Spinning Yarns

Bengal Textile Industry in the Backdrop of John Taylor's Report on 'Dacca Cloth Production' (1801)

Sushil Chaudhury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000079203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Indische & südasiatische Geschichte

Since time immemorial Indian textiles, especially textiles from Bengal, were in great demand and exported to different parts of the world. Textiles from Bengal were appreciated by the Romans as early as first century ad. Numerous foreign travellers including Chinese, Portuguese, Arab and Persian, have mentioned the delicacy and beauty of Bengal textiles. From the mid-seventeenth century, there was a massive spurt in demand of cloth manufactured in Bengal, but after the British conquest of Bengal in 1757 this industry started to decline.
This monograph traces the journey of Bengal textiles till its decline. Among the topics covered include accounts of the admiration for Bengal textiles from far and wide, the different types of textiles that were manufactured in Bengal, the major exporters, the major centres of production, the production system, the Dhaka muslin and the silk industry in Bengal, the procuring system that was adopted by the European / Asian merchants, the condition of the artisans who were the chief pillars of the textile industry and lastly the reasons behind the decline of the Bengal textile industry.
This is the first comprehensive volume on Bengal textile industry. It is the outcome of the author's four and a half decades of work on various aspects of Indian Ocean trade, the activities of the European companies and their impact on Indian / Bengal's economy.
Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

CHAPTER 1

Prologue

THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY in India is a traditional handicraft cottage industry especially in Bengal. From time immemorial Indian textiles were exported, again especially from Bengal, to different parts of the world, including the erstwhile Roman Empire. But it was from the mid-seventeenth century that there was a great demand for Bengal textiles in various parts of the world including Europe. As Bengal was the hub of the textile industry, the Bengal textile trade and industry in the backdrop of the Indian scenario will be discussed. In the process the various similarities as also dissimilarities in the textile industry of the various regions of India in the early modern era will also be touched upon.

There is little doubt that the textile industry had a vital role in the socio-economic life of Bengal as also in many parts of India, especially from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century. The village economy of the then Bengal was primarily agriculture based — a large part of the population was engaged in agricultural activities. Of these peasant-workers, most of them engaged themselves in weaving textiles in their leisure time. Indeed, in the early modern era, Bengal textile industry was basically a rural cottage industry. Thus in Bengal, as in some other parts of India, the peasant was also a weaver or vice versa. In this production system, the peasant-weaver’s cottage was his workshop. His tools were very few and primitive with which he and his family produced the cloth. The cotton or yarn was purchased by him from the local hat (small village market) and it was his wife who spun yarn from the cotton. Later the whole family helped in weaving the cloth. When finished, the weaver used to sell it in the local hat or to the dalals or merchants of whom there was no dearth in the market. In general, the practice was that the weaver would receive some advance from the merchant-middlemen, dalals, dadni merchants and the likes for buying the raw materials, especially cotton or thread/yarn and for maintaining himself and his family during the period (about six months) when he would be busy in weaving cloth. When the demand for cloth was high, the weaver worked full-time and found no time for cultivation. Many peasants even turned full-time weavers to meet the demands of the market.

At this point one might ask the question: why was there such a high demand for textiles? The answer is simple. Besides the personal needs of the peasant-weavers, there was then a huge demand for Bengal textiles in different parts of Asia including India as also in Europe because of the fact that Bengal textile was not only cheap but also of much superior quality as compared to the other textiles available in the markets. After the discovery of direct sea-route from Europe to Asia by Vasco de Gama in 1498, the demand for Bengal textiles in Europe increased considerably from around the mid-seventeenth century. Thus on the one hand the demand of the Asian merchants and on the other that of the Europeans resulted in a huge amount of textile exported from Bengal till the mid-eighteenth century. But the export more or less came to an end with the British conquest of Bengal in 1757 bringing with it whole-scale repressions by the Company officials, its servants and the gomastas, and after the Industrial Revolution in Britain towards the end of the century, the Bengal textile industry started to decline.

Unfortunately, there is a dearth of books written in English dealing exclusively with the Bengal textile industry. Those available are concerned mostly with the muslin industry of Dhaka. For instance, Abdul Karim’s Dhakai Muslin (1965) though a commendable work deals mostly with the Dhaka muslin industry. However, many of his observations are in general applicable to the Bengal industry as a whole. However, it should be pointed out that Karim did not touch upon some very significant aspects of the textile industry. Not only the number of books written in English on the Bengal textile industry are very few but most of them were written more than a hundred years back. James Taylor’s A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Cotton Manufacture of Dacca in Bengal, published in 1851, contains very few details of the Bengal textile industry as whole — N.N. Banerjee’s Monograph on the Cotton Fabrics of Bengal published in 1878 can hardly be relied upon. Moreover this 62-page book is very difficult to get hold of — only seven copies are available in the world and none in India.

