This book presents a comprehensive history of handloom weaving industry in India to challenge and revise the view that competition from machine-produced textiles destroyed the country’s handicrafts as claimed by historians until recently. It shows that skill-intensive handmade textiles survived the competition on a large scale, and that handmade goods and high-quality manual labour played a positive role in the making of modern India. Rich in archival material, The Crafts and Capitalism explores themes such as the historiography of craft technologies; statistical work on nineteenth-century cotton cloth production trends; narratives of merchants, the social leaders, the factory-owners; tools and techniques; and, shift from handloom to power loom. The book argues that changes in the handloom industry were central to the consolidation of new forms of capitalism in India. An important intervention in Indian economic history, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian history, economic history, colonial history, modern history, political history, labour history and political economy. It will also interest nongovernmental organizations, textile historians, and design specialists.

Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers 1780-1840 develops several themes important to understanding the social, cultural and economic implications of industrialization. The examination of these issues within a population of extra-factory workers distinguishes this study. The volume centers on the rapid growth of handloom weaving in response to the introduction of water powered spinning. This change is viewed from the perspectives of mechanics, technological limitations, characteristics of weaving, skills, income and cost. In the works of Duncan Bythell and Norman Murray the displacement of British and Scottish hand weavers loomed large and the silence of American handloom weavers in similar circumstances was deafening. This study reflects the differences between the three culture by centering not on displacement but on survival. Persistence is closely tied to the gradual nature of technological change. The contrasts between independent commercial artisans and outwork weavers are striking. Displacement occurs but only among artisans devoting their time to independent workshop weaving. Alternatively outwork weavers adapted to changing markets and survived. The design and development of spinning and weaving device is stressed, as are the roles of economic conditions, management organization, size of firms, political implications and social factors contribute to the impact of technological change on outwork and craft weavers.

A heavily illustrated classic on the evolution of the handloom is now reissued in a handy paper edition.

Weaving Histories looks at the economic history of South Asia from a fresh perspective, through a detailed study of the handloom industry in colonial South India between 1800 and 1960 and its wider implications for the Indian economy. It employs an unusual array of sources, including paintings and textile samples as well as archival records, to excavate the links between cotton growing, spinning and weaving before the nineteenth century. The rupture of these connections produced a sea-change in the lives of ordinary weavers. New technologies reshaped production systems, and markets for cotton and cloth were transformed under the pressure of global trade. Weaving Histories uncovers these global connections and their human impact, especially on makers of coarse cloth and women workers. After the First World War, the handloom industry became a key battleground for struggles over workers' rights, and this emerging regulatory framework, in turn, exerted a strong influence on the economic trajectory of India after independence. This book examines the transformation of production systems, working conditions and state policies towards workers and owners, ending with a brief consideration of their long-term effects after 1947, when India became independent.