Abstract
Of the world’s great ocean basins, it was the Indian Ocean that most widely produced, exchanged and consumed cloth in the greatest variety and types of finish, and over the longest time. This introduction presents the volume’s thematic sections and the twelve chapters that follow, contextualizing them within current scholarship. It further provides an overview of the region, and the volume’s expansive view of the ocean as an ‘interaction-based arena’ that, while connected to other oceans and seas, had an internal dynamism and historical coherence created by widespread human relationships that were themselves undergirded in significant ways by the kinds of material exchanges and histories represented by the trades and consumption of textiles discussed in the book’s pages.
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Notes
- 1.
Annette Weiner and Jane Schneider eds. Cloth and Human Experience (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).
- 2.
Suggestive recent explorations of the potential of the Indian Ocean to subvert long-established paradigms are provided, for instance, in Isabel Hofmeyr, “South Africa’s Indian Ocean: Notes from Johannesburg,” History Compass 11 no. 7 (2013): pp. 508–512 (the quote is from p. 509); idem, “Universalizing the Indian Ocean,” PMLA 125, no. 3 (2010): pp. 721–729; Antoinette Burton, Clare Anderson, Isabel Hofmeyr, Christopher J. Lee, Nile Green and Madhavi Kale, “Sea Tracks and Trails: Indian Ocean World as Method,” History Compass, 11, no. 7 (2013): pp. 497–535; Lindsay Bremner, “Folded Ocean: The Spatial Transformation of the Indian Ocean,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 10, no. 1 (2013): pp. 1–28.
- 3.
Nile Green, “Rethinking the “Middle East” after the Oceanic Turn,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): p. 560.
- 4.
Our understanding of translocality as a complex, multipolar process and ‘descriptive tool’ is derived from Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen, “Introduction,” in Translocality: The Study of Globalising Phenomena from a Southern Perspective, ed. Ulrike Freitag and Achim von Oppen (Leiden: Brill, 2010): translocality “is an intermediary concept which helps to better understand and conceptualise connections beyond the local which are, however, neither necessarily global in scale nor necessarily connected to global moments.” (p. 3).
- 5.
Here the volume departs from a similarly themed collection edited by Ruth Barnes, Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies (London:Routledge, 2005), that brought together essays examining textiles analytically within single political frames rather than tracing the connections across and beyond them. We note also that Jerry Bentley first warned of the danger of reifying ocean space in his discussion of ocean basins, “Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis,” Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (1999): pp. 215–224.
- 6.
As noted especially by Erik Gilbert, Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar (Oxford, UK/Zanzibar/Athens, OH/Nairobi: James Currey/Gallery Publications/Ohio University Press/E.A.E.P, 2004).
- 7.
Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, “Introduction: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850,” in How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 10. See also Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (eds.), The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
- 8.
Riello and Roy, “Introduction”, p. 17.
- 9.
See, for example, John Brewer and Roy Porter eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1994); Beverly Lemire, Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and Consumer in Britain, 1600–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century.” Past and Present, 182, no. 1 (2004): pp. 85–113; idem, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). The concept of sartorial imaginary is borrowed from Robert S. DuPlessis, The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and the Colonization of the Atlantic World, 1650–1800 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 20.
- 10.
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Alfred P. Knopft, 2014).
- 11.
Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also the short but nonetheless useful overview by Beverly Lemire that emphasizes the influence of cottons in the development of Europe’s fashion system: Cotton (Oxford & New York: Berg, 2011).
- 12.
Matiebelle Gittinger, Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles (Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1982); John Guy, Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998); Robyn J. Maxwell, Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade, and Transformation (Melbourne: Australian National Gallery, 1990).
- 13.
Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt: The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
- 14.
Ruth Barnes and David Parkin, eds. Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies (London: Routledge, 2005); Rosemary Crill, ed., Textiles from India: The Global Trade (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2006); Sarah Fee and Pedro Machado eds., “The Translocal Textile Trades of Eastern Africa”, Special Issue of Textile History (May 2017).
- 15.
Peter Perdue, Helen F. Siu and Eric Tagliocozzo, “Introduction: Structuring Moments in Asian Connections,” in Asia Inside Out: Changing Times, ed. Peter Perdue, Helen F. Siu and Eric Tagliocozzo (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 6.
- 16.
As reflected in the title to the volume, Riello and Roy, How India Clothed the World.
- 17.
K.N. Chaudhuri, Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 184.
- 18.
The “remarkably protean” qualities of apparel and their use for “multiple expressive and symbolic projects” is clear also beyond the Indian Ocean, most explicitly in the Atlantic as noted by DuPlessis, Material Atlantic, p. 4.
