Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:09:12.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bengali raw silk, the East India Company and the European global market, 1770–1833*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Roberto Davini
Roberto Davini
Affiliation:
Via 2 Giugno 6, 50012 Bagno a Ripoli (Fi), Italy E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1769, the East India Company decided to transform the Bengali silk industry, and introduced Piedmontese reeling technologies and spatially concentrated working practices into the area. Although Bengali raw silk reeled with the new methods never reached the standards of Piedmontese silks, the Company was able to produce huge quantities of low-quality raw silks, and to gain market share in London from the 1770s to the 1830s. By investigating the reasons behind this partial success, this article shows that some features of Piedmontese technologies had a crucial impact on peasants who specialized in the mulberry cultivation and the rearing of silkworms. The Company had to cope with resistance from some rural economic agents in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Bengal, but other elements in local society were able to profit from the Company's interest in producing raw silk.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 57 - 79
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Chaudhuri, K. N., The trading world of Asia and the East India Company, 1660–1769, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, ch. 15 and p. 533.Google Scholar

2 Reports and documents connected with the proceedings of the East India Company in regard to the culture and manufacture of cotton-wool, raw-silk and indigo in India, printed in London by the order of the East India Company 21st December 1836, London, 1836, p. xxiv.

3 Moioli, Angelo, La gelsibachicoltura nelle campagne lombarde dal seicento alla prima metà dell'ottocento. Parte prima: la diffusione del gelso e la crescita produttiva della sericoltura, Trento: Universitá di Trento, 1981, pp. 24–8.Google Scholar

4 Zanier, Claudio, Where the roads met: East and West in the silk production processes (17th to 19th Century), Kyoto: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Scuola di Studi sull' Asia Orientale, 1994, especially pp. 1–64.Google Scholar

5 Zanier, Claudio, ‘L'evoluzione delle tecniche di trattura e di torcitura della seta in Europa nei secoli XVII e XVIII: modello cinese o modello sabaudo?’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., La seta in Europa: Sec. XIII–XX, Florence: Olschki, 1993, pp. 363–6.Google Scholar

6 Zanier, Where the roads met.

7 Chicco, Giuseppe, La seta in Piemonte 1650–1800: un sistema industriale d'ancien régime, Milan: Franco Angeli Editore, 1995, pp. 73–99.Google Scholar

8 Zanier, Where the roads met; Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, ch. 3.

9 Reports and documents, Appendix C, ‘Description of the manufacture of country-wound and filature-wound silk,’ pp. 15–16; Geoghegan, J., Some account of silk in India, especially of the various attempts to encourage and extend sericulture in that country, Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1880, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

10 Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 75–80.

11 West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata (henceforth WBSA), Controlling Committee of Commerce (henceforth CCC), vol. 1, Proceedings for 25 October 1771, Aldersley's minute.

12 Zanier, Where the roads met, pp. 26–7.

13 Reports and documents, Appendix C, ‘General instructions for the further improvement of the Italian raw silk filature in Bengal (Wiss's instructions)’, pp. 16–26.

14 Bayly, C. A., Rulers, townsmen and bazaars, North Indian society in the age of British expansion, 1770–1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar

15 Datta, Rajat, Society, economy and the market: commercialization in rural Bengal c. 1760–1800, Delhi: Manohar, 2000.Google Scholar

16 Levi, Scott C., Indian diaspora in Central Asia and its trade, 1550–1900, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002, p. 3.Google Scholar

17 Gommans, Jos, The rise of the Indo-Afghan empire c. 1710–1780, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995, ch. 1.Google Scholar

18 Sinha, N. K., The economic history of Bengal from Plassey to the Permanent Settlement, vol. 1, Calcutta: Firma K.L.M, 1956, pp. 15–20 and p. 190Google Scholar; B. B. Chaudhuri, ‘Agricultural growth in Bengal and Bihar’, Bengal Past and Present, 1976, pp. 290–340.

19 WBSA, CCC, vol. 2, Proceedings of 12 February 1772, letter from the Council of Revenue at Morshedabad to the President and Council, Morshedabad, 11 November 1771.

20 WBSA, CCC, vol. 2, Proceedings of 7 February 1772, extract of a letter from the Hon'ble the Committee of Commerce to the Chief and Council of Cossimbazar, 21 December 1771.

21 Washbrook, David, ‘Progress and problems: South Asian economic and social history c.1720–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1, 1988, pp. 57–96, especially pp. 63–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 WBSA, CCC, vol. 2, Proceedings of 12 February 1772, letter from the Naib Dewan to the Council of Revenue at Murshidabad.

