Cotton
trade - the early beginnings
Roman Cotton Toga Parties:
Around 200 BC Roman ships
docked at ports on the Southwest coast of
India
to pick Indian fabric from which their coveted togas were fashioned. Roman
emperors paid fabulous sums for the prized Indian cotton [Muslin], which was
known as mal mal khaas. Pliny complained of the trade deficit that the
Roman empire was running with
India
. The Romans called this mal mal khas as 'woven air' or `vetri
venti' or woven winds.
Europe & love for Calico:
The hunt for spices led the
Europeans also to the southwestern coast of
India
in AD 1500 to Kozhikode, also called
Calicut
, in northern Kerala.
Calicut
was a famous cotton-weaving centre and it is remembered as the place of origin
of calico, to which it gave its name (i.e.,
Calicut
). Calico refers to an all-cotton fabric woven in plain, or tabby
weave and printed with simple designs in one or more colours.
Calico originated in
Calicut,
India. By the 11th / 12th century, Hemachandra, an Indian
writer, mentions chhimpa, or calico prints, decorated with chhapanti,
or a printed lotus design. The earliest fragments to survive (15th
century) have been found not in
India
but at Fustat, in the neighbourhood of
Cairo
in the 15th century. The calico examples are resist-dyed (in which
parts of the fabric to be left un-dyed are covered with a substance that
resists the dye) and block-printed, and are of Gujarati manufacture. In the
17th and 18th centuries calicoes were traded between
India
and
Europe. Printed calicoes were generally used
for hangings and bedcovers, as well as for dresses in
England
.
Chinese & southeast Asian
connection: In
AD 1300 Marco Polo records the exports of Indian textiles to
China
and
South East Asia
from the Masulipattinam (Andhra) and Coromandel (Tamil) coasts in the "largest
ships" then known. It is conjectured that the initial development of this trade
accompanied the spread of Indian cultural influence in
South-East Asia. John Guy in the "Arts of
India, 1550 - 1900", points out that "textile patterns on sculptures of Indian
deities in central Java and elsewhere in the region very probably reflect the
prestige cloths in circulation in the late first millennium".
The Chinese traded in textiles
extensively with
India
during 1300-1800 in the times of the Ch'ing & Ming dynasties.
Cochin
, in Kerala, still has buildings that show this Chinese influence.
At the Khmer capital of
Angkor
at the end of the thirteenth century, preference was given to the Indian
weaving for its skill and delicacy. Prestige trade textiles such as Patola
(double ikat silk in natural dyes) from Patan and Ahmedabad, and decorative
cottons in brilliant colourfast dyes from Gujarat and the Coromandel coast were
highly sought after by the Indonesian-Malaysian royalty and wealthy traders of
the
Philippines
. The port city of
Surat
(in Gujarat) emerged as the major distribution point for Patola destined for
South-East
Asia, and was frequented by the ships of the Dutch East India Company. Wearing the Patola was the exclusive
right of the Indonesian nobility.
The Dutch East India Company was
the main distributor of Patola to local rulers in the
East
Indies. As part of the incentives offered to win local trading concessions and co-operation, embroidered
bedspreads and wall hangings made in Satgaon, the old mercantile capital of
Bengal, (near modern Calcutta) were also distributed. Quilts of embroidered
wild silk (tassar, munga or eri) on a cotton or jute
ground, combining European and Indian motifs were commissioned by the
Portuguese who had been attracted to
Bengal
as traders by the quality of the region's textiles. Cambay also produced silk
embroidered quilts. Textiles from
Golconda
and further south also found favour in Europe and
South
East Asia. In the early 1600s, Dutch and English trading settlements were established in
Golconda
territory.
Produced in the
Golconda
hinterland, were the famous kalamkaris. These were/are finely painted
cotton fabrics and were bought or commissioned from the port city of
Masulipattinam
. Buying at source enabled the Dutch and English merchants to
procure these textiles at rates thirty per cent lower. 'Palampores' were/are
painted fabrics based on the "tree of life" motif that had become popular in
the Mughal and
Deccan
courts.