- 19.
Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c.1750–1850 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
- 20.
Several otherwise authoritative works such as Beckert, Empire, erroneously claim that cotton easily takes dyes. On Europeans’ difficulties in replicating India’s dye palette on cottons, see Riello, Cotton, and Hanna Martinsen, The Chemistry of Fashion: Eighteenth Century French Textile Printing. (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2015)
- 21.
These ethnographic insights provide further instances of what Jeremy Prestholdt has recently termed “basin consciousness,” which operates as a “diffuse mode of thought that reflects historical connectivities and the legacies of basin thinking but also informs other imaginaries of linkage [and] is shaping transoceanic relations on multiple scales.” Prestholdt, “Locating the Indian Ocean: Notes on the postcolonial reconstitution of space,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 9, no. 3 (2015) p. 452.
Bibliography
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Barnes, Ruth, and David Parkin eds. Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies. London: Routledge, 2005.
Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred P. Knopft, 2014.
Bentley, Jerry. “Sea and Ocean Basins as Frameworks of Historical Analysis.” Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (1999): pp. 215–224.
Berg, Maxine. “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century.” Past and Present 182, no. 1 (2004): pp. 85–142.
Berg, Maxine. Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Bremner, Lindsay. “Folded Ocean: The Spatial Transformation of the Indian Ocean.” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 10, no. 1 (2013): pp. 18–45.
Brewer, John, and Roy Porter eds. Consumption and the World of Goods. London: Routledge, 1994.
Burton, Antoinette, Clare Anderson, Isabel Hofmeyr, Christopher J. Lee, Nile Green and Madhavi Kale. “Sea Tracks and Trails: Indian Ocean World as Method.” History Compass 11, no. 7 (2013): pp. 497–502.
Chaudhuri, K.N. Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Crill, Rosemary ed. Textiles from India: The Global Trade. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2006.
DuPlessis, Robert S. The Material Atlantic: Clothing, Commerce, and the Colonization of the Atlantic World, 1650–1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Fee, Sarah, and Pedro Machado eds. “The Translocal Textile Trades of Eastern Africa.” Special Issue of Textile History (forthcoming, May 2017).
Freitag, Ulrike, and Achim von Oppen. “Introduction.” In Translocality: The Study of Globalising Phenomena from a Southern Perspective, edited by Ulrike Freitag, and Achim von Oppen, pp. 1–25. Leiden: Brill, 2010.
Gilbert, Erik. Dhows and the Colonial Economy of Zanzibar. Oxford, UK/Zanzibar/Athens, OH/Nairobi: James Currey/Gallery Publications/Ohio University Press/E.A.E.P, 2004.
Gittinger, Matiebelle. Master Dyers to the World: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles. Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1982.
Green, Nile. “Rethinking the ‘Middle East’ after the Oceanic Turn.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): pp. 556–564.
Guy, John. Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
Hofmeyr, Isabel. “South Africa’s Indian Ocean: Notes from Johannesburg.” History Compass 11, no. 7 (2013): pp. 508–512.
Hofmeyr, Isabel. “Universalizing the Indian Ocean.” PMLA 125, vol. 3 (2010): pp. 721–729.
Lemire, Beverly. Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and Consumer in Britain, 1600–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Lemire, Beverly. Cotton. Oxford & New York: Berg, 2011.
Machado, Pedro. Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1850. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Martinsen, Hanna. The Chemistry of Fashion: Eighteenth Century French Textile Printing. PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2015.
Maxwell, Robyn J. Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade, and Transformation. Melbourne: Australian National Gallery, 1990.
Perdue, Peter, Helen F. Siu and Eric Tagliocozzo. “Introduction: Structuring Moments in Asian Connections.” In Asia Inside Out: Changing Times, eds. Peter Perdue, Helen F. Siu and Eric Tagliocozzo. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Prestholdt, Jeremy. Domesticating the World: African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Prestholdt, Jeremy. “Locating the Indian Ocean: Notes on the postcolonial reconstitution of space.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 9, no. 3 (2015).
Riello, Giorgio, and Tirthankar Roy. “Introduction: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850.” In How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850, edited by Giorgio Riello, and Tirthankar Roy, pp. 1–28. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
Riello, Giorgio, and Prasannan Parthasarathi eds. The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Weiner, Annette, and Jane Schneider eds. Cloth and Human Experience. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
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Machado, P., Fee, S. (2018). Introduction: The Ocean’s Many Cloth Pathways. In: Machado, P., Fee, S., Campbell, G. (eds) Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures, and the Material Worlds of the Indian Ocean. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58265-8_1
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