Trading Fabrics: Cotton Textile Procurement in India and European Industrialisation, c. 1600-1800

About This Event

Two generations ago, Dutch historian J. C. van Leur commented that much of the early modern history of European trade in Asia was written as "from the deck of a ship". The central role given to the commerce and consumption of textiles in the Indian Ocean and beyond has obscured the importance manufacturing and procurement in India. This paper considers how textiles produced in the inland areas of the Coromandel coast were sourced by Danish, Dutch, English and French companies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A focus on procurement in the so-called European ‘factories’ in India reveals how quality and reliability of supplies remained a central concern in the global trade of Indian cotton textiles in this period. This paper argues that the development of cotton textile manufacturing in Europe (the other ‘factories’) was a response to the many procurement problems in India.

Featured Guests

• Giorgio Riello: Chair of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute, Professor of Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick, and Principal Investigator for CAPASIA: The Asian Origins of European Capitalism (funded by the European Research Council)

Co-sponsors

• Hamilton College