However, there is significant discussion on the Bengal textile industry in some publications of the last century. For instance, J.C. Sinha’s Economic Annals of Bengal (1927), H.R. Ghosal’s Economic Transitions in the Bengal Presidency (1950), N.K. Sinha’s Economic History of Bengal (vol. 1) (1956) are quite remarkable contributions in this respect. Then again from around the 1970s, several treatises on the economic history of Bengal contain very useful information on the textile industry — K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia (1978), Om Prakash, Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal (1985) and The European Commercial Enterprises in Pre-Colonial India (1998), P.J. Marshall’s, Bengal: The British Bridgehead (1987) and the Sushil Chaudhury’s Trade and Commercial Organization in Bengal, 1650–1720 (1975) and From Prosperity to Decline: Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (1995). But all of them deal with Bengal/ Indian textile industry only as a part of other themes. Two significant works dealing exclusively with Bengal textile industry in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century are D. Mitra’s The Cotton Weavers of Bengal (1978) and Hameeda Hossain’s The Company Weavers of Bengal (1988). But there is next to nothing in them about the textile industry in the pre-modern era. Recently an excellent collection of essays on various aspects of south Indian textiles has been published (Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World?, 2006) which will be helpful in reconstructing the history of the Indian textile industry in some areas. Unfortunately here too one gets only piecemeal discussions of different regions, and not a comprehensive study of the Indian textile industry in the early modern era as a whole.

However, so far as the regional studies on textiles in various parts of India are concerned, there are quite a few good works till date. S. Arasaratnam’s and Vijaya Ramaswamy’s work on south Indian textiles, especially Textiles and Weavers in Medieval South India, Prasannan Parthasarathi’s, The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720–1800 (2001).

Actually while working for more than four decades on various aspects of Indian Ocean trade, the activities of the European Companies and their impact on Indian’s/Bengal’s economy and politics, the commercial enterprises of the Armenians in Bengal/India and their role in the overland trade, etc., in the different archives and libraries of India and abroad, especially in the British Library, London and Algemeen Rijksarchief in Holland, this author has collected a lot of material on the Indian/Bengal textile industry On the basis of these material as well as those are available as secondary sources, an attempt has been made to write a monograph on Bengal textile industry.

For centuries, Bengal textiles were admired all over the world. Foreign travellers and observers, right from the Roman times down to the late eighteenth century, spoke highly of the fine quality and cheapness of the textiles manufactured in Bengal. As such Bengal textiles were exported to different parts of the world till the late eighteenth century when the British occupation of Bengal on the one hand and the advent of the Industrial Revolution in England on the other sounded the death-knell of Bengal’s traditional indigenous industry. Hence one would have expected that there will be at least several works devoted entirely to the Bengal textile industry and trade in the early pre-Colonial era. Unfortunately it is not the case.

The various aspects of the Bengal textile industry and trade has been discussed in this monograph. The Introduction outlines the main propositions the author has tried to examine in the book. Chapter 2 is an account of the admiration for the Indian textiles, particularly Bengal muslins, from the Roman times and then by Herodotus, Ptolemy, Pliny, among others and later on by the hordes of foreign travellers who visited India from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Besides, the chapter depicts how the contemporary European observers narrated the wonderful expertise and excellence of the work of the Indian artisans, especially the Bengal weavers and spinners in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. It has also been demonstrated here that Bengal not only produced expensive muslins and fine textiles but also coarse and cheap cloth for which there was a great demand in many parts of the world. In this context the question that naturally crops up is who were the major exporters of these textiles — the Europeans or the Asian merchants?

Chapter 3 showcases the advantages that Bengal had over other centres of textile production in India, of which the most important and distinct ones may be identified as (1) abundance of highly skilled labour, specially weavers and spinners; (2) remarkably low cost of production; (3) cheap and highly flexible transport facilities in its riverine network and finally, (4) a flourishing agriculture resulting in cheapness of staples like rice, cotton yarn, silk thread, etc. Besides, the Bengal textile industry had certain special features which were not to be found in any other region. These were: the textile industry in Bengal was basically a rural domestic handicraft industry, it was spread all over Bengal. At the same time it was characterized by localization and specialization achieved through generations. Besides, in common with other major centres of textile production like Gujarat, Coromandel, and the Punjab, Bengal enjoyed for long an active regional and intra-Asiatic trade, the presence of an entrepreneurial class from all over Asia and locally produced cotton and silk. But it should be noted that it was the comparative advantages of Bengal, listed above, over the other centres of textile production that gave it the preponderance in textile trade and industry for centuries, including the period under review.

Chapter 4 deals with the production system and organization of the textile industry in Bengal. In this traditional production system, the weaver used to produce cloth in his home with his family. His cottage was his workshop. In this personalized production system, a little capital used to suffice. Sometimes there is reference of head weavers who used to weave cloth with the help of a few other weavers. However, a very important and significant fact about the production system was that the dadni or advanced system was a traditional and integral part of production system. It has also been explained here the raison d’être of the dadni system and its extension in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Besides, this chapter gives a description of the different stages of cloth production right from spinning to winding and preparing the yarn, warping, applying the reed to the warp, beaming or applying the warp to the end roll of the loom, preparing the heddles or harness and lastly the weaving, washing, etc.