23 WBSA, Committee of Circuit at Cossimbazar (henceforth CCK), Proceedings of 25 August 1772.

24 WBSA, Board of Revenue (henceforth BoR) Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 25 June 1789, letter from the collector of Burdwan, Mr Mercier, 6 February 1789; letter from the collector of Rungpore, Mr H. H. Dowall, 26 March 1789; letter from the acting collector of Murshidabad, 29 March 1789; letter from the collector of Rajshay, Mr Speke, 21 June 1789.

25 James, Grant, ‘An historical and comparative analysis of the finances of Bengal; chronologically arranged in different periods from the Mogul conquest to the present time, Calcutta 27th April 1786’, in W. K. Firminger, ed., The fifth report from the select committee of the House of Commons on the East India Company, Calcutta: R. Cambray & Co., 1918, vol. 2, p. 197.Google Scholar

26 WBSA, CCK, Proceedings of 25 August 1772, letter from Thomas Pattle to the Committee of Circuit, Bauleah, 25 July 1772.

27 Mukherjee, Rila, Merchants and companies in Bengal: Kasimbazar and Judgia in the eighteenth century, New Delhi: Pragati Publications, 2006, pp. xvi–xvii and pp. 92–6.Google Scholar

28 Khan, Abdul Majed, The transition in Bengal, 1756–1775: a study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, ch. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 WBSA, Board of Trade (henceforth BoT) Custom, Proceedings of 2 December 1796, letter from the reporter of external commerce of Calcutta, 2 December 1796.

30 WBSA, BoT Custom, Proceedings of 3 March 1801, letter from the collector of Benares Custom House, 12 June 1801.

31 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 23 October 1819, letter from Bayley and Ruherford to BoT, 20 August 1819.

32 Ibid.

33 WBSA, BoT Custom, Proceedings of 16 August 1796, letter from the reporter of external commerce, 15 August 1796; WBSA, BoT Custom, Proceedings of 19 December 1800, letter from the reporter of external commerce, 10 September 1800; WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 9 October 1805, letter from the secretary to the government of Bengal to the Board of Trade, 26 September 1805; WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 29 October 1819, letter from Rutherford to Mr Goodwin, warehouse keeper at Bombay, Camp Bander, 25 July 1819.

34 Washbrook, David, ‘From comparative sociology to global history: Britain and India in the pre-history of modernity’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 40, 4, 1997, pp. 410–43, especially p. 437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Chaudhuri, Sushil, From prosperity to decline: eighteenth century Bengal, New Delhi: Manohar, 1995, pp. 249–59Google Scholar; Datta, Rajat, ‘Markets, bullion and Bengal's commercial economy: an eighteenth century perspective’, in Om Prakash and Denys Lombard, eds., Commerce and culture in the Bay of Bengal, 1500–1800, New Delhi: Manohar, 1999, pp. 331–3.Google Scholar

36 Quoted in Ghosal, H. R., Economic transition in the Bengal presidency (1793–1833), Calcutta: Firma K.L.M., 1966, p. 57.Google Scholar

37 Greenough, Paul R., Prosperity and misery in modern Bengal: the famine of 1943–1944, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.Google Scholar

38 Peter Robb, ‘Peasants' choices? Indian agriculture and the limits of commercialization in nineteenth-century Bihar’, Economic History Review, new series, 45, 1, 1992, pp. 97–119; Sures Chandra Banerji and Girija Prasanna Majumdar, eds., Krsi-Parasara, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, n.d.; Anon., ‘Khonar Bochon’, in Batthacharya Krishna, ed., Borah Mihir o Khona, Calcutta: P. B. Das, n.d.

39 Hunter, William W., A statistical account of Bengal, vol. 7, London: Trubner and Co., 1876, pp. 20–2 and p. 73Google Scholar; Colebrooke, H. T., Remarks on the husbandry and internal commerce of Bengal, London: Black and Parry, 1806: p. 42–5Google Scholar; Buchanan-Hamilton, Francis, Geographical, statistical and historical description of the district, or zila of Dinajpur, in the province or soubah of Bengal, Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1833, pp. 210–14Google Scholar; Roberto Davini, ‘Una conquista incerta: la Compagnia inglese delle Indie e la seta del Bengala (1769–1830)’, PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2004, ch. 2.

40 Davini, ‘Una conquista incerta’, ch. 2; WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 26 November 1819, letter from the secretary to the Governor General in Council, 12 November 1819.

