This volume examines the role of textiles within the expanding global economy in the Age of European Exploration. Major themes include: the opening of new markets and responses to competition in the cloth trade, evolving techniques and modes of production, and changes in the patterns of consumption of local and imported cloth in a comparative, cross-cultural context.

This volume examines the role of textiles within the expanding global economy in the Age of European Exploration. Major themes include: the opening of new markets and responses to competition in the cloth trade, evolving techniques and modes of production, and changes in the patterns of consumption of local and imported cloth in a comparative, cross-cultural context.

King challenges the notion that Britain always exploited its empire. She presents a new picture of the trade, where the strong links between Indian designs, the English silk industry and prominent members of the English arts and crafts movement led to the production of beautiful and luxurious textiles.

This volume undertakes the important task of envisioning a regional history of Asia based on its unique internal characteristics, going beyond the usual West/non-West dichotomy. The “regional trade zone of modern Asia” was debated in the 1980s. Since then, Japanese historians of the socioeconomic history of Asia have explored how the traditional trade relations that had developed over the centuries in Asia responded to the so-called Western impacts in the mid-nineteenth century, including the opening of ports and tariff reduction under free trade regimes and the advance in transportation technology. Against this academic background, the four chapters in this volume examine how overseas Chinese, some of the key actors in regional and local trade, dealt with their Western counterparts, and how Asian commodities penetrated other parts of the world through the newly created web of global commerce. The book reviews discuss theoretical issues to explore various connections among and comparisons of the economies in the region. This volume provides readers with critical insights into the Asian region in the past and present by investigating the long-term trajectory of its linkages to the global economy.

This collection examines cloth as a material and consumer object from early periods to the twenty-first century, across multiple oceanic sites—from Zanzibar, Muscat and Kampala to Ajanta, Srivijaya and Osaka. It moves beyond usual focuses on a single fibre (such as cotton) or place (such as India) to provide a fresh, expansive perspective of the ocean as an “interaction-based arena,” with an internal dynamism and historical coherence forged by material exchange and human relationships. Contributors map shifting social, cultural and commercial circuits to chart the many histories of cloth across the region. They also trace these histories up to the present with discussions of contemporary trade in Dubai, Zanzibar, and Eritrea. Richly illustrated, this collection brings together new and diverse strands in the long story of textiles in the Indian Ocean, past and present.

Considers textile industry production capacity, employment, and price problems, and considers imports impact on domestic industry, 1959-1961 (p. 121-227)