Abstract
This chapter explores the dynamism of cloth as an object imagined, fabricated and creatively adapted. Referencing contributions to the volume and other recent work, it promotes a holistic view of cloth as both cultural and economic object, a perspective that acknowledges the ways in which niche markets and complementary processes of alteration have augmented cloth’s socio-economic value and importance as a medium of transregional engagement. As evidenced by the chapters in this collection, a consideration of the long production chains and myriad uses of textiles offers a deeper understanding of the world of the Indian Ocean, the world from the perspective of the Indian Ocean and processes of global integration over many centuries.
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Notes
- 1.
Kai Kresse and Edward Simpson, “Between Africa and India: thinking comparatively across the western Indian Ocean,” Zentrum Moderner Orient Working Paper no. 5, (2011): p. 1.
- 2.
Abdul Sheriff, Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: cosmopolitanism, commerce, and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
- 3.
Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed., Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1986), pp. 3–63.
- 4.
Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed., Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64–94.
- 5.
Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World; The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
- 6.
Kazuo Kobayashi, “Indian Cotton Textile and the Senegal River Valley in a Globalising World: Production, Trade and Consumption, 1750-1850” (PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2016).
- 7.
These connections were being deepened with the Atlantic in the eighteenth century around slave trading from Brazil and the Rio de la Plata region to the southeast African coast, for which see Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), especially chapter 3.
- 8.
Jeremy Prestholdt, “On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism,” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): pp. 755–81.
- 9.
Katsuhiko Kitagawa, “Japanese Competition in the Congo Basin in the 1930s,” in A.J.H. Lantham and Heita Kawakatsu, eds., Intra-Asian Trade and the World Market (New York: Routledge, 2006), ch. 10.
- 10.
Jeremy Prestholdt, “Locating the Indian Ocean: Notes on the Postcolonial Reconstitution of Space,” Journal of Eastern African Studies 9, no. 3 (2015): pp. 440–467.
- 11.
Nile Green, Bombay Islam: the religious economy of the west Indian Ocean, 1840-1915 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Jeremy Prestholdt, Domesticating the World: East African Consumerism and the Genealogies of Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
- 12.
Messrs. Ballard and Halley, “New York Fashions,” Harper’s Bazaar September 11, 1875.
- 13.
Prestholdt, Domesticating the World.
Bibliography
Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, pp. 76–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1986.
Green, Nile. Bombay Islam: the religious economy of the west Indian Ocean, 1840-1915. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Kitagawa, Katsuhiko. “Japanese Competition in the Congo Basin in the 1930s.” In Intra-Asian Trade and the World Market, edited by A.J.H. Lantham and Heita Kawakatsu, pp. 155–167. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Kobayashi, Kazuo. “Indian Cotton Textile and the Senegal River Valley in a Globalising World: Production, Trade and Consumption, 1750-1850.” PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2016.
Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed., Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Kresse, Kai, and Edward Simpson. “Between Africa and India: thinking comparatively across the western Indian Ocean.” Zentrum Moderner Orient Working Paper no. 5, (2011): pp. 1–15.
Machado, Pedro. Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Messrs. Ballard and Halley. “New York Fashions.” Harper’s Bazaar September 11, 1875.
Prestholdt, Jeremy. “On the Global Repercussions of East African Consumerism.” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): pp. 755–781.
Prestholdt, Jeremy. Domesticating the World: East 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): pp. 440–467.
Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World; The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Sheriff, Abdul. Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: cosmopolitanism, commerce, and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
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Prestholdt, J. (2018). The Fabric of the Indian Ocean World: Reflections on the Life Cycle of Cloth. 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_14
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