The Indian apprenticeship: The trade of Indian Textiles and the making of European cottons

Global Economic History Series

Volumn 4, Issue , 2009, Pages 309-346

  Riello, Giorgio ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84967102086     PISSN: 18725155     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book Series    
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004176539.i-490.87     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. 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, 1 (2006), pp. 2-31.
2. For a revisionary analysis see Patrick K. O'Brien, "The Geopolitics of a Global Industry: Eurasian Divergence and the Mechanisation of Cotton Textile Production in England", in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (eds.), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 367-85.
3. Broadberry and Gupta, "Early Modern Great Divergence"
4. Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, "Cotton Textiles and the Great Divergence: Lancashire, India and Shifting Comparative Advantage, 1600-1850" (Unpublished paper, July 2004). See also Gupta's paper in this volume.
5. Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
6. Not all historians agree. For instance, Steensgaard states that "The Indians weavers were able to deliver without fundamental changes in technique or organization". Other historians are less categorical and suggest a complex - and long-term - restructuring of the entire productive system. 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-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 125. See also Ian Wendt's paper in this volume.
7. Douglas A. Farnie, "The Role of Merchants as Prime Movers in the Expansion of the Cotton Industry, 1760-1990", in Douglas A. Farnie and David J. Jeremy (eds.), The Fibre that Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600-1990s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 15-55.
8. 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, Desires and Delectable Goods (London: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 228-244
9. Id. "In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century", Past and Present, 82 (2004), pp. 85-142.
10. Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, "East and West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe", Journal of Social History, 41, 4 (2008), pp. 887-916.
11. Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study of International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
12. Id., "Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in England", Social Science History, 13, 4 (1989), pp. 343-79.
13. See also Maxine Berg, "Africans and the Industrial Revolution: Roundtable", International Journal of Maritime History, 15, 2 (2003), pp. 291-300
14. Giorgio Riello "Cotton before the Revolution: A European Perspective, c. 1200-1800" (Unpublished paper presented at the Economic History Seminar, London School of Economics, May 2004).
15. Beverly Lemire, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
16. Jan de Vries, "Connecting Europe and Asia: A Quantitative Analysis of the Cape-Route Trade, 1497-1795", in Dennis O'Flynn, Arturo Giràldez and Richard von Glahn (eds.), Global Connections and Monetary History, 1470-1800 (Aldeshot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 35-106.
17. As Pieter Emmer observes, the entire quantity of goods traded from Asia to Europe between 1500 and 1800 could fit within just five present-day super-tankers. Pieter Emmer, "The Myth of Early Globalization: The Atlantic Economy, 1500-1800", European Review, 11, 1 (2003), p. 38.
18. Further figures about the overall size of the Eurasian trade are provided by Om Prakash, The New Cambridge History of India; Vol. 2, Part 5. European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 32
19. Id., "Financing the European Trade with Asia in the Early Modern Period: Dutch Initiatives and Innovations", Journal of European Economic History, 27, 2 (1998), p. 354.
20. Berg, although supporting the idea of Asia's impact on European taste and consumption, admits that imported commodities accounted no more than 1% of Europe's total industrial output. Maxine Berg, "Manufacturing the Orient. Asian Commodities and European Industry 1500-1800", in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Prodotti e tecniche d'oltremare nelle economie europee. Secc. XIII-XVIII. Atti della ventinovesima settimana di studi, 14-19 aprile 1997 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1998), p. 395.
21. K. S. Mathew, Portuguese Trade with India in the Sixteenth Century (New Delhi: Manohar, 1983), p. 133.
22. Om Prakash, New Cambridge History of India, p. 36, table 2.3
23. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia. 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History (Harlow: Longman, 1993), p. 63, 142, 166.
24. George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630-1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 76.
25. Tomé Pires, The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512-15, ed. Armando Cortesaõ (London: Hakluyt Society Publications, 1944), vol. 1, p. 45.
26. Quoted in Micheal N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1976), p. 12.
27. John Guy, "Sarasa and Patola: Indian Textiles in Indonesia", Orientations, 20, 1 (1989), p. 48.
28. Prithvish Nag, "The Indian Ocean, India and Africa: Historical and Geographical Perspectives", in Satish Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Politics (New Delhi: Sage, 1987), p. 159, footnote 25.
29. Marie Antoinette Petronella Meilink-Roelofsz, Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago: Between 1500 and About 1630 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1962), p. 189.
30. Moreland suggests that the low quantities of Indian textiles imported into Europe before 1660 are due to very low European demand. W. H. Moreland, From Akbar to Aurangzeb: A Study in Indian Economic History (London: Macmillan, 1923), p. 123.
31. This position has been recently challenged by Lemire and others who argue that the Euro-Indian textile trade before 1660 was much larger than what figures show. Beverly Lemire, "Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600-1800", Textile: A Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1, 1 (2003), pp. 65-85.
32. O. P. Singh, Surat and its Trade in the Second Half of the 17th Century (Delhi: University of Delhi, 1977), p. 137.
33. Jan Huygen van Linschoten, The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies, from the English Translation of 1598, ed. Pieter Anton Tiele (London: Hakluyt Society, 1885), vol. 1, p. 129.
34. Afzal Ahmad, "Indian Textiles and the Portuguese Trade in the Seventeenth Century (1600-43)", Studia, 48 (1989), pp. 215-20.