THE ‘GREAT DIVERGENCE’ IN BENGAL- AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE EARLY MODERN COTTON TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Arkaprabha Pal
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Arkaprabha Pal: IIT Kharagpur

No axvh3, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Bengal was one of the leading producers of high-quality textile during the early modern centuries and played a very nodal role in the intra-Asian and global trade. After 1500, with the descending of the European traders on its shores, the cotton textile industry boomed. It accounted for nearly two-fifths of all textile exports to Europe from Asia. I attempt, in this essay, to understand the ‘Global Divergence’ debate in South Asia with a focus on Bengal and its trade and production in cotton textiles. I situate Bengal as a central region of cotton production and trade in the early modern global economy with regards to not only Europe but also to other parts of Asia and within the sub-continent itself. I reiterate Prasannan Parthasarathi’s contribution to the ‘Great Divergence’ debate to argue that Bengal hosted a thriving cotton textile industry deep into the late eighteenth century. I echo that the destruction of the textile industry occurred in the high days of colonialism in the latter half of the nineteenth century. I attempt to substantiate this by trying to understand Om Prakash’s analysis of the methods of procurement of production before and after the ascendency of the Europeans as political administratorsin Bengal; when production by weavers was market driven and when it was driven by coercion and impunity, respectively. I finally conclude by commenting on the limitation of this analysis and the further research scope it holds.

Date: 2018-03-14
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:axvh3

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/axvh3

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