41 George Williamson, Address to the Court of Directors, together with his proposals to them for improving the manufacture of silk in Bengal, so as to preclude the necessity of importing raw silk into England, from Italy, Turkey, etc., being the result of close application, accurate observations, and repeated experiments made upon the spot, during his residence in Bengal for fifteen years, from 1756 to 1771, London, 1775, pp. 15–18; Mukerjee, N. G., Monograph on the silk fabrics of Bengal, Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1903, p. 23Google Scholar; Geoghegan, Some account, p. 21.

42 Williamson, Address to the Court, pp. 15–18; WBSA, CCK, Proceedings of 25 August 1772, letter from Thomas Pattle to the Committee of Circuit, Bauleah, 25 July 1772.

43 WBSA, CCK, Proceedings of 25 August 1772, letter from Thomas Pattle to the Committee of Circuit, Bauleah, 25 July 1772.

44 WBSA, CCC, vol. 1, Proceedings of 12 February 1772, letter from the supervisor of Rajshay to the Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad, 5 November 1771; Harbans, Mukhia, ‘Social resistance to superior technology: the filature in eighteenth-century Bengal’, Indian Historical Review, 9, 1985, pp. 56–64.Google Scholar

45 WBSA, CCC, vol. 1, Proceedings of 11 July 1771, letter to Cossimbazar.

46 WBSA, CCC, vol. 2, Proceedings of 18 November 1772.

47 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 26 May 1820, letter from the commercial resident of Malda, 9 May 1820.

48 Ibid.

49 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 21 March 1817, letter from the commercial resident of Cossimbazar, 11 March 1817.

50 Ibid.

51 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 11 September 1821, letter from the commercial resident of Soonamooky, 30 August 1821.

52 British Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons, vol. 6, Report from the select committee of the House of Lords on the present state of the affairs of the East India Company: sessions from 5th February to 23rd July 1830, London: 1830, p. 222.

53 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 6 August 1789, letter from BoT to Governor General in Council; Bhadra, Gautam, ‘The role of pykars in the silk industry of Bengal (c. 1765–1830), part 1’, Studies in History, 3, 1987 pp. 155–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bhadra, Gautam, ‘The role of pykars in the silk industry of Bengal (c. 1765–1830), part 2,’ Studies in History, 4, 1988, pp. 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See especially part 2, pp. 24–5.

54 Williamson, Address to the Court, p. 15.

55 Datta, Society, economy and the market, chs. 1 and 2; Robb, ‘Peasant choices?’; Sugata Bose, Peasant labour and colonial capital: Rural Bengal since 1770 (The new Cambridge history of India, vol. 3, part 2), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, chs. 2 and 4; Anand A. Yang, Bazar India: markets, society, and the colonial state in Gangetic Bihar, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998, ch. 5.

56 WBSA, CCC, vol. 1, Proceedings of 12 February 1772, letter from the supervisor of Rajshay to the Council of Revenue at Moorshedabad, 5 November 1771; WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 13 March 1789, ‘A statement of the estimated expenses incurred by the chassars in the Commercolly Aurung in rearing the cocoons of the november Bund’, enclosed in letter from the commercial resident at Commercolly, 18 February 1789; Mukhopadhyay, Bhaskar, ‘Forced commercialization in early colonial Bengal: a model and beyond’, Calcutta Historical Journal, 15, 1–2, 1990–1991, pp. 28–82.Google Scholar

57 Ray, Ratnalekha, Change in Bengal agrarian society, New Delhi: Manohar, 1979Google Scholar; Gupta, Ranjan Kumar, The economic life of a Bengal district: Birbhum 1770–1857, Burdwan: Burdwan University, 1984.Google Scholar

58 Datta, Society, economy and the market, pp. 99–102.

59 Bhadra, ‘The role of pykars’, parts 1 and 2.

60 Datta, Society, economy and the market, p. 96.

61 Hunter, William W., The annals of rural Bengal, London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1868Google Scholar; Ray, Change in Bengal; Gupta, The economic life.

62 WBSA, BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 25 June 1789, letter from the collector of Rajishahy, Mr Speke, Calcutta, 21 June 1789.

63 Datta, Society, economy and the market; Robb, ‘Peasants' choices?’.

64 Bhadra, ‘The role of pykars’, parts 1 and 2; Mukhopadhyay, ‘Forced commercialization’.

65 WBSA, BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 14 January 1791, ‘Complaints of the ryotts belonging to the three shares of the Pergunnah Lushkerpore’, enclosed in letter from the collector of Moorshedabad, 11 January 1791.

