7 Weavers, Iron Smelters and Factory Owners

1 79 Weavers, Iron Smelters andFactory Owners7 Fig. 1 Trading ships on the port of Surat in the seventeenth centurySurat in Gujarat on the west coast of India was one of the most important ports ofthe Indian Ocean trade. Dutch and English trading ships began using the port from theearly seventeenth century. Its importance declined in the eighteenth chapter tells the story of the crafts and industries of India duringBritish rule by focusing on two industries, namely, textiles andiron and steel. Both these industries were crucial for the industrialrevolution in the modern world. Mechanised production of cottontextiles made Britain the foremost industrial nation in the nineteenthcentury. And when its iron and steel industry started growing fromthe 1850s, Britain came to be known as the workshop of the world .The industrialisation of Britain had a close connection with theconquest and colonisation of India.

2 You have seen (Chapter 2) howthe English East India Company s interest in trade led to occupationof territory, and how the pattern of trade changed over the the late eighteenth century the Company was buying goods in Indiaand exporting them to England and Europe, making profit throughthis sale. With the growth of industrial production, Britishindustrialists began to see India as a vast market for their industrialproducts, and over time manufactured goods from Britain beganflooding India. How did this affect Indian crafts and industries?This is the question we will explore in this chapter. NCERTnot to be republishedOUR PASTS III80 Fig. 2 Patola weave,mid-nineteenth centuryPatola was woven in Surat, ahmedabad and Patan. Highlyvalued in Indonesia, it becamepart of the local weavingtradition Textiles and the World MarketLet us first look at textile 1750, before theBritish conquered Bengal, Indiawas by far the world s largestproducer of cotton textiles.

3 Indiantextiles had long been renownedboth for their fine quality andexquisite craftsmanship. Theywere extensively traded inSoutheast Asia (Java, Sumatraand Penang) and West andCentral Asia. From the sixteenthcentury European tradingcompanies began buying Indiantextiles for sale in of this flourishingtrade and the craftsmanship ofIndian weavers is preserved inmany words still current inEnglish and other languages. Itis interesting to trace the origin of such words, and seewhat they tell tell us historiesEuropean traders first encountered fine cotton clothfrom India carried by Arab merchants in Mosul inpresent-day Iraq. So they began referring to all finelywoven textiles as muslin a word that acquired widecurrency. When the Portuguese first came to India insearch of spices they landed in Calicut on the Keralacoast in south-west India.

4 The cotton textiles whichthey took back to Europe, along with the spices, cameto be called calico (derived from Calicut), andsubsequently calico became the general name for allcotton are many other words which point to thepopularity of Indian textiles in Western markets. InFig. 3 you can see a page of an order book that theEnglish East India Company sent to its representativesin Calcutta in order that year was for 5,89,000 pieces of through the order book you would have seena list of 98 varieties of cotton and silk cloths. Thesewere known by their common name in the Europeantrade as piece goods usually woven cloth pieces thatwere 20 yards long and 1 yard wide. NCERTnot to be republished81 WEAVERS, IRON Smelters AND Factory OWNERSFig. 3 A page from an orderbook of the East India Company,1730 Notice how each item in theorder book was carefully pricedin London.

5 These orders had tobe placed two years in advancebecause this was the timerequired to send orders to India,get the specific cloths woven andshipped to Britain. Once the clothpieces arrived in London theywere put up for auction and look at the names of the different varieties ofcloth in the book. Amongst the pieces ordered in bulkwere printed cotton cloths called chintz, cossaes (orkhassa ) and bandanna. Do you know where the Englishterm chintz comes from? It is derived from the Hindiword chhint, a cloth with small and colourful flowerydesigns. From the 1680s there started a craze for printedIndian cotton textiles in England and Europe mainlyfor their exquisite floral designs, fine texture andrelative cheapness. Rich people of England includingthe Queen herself wore clothes of Indian , the word bandanna now refers to anybrightly coloured and printed scarf for the neck orhead.

