in the
region in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As early as the sixteenth
century, the dyeing and calendaring of cloth were carried out by specialized
s Id., 'Model and Reality' .
. · n Id., 'Qjngdai qianzhongqi jiangnan nongrnin laodong shengchanlu de tigao', in Fang Xing,
Jing J unjian, and Wei Jinyu (eds.), Zhongguojingji tongshiqingdaijuan (Beijing, 1999); id., 'Farm
Labor Productivity inJiangnan, 1620-1850', in Robert C. Allen, Tommy Bengtsson, and Martin
Dribe (eds.), Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectiveson Well-Being in Asia and Europe
(Oxford, 2005), 55-76; id., 'Xiangminmen chi de bucuo: shijiu shiji chuqi songjiang renmin
shiwu xiaofei shuiping kao', in Deng Guangmingxianshengbainian shoutanjinian wenji (Beijing,
2007).
7 Id., 'Qjngdai qianzhongqi jiangnan nongrnin laodong shengchanlu de tigao'; id., 'Ming qing
jiangnan mianfangzhiye de laodong shengchanlu', in Ts'ui-jun Liu and Shi Shouqian (eds.),
Jingjish, dushishiyu wuzhi wenhua(Taipei, 2002).
8 Id.,' "Chucai jinyong"-yuandai zhongguo de shuizhuan yu shiba shiji yingguo de akelaite
shuili fangshaji', Lishiyanjiu, 1 (2002).
390 Bozhong Li
firms located in urban areas. By the eighteenth century travelling craftsmen

ginned cotton and sized yarn. 9
Before the mid-seventeenth century the division of labour within peasant
households between men who cultivated the land and women who spun yarn
and wove cotton cloth (nan-geng nu-zhi) was not omnipresent in eastern
Jiangnan, although a clear gender division oflabour had already appeared in silk
manufacturing in the western part of Jiangnan. However, by the late eighteenth
century domestic spinning and weaving of cotton had become part of women's
work: females virtually ceased all agrarian activities in which the returns were
discernibly lower than in the production of cotton cloth. 10 Only the better
skilled and stronger women were occupied in weaving. Younger, older, and less
dexterous females were employed instead in spinning, using single-spindle
wheels or, more rarely, three-spindle machines (Illustrations 19.1 and 19.2).
Despite the rational division oflabour, full productive specialization was rarely
achieved because demand for cotton yarn far exceeded its supply. 11
In the Songjiang textile region the domestic manufacturing of cotton cloth
was not simply a by-product of agriculture. 12 Finishing had evolved into spe-
cialized urban crafts; divisions of labour had appeared among the region's
largely female workforce; geographical specialization between town and the
country had also emerged with the latter specialized in spinning and the former
in weaving. Training systems for women are recorded which show that it took
two years for a young girl to become proficient at spinning and another two
years to become a qualified weaver. 13
The period here considered saw also a vigorous commercialization in
Songjiang's cotton textile production. A sophisticated system was developed
which was often referred to as buhao or buhang. Textile mercantile companies
(buhao) controlled most of the cotton textile production in Songjiang and devel-
oped it into a highly commercialized economic activity (Illustration 19.3).
Spinners purchased raw cotton from suppliers (huahang) and sold finished yarn
to middlemen (yarn shops), who in turn sold it to weavers. By the late eigh-
teenth century buhao merchants trading on a large scale and over long distances
virtually controlled the industry. The buhao usually kept a large office in towns
9Id., 'Fang zhi fenli: ming qing jiangnan mianfangzhiye zhong de laodong fengong yu
shengchan zhuanyehua', in Yeh-Chien Wang and Chen Ciyu (eds.), Xinhuoji: chuantongyu jindai
bianqianzhong de Zhongguojingji (Taipei, 2001 ).
10
Id., 'Cong "fufu bingzuo" dao "nan geng nu zhi" ', Zhongguojingjishiyanjiu, 3 ( 1996), 99-
107; id., '"Nan geng nu zhi" yu "banbiantian" juese de xingcheng', Zhongguojingjishiyanjiu, 3
( 1997), 10-22; id., AgriculturalDevelopmentinJiangnan, 143-5I.
11 Id., 'Fang zhi fenli'.
12 Ibid.; id., 'Cong "fufu bingzuo" dao "nan geng nu zhi" ';id.,' "Nan geng nu zhi" yu "ban-
biantian" juese de xingcheng'.

13 Id.,Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua,436----<).
Involution and ChineseCotton Production 391
Illustration r9.r. 'An Old Woman Twisting Cotton', plate 57 from George Henry Mason,
The Costumes o/China (London, r8oo). Engraved by J. Dadley. Coloured engraving.
Courtesy of the British Library, London
such as Suzhou or Songjiang and had branches in all major cloth-producing vil-
lages in Jiangnan.
Buhao located in Suzhou (at the time the commercial capital of China) also
owned most of the capital required for dyeing and calendaring of cloth and
employed hundreds of skilled workers in the finishing of grey (unbleached and
undyed) cloth produced largely by women within the peasant households. The
buhao set timetables for the delivery of the cloth and standards of quality. 14
Peasant women purchased raw materials from huahang or merchant houses
which connected regions that grew the cotton with those that engaged in the
manufacture and finishing of the cotton cloth. The women spinning and
14 Ibid. Sr-2.
392 Bozhong Li
Illustration 19.2. A Woman Weaving Cotton', plate from George Henry Mason, The Costumes
of China (London, 1800). Engraved by J. Dadley. Coloured engraving.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, D.58-1898.
Illustration 19.3. 'Cotton Ferry', plate from George Henry Mason, The Costumesof China
(London, 1800). Engraved by J. Dadley. Coloured engraving.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 8655:39.
weaving cotton exercised little control over their product and retained.only
limited autonomy in their work.
PRODUCTIVITY
My analysis so far has argued against the conventional view that the productiv-
ity of textile manufacturing in eighteenth-century China was abysmally low.
The technologies employed in spinning, widespread division of labour,
urban/ rural specialization, learning-by-doing, high levels of commercialization,
and coordination of spinning, weaving, and finishing suggest high levels of pro-
ductivity in cotton manufacturing in late eighteenth-century Songjiang. This
statement needs to be qualified as it can only be relative rather than absolute. I
argue that Songjiang's cotton textile productivity was high: (a) compared with
the productivity of males employed in farming; and (b) compared over time and
possibly with other regions engaged with the production of textiles within and
beyond the Qing Empire.
Physical strength determines much of the difference in productivity between
men and women in pre-modern farming. There was a comparative advantage
in concentrating female labour in branches of manufacturing like textiles where
dexterity and skill outweighed physical strength. My research which compared
the daily earnings of men who farmed and women engaged in spinning and
weaving shows that the income per workday of a woman was circa 70 per cent
that of a mah. Since men's earnings in Jiangnan were relatively high, there is
reason to believe that the same was true also for women.
Women's specialization in textile production presented several advantages
in terms of overall family income and welfare. Textile manufacturing was less
physically demanding for women, more remunerative in terms of output per
unit of input, and less affected by natural and climatic conditions than agricul-
ture. Moreover, women's work in textile production could remain outside the
scrutiny of the imperial tax system. One can conclude that the net benefits from
the intensification offemale labour in cotton textiles can hardly be portrayed as
a historical 'involution'. For example, the average size of a Songjiang family
farm was IO mu of paddy fields. 15 Cultivation required 18 male workdays per
mu or a total annual labour input of 180 days. Women in peasant houses worked
up to 265 days per year, spinning and weaving cotton. Given that a woman's
daily income was 70 per cent the male level, their total annual income was
roughly sufficient to support two adults. 16
15 One mu equals 0.0667 hectare or 0.1647 acre. See Zurndorfer's chapter in this volume, n. 9.
16 Li, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 148-51; id., 'Qjngdai qianzhongqi jiangnan
nongmin laodong shengchanlu de tigao'; id., 'Ming qing jiangnan mianfangzhiye de laodong
shengchanlu'.
394 Bozhong Li
Furthermore, available data show that in the eighteenth century textile pro-
ductivity increased at least 20 per cent. InJiangnan, six workdays oflabour were
necessary to produce one bolt of cloth: one day was spent on weaving, another
on ginning, fluffing, and sizing, and four on spinning. The total production was
four liang of yarn using a single spindle wheel and 12 to 16 liang a day if a three-
spindle machine was used. If and when the advanced technology was used, a
female spinner could produce sufficient yarn to supply a weaver for a day's work
on her loom. It meant that the major bottleneck in cotton textile production-
the low productivity of spinning-was broken and the productivity of spinning
and weaving became more balanced.
These changes in physical productivity can be translated into earnings. For
example, the selling price of a bolt of cloth was formed by the costs of raw cotton
(one-third), and wages and a small profit (two-thirds). Given that three catties
of raw cotton were required to produce one bolt of cloth, the earnings and
profits add up to around six days' work of female labour. Eighteenth-century
estimates suggest that the return for the production of one bolt of cloth came to
around 1.4 dou17 of rice in the early eighteenth century, rising to 1.9 dou by mid-
century, but falling back to 1.1 dou (or 3.2 sheng a day in money terms) by the
late nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century labour productivity had
just about doubled. is
Technological, organizational, and commercial progress in the domestic-
cum-proto-cotton textile manufacturing in Songjiang seems to have generated
a remarkable increase in the incomes of women engaged in the production of
cotton textiles. Indeed, it is not difficult to cite contemporary observations that
women could support whole families (including husbands and the education of
sons) from the fruit of their labour. Unfortunately by the early nineteenth
century signs of adverse trends were already evident. In the 1820s, during a
cyclical downturn in demand, the price of raw cotton rose substantially and the
return per bolt of cloth produced dropped to the equivalent of 1.7 dou of rice.
Nevertheless, even at that low level, the daily income of a female worker
amounted to an estimated 3.4sheng, sufficient to feed 3.7 people at a time when
the average peasant family size was just 4.5 people. 19
17 1 shi = IO dou = rno sheng. One shi of husked rice weighs around 80 kilograms.
18 Id., Agricultural Development in Jiangnan; id., 'Qingdai qianzhongqi jiangnan nongmin
laodong shengchanlu de tigao'; id.,Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua.
19 Id., 'Qingdai qianzhongqi jiangnan nongmin laodong shengchanlu de tigao'; id.,Jiangnan
de zaoqi gongyehua.
NINETEENTH-CENTURY DECLINE
For more than six decades after 1840 Songjiang, along with other parts of
Jiangnan, experienced and somehow 'weathered' a series of foreign invasions
and the most destructive civil war in Chinese history. During the Taiping
Rebellion ( 1853--64)Jiangnan lost halfits population, although the human losses
and destruction of capital in Songjiang appear to have been on a smaller scale.
Even before the war, however, the textile industry was seriously affected by the
so-called 'Daoguang Depression' of 1820-50 when internal markets practically
collapsed. This period also witnessed adverse climatic changes which included
sharp drops in temperature, heavy summer rain, and frequent floods which
destroyed cotton crops. 20
Foreign competition in overseas and Chinese markets intensified greatly. In
1846, Bao Shi ch en, a scholar from Jiangnan region, observed that:
Songjiang and Taicang had benefited from the cotton cloth they produced and profits
from cloth had doubled compared to those from the paddy field ... Recently, however,
foreign cloth is selling at a price which is only one third of that of the local cloth. Year
after year the cotton textile industry will not be able to endure this 'competition'. 21
Thus the Songjiang industry not only lost out in its overseas markets but
became itself the receiver of foreign cotton textiles. The Chinese government
was powerless to stop the imports because of the tariff treaties it had been forced
to sign with 1the United Kingdom and other foreign powers. 22
Further decline of Songjiang's textile industry was caused by the opening of
the Suez Canal which virtually halved the distance between European produc-
ers and their markets in east Asia. Between 1846 and 1877 the prices of British
cotton in Shanghai fell by more than 50 per cent. The final deathblow came with
the rise of a mechanized factory industry in Shanghai, which absorbed labour
and capital from its hinterland. In Songjiang, the traditional domestic proto-
industry survived, though restricted in scope and scale and in the form of a side-
line activity for peasant women who received abysmally low returns for their
labour. These remnants of a once efficient and prosperous domestic, cotton
textile proto-industry have led Philip Huang into postulating an anachronistic
history oflong-term involution.
20 Id., '"Daoguang xiaotiao" yu "guiwei dashui" ', Shehui kexue (Social Sciences) (Shanghai),
6 (2007).
21 Bao Shichen, Qjmin sishu (Beijing, 2001), 86.
22 Li, 'Ming qing jiangnan yu waidi jingji lianxi de jiaqiang jiqi duiJiangnan jingji fazhan de
yingxiang'.
20
DECLINE IN THREE KEYS
Indian Cotton Manufacturing from the
Late Eighteenth Century
PRASANNAN PARTHASARATHI AND IAN WENDT
INTRODUCTION
From fitful beginnings, the cotton industry of western Europe developed rev-
olutionary methods of manufacturing in the late eighteenth century. This rev-
olution was the culmination of two long-term developments in the global
economy. First, it was part of a long-term global shift to cottons that began in
medieval times and took place at different tempos in different regions. Second,
it was the outcome of an early modern push to imitate and replace Indian tex-
tiles, which took place to greater and lesser extents in South-East Asia, the
Ottoman Empire, Iran, and various locations within Europe.
The exp¥1sion of cotton in Europe had global ramifications that far exceeded
those of cotton manufacturing in other regions of the world. By the eighteenth
century China may have had the world's second largest cotton industry, after
the Indian subcontinent, but its industry had only a limited Asian impact, and
mostly centred upon the import of raw cotton from the Indian subcontinent for
about half a century from 1780. Similarly Ottoman and Iranian chintzes passed
in Europe as products oflndia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but
they failed to have a worldwide impact in the way the cotton manufacturers of
Lancashire were to in the nineteenth century.
Nowhere in the world was the global impact of the European revolution felt
more suddenly and more deeply than in the Indian subcontinent. For most
other regions of the world, it was more like the passing of a baton from the sub-
continent to northern England. There was still competition from cottons, but
now they came from England instead of India. British machines and methods
of production showed a way to compete, which many textile manufacturing
areas had previously been unable to do. In the space of a few decades, India went
from exporting voluminous quantities of cloth to losing markets around the
world, then importing cheap cotton yarn, and finally importing the cloth itself.
Therefore, the European cotton revolution produced a revolution of sorts in
India as well. But while the European revolution was a triumphal rise, that in
India was a whimpering decline.
This chapter is a reflection on the history and historiography of decline in
nineteenth-century India. It examines decline as it was expressed in three keys.
The first is the writings of contemporaries. The second is the statements oflate
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century nationalists, for the decline of Indian
cotton manufacturing was a major plank of the critique of British rule. The last
is the analyses of modern historians who have been locked in a fractious debate
on the nature and extent of decline.
EARLY LAMENTS OF DECLINE
In the late eighteenth century, the great Persian poet Mir wrote: 'This age is not
like that which went before it. The times have changed, the earth and sky have
changed.' 1 A Sanskrit poet was more direct when he compared the rise of the
'white faced upstarts' to the recurrence of the age of demons. 2 In the minds of
many inhabitants of Bengal, south India, and other regions in the subcontinent
that were coming under the growing power of the British, there was little doubt
that the world was turned upside down and that it was an age of decline. Rajat
Ray has summed it up: 'An ill-wind had blown from the West and a whole
world had gone. ' 3
For the old Mughal elite, it was certainly the ending of an old order. The
nobility of the empire were defeated in battle, toppled from their thrones and
offices, and many pensioned off to pass their final days far from the seats of
power and influence. For the great Persian poets and bards, who recorded these
traumatic changes, their sinecures, networks of patronage, and appreciative
patrons were politically and economically eviscerated and unable to offer the
support that had enabled them, and many generations of their ancestors, to
follow their art and ply their wares. They were now cut loose to scramble for
positions and titles in the new British order.
For these old power holders and their clients and hangers-on, British rule
was a disaster of monumental proportions. Their wails of decline, complaints
1 Khurshidul Islam and Ralph Russell, Three Mughal Poets, Mir, Sauda, and Mir Hasan
(Delhi, 1991), 22, cited in Rajat Kanta Ray, 'Indian Society and the Establishment of British
Supremacy, 1765-1818', in P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, ii: The
Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), 508---29.The quote appears on 508.
2 V. Raghavan (ed.), Sarva-Deva-Vilasa (Madras, [1958]), 2, 80-1, 90, cited in Ray, 'Indian
Society', 508.
3 Rajat Kanta Ray, 'Colonial Penetration and the Initial Resistance: The Mughal Ruling Class,
the English East India Company and the Struggle for Bengal 1756-1800', Indian Historical
Review, 12/I-2 (1985-6), 1-105. The quote appears on r.
Indian Cotton Manufacturing 399
that the social order had been inverted, and laments for an old regime are not
surprising. However, similar laments came from less obvious sources that have
been less recognized. For these, we must pay attention to the small voices of
history. Many, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, came from men
and women directly connected to the manufacture of cotton textiles.
From the 1760s and 1770s, the British exercised their recently acquired polit-
ical power in Bengal and south India to lower the price of cotton cloth, which
they were still purchasing in vast quantities for markets in Europe, Africa, and
elsewhere. The essence of this price lowering was reducing the earnings of
weavers. It is unlikely that the quantity of cloth manufactured in the two regions
declined, but there was a marked deterioration in the standard ofliving and con-
ditions of work for weavers as the growing political power of the British pressed
upon them. This led to lamentations ofloss and decline. In 1768 weavers in
south India, for example, demanded a return to the pre-British system in which
'merchants and brokers advance them the money'. Otherwise, the weavers
declared that 'they would not work for the Company at all'. 4 The new British
order led to weaver complaints of economic distress as their earnings had fallen
and were no longer sufficient. From all parts of south India and Bengal weavers
sent petitions and letters to the British demanding higher prices for their cloth. 5
Laments of decline and distress also emanated from spinners. In an oft-
quoted yet still valuable letter, a widow in Bengal in the 1820s was dismayed at
her inability to support herself and her family from the earnings in spinning:
I was widowqd when I was twenty-two years old. I had given birth to only three daugh-
ters ... I began to spin yarn on asana and charkha ... The weavers would come to my
doorstep to buy the yarn thus spun ... and they would immediately advance as much
cash money as I wanted. As a result we did not have any anxiety about food and clothing
... In this fashion I got three daughters married ... Now for over three years, the
mother and daughter-in-law are facing ricelessness again. Not only have the weavers
stopped coming to my doorstep to buy my yarn, even when I send it to the hat they will
not buy at one-fourth of the former price. I am completely at a loss to understand how
this has come to pass. I have made inquiries and have learned that the weavers are using
English yarn now being extensively imported ... When I examined the yarn I indeed
found it better than mine. 6
By the 1820s, therefore, the difficulties that cotton textile manufacturers

