Textile Trade in Colonial India

The arrival of Vasco da Gama at Calicut in the late fifteenth century paved the way for trade between India and Europe. This Portuguese sailor discovered a new sea route to India from Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British consequently visited and established trading factories across the subcontinent from the early sixteenth century onwards. The European traders were captivated by the abundance of silk and cotton produced here. The British East India Company, founded in 1600 for trade with the south and south-east Asian nations, landed in India in August 1608. They primarily traded in spices, cotton and silk.

Throughout the seventeenth century, the export of cotton goods expanded very fast. The port of Surat on the Gujarat coast connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea ports; while, Masulipatam on the Coromandel Coast and Hooghly in Bengal had trade routes with Java, Sumatra and Penang. Indian merchants and bankers were associated with this export network by financing production, collecting the woven cloth from villages and supplying it to the port towns.

Printed cotton textiles imported from India became popular in England and other European countries from the 1680s. Indian clothes were loved for their elegant floral designs, fine texture and reasonable cost. Rich people of England including the Queen herself wore clothes of Indian fabric. In 1730, the British East India Company ordered five lakhs and eighty-nine thousand pieces of clothes. It contained a list of ninety-eight varieties of cotton and silk products. The increasing popularity of Indian textiles led to a protest against its import by the local wool and silk makers of England during the early eighteenth century.

In 1721, the British government introduced an act to ban the use of chintz in England. This act came to be known as the ‘Calico Act’. The word chintz refers to printed cotton textiles. It is derived from the Hindi word chhint – a cloth with small and colourful flowery designs. The English producers wanted a secure market within the country by preventing the import of Indian finished products. During the 1730s, the first textile industry came up in England. Indian designs were copied and reproduced there on white muslin imported from India. As a consequence, it gave a death blow to the highly valued Indian fabrics.

The supply merchants of India had the agency to select their best buyers. The Portuguese, the British, the Dutch, the French as well as the local traders altogether competed in the market to obtain woven cloth. The East India Company also began intervening in Indian politics by the 1750s. The biggest strike from the British was the defeat of the Nawab of Bengal- Siraj-ud-Daulah, in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. It was a demonstration of the British military strength and their capacity to monopolize Indian trade. The textile export network, controlled by the Indian merchants, started to deteriorate following this battle. European companies gradually attained power over the Indians. This resulted in a decline of the old ports of Surat and Hooghly through which local merchants used to operate their exports. Eventually, the local bankers slowly went bankrupt.

In the last years of the seventeenth century, the gross value of trade that passed through the port of Surat was Rs 16 million. By the 1740s, it fell to Rs 3 million. While the old ports of Surat and Hooghly dried up, Bombay and Calcutta started to grow. It was a vivid indicator of the colonial power in India. The European companies started to control the trade through these new ports from the second half of the eighteenth century.

During the 1760s, the emergence of the Industrial Revolution catalyzed industrial growth in England. It was an incredible transition to several new manufacturing processes and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Textiles were the dominant industry of this revolution in terms of modern production methods. During the 18th century, notable inventions were made to boost the textile industry there, like the Steam Engine, the Spinning Jenny, the Spinning Frame, the Water Frame, the Crompton Mule Spindle etc. The Industrial Revolution made Britain the leading commercial nation in the world. It gained a major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent through the activities of the British East India Company.

The Company proceeded to develop a system of management and control to eliminate competition, control costs and to ensure regular supplies of cotton and silk goods. It also tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connected with the cloth trade, and to establish direct control over the weaver. Indian textiles continued to dominate world trade till the end of the eighteenth century. The newly established textile industries in England had not expanded till then and Indian clothes were still in great demand. This led to the abolition of the Calico Act in 1774, after the British found themselves strong enough to compete with Indian textiles.

The exceptional development of cotton industries in Britain gradually affected the textile producers in India. Indian textiles had to compete with the British textiles in the European and American markets. The modern technology used in England could produce far cheaper and longer-lasting textiles than that of India. Exporting textiles from here also became troublesome since high duties were imposed on Indian textiles imported into Britain. In the early nineteenth century, the British-made cotton textiles successfully removed Indian products from their traditional markets in Africa, America and Europe. European companies also gradually stopped buying Indian goods altogether. It resulted in a great deterioration of the Indian textile trade. Thousands of weavers and spinners across the country became unemployed within the initial years of the 19^th century.

India had lost its rich and highly favoured market of cotton and silk goods by the early nineteenth century. Meanwhile, it became only a supplier of raw cotton for England. These raw materials were processed in the industries to produce clothes there. Eventually, the British merchants further exported the goods to India to occupy its market. Nineteenth-century colonial India is represented by the great exploitation of Indian resources. Noted scholar Dadabhai Naoroji propounded the theory- Drain of Wealth to reflect this exploitation.

By the early 1810s, some British merchants decided to set up cotton yarn manufacturing industries in India. In 1818, the first cotton mill, known as the Fort Gloster Mill was established in Calcutta for this purpose. About 700,000lb of yarn was spun there annually.

The Indian market was completely occupied by British clothes in the 1830s. In fact, two-thirds of all the cotton clothes worn by Indians were made in England by the 1850s. Manchester and Lancashire became the world emporium for cotton piece goods. In 1811-12, piece goods accounted for 33 percent of India’s export, and by 1850-51, it was no more than 3 percent.

The real development of the Indian cotton industry began with the setting up of Bombay Spinning and Weaving Mill in 1851. It was established completely with Indian capital by a Parsi merchant. In the early years of the nineteenth century, there was a rapid increase in import of Lancashire cotton piece goods to India and exports of raw cotton to England. The Parsi merchants, employed by the British, acquired vast financial resources from this trade.

Table 1: Value of Cotton Exports from Mumbai to England (1861-1866).

Data Source: Marwaris in the Cotton Trade of Mumbai: Collaboration and Conflict

Table 2 (a): Growth of Cotton mills in India, 1879-80 to 1894-95

Table 2 (b): Export of Indian Twist and Yarns, 1879-80 to1890-91 in lb

Sources: Gadgil (1924), p. 75& 76

The first decade of the twentieth century was a period of major changes in India. The emergence of the Swadeshi Movement (1906-1911) greatly emphasized nationalism and encouraged all Indians to boycott foreign cloth. This led the Indian industrialists to produce cloth on a large scale in their mills. Cotton piece-goods production in India doubled between 1900 and 1912.

Meanwhile, the Indian mills received a great domestic market during World War I (1914-1919). It also supplied several war requirements including jute bags, tents, leather boots and army uniforms. India developed trade links with Persia, Turkey, Africa and Ceylon during this period. As a consequence, India’s textile industry started to cover a wider market.

The Swadeshi Movement was instrumental in promoting this idea of self-reliance. The role of Mahatma Gandhi in emphasising the significance of swaraj was a revolutionary episode of that century. Gandhi’s perspective towards the charkha (spinning wheel) as a symbol of self-help, self-service, self-contentment and austerity represents the thirst for independence. He continuously encouraged the people across the country to spin their own khadi. Khadi was used as a mark of self- sustainability. This incredible determination of Gandhi to visualize swaraj through the charkha is unforgettable and relevant till date.