How Indian Textiles dominated European Markets till 18th Century

While going through the NCERT books on History, I came across an interesting discussion on how Indian textiles dominated European markets till the 18th century. The decline of Indian textile industry was deliberately brought about the British by imposing high import duties on the cloth in Britain while importing vast quantity of British cloth to India. It is a shocking tale of colonial greed, white man's insecurity and aversion to fair competition and complete decimation of a local industry which provided employment to millions.

When the British first arrived on the scene in Surat in the 17th Century, they had to place orders two years in advance because this was the time required for the orders to reach Europe from India through ships. Once these cloths arrived there, they were auctioned and sold at very high rates. The popularity and the quality of the Indian textiles can be gauged from the fact that rich people of England, including the Queen herself wore clothes of Indian fabric.

British Ships at Surat Port

Alarmed by the popularity of the Indian textiles, the wool and silk makers in England demanded protection from their government against the import of Indian cotton textiles. The British Parliament passed the Calico Act (derived from the word 'Calicut') in 1720, banning the import of printed cotton textiles in England. The interesting thing is, these very western nations have the gall to decry 'protectionism' when other governments do what they did to Indian textiles in the 18th century, simply because the balance of trade is in their favor today!

So, what kinds of Indian textiles were famous in Europe? Here are some examples:

1. Chintz: The word 'chintz' comes from the Hindi word 'Chhint' meaning a cloth with small and colourful flowery design. According to Live History India:

"Trade numbers from this period are astounding. The British exported about 84,000 pieces of the different varieties of calico from India. And this would only grow. By 1684 CE the quantity of calicoes exported to England was over a quarter of a million pieces – and this accounted for as much as 73% of the company’s trade.

The calico craze reached its peak in the 1680s when these fabrics were used for clothes. Traders’ wives had abandoned English brocades and Venetians for glazed calico, popularly called as ‘Indian Chintz’. In about a decade, ‘Chintz’ would be everywhere, with trousseau fashioned out of the fabric and it even made its way into pop culture, featuring in anniversaries and events. In fact, the first wedding anniversaries were called a ‘calico wedding’!" 

Woman’s jacket. Made in coastal southeast India for the Dutch market; used in Hindeloopen, Friesland. Mordant-dyed and resist-dyed cotton, 18th century, 57.8 cm.

2. Bandanna: The word 'bandanna' comes from the word 'bandhana' and refers to a variety of brightly coloured cloth produced through a method of tying and dying. According to the Smithsonian Mag:

"Long before American cowboys sported bandanas, the European snuff user of the 18th century suffered from an embarrassing problem: Blowing his nose into a white or solid-colored handkerchief left behind dark tobacco stains. He found a stylish solution in India, where textile makers employed a millennium-old tie-dyeing technique called bandhani to create colorful silk and cotton kerchiefs covered in lively patterns. After the Dutch and English East India companies imported these kerchiefs to England, snuff-takers embraced them to make their habit more discreet, and the name was anglicized to “bandana.”

Traditional Indian Bandhani fabric

3. There were a variety of other fabrics which were clubbed together as 'Calico' such as Kasimbazar, Patna, Calcutta, Patna and Charpoore. 

According to the British Library:

"This document from 1730 lists the range of textiles - or 'piece goods' - purchased in Bengal by the Company. During the 18th century Indian textiles provided 60% of the total value of the Company's sales in London. While workers were subjected to the devastating effects of extreme climate, famine and war, the landowners, brokers and the Company grew rich on their skills."

"Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India"

In his famous address to the Oxford Union, Dr. Shashi Tharoor briefly touched upon the causes of decline of Indian textiles when he said:

"Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by it's depredations in India. In fact Britain's industrial revolution was actually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India.

The handloom weaver's for example famed across the world whose products were exported around the world, Britain came right in. There were actually these weaver's making fine muslin as light as woven air, it was said, and Britain came right in, smashed their thumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties on their cloth and products and started, of course, taking their raw material from India and shipping back manufactured cloth flooding the world's markets with what became the products of the dark and satanic mills of the Victorian England

That meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer, went from having 27 per cent of the world trade to less than 2 per cent."

The NCERTs sum up the decline of textile industry in India in the following words:

The development of cotton industries in Britain affected textile producers in India in several ways. First: Indian textiles now had to compete with British textiles in the European and American markets. Second: exporting textiles to England also became increasingly difficult since very high duties were imposed on Indian textiles imported into Britain.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Englishmade cotton textiles successfully ousted Indian goods from their traditional markets in Africa, America and Europe. Thousands of weavers in India were now thrown out of employment. Bengal weavers were the worst hit. English and European companies stopped buying Indian goods and their agents no longer gave out advances to weavers to secure supplies. Distressed weavers wrote petitions to the government to help them. 

But worse was still to come. By the 1830s British cotton cloth flooded Indian markets. In fact, by the 1880s two-thirds of all the cotton clothes worn by Indians were made of cloth produced in Britain. This affected not only specialist weavers but also spinners. Thousands of rural women who made a living by spinning cotton thread were rendered jobless.