faced emanated from the global economy and some voted with their feet, so to
4 Prasannan Parthasarathi, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and
Kings in South India, r720-r800 (Cambridge, 2001), 104.

5 Ibid. 108 and 113; Hameeda Hossain, The Company Weavers of Bengal: The East India
Company and the Organization of Textile Production in Bengal r750-r8r3 (Delhi, 1988), ch. 4.
6 Cited in Prasannan Parthasarathi, 'Historical Issues ofDeindustrialization in Nineteenth-
Century South India', in Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World:
Cotton Textiles and the Indian Ocean, r500-r850 (Leiden, forthcoming 2009).
400 Prasannan Parthasarathi and Ian Wendt
speak, to cope with their straitened circumstances. Dharma Kumar found that
textile workers were among the earliest indentured migrants from south India
to plantations around the British Empire. According to Kumar, 'In 1834 the
Collector of Godavari, wrote to the Board of Revenue that men from his district,
usually washermen and weavers thrown out of employment by the abolition of
the Company's factories, were going to Bourbon in large numbers and to
Mauritius.' 7 In 1838, the Collector of Godavari reiterated that weavers were
among the labour migrants. In 1840, the Collector ofRajahmundry stated that
washermen and weavers were among the principal occupational groups from
which emigrants from his district were drawn. And in 1863, the Collector of
Vizagapatnam wrote that the majority of migrants from his area were weavers.8
Godavari, Rajahmundry, and Vizagapatnam had been for decades, if not cen-
turies, major centres of cotton cloth manufacture and they were densely settled
with spinners, weavers, washermen, and other textile specialists who made vast
quantities of cloth for both home and overseas markets.
The small voices of cotton workers certainly suggest decline and loss in the
first decades of British rule in the subcontinent. These voices may have perco-
lated up to the literati and elites oflndia or the news of the distress of the textile
workers may have reached these groups through independent channels.
Nevertheless, from the late eighteenth century a sophisticated critique of British
government in the subcontinent was articulated. In 1780, Ghulam Hussain
Tabatabai, a historian in northern India of aristocratic blood, complained that
the British were draining the wealth oflndia and assaulting the goodness of the
land. 9 These sentiments were echoed by others in the early nineteenth century.
In these early sentiments of patriotism, as Christopher Bayly has labelled them,
there is a foreshadowing oflater, but now nationalist, critiques of British rule. 10
At the same time, in the 1820s and 1830s, British administrators in India
reported great distress because of the decline in cotton manufacturing. In 1832,
R. M. Martin, who was based in Bengal, wrote, 'By increase of export of cotton
goods to India from Britain many millions oflndo-British subjects have been
totally ruined.' 11 Administrators in Madras became concerned from the late
1820s that the decline in cotton cloth exports was threatening the stability of the
presidency's revenues. And most famous of all, the Governor-General William
7
Dharma Kumar, Land and Caste in South India: Agricultural Labour in the Madras
Presidencyduring the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1965), 130.
8 Ibid. 139.
9 C. A. Bayly, The Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in
the Making of Modern India (Delhi, 1998), 58.

10 Ibid. r.
11 Cited in R. C. Majumdar, 'Discontent and Disaffection', in R. C. Majumdar (ed.), The
History and Culture of the Indian People, ix/r: British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance
(Mumbai, 4th edn. 2002), 413.
Indian Cotton Manufacturing 401
Bentinck declared: 'The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of com-
merce. The bones of the cotton-weavers are bleaching the plains of lndia.' 12
Bentinck's words were made famous by Karl Marx who quoted them in a dis-
patch to the New York Tribune on British rule in India.
The despair at the state of cotton manufacturing found expression in the
Azamgarh Proclamation, issued by the rebels of 1857 and published in the Delhi
Gazette in late September of that year. The Proclamation declared:
It is evident that the Europeans, by the introduction of English articles into India, have
thrown the weavers, the cotton-dressers, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, and the shoe-
makers, &c., out of employ, and have engrossed their occupations, so that every descrip-
tion of native artisan has been reduced to beggary. 13
This is another instance in which cotton manufacturers loom large in the per-
ceptions oflndian decay and decline in the nineteenth century.
NATIONALISM AND DECLINE
From the late nineteenth century the decline of cotton manufacturing was a
central plank of the nationalist critique of British rule. Romesh Chander Dutt,
the great member of the early Indian National Congress, devoted several sections
of his economic history of British India to the fate of cotton. Dutt concluded:
India in the eighteenth century was a great manufacturing as well as great agricultural
country, anli the products of the Indian loom supplied the markets of Asia and of
Europe. It is, unfortunately, true that the East Indian Company and the British
Parliament ... discouraged Indian manufactures in the early years of British rule in
order to encourage the rising manufactures of England ... millions oflndian artisans
lost their earnings; the population of India lost one great source of their wealth. 14
Dutt also quoted H. H. Wilson, an East India Company servant who was later
the first Boden Chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University, who intoned that the
decline of cotton manufacturing was 'a melancholy instance of the wrong done
to India by the country on which she has become dependent' and that the mills
of Paisley and Manchester 'were created by the sacrifice of the Indian manufac-
ture' .15
For the nationalist movement which was forming in the late nineteenth
century, the decline of the cotton industry became a symbol of the British
12
Cited ibid. 414.
13 'Azamgarh Proclamation', in Stephen Hay (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition, ii: Modern
India and Pakistan (New York, 2nd edn. 1988), 179-80.
14 Romesh Dutt, The Economic History of India, i: Under Early British Rule (London, 2nd edn.
1906), pp. vi-vii.

15 Ibid. i. 187-8.
402 Prasannan Parthasarathi and Ian Wendt
destruction of the Indian economy. An explicit connection between cottons and

a nationalist agitation was made for the first time in the Swadeshi (of own
country) Movement in early twentieth-century Bengal. The movement rejected
the.consumption of British goods, of which cotton cloth was the most impor-
tant. During Swadeshi mass protests, 'persons taking a vow to the nation cere-
monially cleansed themselves with a dip in the Ganges, then emerged to dress
in Indian cloth' .16
From the 1920s the cotton industry was linked even more closely to nation-
alism when Mohandas Gandhi took up hand spinning of cotton as a mode of
resistance to British rule and a means to Indian regeneration. Gandhi formed
the All-India Spinners Association in 1924 to promote hand spinning of cotton
yarn and the Mahatma himself devoted a portion of each day to spinning. Some
of the most enduring images of Gandhi are photos of him at the spinning wheel
(Illustration 20.1) Gandhi wrote: 'When the East India Company came in, we
were able to manufacture all the cloth we needed, and more for ... export' and
'the foundation oflndia's freedom will have been laid only when the import of
Lancashire cloth has stopped'. 17 According to Lisa Trivedi, Gandhi 'trans-
formed an ordinary country cloth into a material and visual symbol that would
be woven into the fabric oflndian politics and culture for decades to come' .18
Cloth possessed great symbolic power in India because of the important role it
played 'not merely in fixing and symbolizing social and political statuses, but in
transmitting holiness, purity and pollution', Christopher Bayly has written. 19
The spinning wheel, and by extension Indian cotton cloth, was also on
display for all to see as it was placed at the centre of the flag of the Indian
National Congress. Independence, therefore, was to lead to a revival of past
Indian greatness at the heart of which lay cotton manufacturing. The charkha
flag was 'marched through busy city streets and hoisted at gatherings in large
open spaces', according to Trivedi. 20 The spinning wheel did not endure as a
symbol of India after independence, however. Soon after the departure of the
British the spinning wheel was removed from the flag of India and replaced with
a wheel, which recalled ancient Buddhist and Hindu symbolism (the dharma
chakra, etc.) as well as the spinning wheel, but the latter in far more abstract
terms.
16 C. A. Bayly, 'The Origins ofSwadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society, 1700---
1930', in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(Cambridge, 1986), 285-321. The quote appears on 311.
17 Qµoted in Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's Nation: Homespun and Modern India
(Bloomington, Ind., 2007), pp. xx and 1.

18 Ibid. 2.
19 Bayly, 'Origins ofSwadeshi', 285.
20 Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's Nation, 102.
Indian Cotton Manufacturing
Illustration 20.1. Gandhi spinning in Birla House, Mumbai, August 1942.

© Kanu Gandhi/GandhiServe.
HISTORIANS AND DECLINE
The decline of the cotton industry was used to great political effect to mobilize
anti-British sentiment in India from the late nineteenth century. The reaction
of historians to the decline of Indian cotton manufacturing has been more
mixed. In the years after Indian independence, nationalist historians subscribed
to the thesis of a decline in cottons as well as a more general thesis of Indian
deindustrialization. Both were articulated in much the same terms as the nation-
alists of the late nineteenth century. R. C. Majumdar's eleven-volume History
and Cultureof the Indian People,as much a monument to the Indian nation as it
is a monument of historical scholarship, devoted several sections to cottons in
the early decades of British rule in what was otherwise a work largely of political
history. 21 These pages drew upon mostly familiar sources to paint a graphic
portrait of decline, and Majumdar's discussion differed little from that of
Romesh Dutt. Both writers, although separated by several decades, drew upon
British officials and administrative reports, gave some data on trade, and
21 R. C. Majumdar (ed.), The History and Cultureof the Indian People(Bombay, 1951---69).
emphasized the inequities of trade policy in Britain and India which protected
the British market from competition but not the Indian.
Although nationalist commentators and historians, from the late nineteenth-
century to the immediate years after independence, wrote with great certainty
that the Indian cotton industry came to be destroyed, there was little actual
examination of the evidence. An attempt to quantify the extent of decline in
cotton manufacturing in the early days of British rule was not undertaken until
the 196os.22 In what is now a classic paper, Amiya Kumar Bagchi compared
employment figures from the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and
argued that the number of workers engaged in manufacturing in the region that
is now Bihar had declined in absolute terms, and that the proportion of manu-
facturing workers in the population had fallen by more than half. Bagchi's essay
examined data on manufacturing as a whole, but there is little doubt that cotton
lay at the heart of the exercise.23
Bagchi's findings and nationalist arguments more generally for the decline
of cotton manufacturing, have not gone unchallenged. One set of challenges has
revolved around the reliability of the quantitative evidence. In the case of
Bagchi, this has centred upon his early nineteenth-century employment
figures. 24 Historians have also questioned the thesis on decline of cottons, and
deindustrialization more generally, on the basis of data from other manufactur-
ing regions in the subcontinent. Konrad Specker, for example, has investigated
nineteenth-century developments in south India and concluded that 'to talk
about destruction of a flourishing textile industry and about deindustrialization,
however, is too simple to render justice to the complexity of changes that
occurred in Indian economic life under the impact of British economic pene-
tration of the Indian market'. 25 Finally, a third set of criticisms has drawn upon
evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and argued that
decline and deindustrialization do not hold for these decades. According to
Tirthankar Roy, who has analysed all-India developments in the late nineteenth
22 Daniel and Alice Thorner investigated on the basis of census data from 1881 and 1931 the
levels of employment in manufacturing and concluded that there had been little change. While
their broad conclusions have been both challenged and defended, none of these contributions
speaks to the decline of cottons in India in the early decades of the European cotton revolution.
See Daniel Thorner and Alice Thorner, 'De-industrialization in India, 1881-1931', in Daniel
Thorner and Alice Thorner, Land and Labour in India (Bombay, 1962), 70-81.
23 Amiya Kumar Bagchi, 'De-industrialization in India in the Nineteenth Century: Some
Theoretical Implications',Journal of DevelopmentStudies, 12/z (1976), 135-64.
24 Marika Vicziany, 'The Deindustrialization of India in the Nineteenth Century: A
Methodological Critique of Ami ya Kumar Bagchi', Indian Economicand Social History Review,
16/I (1979), rn5-46. Also see Bagchi's reply which followed: Amiya Kumar Bagchi, 'A Reply',
Indian Economicand Social History Review, 16/ 2 ( 1979), 147-61.
25 Konrad Specker, 'Madras Handlooms in the Nineteenth Century', in Tirthankar Roy (ed.),
Clothand Commerce:Textilesin ColonialIndia (New Delhi, 1996), 175-217. The quote is on 216.
and early twentieth centuries, 'There is little dispute among historians with the
statement that economic contact between India and industrializing Europe had
both a destructive and a creative impact on Indian industry. In the most influ-
ential view, the destructive impact has tended to be overemphasized. This
[author] by contrast, considers the creative impact the more important. ' 26
It is not unusual for historians to debate the quality and accuracy of data and
evidence, which is the substance of the first objection to Bagchi. The other
objections to the theses of decline and deindustrialization are of a totally differ-
ent kind, however; they revolve around the status that should be accorded to
British colonialism for understanding the economic evolution of nineteenth-
century India. Such interpretations of decline in cotton manufacturing have
come to be associated with nationalism and anti-colonialism. Opponents of
these arguments point to different factors in the explanation of economic stag-
nation in British India and argue that the impact of colonial rule has been greatly
overemphasized. The factors, apart from colonialism, include resource endow-
ments and peculiarities of the Indian economy, society, and culture.
THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
The debate on the fate of cotton manufacturing in nineteenth-century India has