6 Originally, the term derived from the wordFig. 4 Jamdani weave, earlytwentieth centuryJamdani is a fine muslin onwhich decorative motifs arewoven on the loom, typically ingrey and white. Often a mixtureof cotton and gold thread wasused, as in the cloth in thispicture. The most importantcentres of jamdani weaving wereDacca in Bengal and Lucknowin the United Provinces. NCERTnot to be republishedOUR PASTS III82 Fig. 5 Printed design on finecloth (chintz) produced inMasulipatnam, Andhra Pradesh,mid-nineteenth centuryThis is a fine example of thetype of chintz produced forexport to Iran and 6 Bandanna design, earlytwentieth centuryNotice the line that runs throughthe middle. Do you know why?In this odhni, two tie-and-dyesilk pieces are seamed togetherwith gold thread patterns were mostlyproduced in Rajasthan andGujarat. bandhna (Hindi for tying), and referred to a varietyof brightly coloured cloth produced through a methodof tying and were other cloths in the order book that werenoted by their place of origin: Kasimbazar, Patna, Calcutta,Orissa, Charpoore.

7 The widespread use of such wordsshows how popular Indian textiles had become indifferent parts of the world. NCERTnot to be republished83 ActivityWhy do you think theAct was called theCalico Act? What doesthe name tell us aboutthe kind of textiles theAct wanted to ban?hWEAVERS, IRON Smelters AND Factory OWNERSS pinning Jenny Amachine by which asingle worker couldoperate several spindleson to which thread wasspun. When the wheelwas turned all thespindles textiles in European marketsBy the early eighteenth century, worried by thepopularity of Indian textiles, wool and silk makers inEngland began protesting against the import of Indiancotton textiles. In 1720, the British government enacteda legislation banning the use of printed cotton textiles chintz in England. Interestingly, this Act was knownas the Calico this time textile industries had just begun todevelop in England.

8 Unable to compete with Indiantextiles, English producers wanted a secure marketwithin the country by preventing the entry of Indiantextiles. The first to grow under government protectionwas the calico printing industry. Indian designs werenow imitated and printed in England on white muslinor plain unbleached Indian with Indian textiles also led to a searchfor technological innovation in England. In 1764, thespinning jenny was invented by John Kaye whichincreased the productivity of the traditional invention of the steam engine by Richard Arkwrightin 1786 revolutionised cotton textile weaving. Cloth couldnow be woven in immense quantities and cheaply , Indian textiles continued to dominate worldtrade till the end of the eighteenth century. Europeantrading companies the Dutch, the French and theEnglish made enormous profits out of this flourishingtrade.

9 These companies purchased cotton and silktextiles in India by importing silver. But as you know(Chapter 2), when the English East India Companygained political power in Bengal, it no longer had toimport precious metal to buy Indian goods. Instead, theycollected revenues from peasants and zamindars inIndia, and used this revenue to buy Indian 7 A sea view of the Dutchsettlement in Cochin, seventeenthcenturyAs European trade expanded,trading settlements wereestablished at various Dutch settlements in Cochincame up in the seventeenthcentury. Notice the fortificationaround the settlement. NCERTnot to be republishedOUR PASTS III84 Fig. 8 Weaving centres: 1500 -1750If you look at the map you will notice that textile production was concentratedin four regions in the early nineteenth century. Bengal was one of the mostimportant centres. Located along the numerous rivers in the delta, theproduction centres in Bengal could easily transport goods to distant not forget that in the early nineteenth century railways had not developedand roads were only just beginning to be laid on an extensive in Eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh) was the foremost textile centre inthe eighteenth century.

10 It was famous for its mulmul and jamdani you look at the southern part of India in the map you will see a secondcluster of cotton weaving centres along the Coromandel coast stretchingfrom Madras to northern Andhra Pradesh. On the western coast there wereimportant weaving centres in were the major centres of weavingin the late eighteenth century? NCERTnot to be republished85 Who were the weavers?Weavers often belonged to communities that specialisedin weaving. Their skills were passed on from onegeneration to the next. The tanti weavers of Bengal, thejulahas or momin weavers of north India, sale andkaikollar and devangs of south India are some of thecommunities famous for first stage of production was spinning a workdone mostly by women. The charkha and the takli werehousehold spinning instruments. The thread was spunon the charkha and rolled on the takli.