Chapter 5 is mainly concerned with a detailed discussion of the Dhaka muslin industry. Quite a few things like the origin of the word ‘muslin’, why was the Dhaka muslin the most beautiful, where in Dhaka was the cotton suitable for production of muslin grown, who did spinning of yarn for muslin, which were the aurangs where the best quality and most expensive muslin were produced, how expensive were these muslins and finally what was the production organization like in the royal karkhanas or musbool-khas-kothi where muslins for the royalty and nobility were produced in Dhaka are discussed in this chapter.

Bengal produced not only muslin or fine cloth and cheap and coarse textiles but also silk, and mixed cotton and silk textiles in large quantities. How and where were these textiles produced, what was the process of silk production, how was the silk yarn and who did it, what was the approximate cost of producing silk textiles and finally the comparative role of the Asian and Europeans in the export of silk textiles in Bengal are discussed in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 is devoted to an analysis of the procurement system of textiles adopted by European and Indian/Asian merchants. It was because of the diffusion of textile production in Bengal (not so much in regions), that procurement was not an easy task. However, the Asian/Indian merchants had certain advantages over the Europeans in procuring textiles. In most cases the Asian/Indian merchants employed gomastas who were in general their kith and kin or people who belonged to the same caste. These people were conversant of the local language and as such could directly contract with the weavers for supply of cloth. Moreover they could cover their food and lodging with a small sum of money compared to the Europeans. But in the case of the Europeans, the process was rather difficult. As their employees did know the local language they had to depend on dadni merchants, dalals or paikars for the supply of export commodities. So they had to employ in their principal factories a local person as the chief merchant who used to arrange for the supply of necessary items for export through dadni merchants or dalals. Basically the dadni merchants were the mainstay for procurement of textiles and other export goods. Among the dadni merchants in Calcutta, the dominance was of the Seth and Basak families and in Kasimbazar it was the Katma family. But the main difficulty in procurement of export items, especially textiles and silk was that the Companies suffered from a chronic shortage of liquid capital and they had to borrow from the local credit market, especially from the House of the Jagat Seths. All this is detailed in this chapter.

Why and how the Companies came to India/Bengal for trade and what was their role in the export trade of textiles is described in Chapter 8. It also examines why there was a sudden boom in textile export and the comparative role of the English and Dutch Companies in the export of textiles, with quantitative evidence. Besides it gives an account of the different types of cloths exported by the two Companies. It also looks into the role of Bengal textiles in the inter-Asian trade of the Dutch Company.

There has been a consensus among historians for a long time that the European Companies were the major exporters of textiles from Bengal/India and that compared to it the role of the Asian/Indian merchants was insignificant. Chapter 9 has tried to establish with qualitative as well as quantitative evidences that in textile export, not to speak of silk export, the Asians/Indians were much ahead of the Europeans. This scenario was completely reversed after the British conquest of Bengal in 1757.

Chapter 10 relates to the condition of the artisans — weavers, spinners, etc. — who were the chief pillars of the textile industry. Here we have tried to ask a few questions — how far mobile were the weavers? Were they willing to leave their habitation in the face of oppression by the ruling authority/mahajans/Company officials? How much freedom did they enjoy? Could they produce cloth according to their choice or well compelled to do so at the dictates of others? Was it possible for them to bargain with the dadni merchants/dalals/paikars at the time of the contract? More importantly, what was the economic condition of the artisans and how much did they earn? In the records of the European Companies, there are numerous references to the poverty of the weavers. Was it a fact or figment of an ‘imagination’ of the Company factors? Last but not the least, the condition of the weavers in the beginning of the eighteenth century is compared here with that of the weavers towards the end of the Chapter 11 deals with the debate regarding the absence of technological innovations despite a huge demand for textiles in the eighteenth century. It has also taken up the question how could India/ Bengal afford to meet the demand for the large amount of textiles with the almost primitive form of production system. The next chapter takes a look at the scenario in the other centres of textile production, especially in south, western and northern India in the backdrop of the different aspects of the textile production in India. Lastly, it has been attempted to find out the reasons/causes behind the decline of the Bengal textile industry which began in the second half of the eighteenth century. In conclusion, there is a resume of the main propositions with explanations put forward in the volume.

N.B. It has not been possible to identify some of the aurangs (production centres) of textiles. Again, it was difficult to make out what exactly was the type of some of the cloths as most of them have been out of circulation for long and have become obscure. Hence we had to keep the names as found in the records. There might be a little repetition here and there but that was necessary for clarification of some issues.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• 1. Prologue
• 2. Historical Perspective
• 3. Bengal’s Advantages over other Regions of India
• 4. Production Organization
• 5. The Dhaka Muslin Industry
• 6. Silk Textiles
• 7. Procurement of Textiles for Export
• 8. Role of the European Companies in Bengal’s Export Trade
• 9. Asian Merchants and Textile Export
• 10. How ‘Poor’ were the ‘Poor’ Indian Weavers?
• 11. Technology in Bengal Textile Industry
• 12. The Decline of the Textile Trade and Industry
• 13. Conclusion
• Appendices
• Original Sources
• Index