become a referendum on colonialism. However, the essays in this volume
suggest a,n alternative approach: that British colonialism was not the only factor
in cotton's path of development in nineteenth-century India.
In medieval times, Indian cotton cloth exports had dominated the textile trade
l of the Indian Ocean. From the sixteenth century their reach became global as
European traders carried them to the trading system of the Atlantic. Wherever
they were imported Indian cottons posed a threat to local textile manufacturers,
who feared being displaced by the competition. At the same time, as several
I essays in this volume have shown, imports oflndian cottons also stimulated local
cotton manufacturing around the world. From West Africa to western Europe,
Japan, South-East Asia, Iran, and Turkey, local textile workers were inspired
by the Indian stuffs and either sought to replicate them or conceived of new
products from the Indian examples. And this was happening in the context of a
long-term shift towards cotton in the global economy. Therefore, the global
hegemony was neither stable nor guaranteed to be permanent.
The European cotton revolution of the late eighteenth century took several
decades if not centuries to emerge. Although it was slow in developing, it hit
the major textile manufacturing regions of the Indian subcontinent like a jack-
hammer. The new competition was sudden, forceful, and unrelenting.
26 Tirthankar Roy, TraditionalIndustry in the Economy of ColonialIndia (Cambridge, 1999), 3.
Although the European revolution was part of a long-term process of change

that had parallels in other regions, it was at the same time an imitation oflndian
stuff that was of an entirely new sort and magnitude. Cotton manufacturers
around the globe had to adapt to the European revolution. It was particularly
difficult in the subcontinent, however, given the size and scale of cotton man-
ufacturing and the fact that the world was suddenly turned upside down.
Within a matter of a few decades, the great cotton regions oflndia had been dis-
placed from their positions as global cotton hegemons. Silver, gold, and copper
were no longer flowing in from Japan, South-East Asia, west Asia, Europe, and
the Americas in exchange for Indian textiles. Merchants of all shades and stripes
were no longer stalking the cotton-manufacturing regions of Gujarat, Bengal,
south India, and elsewhere, paying high prices for scarce supplies of cloth.
For Karl Marx, the decline of the cotton industry was the prelude to an eco-
nomic and social regeneration in India. 'England, it is true, in causing a social
revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests ... The ques-
tion is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the
social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she
was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution,' Marx
wrote in the New York Tribune. 27 Marx predicted that British rule would break
up stasis and stagnation in India and transmit capitalism which had created a
modern cotton industry in Europe. The essays in this volume show that Marx
was wrong on both counts. First, before British rule the advanced maritime
regions of the subcontinent possessed highly commercialized and economically
sophisticated economies. Second, capitalism did not propel the European cotton
revolution. As Patrick O'Brien has argued, it was a complex of geopolitical
factors in which the British state played a critical role.
This fact, that the British state was critical to the rise of British cotton, was
a staple of nationalist critiques of British rule in India. From Romesh Dutt to
Ami ya Bagchi, much has been made of the trade barriers and protective tariffs
that the British imposed to foster their textiles from the eighteenth century. It
is a sense of loss, of what might have been in nineteenth-century India if the
British had acted in the subcontinent as they did at home, that animates
modern-day laments of decline. To criticize the policies of colonialism,
however, is not to reduce the analysis to the politically inspired arguments of
latter-day nationalists. For a critique of colonialism is not only the possession
of nationalism.
27 Karl Marx, 'The British Rule in India', in Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader
(New York, 2nd edn. 1978), 658.

CONCLUSION
Despite the importance of the issue and the heatedness of the debate, there has
been very little serious historical investigation of the decline of cottons in India,
especially in the major textile-manufacturing regions and in the first decades of
the nineteenth century. The scholarship consists of the occasional article, but a
detailed book-length study based on intensive work in the relevant archives and
premised upon a deep understanding of the nature of textile manufacturing
from cotton growing to cloth finishing remains to be undertaken. 28
Even if we possessed such a study, the debate on decline would most likely
still not be resolved. Contentious issues will no doubt remain on how to inter-
pret the evidence, its quality, and so forth. History may be an empirical subject,
but historical truths are rarely established solely on the basis of evidence. Those
critics of the thesis of decline who tend to focus on the evidence (with rare
acknowledgement of the poor quality ofit) are focusing on the particular. They
miss the fact that at a gerteral level, the decline of cottons in nineteenth-century
India is part of a 'structure of feeling', to borrow a phrase from Raymond
Williams, that is widely shared. The beliefin decline does not rest upon the par-
I,l ticulars of the evidence-loom censuses, employment calculations, or trade
figures-but rather on the general arc of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
I turies in which the Indian subcontinent went from exporting massive quantities
of cotton~ to importing them. That arc of change is supported by the essays in
\I this volume. They suggest a world in which Indian cottons had been at the core
of the global economy, but then came to be peripheral. This is what the decline
I
of cottons in the subcontinent has meant to millions. It has achieved near mythic
status. Yet it is history none the less.
28 Such a solid foundation for south India may be found in Ian Wendt, 'The Social Fabric:
Textile Industry and Community in Early Modern South India' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis,
University ofWisconsin, Madison, 2005).
GLOSSARY
adinkra - cotton cloth with patterns of stamped and/ or painted motifs, made
in the Asante Kingdom. Plain white ground cloth, it was originally a West
African strip-cloth woven on the treadle loom; this was later replaced by
imported European linens and cottons.
African chintz - resist-dyed, painted, or printed textiles, using cotton
cloth-locally made or imported-as a ground.
alaca - a cloth made of mixed fibres such as cotton and silk, also a striped fabric;
in the latter case a combination of red and yellow was favoured. Used in the
Ottoman Empire.
alachas - an important Gujarat cloth of mixed cotton and silk or tussur silk,
usually striped red and white or blue and white, sometimes flowered or
embellished with gold and silver thread.
Allada cloth- cotton cloths produced in the Bight of Benin hinterland, woven
on either the vertical loom or the treadle loom. Traded during the Atlantic
slave trade in units making up a wrapper; primarily loom patterned.
allejar (allejae)- cotton handkerchief, mostly striped blue and white or red
and white, or sometimes checked (loom patterned). It was made in south
India.
ardians fardeas)- probably from Gujarati aradhil adadhi.Plain dyed cloths of
differing sizes traded in Delagoa Bay.
· armosins (armozjin)- a staple silk textile, plain, striped, or chequered, often
brocaded or embroidered in coloured silks, silver, or gold threads. It was
exported in fairly large quantities from India. However, a silk stuff manu-
factured in northern Europe (mostly the Netherlands) also bore this name.
bafta (baftas, or baffeta)- a generic term for white or piece-dyed cottons from
Gujarat (specially Broach and Navsari), varying in quality from coarse to
fine, the latter costing nearly twice the former. Bafias sent to Europe were
usually white, but for the Asian markets they were more commonly dyed
red, blue, or black. After the Gujarat famine of 1630, they became scarce
and were imitated in many other parts oflndia, the term thus losing all local
significance.
balanced plain weave - interlacing of single, alternating warp (lengthwise)
threads with single, alternating weft (crosswise) threads; when warp and
weft threads are equal in size and equally spaced, the plain weave is 'bal-
anced'.
bantan - luxury cloths woven with thread made of mixed cotton and 'silk-
cotton' (kapok) fibre, reportedly to look like silk. Woven originally in the
Glossary
upper Guinea Coast hinterland on the treadle loom; higher-priced versions

were woven in the Cape Verde Islands using imported silk. The name
comes from the Mandinka and Wolof word for ceiba, the American kapok
tree (which differs from their word for bombax, the African kapok tree).
Both trees yield a floss, but it is not spinnable by itself; the floss is used
mainly as stuffing and as tinder.
barafula (berafula)- cotton cloths woven originally in the upper Guinea Coast
hinterland on the treadle loom, then imitated in the Cape Verde Islands
beginning in the mid-sixteenth century. Standardized as a wrapper made
of six strips of alternating colours, plain white and piece dyed with indigo,
the barafula became a currency and standard of value in the Cape Verde
Islands and along the upper Guinea Coast in the seventeenth century.
barchent - a generic German term for fustian. The term is borrowed from the
Latin barracanus and the Italian barracano, derived in turn from the Arabic
barrakan and the Persian baranka.
bark cloth - type of cloth made by processing and beating out pieces of inner
bark cut from living trees. In the Gold Coast hinterland, Antiaris africana
was the preferred species and bark cloth made from it circulated in forest
communities before and during the Atlantic slave trade. Both the tree and
cloth were called kyenkyen in the Asante Kingdom, and it remained an
important ceremonial item there into the twentieth century.
barnaze (barnaje) - dyed cloth (probably indigo dyed). It was traded in
Zambezi Valley.
basma - printed cotton.
bast - general term for strong, linen-like fibres that were used to make rope,
twine, and cordage in West Africa from ancient times. Processed fibre from
the bark of Tabernaemontana pachysiphon was spun into thread and woven
into cloth in the hinterlands of the Bight of Benin, where it served ceremo-
nial purposes in the court of the Benin Kingdom.
bazin - a twill weave, either a pure cotton or a linen warp and cotton woof,
resembling dimity or fustian; originally made in India but eventually pro-
duced in France.
beledi - a coarse cloth, normally of cotton but occasionally of silk.
bengara(-jima)-striped cloth from Bengal used in Tokugawa Japan.
Benin cloth - cotton cloths produced in the Benin Kingdom and the Bight of
Benin hinterland, using the vertical loom. Traded during the Atlantic slave
trade in units making up a wrapper; plain white, loom patterned, or piece
dyed.
berafula see barafula
bethilles - the Deccanese term for muslin. Coromandel exports came mostly
from Golconda, especially the neighbourhood ofWarangal. Their length
Glossary 4II
varied from 15 to 25 yards, while their usual width was 1.5 yards. They
were sometimes dyed red and were striped or flowered with embroidery.
The fine grades were sometimes reinforced with thin wire thread. They
were much in demand in Europe as neckcloths.
bez - generic term for white cottons and linens.
biaobu - 'Standard' cloth, a Chinese term for a broad and thick type of cotton
cloth.
bocacis - multicoloured linen cloths imported from Europe through Spain.
bogasi - coarse cloth often used for linings and cheap shirts.
bolt - a roll of fabric in China.
bombasine - the term was originally applied to heavy canvas made of Levant
cotton in the weft and high-grade hemp in the warp which was used for sail-
cloth, tents, and awnings. Bombasine were also produced in finer, lighter
textures with plain or napped surfaces. Made in a variety of colours and pat-
terns, they were widely adopted for outer clothing, tablecloths, and mat-
tress and pillow coverings.
brawle (brawl)- low-priced blue and white striped cottons (loom patterned),
popular on the Guinea Coast during the Atlantic slave trade. Made in
western India, and imitated by British manufacturers by the end of the sev-
enteenth century.
bretanas - cotton cloth imported from Brittany and sold to the Spanish
American colonies through Spain.
buckram - from Persian Buchara, Italian bucherame,Old French boquerant,
Mid~le English bukeram.An imitation of a cloth ofBokhara, in present-day
Uzbekistan. Originally a fine cotton fabric stiffened with starch or gum,
used in apparel and headgear including hennins and framed hoods and hats.
calico - general term used by Europeans to refer to cottons exported from
India.
calimanco - (French calamande) brightly dyed glazed worsteds that com-
peted with calico.
cangans - a multicoloured cotton shawl produced mainly on the Coromandel
Coast.
canniken (canequins, or kanniekin, or kaniki)- low-priced, coarse cotton,
piece dyed blue or black, probably similar to baftas. It was woven chiefly in
India at Broach and Navsari and sold in all the main Asian markets and in
south-east Africa.
Cape Verde Island cloth - cottons made in the Cape Verde Islands on the
treadle loom in imitation of cottons woven in the upper Guinea Coast hin-
terland. The most elaborate versions had very complex loom patterning.
They were traded widely all along the Guinea Coast in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
412 Glossary
capotins (capperees)- blue and white chequered or striped cloths. They were
traded in Delagoa Bay.
cassa Bengale - smooth, finely woven cotton cloth, woven in Dacca, Bengal,
and India.
cavezzi - skeins of commercial warp threads of specified lengths and counts,
with a prescribed number of threads per linear unit. The centre of produc-
tion was Lombardy in Italy.
chafarcani (or jafarkani)- an Indian cotton print in two colours only, which
therefore needs just two planches(boards) for the printing and is considered
a cheap variety of cloth.
charkha - a wooden wheel used to spin coarse or medium-quality yarns.
chauderes (or chautars) - plain white calicoes, possibly of superior quality.
They were traded across east central and south-east Africa.
chello (chela, or chillae)- cotton handkerchief usually striped or chequered
blue and white (loom patterned). It was made in north-east India. The
name perhaps derived from Sanskrit chela or chaila, 'a kind of scarf or
mantle'. It was exported mainly to the Malay archipelago.
chemise - shirt or blouse, typically voluminous, long, and tunic-like.
chintz (chintes)- painted or printed (sometimes glazed) cottons originally
from India, later in the eighteenth century imitated by European manufac-
turers as a mixed cotton-linen. Name possibly derived from the vernacular
word chitta, 'spotted cloth'.
fifekli - literally 'with a flowered design', presumably a variety of printed
cotton cloth used in the Ottoman Empire.
copper plate - a cotton fabric printed in monochromatic red, blue, purple, or
sepia by a large engraved metal plate.
cotones - Spanish cotton cloth 'in imitation of Chinese fabrics' used for bed-
clothes.
cotonias - cotton fabric from Flanders.
cottonade - see siamoise
counterpane - a white, tufted cotton bed covering.
culottes - breeches.
cuttanee (cuttenee)-from the Persian qutni, a mixed silk and cotton cloth with
loom-patterned stripes and sometimes floral motifs, woven in satin weave.
Made in Gujarat.
denim - from sergede Nzmes, a coarse, sturdy cotton cloth similar to drill. Used
for outerwear and upholstery.
dimity (deitemal, or peitemal)- from the Greek dimitosand the Italian dimito,
a fine, corded cotton fabric, white, dyed, or figured with coloured yarns,
used for tunics and other garments.
dotins (dutties)-from dhoti, a strong coarse cotton cloth, probably indigo dyed,
Glossary 413
used throughout east-central Africa and in interior trade across region.