66 Chowdhury, Benoy, ‘The process of agricultural commercialization in Eastern India during British rule: a reconsideration of the notions of forced commercialization and dependent peasantry’, in Peter Robb, ed., Meanings of agriculture: essays in South Asian history and economicsy, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 71–91.Google Scholar

67 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 13 March 1789; Colebrooke, Remarks, pp. 107–8.

68 McLane, John, Land and local kingship in eighteenth-century Bengal, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 29 May 1789, letter from the commercial resident of Malda, n.d.

70 McLane, Land and local kingship, ch. 4.

71 WBSA, CCC, Proceedings of 25 October 1771.

72 Sen, Sudipta, Empire of free trade: the East India Company and the making of the colonial marketplace, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.Google Scholar

73 Datta, Society, economy and the market, pp. 200–6.

74 WBSA, BoR Sayer, Proceedings of 13 May 1790, letter from the collector of Nadia, 13 April 1790; WBSA, BoR Sayer, Proceedings of 1 April 1791, ‘Explanation of the different articles of which the Sayer in the collectorship of Naddea is composed’, 8 March 1791; WBSA, BoR Sayer, Proceedings of 15 April 1794, ‘Nerrick of the duties collected at haut Narrainpore in Pergunnah Tumlock’, 9 October 1793; WBSA, BoR Sayer, Proceedings of 20 August 1794, letter from the collector of Rajshahy, 12 July 1794; WBSA, BoR Sayer, Proceedings of 8 July 1791, ‘Explanatory statement of Sayer for which the landholders of the Zillah of Murshidabad have been considered entitled’, Murshidabad, 23 June 1791.

75 WBSA, BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 6 June 1791, ‘The memorial of James Frushard, superintendent of the regulating and improving the Hon'ble Company's investment in raw silk’, 25 March 1791, enclosed in letter to the Board of Revenue from the preparer of reports.

76 WBSA, BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 6 June 1791, letter from the Board to the Governor General in Council.

77 Hunter, The annals, p. 246.

78 BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 6 June 1791, ‘Letter from Mr. Meyer, the preparer of reports to James Frushard’, 17 November 1790.

79 Hunter, The annals, p. 247.

80 WBSA, BoR Miscellaneous, Proceedings of 6 June 1791, ‘The memorial of James Frushard’.

81 Hunter, The annals, p. 249.

82 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 7 July 1820, letter from the Board of Trade to the Governor General in Council.

83 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 7 July 1820, ‘Translation of the petition of Kasubnauth Mullick zamindar of the dehee Chungdhoblee in the tuppah Chapeilah to the resident of Commercolly factory, the 19th of January 1820 corresponding with the 29th of Pous 1226 Bengalee style’, enclosed in letter from the acting commercial resident of Commercolly, 19 May 1820.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid.

86 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings 23rd June 1778, Letter from Cossimbazar, 12th June 1778.

87 Bhadra, ‘The role of pykars’, part 1, pp. 178–80.

88 Datta, Society, economy and the market, ch. 3.

89 Nandy, Somendra Chandra, Life and times of Cantoo Baboo, the banian of Warren Hastings, vol. 1, Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1978.Google Scholar

90 WBSA, CCK, Appendix to Proceedings from 7 to 17 September 1772, ‘An account of the quantity of cocoons which have been purchased for the new filature since its first establishment’.

91 Nandy, Life, pp. 31–4; WBSA BoT Commercial, Appendix to Proceedings of 2 October 1787, ‘Account of all silk filatures public and private established within or adjacent to Cossimbuzar’, Cossimbuzar, 22 September 1787.

92 Kling, Blair B., Partner in empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the age of enterprise in Eastern India, Calcutta: Firma K.L.M., 1976, p. 13 and p. 30Google Scholar; WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 17 March 1775.

93 Gupta, The economic life, p. 75; Bhadra, ‘The role of pykars’, part 2, p. 9.

94 WBSA, BoT Commercial, Proceedings of 27 April 1821, letter from Cossimbazar, 16 April 1821.

95 Kling, Partner in empire, p. 31.

96 Reports and Documents, Appendix M, ‘Statement of the several silk factories in India, the property of the East India Company, as they stood in March 1832’, pp. 215–18.

97 Kling, Partner in empire, pp. 84–5.

98 Zanier, Where the roads met, p. 36.

99 Ibid.

100 Chicco, La seta in Piemonte, pp. 81–92.

101 Sousa, Fernando de, ‘The silk industry in Trás-os-Montes during the Ancient Regime’, Journal of Portuguese History, 3, 2, 2005, pp. 1–14Google Scholar, especially pp. 6–8.

102 Zanier, Where the roads met, pp. 37–8.