dowlas - heavy, coarse linen, originally from Brittany, but eventually woven
in Germany, Ireland, and Scotland.
dreibants - three-breadth versions of 'Benin cloth' that were traded widely on
the Guinea Coast especially in the seventeenth century. The Dutch used
this term as a unit of account for making all their cloth purchases.
drill (or drilling) - from the Latin trilix and Italian terlici meaning a triple-
twilled cloth. A heavy mixed fabric of cotton, linen, and hemp with a diag-
onal weave. It was used for outer garments, bedspreads, and mattress
ticking.
dutties - see dotins
flannel - a soft twilled woollen fabric napped on one or both sides. It was
woven in solid colours and geometric patterns including plaids, stripes, and
checks and used for apparel and household linens in medieval Europe.
flannelette - a lighter, loosely woven version of cotton flannel with soft,
absorbent qualities suitable for a wide variety of household uses.
'floral cloth' - fine-quality Chinese cotton textile, manufactured in urban loom
houses.
fotas - an ordinary cotton calico.
fustagno - a generic Italian term for cotton cloth or 'fustian' derived from the
Arabic fustan that denoted a cotton/linen fabric used for tunics and other
items of apparel and sails.
fustian - broad category of cotton-linens. See alsofustagno; barchent.
galan (gtllan) - cotton cloths woven on the treadle loom in the vicinity of
Galam, in the upper Senegal River basin. They were blue and white striped
(loom patterned), and were transported downriver for export.
garras - an ordinary cotton calico.
ginghams - 'A kind of cotton or linen cloth, woven of dyed yarn, often in
stripes or checks' ( OED). It is derived from the Malay Ginggang, meaning
'striped'. It is not certain whether Coromandel ginghams were the same as
Bengal ginghams of mixed cotton and tussur silk or whether they were
entirely made of cotton. The important feature to traders was that they were
woven with double-threaded warps and wefts, thus having a distinctive
texture. They were sent to the Malay archipelago and after 1640 to Europe.
The dimensions were approximately 20 yards by I yard.
gondos - rough utilitarian cotton cloth manufactured in Sofala.
Gossypium arboretum -Asiatic short-staple coarse cotton growing in central
Asia and north-west China.
Gossypium herbaceum - the Old World species of the cotton plant that yields
a variety of short-staple cotton. It originated in south Asia and eventually
spread to south China and the Middle East.
Glossary
goulongs - a variety patterned in the loom and which usually incorporated gold
thread. It was intended chiefly for making into Malay sarongs.
Guinea cloth - general term for a variety oflow-cost cottons, made in western
India. They were striped or checked (loom patterned) with coloured
threads. Popular on the Guinea Coast during the Atlantic slave trade, hence
their name.
hat - a weekly or periodical market.
huazu - rent payment in China in cotton cloth.
huipil - traditional cotton Indian shirt usually manufactured by women.
ikat- from the Malay ikat, meaning 'to tie', a cotton cloth and type of weaving
that uses a resist-dyeing process on either the warp or weft before the
threads are woven to create a pattern or design.
indianas - cotton fabric printed with colourful designs. They were character-
istically printed on white cotton cloth manufactured in Spain.
indienne - block-printed calico, originally made in India but from the 1670s
in Europe.
jafarkani - see chafarcani
jean a twilled cloth of the fustian group, initially composed, like the other fus-
tians, oflinen warps and cotton wefts, but by the late eighteenth century
increasingly made with both warps and wefts in cotton. The term 'jean' is
an Anglicization of Genoa as it was originally produced in Liguria and
Piedmont, and exported through the port of Genoa.
jorians (joories) - probably fromjhuri, plain white calicoes from Gujarat of
varying quality. They were exchanged widely in east-central Africa.
kanniekin (kaniki) - see canniken
kasuri-momen - Japanese-style splashed patterned cloth (ikat). The patterns
are created by the combination of the indigo-dyed yarn.
kente - elaborately patterned cloth woven of silk or silk and cotton on the
treadle loom in the Asante Kingdom. Created in the early eighteenth
century, or perhaps before then, and promoted under royal patronage as a
luxury cloth and major ceremonial art form.
keshang - 'Guest merchants', long-distance merchants who traded cloth all
over the Chinese empire.
kirbas (kirbaz, or kirpas)- a coarse weave, often oflinen, used for lining.
kutni - a mixture of cotton and silk woven so that one side appears as silk and
the other as cotton.
lienzo de la tierra - locally made plain cotton textiles in the Spanish American
colonies.
litham -Arabic term for the face veil, worn by either men or women. Adopted and
still worn by Saharan Berbers such as the Tuareg, who call it the tagulmust.It
was produced and exported as a cloth currency in Tuareg trading networks.
Glossary
long cloth - cotton cloth, variable in quality and price, plain white or piece
dyed. It was exported from India's Coromandel Coast. It was usually c.37
yards long, hence the name.
longuins (long cloths) - probably from fungi, a cloth generally white but also
blue or brown. It was traded widely in east central Africa.
loom-produced pattern - patterns made within the structure of the weaving
process, for example, by using differently coloured threads or by manipu-
lating the arrangement and number of thread elements.
machicote - short wrap-around skirt worn by Amerindian women.
machiras - roughly woven undyed cotton cloths manufactured in Zambezi
Valley.
mantas - cotton blankets.
mantelet - lined, sometimes pleated loose or semi-fitted over-garment, short
coat, or jacket. It was worn open, over the corset.
matafu(-jima)- striped cloth from Madras used in Tokugawa Japan.
mian (mumin)- Chinese expression for the cotton plant.
midloom - Chinese term for low-quality cotton cloth.
mordant- a substance used in dyeing to fix the colouring agent.
moree (muris-sen)- one of the categories of staple cotton cloth woven on the
Coromandel Coast. It was usually of superior quality and much in demand
in Europe as a substitute for linen cloth. It was also used for chintz making.
The traditional centre of manufacture was Masulipatnam but later it was
also roven in the Madras area. The usual dimensions were about 9 yards
by I yard 8 inches.
mousseline - lightweight cotton from India; much like muslin.
muslin - very fine, semi-transparent plain white cotton clqth, legendary for its
high quality. The name is derived from Mosul, on the Tigris River, but the
cloth itself was woven in India, especially the district of Bengal.
nankeen - a cotton cloth manufactured in regions near the city of Nanjing in the
Yangzi River delta, particularly popular in the late eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries. By c.1780 they were also produced in Lancashire. This textile
was a plain natural-coloured cloth used for pockets, stockings, and items of
clothing which needed a hard-wearing fabric, as well as for the sails of ships.
A piece of nankeen measured 16 yards in length and one yard in width.
'Negro cloth' -see plains
nicannee (niccanee, or nickanee, or niquanias) - low-priced striped cotton
cloth (loom patterned). It was produced in western India and bought by
British merchants mainly for the Guinea trade.
okushima taffachelas(in Dutch) - or certain types of striped textiles produced
in Coromandel were called in Japan okushima, which literally meant 'a
distant island'.
Glossary
ozenbrig (osnabrug, and many other spellings) - cheap, coarse,

unbleached flaxen or hempen linen. Originally from Germany, by the eigh-
teenth century it was also woven in Ireland, Scotland, and elsewhere.
panos pretos - cotton cloths woven originally in the upper Guinea Coast hin-
terland on the treadle loom. These were plain white strips sewn together to
make standard wrapper sizes, then piece dyed in indigo. The finest ones
were beaten to produce a glazed surface finish. They were traded along the
upper Guinea Coast especially from the late sixteenth century. Overseas
versions came to be called piecesde Guinie by European merchants. The
name panospretos, in coastal Creole, means literally 'black wrappers'.
parcals - a closely woven cotton cloth. It was a sort of fine white cambric. Its
dimensions were 8 yards by I yard.
patolas (Gujarati patolu) - a well-known type of silk cloth, the warp and the
weft being tie dyed before weaving according to the predetermined pattern.
Patolas were exported mainly to the Malay archipelago, the measurements
varying according to the needs of different markets. The chief centre of
patola weaving was Patan, north-east of Ahmadabad in western Gujarat.
pe§temal - seetestemel/de§tmal
pieces de Guinee - name given by European merchants to Indian-made cotton
cloths dyed indigo blue and glazed (seepanos pretos). These became an
important commodity currency that was used in the desert-side gum export
trade north of the Senegal River in the eighteenth century.
pignolato - a generic Italian term for cotton cloth, possibly referring to the
common 'pine cone' pattern (similar to a rhombus) that was a standard vari-
ation of the basic twill weave in mixed cotton/linen textiles. Sometimes
called a honeycomb, lozenge, or diamond weave in popular parlance.
pintado - Indian painted calico where the dyes and mordants were applied to
the cloth freehand with a brush. Thus each painted design had the character
of individual drawing with the human and sensuous touch, instead of being
limited to the repeat pattern imposed by the print block. Such cotton paint-
ings were called either pintadoes(from the Portuguese word pintadoe,'paint-
ing') or chinetes(Hindi chint, later English chintz). Whereas the former was
applied only to painted cottons, the latter term was used for both painted
and printed.
plains - (or 'Negro cloth') generally white, green, or blue cheap woollens,
usually woven in Wales or the West Country of England.
pulicat (pullicat) - silk handkerchiefs, made in India.
quaqua cloth - cotton cloths brought to the Ivory Coast from the West African
interior to exchange for salt and overseas products during the Atlantic slave
trade. Traded in units based on standard wrapper sizes. They were made of
plain or loom-patterned strips woven on the treadle loom and sewn together.
Glossary
ramie - a textile plant with great tensile strength, and whose yarn varied from
coarse to very fine.
raphia (raffia) - fibre from the cuticle of young leaflets of the raphia palm. It
was gathered and processed, but not spun. Textiles woven from raphia were
therefore limited in dimension to the length of the fibre, unless fibres were
spliced or knotted to form a continuous length. In West African rainforests,
Raphia vinifera, the wine palm, was a main source of this textile fibre.
romaul (romal, or rumal) - small thin squares, woven of cotton or silk, usually
decorated with painting, printing, or embroidery. Made in India for use as
a covering or for wrapping gifts. They were traded on the Guinea Coast in
the eighteenth century.
salampuris - Coromandel word for white cloth with red borders. Its usual
dimensions were 4 yards by I yard.
samateres-white, very narrow, rough, open, and ordinary cloth. It was traded
extensively in Manyika (Zambezi Valley).
santome(-jima)-striped cloth from Sao Thome used in Tokugawa Japan.
sarasa - Indian printed and painted textiles with exotic flowers, birds, human
figures, and geometric patterns (and South-East Asian, Japanese, and
European ones in the same style as well). Sarasa is conventionally said to
have derived from 'Surat'.
savagagins - cured cloths.
shift- the garment eighteenth-century women wore next to the body, some-
time~ termed a smock or a chemise.
shima - meaning 'stripes' or 'checked pattern' in Japanese. The term derived
from the homonym shima, which meant 'island' (which implied a remote
place such as India). It was used after the arrival of Portuguese merchants
in Japan in the mid-sixteenth century.
shima-mono -textiles with stripes or checks used in Tokugawa Japan.
siamoise (cottonade)-inexpensive fustian-like imitation of calico with flax or
hemp warp and cotton weft that originated in Rouen in the seventeenth
century.
tajfachelas (seealsookushima)- a fine-quality calico. It could, however, also be
produced from cotton yarn or from cotton and silk mixed yarn.
taffeta (taffatie, or taffety)- general trade term for silk piece goods made in
India and elsewhere. The name is derived from the Persian word tafta, 'a
glossy twist'.
tafta - a Bengali silk textile.
taka-bata - a handloom made of wood used in Japan. Originally, it was used to
weave silk fabrics, and then introduced to the cotton-weaving districts to
weave striped cotton in the latter half of the Tokugawa period.
tan - the unit for cloth that was widely used in Japan. Ideally, it was the size of
Glossary
cloth that was sufficient for making one piece of the traditional Japanese
dress, the kimono. One tan was approximately 0.35 metres wide and 11
metres long.
tapi-chindaes - a cheap painted or printed cloth made especially for the Spice
Islands.
tapis - a general term for coloured piece goods used as skirts by both men and
women in many parts of South-East Asia.
tapi-sarassas - a variety of tapis patterned with birds and foliage.
tapsell (tapseel, or topseil, or tafficila)-low-priced striped (loom-patterned)
cloth of mixed silk and cotton, woven in western India. Much in demand
on the Guinea Coast during the Atlantic slave trade.
T-cloth - Chinese term for low-quality cotton cloth.
testeme (de§tmal, or pe§tmal) - a waistcloth, worn in the baths or workshop in
Ottoman times. Probably identical to pejtemal.
thickset - a kind of fustian, normally with a short, close nap.
'three-shuttle cloth' - Chinese cotton or ramie-cotton cloth, manufactured
in urban loom houses, in particular in Songjiang in East China.
tiraz- a royal workshop for the production ofluxury fabrics in the early Islamic
world.
to-zan - an abbreviated form of t6-santome(literally 'Chinese santome textiles'),
which meant genuine Indian santometextiles, as the term 'to' or Tang China
symbolized a far place in the Japanese language.
tussur silk - high-quality silk of a brownish colour produced by the tussur
moth, common in Asia.
velour - a heavy, napped cotton fabric imitating velvet. It was used for clothing
and upholstery.
velveret - a striped or ribbed fustian with a cotton warp and a silk weft, often
ribbed. It was used for apparel.
velvet - a fabric with a raised pile.
velveteen - an all-cotton cloth made in imitation of velvet.
vespifa - indigo-dyed cloth. It was used on the Swahili coast and in the
Zambezi Valley.
voyageur - a fur trader in French North America who held a government
licence or conge.
watagae - a Japanese term for 'cotton changing' that implies a form of the trans-
action between cotton merchant and household. The merchant provided a
farming household with ginned cotton and then collected cloths produced
by this same household. The farming household was given a certain amount
of ginned cotton as remuneration.
weft-face plain weave - interlacing of single, alternating warp (lengthwise)
threads with single, alternating weft (crosswise) threads; when there are
Glossary
fewer warp threads and more weft threads per unit of measurement, the
weft threads predominate. This structure makes the cloth heavier and stur-
dier than a cloth of balanced plain weave.
woollen stuff - relatively thin worsteds.
wrapper - rectangular cloth worn wrapped around or draped over the body by
West African women and mostly non-Muslim men. Based on standard
sizes for men and women, and originally made up ofbreadths woven on the
vertical loom or strips woven on the treadle loom. Cloth currencies were
often in the form of either a wrapper or sufficient units of cloth necessary
to make one. Known also as pagnein French, pano in Portuguese and coastal
Creole.
xereo (xerco) - plain white cotton cloth woven on the treadle loom in the hin-
terland of the upper Guinea Coast between Cape Verde and the Senegal
River. Important trade item in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The name comes from major weavers of it, Serer-speakers.
xilotepec - traditional coarse plain white cotton for household use and local
trade in the Spanish American colonies.
yaren - in China, cotton cloth brokers who bought and sold cotton yarn and
cloth.
youdun - fine-quality cotton used for making summer socks in China.
zuartes - blue (indigo-dyed) cotton cloths trade in the Zambezi Valley.
I
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This is not a comprehensive bibliographical list. Its aim is to help readers to

trace terms and expand this glossary. More complete references can be found
in the Bibliography:
John Adams, Sketches Taken duringTen VoyagestoAfrica (repr. 1970); Marshall

Joseph Becker, 'Matchcoats', Ethnohistory, 52/ 4 (2005), 727-87; Dorothy K.
Burnham, Warp and Weft (1980); Antonio Carreira, Panaria Cabo-Verdiano-
Guineense(1968); Centre International d'Etude des Textiles Anciens, Fabrics
( 1964); Philip Curtin, EconomicChangein PrecolonialAfrica ( 1975); John M.
Dalziel, The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa (1937); R. P. A. Dozy,
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and P. R. Schwartz, Studies in Indo-European Textile History (1966); Adam
420 Glossary
Jones (trans. and ed.), WestAfrica in the Mid-Seventeenth Century (1995); Ilona
Katzew, Casta Painting (2004); Sigismund Koelle, PolyglottaAfricana, ed. D.
Dalby and P. E. H. Hair (1963); Colleen E. Kriger, Clothin WestAfrican History
(2006); Pedro Machado, 'Gujarati Indian Merchant Networks in Mozambique,
1777-c.1830' (2005); Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry
in the Later Middle Ages 1rno-1600 (1981); Florence M. Montgomery, Textiles
in America, 1650-1870 (1984); Nize Izabel de Moraes, 'Le Commerce des tissus
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in Latin America, 1492-1820 (2006); A. F. C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans,
1485-1897 (1969); Satyaprakasa Sangara, Indian Textiles in the Seventeenth
Century (1998); P. J. Thomas, Mercantilism and the East India Trade ([1926]
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
William Gervase Clarence-Smith is Professor of the Economic History of

Asia and Africa, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Uni-
versity of London. He is also chief editor of the Journal of Global History (Cam-
bridge University Press). He has written on the history of commodities, labour,
diasporas, and social structures, with particular reference to Africa and South-
East Asia. His latest book is Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (2006).
Robert DuPlessis is the Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and Interna-

tional Relations at Swarthmore College, USA. Among his recent publications
are Transitions to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (1997); 'Transatlantic Tex-
tiles: European Linen in the Cloth Cultures of Colonial North America', in
Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw (eds.), The European Linen Industry in
Historical Perspective (2003); Market Makers and Market Takers: A History of
Natural Fibers Textiles in the Central Apennine Region (2005); 'Cloth and the
Emergence of the Atlantic Economy', in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.),The Atlantic
Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (2005).
Suraiya Faroqhi was Professor of Ottoman Studies at the Ludwig Maximil-

ians Universitat in Munich between 1988 and 2007. Following retirement she
teaches at Bilgi University in Istanbul. She is the author and editor of more
than a dozen books including Pilgrims and Sultans: The Haj under the Ottomans
(1994); Subjects of the Sultans: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire
(2000); Stories of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing Status, Establishing
Control (2002); The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it, I54os to I774
(2004). Her festschrift from her Ankara colleagues Osmanlz'ntnpe;inde birj]!aam
(A Lifetime in the Wake of the Ottomans) edited by Onur Yildmm (2008) has
recently been published.
Kayoko Fujita is Associate Professor at the Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific Univer-

sity (Beppu, Oita, Japan), where she teaches Japanese and global history. She
studied the history of Japan's foreign relations at Osaka University and the
Dutch commercial expansion to Asia at Leiden University. Her research fo-
cuses on the changing patterns of intra-Asian and long-distance trade and their
impact on Japan's culture, society, and economy since the sixteenth century.
She is currently co-editing a book entitled Offihore Asia: Maritime Interactions
in Eastern Asia with Anthony Reid and Momoki Shiro.
470 Notes on Contributors
Pat Hudson is Professor of Economic and Social History at Cardiff University.

She has researched and published on industrialization in Britain, on pre-factory
manufacturing, the family economy, and demographic change in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, as well as on the role of quantitative analysis in
historical work. She is currently working on the relationship between history
and economic analysis and the changing nature of merchant correspondence
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The article in this volume
marks a return to debates about the roots of British industrialization in the suc-
cesses of the textile sector internationally, first explored in The Genesis of In-
dustrial Capital (Cambridge, 1986).
Colleen E. Kriger is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina,

Greensboro, USA, where she has been a faculty member since 1993. She fo-
cuses her research on artisans, skilled labour, and commodity currencies in pre-
colonial (pre-twentieth-century) African history, and has published articles in
Journal of African History, African Economic History, History in Afri"ca, Textile
History, and African Arts. Her most recent book, Cloth in West African History
(2006), is part of the African Archaeology Series of AltaMira Press. She has
been a co-editor of African Economic History since 1999.
Beverly Lemire is Professor of History and Henry Marshall Tory Chair at

the University of Alberta, Canada. Her publications include Fashion's
Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, r66o-r8oo (1991);
Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory
(1997); and most recently The Business of Everyday Life: Gender, Practice and
Social Politics in England, c.r600-r900 (2005). She co-edited Women fS
Credit: Researching the Past, Re.figuring the Future (2002), an interdisciplinary
initiative that gave her a taste for globally comparative projects. She is cur-
rently writing a history of cotton for the Berg series 'Textiles that Changed
the World'.
Bozhong Li is Professor of History at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He

worked in different academic institutions, including the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences, University of Michigan, UCLA, Caltech, MIT, Harvard Uni-
versity, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National
Humanities Center, University of Cambridge, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Social es, University of Tokyo, Keio University, and Acamica Sinica.
He has worked in Chinese economic history and has authored eight books in the
field, including TangdaiJiangnan nongye defazhan (1990); Agricultural Devel-
opment in Jiangnan, r620-r850 (1998); Jiangnan de zaoqi gongyehua (2000);
Fazhan yu Zhiyue: Ming-Qjng Jiangnan shengchanli jingjishi yanjiu (2001);
Lilun, fangfa yu fazhan qushi: Zhongguojingjishi yajiu xin tansuo (2001 ); Duo
shijiaokan Jiangnanjingjishi, 960-r850 (2003).
Pedro Machado completed his Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African
Studies (SOAS), University of London, and was a Fellow at the Institute of
Commonwealth Studies in London, and Assistant Professor in Global History
at New York University in 2005-7. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of
World History at Indiana University, Bloomington. He specializes in eigh-
teenth- and nineteenth-century Indian Ocean social, cultural, and economic
networks. He is interested in the Indian Ocean both as a site of interrelation and
as a space of overlapping and intersecting webs of'connected histories'.
Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui earned her Ph.D. degree at Bryn Mawr College
under the direction of David Herlihy. Her field of specialization is the economic
and social history of medieval and Renaissance Italy with a focus on urban in-
dustry. Her publications include The Italian CottonIndustry in the Later Middle
Ages, rroo-r6oo (1981) and numerous articles on Italian cotton and woollen
production. She is also the editor of An Expanding World: The EuropeanImpact
on World History r450-r800: Textiles: Production, Trade and Demand (1998)
and co-editor (with Thomas Blomquist) of The 'Other Tuscany': Essays in the
History of Lucca, Pisa and Siena duringthe Thirteenth,Fourteenthand Fifteenth
Centuries(1994).
I
Patrick O'Brien (FBA) was educated at the London School of Economics and
Oxford and is Centennial Professor of Global History at the Department of
Economic History at the London School of Economics. He was previously Di-
rector of the Institute of Historical Research in 1990-7 and taught at Oxford
and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
He has spent his career writing books and articles in European and latterly
global economic history. His recent work attempts to bring the state back into
narratives oflong-run economic growth.
Prasannan Parthasarathi is Associate Professor of History at Boston Col-

lege. He is the author of The Transitionto a ColonialEconomy: Weavers,Mer-
chantsand Kings in South India, r720-r800 (Cambridge, 2001) as well as several
articles in comparative and global economic history. His Why EuropeGrewRich
and Asia Did Not will be published shortly.
Om Prakash, formerly Professor of Economic History at the Delhi School of

Economics, is a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, Amsterdam. He has held visiting positions at several universities and
472 Notes on Contributors
institutes including the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, the Netherlands

Institute for Advanced Study, Wassenaar, and the International Institute for
Asian Studies, Leiden. His publications include The Dutch East India Company
and the Economy of Bengal r630-r720 (1985); PreciousMetals and Commerce:
The Dutch East India Companyin the Indian OceanTrade(1994); EuropeanCom-
mercialEnterprisein Pre-ColonialIndia (1998); and Bullionfor Goods:European
and Indian Merchants in the Indian Ocean Trade, r500-r800 (2004).
Olivier Raveux holds a doctorate in history from the University of Provence

and is currently a researcher at the CNRS in Aix-en-Provence (UMR
TELEMME). His research focuses on the process of industrialization in the
Mediterranean from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. His main
publications include 'Espaces et strategies industrielles aux XVIIIe et XIXe sie-
cles: exploiter le laboratoire mediterraneen', Revue d'histoiremoderneet contem-
poraine,2-3 (2001) (with Gerard Chastagnaret) and 'Los fabricantes de algod6n
a Barcelona (1833-1844): estrategias empresariales en la modernizaci6n de un
distrito industrial', Revista de historiaindustrial,28 (2005).
Giorgio Riello is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the

University of Warwick. He has written on early modern textiles, dress, and
fashion in Europe and Asia. From 2004 to 2007 he was Research Officer for the
Global Economic History Network at the London School of Economics. He is
the author of A Foot in the Past: Consumers,Producersand Footwearin the Long
EighteenthCentury(2006). He edited (with Tirthankar Roy), How India Clothed
the World: The Worldof South Asian Textiles,r500-r850 (2009) and is currently
writing a monograph entitled Worldwide Wefts: Cotton Textiles in Global
History.
John Styles is Research Professor in History at the University of Hertford-

shire. His most recent book is The Dressof the People:Everyday Fashionin Eigh-
teenth-Century England (2007). Previously Head of Graduate Studies at the
Victoria and Albert Museum, he developed the historical themes for the V&A's
acclaimed new British Galleries 1500--1900, which opened in 2001. He also co-
authored Designand the DecorativeArts: Britain r500 to r900 (2001 ), published
to complement the Galleries. He specializes in the history of eighteenth-cen-
tury Britain, especially the study of manufacturing, consumption, and design.
He is currently researching hand spinning in the era of the spinning wheel.
Masayuki Tanimoto is Professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Uni-

versity of Tokyo, where he teaches Japanese economic history. His recent pub-
lications in English include: The Role of Tradition in Japan's Industrialization:
Another Path to Industrialization(2006); 'The Development of Dispersed Pro-

duction Organization in the lnterwar Period: The Case of the Japanese Toy
Industry', in Tetsuji Okazaki (ed.), Production Organizationin Japanese Eco-
nomicDevelopment(2007); and 'From Peasant Economy to Urban Agglomera-
tion: The Transformation of "Labour-intensive Industrialization" in Modern
Japan', in Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara (eds.), Labour-IntensiveIndustri-
alization in HistoricalPerspective(forthcoming).
Marta Vicente is Associate Professor in the Department of History and the

Program of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas.
She is the author of Clothingthe Spanish Empire: Familiesand the Calico Trade
in the Early ModernAtlantic World (2006) as well as co-editor of Women, Texts,
andAuthority in the Early Modern Spanish World(2003). Her current book proj-
ect 'Playing Maria: Staging Sex and Gender in Early Modern Spain' examines
early modern Spanish ideas about the formation of sex and gender in their Eu-
ropean context.
Ian C. Wendt is Assistant Professor of History at Washington State Univer-

sity. His research fields include the history of south Asia, South-East Asia, and
world history. He studies social, economic, and religious history. His current
project focuses on textile industry in south India. His manuscript 'The Social
Fabric: Textile Industry and Community in Early Modern South India' is
under revjsion for publication as a monograph. He is the editor of www.ideol-
ogyforum.com, an online journal dedicated to civil discourse about the ideas
that shape our world.
Harriet T. Zurndorfer is Senior Research Scholar, Faculty of Humanities,

Leiden University. She is the author of Changeand Continuity in ChineseLocal
History (1989), China Bibliography:A ResearchGuide to ReferenceWorksabout
ChinaPast and Present(1995; paperback edition 1999), editor of the compilation
Chinese Women in the Imperial Past: New Perspectives(1999), and more than
fifty learned articles and reviews. From 1992 to 2000, she served as editor-in-
chief of the Journal of the Economicand Social History of the Orient. She is also
founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Nan Nii: Men, Womenand Genderin
China, published since 1999. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls Col-
lege (Oxford), Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne, and a participant in the
Global Economic History Network.
INDEX
A Asia. See also South-East Asian cottons

Abacd, 129 and English manufacturing, 221-223
Abdiilhamid I, Sultan, 97 and English protectionism, 338
Abu al-Muzaffar, Hasan, 172 and European cotton production, 306
Act of Union of 1707, 342 and European trade, 145, 205-206,
Act of Union ofI8oo, 342 211-214,225-226,263-264
Aden, 163 misrepresentations of, 222-223
Adinkra, 124-125 Astar, 95
Africa, 3-4. See also East Africa; West Africa Atlantic trade, 227-228, 283-284, 345, 405
African us, Joannes Leo, 11o Australian wools, 332, 343
Agriculture Austria, 99
in China, 49, 53-54, 6o-61, 390 Avignon, 301,304
in India, 22 Ayntab, 98
inJapan,369-371,376-379,383-385 Azamgarh Proclamation, 401
and spinning, 29-30, 96 Aztec cottons, 250-251
and wool supply, 331,343
Agudo,Juan, 252 B
Ajami, 98 Backstrap looms, 3, 26, 140
Akita district, 371-372 Baflas, 121-122, 150
Alaca, 95 Bagchi, Amiya Kumar, 404-406
Alam, Muzaffar, 39 Baghdad, 163
Aleppo, 98 Bahadur, Rustam Khan, 154
All-India Spinners Association, 402 Baily, Alice, 214
Allada cloths, n3-u4, 122 Bandiagara trove, 107
Allejars, 123 Bantans, u5
Ambelakia, 99 Bao Shichen, 395
America. See North America; Spanish Barafulas, II 5
America Barbarigo, Andrea, 78
Amerindians Barcelona, 75
and cotton consumption, 236-238, 240 Barchent, 67
dress styles of, 251, 258-259 Barges, Antoine and Clement, 301
Anatolia, 92 Baring, Sir Francis, 10, 284
Andaya, Barbara, 134 Barnazes, 166
Anita la respondona, 259 Barnes, Ruth, 209
Antilles, 228 Barracano, 67
Ardians, 172-173 Barthes, Roland, 206
Arkwright, Richard, 51,361 Basco y Vargas, Jose, 137
Aries, 301 Basque region, 213, 217-218
Armenian printers, 298-301 Batavia, 156
Armosins, 159 Batik, 129, 131, 139-141, 157
Arteta de Monteseguro, Antonio, 253 Baville,Jacques, 294
Asa, 367 Bayly, Christopher, 39,400, 402
Asante, 124 Bed sheets, 318-319, 325-326
Ashantee cloth, 123 Beledi, 93
Index
Belefia, Eusebio Ventura, 247 in Elizabethan England, 217-218

Bengal, 18, 21, 33, 161-162 in nineteenth-century England, 320
and Dutch and English traders, 39-40, Calico printing, 274, 338-340. See also
150,152, 158-159 J\ilarseilles calico printing
economic expansion of, 40-41 Cambodia, 129
and Japan trade, 185, 187 Campillo,Jose, 252
Bengara, 190 Canequins,172
Benin cloths, 1n-n3, n6-u7, 121-122 Cangans, I 50
Bentinck, William, 400-401 Cannabissativa, 129
Berenike findings, 163 Cannikens, 150
Berg,J\ilaxine,8,206,273,280,286,359,362 Canting, 141
Bess of Hardwick, 217 Cao Bingzheng, 56
Bez, 93-<J5 Cape Verde Islands, n5-u6
Eisai district, 375 Capotins, 172-173
Bischoff, James, 332 Carding bow, 23-24, 29
Black wrappers, n5, 122 Carfueil, Gaspard, 302
Bleach printing, 6 Caribbean, 227,229,231, 234-235, 242,246
Bleaching Carrera, J\ilagaliJ\il., 258
in India, 38 Cartwright, Edmund, 361
in Italy, 69, 86 Casta paintings, 256-258
Bloch, J\ilarc, 11 Castiglione, Giuseppe, 56
Block printing, 36, 40, 362 Cavezzi, 69, 71
Bojfas1,97 Ceibatree, II 5
Boccaramo,67 Ceremonial uses of cotton, 4, 171, 2 IO
Boccasino,67 Chafarcani,97,292
Bombasine,68, 82 Chambers,]. D., 308-309
Bonsal,James, 230 Chandra, J\iloti, 32
Bowdich, T. Edward, 125 Chao, Kang, 46, 5 r
Bowing, 3, 23-24, 29 Charles I, 219
Boyajian,James, 2u-212 Charles III, 253
Braudel, Fernand, 89-<Jo,222-224 Charles IV, 74, 258
Brawles, 123 Charles V, 250
Bray, Francesca, 59 Chauderes,172
Bretanas, 252 Chaudhuri, K. N., 207,263
Buckingham, James Silk, 96 Chelas, 150, 153
Buer, J\il. C., 308-309 Chelloes,123
Buhao, 390 Chemises,238
Burma, 130, 138, 140 Child,Josiah, 317,321
Bursa, 96 Chinaware, 275
Busto Arsizio, 86 Chinese cotton industry, 4, 43-62, 387-395
and agriculture, 49, 53-54, 6o-61, 390
C cloth varieties, 54-55
Cairo, 208-210 commercialization of, 390-393
Calamine, 243 and consumer preferences, 60
Calico, 33, 123, 213-214 cultivation and textile regions, 49-53
in colonial America, 234, 236, 243, 248, and diffusion of cotton, 2, 45-47
259-260 distribution and consumption, 58-61
durability of, 269 division oflabour in, 389-390, 393
in eighteenth-century France, 223-224 and dress regulations, 45
Index 477
and English imports, 395 and prices, 243

exports, 61,388 rural and urban, 235-236, 246
and foreign competition, 395 in South-East Asia, 149
government promotion of, 44-49 in Spanish America, 249
and hemp and ramie, 45-46, 51, 53, 55-57 and success of cotton, 353-354
household production in, 55-58, 60---61 in West Africa, 112, 120, 123
and Indian imports, 397 andwomen,233-235,238-240,245
and involution, 387-389 Consumptionand the Making of Respectability,
and Japan trade, 183-189, 196, 198-199 309
mechanization in, 389, 395 Cordova, Matias de, 258
merchant control of, 59-60 Coromandel Coast, 5, 7, 18, 20---21,161-162
and population growth, 388 and Dutch and English traders, 39-40,
productivity in, 53-54, 393-394 148-154, 159
and rent payment, 49 and Japan trade, 185-186
and silk, 44-45, 55 Cortes, Hernan, 4,250
and South-East Asia, 138-140 Cotones,252
and southernization, 43-44 Cotonetes,79
spinning and weaving, 3, 51, 53-54, 61, Cotonias,79, 252
389-390, 394 Cottage Comforts,320
and taxation, 48-49 Cotton gin, 3, 23, 370---374
technological innovations, 49-51, 363 Cotton-linen mixtures, 322-324, 338-339,
and trade restrictions, 188 357
Chintz, 22, 123,153,397 Cotton robe, 54
ChuHua,44 Cotton-silk mixtures, 33
Chuogenglu, 51 Cotton species, 43-44
9ifekli, 95--{)6 Cotton-wool mixtures, 329, 333, 336
9it, 95 Counterpanes, 312-314
Clarence-Sµiith, William Gervase, 9, 168 Cremona,71,75,77,85
Clay printing, 251 Criminal court records, 310---319,322-324
Clustering, 360 Croghan, George, 237
Coen, Jan Pietersz, 149 Crompton, Samuel, 361
Colbert,Jean-Baptiste, 297,301 Cromwell, Oliver, 365
Colonialism, 8-10, 398-406 Currency, cotton as, 109-110, 129, 168, 250---
Colour fastness, 266 251
Columbus, Christopher, 250 Cuttanees,123
Commodification, 275 Cutun, 96
'Complaint of a Weaving Wife,' 57
Consumer preferences, IO D
and cloth varieties, 242 Dabuli, Muhammad Rukn al-Din al-, 172
in colonial America, 233-240 Daendels, Marshall, 137
in East Africa, 169-175 Danish East India Company, 263
in England, 214, 218-219, 221-222, 224, Daoguang Depression, 395
269,276--278,309,344 Dapper, Olfert, 113
in France, 277-278 Davis, Ralph, 227
and Indian cottons, 32,214,218, 271-272 De Vries,Jan, 363
in Japan, 368-369, 371-376 Defoe, Daniel, 221,268,320
in medieval Europe, 67 Dekker, 1'homas,221
in Ming China, 60 Delhi, 22
of Native Americans, 236--238, 240 Demand-side theory, 353-355
Index
Designs and decorations in Japan, 196---197

eITibroidery,21, 196,215-217,264 resist, 279-280
European, 5 in South-East Asia, 129-130
hybridity in, 278---280
Indian influence on, 215-217 E
Italian, 67 East Africa, 16!-179
inJapan, 198 consuITier preferences in, 169-175
painted cloths, 21, 32, 36,217 dress styles in, 171
stripes, 190-191 and Gujarati textiles, 164-170
Destmal, 96 and ITierchant networks, 175-178
Diaz,Jasper, 213 social and political uses of cloth in, 171-173
Direct printing, 6 weaving in, 167-168
Diu,169, 176---177 Edo, 191, 201
Divergence, 351-355, 361-365 Elizabeth I, 217
Diyarbakir, 97 Ellia, DoITiinique, 300
Dong Hongdu, 57 Elvin, Mark, 53, 57
Dotins, 166, 172 EITibroidery, 21, 196, 215-217, 264
Draw looITis,3, 27 England
Dreibants, u3 and Asian trade, 212-214, 221-223
Dress styles. See alsoFashion and Atlantic trade, 227-228, 283-284, 348
colonial North AITierica,233 and Chinese ITiarket,395
East Africa, 171 and colonial possessions, 8,347, 357-358,
Japanese, 190-191, 194-195,200-201,367 398---406
Mughal India, 33-34 consuITier preferences in, 214, 218-219,
ofNative AITiericans, 251, 258-259 221-222,224,269,276---278,309,344
and social rank, 171,251, 259-260 criITiinalcourt records in, 310-3 19,
Spanish AITierica,251, 256---260 322-324
West Africa, 120 and global trade, 286---287
Dunois, Petronella, 268 and Guinea trade, 123-124
DuPlessis, Robert, ro, 283 -health and hygiene in, 308, 325-326
Dutch East India CoITipany (VOC), 131, Indian cotton in, 217-218, 224-226,
135-137, 145-160,212 315-318,337-338,341,356
and Bengal, 150, 152, 158-159 and Indian Ocean trade, 178
and CoroITiandel Coast, 148-154, 159 and Java, 137
and European ITiarkets, 152-153, 263-265, ITiercantilisITIof, 355-356, 358
273 prices in, 312,314, 319-321
and Gujarat, 149-152, 159-160 protectionisITI in, 273, 337-343, 406
and Japan trade, 150, 158---159,184-189, and slavery, 123-124, 330, 356---357
194, 199-200 textile exports, 285
and Middle East, 159-160 English cotton industry, 327
and South-Asian coITipetition, 152-153, cotton-linen ITiixtures in, 322-324, 357
156---157 counterfactual speculations, 363-365
and spice trade, 147-148, 151 export ITiarkets, 339, 344-34 7
uses of textiles by, 154-160 and iITiport substitution, 337-340, 349,
Dutt, RoITiesh, 401,403,406 356---357
Dyeing, 6 and Indian decline, 398---406
in Anatolia, 95 andJapan,200,367,379-380
in Europe, 280 and Latin AITierica,286
in India, 27-28 linens vs. cottons, 308, 312-326, 357
Index 479
mechanization of, 359-361 expansion of, 83, 397-398, 405-406

prices in, 312,314, 3H,-321, 344-345 and Islamic influence, 64
and West Africa, 123-124, 227-228, 282 trade routes, 64-67
English East India Company, 145, 263-265
and English consumers, 276-278, 315-318 F
and factors, 346-347 Fan Lian, 60
English woollen industry, 327-350 Fang Guancheng, 55
conflicts within, 340--341 Fashion, 10, 206. See also Dress styles
exports and imports, 342-343, 345-348 and Asian trade, 222-223
factors in, 346 in Spanish America, 255-256, 259-260
fine woollen trade, 331-332 and success of cottons, 267,271,307,
and manufacturing innovation, 333 322-324
and mixed cloths, 329, 333, 336 and women shopkeepers, 241
prices compared to cotton, 334-337, Fashion'sFavourite, 307
343-346 Fernandez de Lizardi,JoseJoaquin, 259
and protectionism, 340--343, 349 Filaroli, 70
and wool supply, 330--337, 343,348 Fitz-James, Dame Elizabeth, 214
Epstein, Larry, 87 Fitz-James, Sir John, 214
Esteban,Javier Cuenca, 344-345 Flax prices, 320
Eurocentrism, 1-2 Flying shuttle, 358----359
Europe, 13 Fontaine, Laurence, 213
and Asian expertise, 362 Fotas, 154
and Asian trade, 205-206, 225-226, France
263-264 American colonies of, 229-235, 242-244
and Atlantic trade, 227-228 and Asian trade, 213-214
commodification in, 275 and Atlantic trade, 227-228
consumer preferences in, 67,269 consumer preferences in, 277-278
designiq, 5 and Indian cotton ban, 223-224
and Dutch trade, 152-153, 263-265, 273 and Indo-Ottoman fabrics, 98
dyeing in, 280 protectionism in, 273-274, 301-304
and export markets, 9-10 textile exports, 285
and global trade, 6, 2u-214, 262-263, and West Africa, 227-228, 282-283
280--287 wool supply in, 331
and Guinea trade, 105-106, 1u-u7, Frank, Andre Gunder, 261,263,351
120--125 French East India Company, 263, 265,
import substitution in, 273-276, 281 277-278
and Indian cottons, 32, 38----39, 2u-219, Frock coats, 324
221-226,245,271-273 Fujita, Kayoko, 375
and Indian Ocean trade, 145, 175 Furoshiki, 199
pedlar networks in, 213 Fustagno, 67
product revolution in, 280--281 Fustanes,79
protectionism in, 271-273, 341-342 Fustat, 209
re-exports, 281-283 Fustians, 72-73, 75, 322-325, 338, 357
woollens in, 64, 69
European cotton industry. See also German G
cotton industry; Italian cotton industry; Ga/ans, II5
Marseilles calico printing Galphin, George, 237
and Asian artisans, 306 Gandhi, Mohandas, 402
cloth and product variety, 67-69 Ganteaume, Benoit, 294
Index
Carras, 152, 154 Guinea coast, u4-u5

Gender Guineas, 153
and cotton consumption, 233-235, Guinees, 153,221
238-241,245 Gujarati cloth, 5-7, 18-21, 161-170
and cotton production, 55-56 and African consumers, 173-174
and division oflabour, 389-390, 393 currency use of, 168
Genoa, 278, 304 and l)utch traders, 149-152, 159-160
George,Nl..l)orothy,310 East African trade, 164-170
German cotton industry and merchant networks, 176-177
centers of production, 74 use value of, 171-172
and Italian competition, 74-77, 79-80 Guy,John, 208
putting-out system, 83, 88
and Spanish markets, 75, So H
Ghurye, G. S., 36 Habib, Irfan, 24-25, 27
Gifts, cotton textiles as, 4, 156,208 Hall, Nl.argaret, 20
Gingams, 153 Han dynasty, 45
Ginning, 3 Hapsburg courts, 99,217
in India, 23 Hargreaves,James, 51,361
in Japan, 370-374 Harley, C. Knick, 320, 325, 344-345
Global commodity, 262 Harrison, William, 214
Global history, 352-353 Health, Wealth and Populationin the Early
Global trade, 1-2. See alsoTrade Days of the IndustrialRevolution, 308
and Asia, 205-206, 225-226 Heckscher, Eli, 352
and Cape route, 263 Hemp
and diffusion of cotton, 2-5, 63 in China, 45-46, 53, 55-57
and domestic production, 9 inJapan, 367,369
East-West, 2u-214, 221 in South-East Asia, 129-130
andEurope,6,211-214,262-264,280-287 Henry VIII, 217
and import substitution, 273-276 Hewlett, Esther, 320
and Indian cottons, 4-7, 17, 21, 208-214, History and Cultureof the India People,403
218-219,223,262,264,397-398, Hobsbawm, Eric, 1
405-407 Holker,John, 278
medieval networks of, 206-208 Honest Whore, The, 221
and woollens, 6, 2u-214, 262,328 Horizontal looms, 3, 26-27
Globalization, 261-262 Horn of Africa, 164-165
Gold Coast, 112, 114, 122-123, 281 Huang, Philip, 375, 388, 388, 395
Gold trade, 187-188 Huang l)aopo, 49-51
Condos, 168 Huazi, 48-49
Goody,Jack, 205 Hudson, Pat, 13
Gossypiumarboretum,43 Huipil, 251
Gossypiumherbaceum,43, 63 Hyakusho, 367
Goulongs,149 Hybridity, 278-280
Grain Coast, 114 Hygiene, 308, 325-326
Great Divergence,The, 9, 11
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, 250,251
Guarnello,67 Ibn Battuta, 11o
Guatemalan Economic Society, 258 Igbo-Ukwu site, 111
Guinea cloth, 105-106, 123, 125-126, Ikat, 129-130, 375
282-283. See alsoWest Africa Imitation, 8
Index
Import blending, 9 and South-East Asia, 39, 127-128, 131,

Import substitution, 8-9, 184, 273-276, 133, 141-142, 157,208
281 spinning and weaving, 3, 26-27, 2()--30,40,
in England, 337-340, 349, 356-357 399
in Japan, 367-368, 380 textile technology, 23-28, 40
in South-East Asia, 137-138 and West African market, 36-38, 105-106,
and success of cotton, 337-340, 349 121-124
Inalcik, Hali!, 101 Indian Ocean, 21-22, 262
Indian cottons, 1, 11-12, 17-41, 397-407 merchant networks in, 175-178
and agriculture, 22 trade in, 145-154, 158---163,169,405
and Atlantic markets, 283-284 Indianas,248
bleaching, 38 lndienne, 276
bowing and ginning, 23-24, 29 Indigo fermentation, 280
and British rule, 398---401,403-406 Indonesia, 131,208,210
and Cairo trade, 208---210 and Dutch traders, 147-154, 156-157
centres of production, 18---23,400 and Indian textiles, 157
cloth varieties, 32-38 Industrialization, 1. See alsoMechanization
consumer preferences for, 32, 214, 218, and import substitution, 8-<},274-275,
271-272 337-340
customization of, 6-7 and Ottoman cottons, 89-90
decline in hegemony of, 397-407 Inikori,Joseph, 10, 281-283, 357
decoration and design of, 5-7, 215 Involution thesis, 387-389
and deindustrialization, 404-405 Iranian chintzes, 397
domestic uses of, 267-268 Ireland, 331,342, 363-364
and dress styles, 33-34 Irish linen industry, 337-339, 341, 356-357
and Dutch traders, 145, 148-160 Irwin, John, 20, 32
dyeing of, 27-28 Ishida Chihiro, 191
and East {\.fricanmarket, 164-170 Isla, Sebastiana de, 252
employment in, 404 Islam
in England, 217-218, 224-226, 315-318, and diffusion of cotton, 63--64
337-338,341,356 and Gujarati trade, 165
and English imports, 400--401, 405-406 in West Africa, 110
and Europe, 32, 38---39,211-219, 221-226, Istanbul, 93-94
245,271-273,397-398 Italian cotton industry, 64-88
expansion of production, 38---41 bleaching, 69, 86
exports,23,36-38, 161-167,208---210,400 centres of production, 64, 78, 80, 82, 87
finishing processes, 30--31, 35-38 cloth and product variety, 68---69
and global trade, 4-7, 17, 21,262,264, cotton-producing regions, 6()--73
397-398,405-407 designs in, 67
andJapan, 185-187, 18()--196,19()--200 export trade, 74, 77-78
and medieval trade, 207-208 and German competition, 74-77, 79-80
and migration, 400 guilds in, 8o--82
and nationalism, 401-402 production decline, 73, 76-77, 85-87
origin of, 2 protectionist measures, 75-77
and Ottoman market, 97 rural and urban producers, 81-87
and protectionism, 271-273 and speculation, 73-74
qualities of, 266 standardization in, 71, 80--81
and raw cotton distribution, 29 yarn imports, 78---79,83
and South America, 285 Ivory Coast, 114
Index
J Keshang, 59
Jacob, Margaret C., 362 Khusrau, Amir, 33
Jagannathpuram, 154 Kilwa, 172
Jamaica, 229,231,234, 242-244 Kimono, 181
Jambusar, 170,172,174 Kin-sarasa, 198
Japanese cotton industry, 181-203, 367-385 Kinoshita Ryuji, 190, 196
and agriculture, 369-371, 376---379, Krieger, Colleen E., 9
383-385 Kubo Shanman, zoo
centres of production, 197-198, 373 Kunio Yanagita, 369
and Chinese trade, 183-189, 196, 198-199 Kutni, 95---96
cloth varieties, 375
and consumer preferences, 368-369, L
371-376 Lan;ados, u6
and cotton cultivation, 182-183, 367-371, Lancashire, 357, 363-364
380 Landes, David, ro-u, 308,351
and dress styles, 190-191, 194-195, Lang Shining, 56
200-201,367 Latin America, 4, 284-286. See also Spanish
and Dutch traders, 150, 158-159, 184-188, America
194, 199-200 Lee, James, 388
dyeing, 196---197 Lemire, Beverly, 264,267,269,307,337
and English imports, zoo, 367, 379-380 Levant, 294-296
and import substitution, 367-368, 380 Levitt, Sarah, 270
'lndianization,' 181 LiRihua, 54
and Indian imports, 185-187, 189-196, Lindley, Sarah, 230
199-200 Linens, 120-121, 123
and local merchants and factors, 376, 379, in American colonies, 231,234,236,
382-383,385 238-240,242-243,283
and peasant households, 368-370, 374, and competition from cottons, 308,
376---379,381-385 312-326
production levels, 190-191, 196---198, cotton-linen mixtures, 322-324, 338-339
372-374 in Europe, 84-85
and silver trade, 183-185, 187-189 in Ireland, 337-339, 341, 356---357
and trade policy, 182-183, 187-189 merchant stocks of, 229-230
and yarn imports, 380-382 Lisbon, zu-213
Javanese cloth, 131, 135-137, 139-141, 149, Litham, 109
152 Lizardi,JoseJoaquin Fernandez de, 259
Jeans,322-324 Lombardy, 69, 71, 76, 78, 80-83
Jeyes, Francis, 241 Long cloth, 123
Jiangnan region, z, 49, 51, 53, 58-59, 61, Longuins, 172
387-389 Looms, 3. See also Weaving
Jorians, 172 backstrap, 3, 26, 140
in China, 54
K draw, 3, 27
Kachchhi Bhatiy merchants, 178 in India, 26---27
Karimbhai, Hasanbhai, 27 in South-East Asia, 139-140
Kasuri-momen, 37 5 in West Africa, u1-u2, u4, II7
Katzew, Ilona, 258 Louisiana, 230-235, 237, 242-243
Kay,John,355,358,359,361,364 Louvois, Marquis de (Fram,:ois Michel de
Kente, 124-125 Tellier), 303-304
Index
M Ming dynasty, 48-49

Machado,Pedro,4,32 Mir Taqi Mir, 398
Machicote, 238 Mixed cloths
Machiras, 168 cotton-linen, 322-324, 338-339, 357
Madagascar, 167-168 cotton-silk, 33
Majumdar, R. C., 403-404 and woollen industry, 329, 333, 336
Makassar, 156-157 Mocenigo, Tommaso (Doge), 78
Malaya, 133 Mocha, 160
Manila, 250 Moctezuma, 250
Mann, Julia de Lacy, 338, 364 Mogadishu, 165, 167
Mann, Susan, 53 Mokyr,Joel, 362
Mantas, 252 Moliere Gean-Baptiste de Poquelin), 271
Manufacturing, 7-8, 281,333. See also Mongols,48
Mechanization Montreal, 229-230, 233-234
English, 221-223 Mordant printing, 6
Ottoman, 95-96 Moreau, Jacob Nicolas, 267
Marco Polo, 45 Morellet, Andre, 267
Marseilles calico printing, 291-306 Morisada mank6, 197
and Armenian community, 297-302 Mortality, 308
and artisans, 294-295 Mozambique, 166,168,177
and Asian competition, 296 Mule spinning, 337
and edict of 1669, 296-297 Mumian, 43
and import of raw materials, 297, 302 Mumianpu, 44
and local cotton production, 294, 303 Muris, 153
and protectionism, 301-304 Musa (Mansa), 1ro
and silk trade, 297-298, 301-302 Musa textilis, 129
technology of, 295-296, 300 Muslin, 123
and trade,-outes, 292-294 in colonial America, 234
Martin, R. M., 400 Indian, 20-21, 33-34
Marx, Karl, 401,406 Mwana Mkuu, 165
Master, Streynsham, 27
Masulipatnam, 153-154 N
Matafu, 190 Nagahara, Keiji, 369
Mechanization, 345, 354, 364-365 Nagasaki, 186-187, 198-199
in China, 389, 395 Naima, Mustafa, 97
explanations of, 360-361 Nanjing, 54, 61, 387
and reinforcing mechanism, 359-360 Nankeen,61,322-324,387
role of inventors, 361 Naples, 87
Mediterranean, 64-67 Naqvi, Hamida Khatoon, 22
Mercantilism, English, 355-356, 358 Native Americans
Merchant networks, 175-178 and cotton consumption, 236-238, 240
Merchant textile stocks, 229-230 dress styles of, 251, 258-259
Methuen Treaty, 341 Nazar, Melchion de, 298
Methwold, William, 20 Needlework, 215-217
Mexico, 285-286 Nelson, Horatio, 365
Mian, 43 Netherlands, 221. See also Dutch East India
Middle East, 159-160 Company (VOC)
Milan, 76-77, 80-82, 85-86 and Armenian printers, 301
Mille, Vincent, 301 and Indian textiles, 152- 153
Index
and Javanese yam, 131, 135-137 and capital investment, 101

and South-East Asia, 135-137 centres of production, 90
Nettle cloth, 45 cloth varieties, 93----96
New Christian network, 211 and domestic markets, 91
NewFrance,231-235,242-244 export and import restrictions, 92----93,
97,
Newberry Collection, 208-209 100
Niccanees,123 Indo--Ottoman fabrics, 97----98,264
Niger region, 111 and industrialization, 89----90
Nigeria, 3 price control, 99- 100
Ni'ikawa district, 372-376, 381 provincial manufacturing, 95----96
Nimes, 301 and tax farming, 101-102
Niquanias, 154 trade, 90----91,100
Nishijima Sadao, 57 and workshops, 91----92,102
Nongshu, 51 and world markets, 99-102, 397
Nongzheng quanshu,58 yam varieties, 94
Nonnez, Alvero, 213
North America p
cloth varieties in, 241-242 Painted clotlis, 21, 32, 36, 217
cotton imports, 229-232 Palat, Ravi, 127
cotton production in, 232 Pang Shangpeng, 56---57
dress styles in, 233 Pangshijiaxun, 56
and English textiles, 284, 348 Panospretos, 115, 122
French colonies in, 229-235, 242-244 Paper stencils, 196---197
incomesin,243-244 Parcal, 153
and Indian cottons, 284 Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 4, 222
merchant stocks, 229-233, 242 Patolas, 150, 157
Native Americans, 236---238,240 Paul, Louis, 361
patterns of consumption in, 233-240 Pavia, 85
prices in, 242-243 Pearson, Michael N., 168
retailing and advertising in, 240-241 Pedlar networks, 213
woollens in, 231,234,236,238,240, Pennsylvania, 229,231,237, 242-243
242-243 Pepys, Samuel, 271
North India, 22-23 Peripheralization, 89----91
Nottingham, 308 Periplusof the /Erythrean Sea, 163
Nussey,John, 332 Perses,276
Persia, 159-160
0 Petmezas, Socrates, 99
Obrajes,251-252 Peysonnel, Claude, 92
O'Brien, Patrick, 8, 406 Philadelphia, 229, 236
Observationsof the Means of Extending the Philippines, 133-134, 137-139, 285
Consumptionof British Callicoes,284 Piecesde guinie, 122
Ode, Oyo and Ijebu, 114 Pignolato, 67
Ohlin, Berti!, 352 Pina, 133-134
Okushima, 191 Pintadoes, 123, 148
Old Bailey proceedings, 310-319, 322-324 Pires, Tome, 20
Oldknow, Samuel, 321 Pit looms, 26
O'Rourke, Kevin H., 26! Place, Francis, 309
Osaka, 198 Playing card making, 295
Ottoman cottons, 89-103 Pomeranz, Kenneth, 9-11, 57,351,388
Index
Portugal R
and Asian trade, 145, 211-212 Racial identity, 235
and cotton imports, 264 Raffles, Thomas S., 141
and Gujarati merchants, 178 Rags wool, 333-334
and Indian designs, 215 Ramaswamy, Vijaya, 24, 26--27
and Japan trade, 190, 194 Ramie, 45-46, 51, 55,367,369
pedlar networks in, 213 Raphia looms, 111
Post-mortem inventories, 309-310 Ray, Rajat Kanta, 398
Prakash, Om, 188 Re-exports, 281-282
Prestholdt,Jeremy, 287 Ready-made cottons, 243
Prices Recycled wool, 333-334
in colonial America, 242-243 Red Sea, 163-164, 169, 177
in eighteenth-century England, 312,314, Red textiles, 121-122, 188, 198
319-320,344-345 Reid, Anthony, 127-128, 140
flax,320 Renan, Ernest, 11
in nineteenth-century England, 321 Resist dyeing, 279-280
wool vs. cotton, 334-337, 343-346 Resist printing, 6, 279
Printing, 6, 21. See also Marseilles calico Ricafort Palacin y Abarca, Mariano, 138
printing Ricardo, David, 352
in Anatolia, 95--96 Rice growing, 378
block, 36, 40, 362 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis de
blue, 280 (Cardinal), 297-298
calico, 274, 338---340 Rimmer, W. G., 320
clay, 251 Roberts, Richard, 355,361,364
in England, 338-340, 362 Roche, Daniel, 269
in Europe, 274, 280, 362-363 Romay Rosell, Francisco, 255
in India, 32, 36, 40 Romauls, 123
in SpanisI, America, 251 Rome, 301
Probate inventories, 309-310 Rouen, 282-283
Protectionism Roy, Tirthankar, 142,404
in England, 273, 337-343, 349, 406 Ruan, 286
in Europe, 271-273, 341-342 Rumals, 153
in France, 273-274, 301-304
in Italy, 75-77 s
Provance, Etienne, 300 Sad6, 195
Puebla, 252 Saint-Domingue, 230-232, 234-235,
Pulicats, 123 242-244
Punjab, 22, 161 Salampuri, 153
Putting-out system Salary. See Wages
in Germany, 83, 88 Salgado, Francisco, 137
in Japan, 385 Salte, Samuel, 321
in South-East Asia, 138---139 Samateres, 172
Pyrard, Frans;ois, 214,267 Santome, 190,375
Sappanwood, 188, 198
Q Sarasa, 5,182,190, 194-201
QjuJun,45 Sarasa benran, 197
Quaqua cloths, 114, 122 Savagagins, 172
Quilts, 214-215, 219 Savary de Bruslons,Jacques, 276
Quito, 252 Schwartz, P.R., 32
Index
Selayar, 133 South Carolina, 231,233,235,237, 242-243

Sella, Domenico, 86---87 South-East Asian cottons, 101-102, 127-142
Sen-no-Rikyu, 195 centres of production, 128
Serquis, Paul de, 298, 300 and Chinese cottons, 138-140
Sestini, Domenico, 96 cloth varieties, 129-130
Seymour,Jane,217 and consumer preferences, 149
Sforza, Ludovico (ii Moro), 81 diffusion of technology, 139-141
Shaffer, Linda, 2 and Dutch traders, 135-137, 148-154, 156
Sheep, 331-332 dyeing, 129-130
Shell polishing, 21 and import substitution, 137-138
Sherratt, Andrew, 208 and Indian imports, 39, 127-128, 131, 133,
Shibori-zome, 198 141-142, 157,208
Shiho sh6ho, 187 and merchant initiatives, 128-129, 138-
Shima, 190-191 139
Shima-mono, 5, 182, 189-190 revival of, 131-134
Shirts and shifts, 315-319, 321 and South America, 285
Sicily, 87 spinning and weaving, 135, 139-141
Sigismund of Luxembourg, 74 and state intervention, 128, 134-138
Silks, 17, 33, 51 and yarn imports, 130
in China, 44-45, 55 Southampton, 214
and competition with cottons, 307 'Southemization', 2, 43-44
cotton-silk mixtures, 33 Spain
and Dutch traders, 158-159 cotton industry in, 253-254
Gujarati, 150 Economic Societies in, 256,258
in Japan, 188-189 and German imports, 75, 80
in Marseilles, 297-298, 301-302 and Italian imports, 80
merchant stocks of, 229-230 and luxury exports to colonies, 254-256,
in North American colonies, 241-242 259
in South-East Asia, 129-130 and the Philippines, 137-138
in Spanish America, 251 Spanish America, 247-260
West African imports of, 11o Amerindians in, 251,253, 258-259
Silver trade, 183-185, 187-189 casta system in, 256---258
Simon,Joseph, 298,300 consumer preferences in, 249
Sindh, 161 cotton as currency in, 250--251
Skin wool, 333 dress styles in, 251, 256---260
Slave trade, 116---u7 Economic Societies in, 256, 258
in American colonies, 234-235, 246 fashionin,255-256,259-260
and England, 123-124, 330, 356---357 pedlars in, 248
in Indian Ocean, 167 production levels in, 250-252
Smith, WoodruffD., 309 and Spain, 249, 253-255
Soap, 326 textile imports, 247-248, 252, 284-286
Social and political uses of cotton, 171-173 woollens in, 283
Sociedades Econ6micas de Amigos de! Pais, Specker, Konrad, 404
256 Spice Islands, 147-148, 151
Song dynasty, 46---48 Spinning
Song Yingxing, 54 and agriculture, 29-30, 96
Songjiang region, 49-51, 53-54, 387-395 in China, 51, 53-54, 389-390, 394
South America, 4, 284-286. See alsoSpanish in Italy, 69-71
America in India, 29-30, 399,402
Index
in Japan, 379-380 Thicksets, 322-323

mechanization of, 345, 350, 389 Thirsk,Joan, 221
in West Africa, 107, 117 Three-spindle wheel, 51
Spinning frame, 51 Tiangongkaiwu, 54-56
Spinning jenny, 51 Tie-dyeing, 196, 198
Spinning wheel Tiretaine,68
in China, 51, 389-390 TiJ-santome,190
in India, 3, 25-26, 40 Toi/es,292
in South-East Asia, 141 Toi/eslarges,98
Stapel, F. W., 154 Toi/espersianes,301
Stencils, 196-197 Toi/espiquies, 301-302
Steno, Michel (Doge), 75 Tokat, 95
Styles,John, 269,276 Tokoyo, 191
Suez Canal, 395 Toledo, Francisco de, 251
Sulawesi, 133, 156 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 197
Sumatra, 133, 135 Trade. See alsoGlobal trade
Surat, 149-151, 159, 169 Atlantic, 227-228, 283-284, 345,405
Suzuki Harunobu, 191 Cairo trade, 208--210
Swadeshi Movement, 402 and China, 61, 183-189, 188, 196, 198--199
Swahili coast, 165-166, 172 and East Africa, 164-167
Swedish East India Company, 263 Guinea trade, 105-106, 1u-u7, 120-125
Indian Ocean, 145-154, 158--163, 169,
T 175-178,405
Tabatabai, Ghulam Hussain, 400 andJapan,183-190, 194,196, 198--199
Taffachelas,150, 159, 191 Mediterranean, 64-67
Taftas, 153 Ottoman, 9o-g1
Taino, 250 Red Sea, 163-164, 169, 177
Taiping Rebellioli, 395 Ricardian theory of, 352-353
Tao Zongyi, 51 and Spanish America, 250
Tapis, 149 and West Africa, 107, 1II-II7
Tapsells,123 Trade of EnglandRevived, The, 269, 320
Tassaralachas,l 59 Trademarks, 74, 76
Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 267 Traidaine,82
Tea ceremony, 195-196 Treadle looms, 3
Technological innovation, 3. See also in South-East Asia, 139-140
Mechanization in West Africa, u4, 117,124
Asian influence upon, 362 Trial transcripts, 310-319, 322-324
calico printing, 295-296, 300 Trivedi, Lisa, 402
in China, 49-51, 363 Tsuranuki Hidetaka, 197
English woollen industry, 333 Turban cloths, 34
flying shuttle, 358-359 Tuscany, 304-305
in South-East Asia, 139-141
and spinning, 51 u
and trade, 3 Ukiyoe, 191
and wages, 358-359 Underwear, cotton, 308--309, 315-319, 321,
Telaroli,70 325-326
Terashima Ryoan, 195 Ungwana, 171
Testemel,96 Urfa, 96
Thailand, 129, 138 Utrecht, Treaty of, 341
Index
V exports, 112-113
Vaniya merchants, 176----178 and French trade, 227-228, 282-283
Valessi, 82 and Guinea trade, 105-106, 111-117, 120--
Valle-Arizpe, Artemio, 286 125
Vashambadzi, 173-174 imports, 108, 110, 120--125, 227-228
Velveret, 322-324 increase in cotton output, 117
Venice, 74-75, 77-78 and Indian cottons, 36----38,105-106, 121-
Vertical looms 124
in India, 3, 27 spinning and weaving in, 107, 111-112,
in West Africa, 111-112, 114,117 114, 117
Vespi;a, 166 and trans-Saharan trade, 108, 110
Vicente, Marta Valentin, 9 woollens in, 108, 110, 121, 123
Vietnam, 129 West Indies, 227,235
Visconti, Filippo Maria, 76 White cloth, 38, 302, 338-339
Von Siebold, Philipp Frantz, 191 Whydah cloth, 123
Wiens, Mi Chu, 48
w Williams, Raymond, 407
Wa-sarasa, 197-198 Williamson,Jeffrey G., 261
Wadsworth, A. P., 338,364 Wilson, H. H., 401
Wages Women
cotton textiles as, 154-155 in China, 53-58, 388-394
eighteenth century, 31 and cotton consumption, 233-235, 238-
in Qjng China, 393-394 240, 245
and technological innovation, 358-359 debt-bonded, 138
Wakan sansai zue, 197 in Japan, 372-374, 379
Walbee, William, 214 as shopkeepers, 241
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 127,261 Wong, Roy Bin, 388
Wang, Feng, 388 Woollens, 327-350. See also English woollen
Wang Zhen, 51 industry
Ware, Opoku, 124 in American colonies, 231,234,236,238,
Watson, Andrew, 107 ,.. 240,242-243,283
Waxing, 279-280 • " and competition with cottons, 266, 269-
Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 10--11 270,307, 327-329, 336----337
Weatherill, Lorna, 215 differentiation of, 329-330
Weaving, 3 fine woollen trade, 331-332
in China, 54, 61,390 and global trade, 6, 211-214, 262, 328
in East Africa, 167-168 in Japan, 188-189, 200
in India, 26----27,30,399 and manufacturing innovation, 333
.in Japan, 379, 381-382 in medieval Europe, 64, 69
in South-East Asia, 135, 139-140 merchant stocks of, 229-230
in West Africa, 111-112, 114, 117 and mixed cloths, 329, 333, 336
West Africa, 105-126 prices, 334-337, 343-348
Bandiagara trove, 108 red, 121
Benin City excavation, 111 in West Africa, 108, 110, 121, 123
cloth as currency in, 109- 1IO and wool supply, 330--337, 343,348
consumer preferences in, 112, 120, 123 Worsteds, 329-330
cotton regions of, 107- 115 and cotton warps, 333
dress styles in, 120 and import duties, 342
and English cottons, 123-124, 227-228, 282 prices, 345
Index
and wool supply, 332.336, 343 Ye Mengzhu, 54

Wrappers, us, 122 Yemen, 177
Wrigley, E. A., 7 Yorkshire criminal records, 31 1, 318
Young, Arthur, 320
X Yuki-jima, 375
Xereos, II5 Yuzen-zome, 196---197
Xilotepec, 251
Xu Guangqi, 52, 58 z
Zabuton, 199
y Zeila, 165
Yamawaki Teijiro, 198 Zhongping, Yan, 48
Yaren, 59 Zuartes, 172-173

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THE SPINNING

PRASANNAN PARTHASARA THI

PASOLD RESEARCH FUND

List of Illustrations Vlll

List of Figures Xll

List of Tables Xlll

Introduction: Cotton Textiles and Global History I

1. Cotton Textiles in the Indian Subcontinent, 1200-1800

7. The Dutch and the Indian Ocean Textile Trade 145

8. Awash in a Sea of Cloth: Gujarat, Africa, and the Western Indian

14. The Birth of a New European Industry: L'Indiennage in

20. Decline in Three Keys: Indian Cotton Manufacturing from the

Notes on Contributors 469

7.2. Painted and dyed palampore produced on the Coromandel

13-5. Block-printed, painted, and resist- and mordant-dyed Kalamkari,

before 1759 293

I.I. Cotton textile centres in India, 1200-1800 19

1.1. Wages in the mid-eighteenth century 31

This book is a product of the Global Economic History Network (GEHN), a

PRASANNAN PARTHASARATHI AND GIORGIO RIELLO

Eric Hobsbawm famously wrote, 'Whoever says Industrial Revolution says

THE DIFFUSION OF COTTON

Archaeologists suggest that cotton originated in India, which is supported by

Local production systems in cotton had long-distance links in terms of tech-

De (eds.), Essays in Honour of S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi, 1976), 182.

in the Traditional Chinese Textile Industries', in W. E. Willmott (ed.), Economic Organization

Adas (ed.), Technologyand EuropeanOverseasEnterprise(Aldershot, 1996), 264.

Schneider (eds.), Cloth and Human Experience(Washington, 1989), 3.

In many world areas, imported textiles supplemented local production. Their

TRADE AND THE ROLE OF THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

13 A. I. Tchitcherov, India: Changing Economic Structure in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth

FROM EAST TO WEST: A COTTON REVOLUTION

Why was the European success with cotton an eighteenth-century affair? E. A.

15 E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chanceand Change: The Characterof the Industrial Revolution in

England (Cambridge, 1988).

2. Industrialization and import substitution

(Copenhagen 2006), 130-1.

Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge, 2002).

Pomeranz's The GreatDivergencegenerated renewed interest in global questions.

This volume is conscious of the problem of perpetuating a whiggish narrative

and Christian Daniels (eds.), State and Society in China:JapanesePerspectivesonMing-QjngSocial

at Global History of Textile Workers Conference, International Institute of Social History,

(Cambridge, 1978), 1-ro.

THE COTTON MANUFACTURING REGIONS

Map 1.1. Cotton textile centres in India, 1200--1800

Nations', in W. H. Moreland (ed.), Relations of Golconda in the Early Seventeenth Century

(Cambridge, 1990), 80--2, 167-79.

Delhi, 1206-1555 (New Delhi, 1986), 40--51, 157-60.

quoted passage appears on 143.

21 Vijaya Ramaswamy, 'Notes on Textile Technology in Medieval India with Special

One of the most profound technical developments was the introduction of

De (eds.), Essays in Honour of S. C. Sarkar (New Delhi, 1976), 182.

varieties of yarn by the eighteenth century. Several different types of wheels

Centuries) (New Delhi, 2004), 34.

Illustration 1+ Method of printing chintz in India. Watercolour, c. 1820. British Library

THE PRODUCERS AND THE ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION

The manufacture of cotton cloth was organized on a commercial basis from

TABLE r. r. Wages in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Britain South India Bengal

Impact of European Expansion on Precapitalist Economy (New Delhi, 1975), 221.

16--17 and 34-7.

THE VARIETIES OF CLOTH

(Bombay, 1951), ch. 6.