Chintz appears in European market
and soon disappears:
The attractiveness of fast dyed, multi-coloured Indian prints on cotton (i.e.
chintz) in
Europe
led to the formation of the London East India Company in 1600, followed by
Dutch and French counterparts. By the late 1600s, there was such overwhelming
demand for Indian chintz (whether from Chittagong in Bengal, or Patna or Surat,
that ultimately French and English wool and silk merchants were able to get the
governments to ban the import of these imported cottons from India - the French
in 1686, while the English followed in 1701.
The British East India Company
also traded in Indian cotton
and silk fabrics, which included the famous
Dacca
muslins. Muslins from Bengal,
Bihar
and Orissa were also popular abroad.(Muslin-a very thin cotton material).
Centres of textile trade:
For the land based Silk routes and international trade, the textile centres of
trade were located in Northern and
Central India. These areas were the kingdoms
of the Rajputs and the Mughals, each with their own unique specialization.
Kashmir
was well known for its woollen weaves and embroidery [so-called paisley motifs
- or the Mango designs]. Cities like Benaras,
Ujjain,
Indore
and Paithan (near
Aurangabad
) were known for their fine silks and brocades. Rajasthan
specialized in all varied patterned prints and dyed cloths. Fine collections of
Indian Textiles can be seen in the
Calico
Museum
in Ahmedabad and in the
Crafts
Museum
in
Delhi
Cotton
trade - AD 1600 - 1800
South Asian Textiles Inc. or The
Golden Age of Cotton Trade
The foundations of the Indian
textile trade with other countries began as early as the second century BC. A
hoard of block printed and resist-dyed fabrics, mainly of Gujarati origin,
found in the tombs of Fostat, Egypt, are proof of large-scale Indian export of
cotton textiles to Egypt in medieval times [1500].
On
July
8, 1497, Vasco Da Gama sailed from
Lisbon
with four ships. Two were medium-sized three-masted sailing ships, each of
about 120 tons, named the "São Gabriel" and the "São Rafael"; a 50-ton caravel,
named the "Berrio"; and a 200-ton freight-ship. The expedition reached
Mombasa
(now in
Kenya) on April 7 and
dropped anchor at Malindi (also now in
Kenya
) on April 14. An Arab pilot who knew the route to
Calicut, on the southwest coast of
India
, was taken aboard.
Calicut
was reached on May 20-1497.The rest as they say is history.
While Chinese Silks had reached
the Roman Empire and Europe in the middle-ages via the grand old multiple arms
via Bokhara,
Tashkent
, Heart of the land silk routes, this was always in limited
quantities and for the few wealthy elites.
Weaving & Software engineering:
In the period 1600-1800, by a
strange twist of History and coincidence, much in the same way as the present
day Software Engineering might of India has come up, Indian Textiles found
their way to Europe and the East Indies. The two professions are strangely
similar; both weaving and software engineering require painstaking labour
intensive work, stitch by stitch and line by line of code & weave of cloth,
and both put an inordinately heavy demand on the eyes and hands. It is no
exaggeration to say that the millions of yards of textiles that have been made
in South Asia and exported, is probably matched by the millions of lines of
Software programs/ code [in various flavours of Java, C++, Fortran programming
languages] by primarily young, intelligent Indian software engineers and more
recently Pakistani software engineers for the western countries.
It was perhaps a great irony of
history that the opening up of the sea routes by the Europeans such as Vasco Da
Gama would lead to the domination of Textiles in
Europe
by the Indian textile industry.
See the references below for
details of this Golden Age of Indian Textiles:
Medieval
India
: An Industrial Miracle in a Golden Age: The 17th-Century Cloth Exports of
India
.] Bennet Bronson,
Associate Curator, Asian Archaeology and Ethnology,
Field
Museum
,
Chicago
.
2. "Trading Places: The East India
Company and
Asia
1600-1834" - Anthony Farrington,
publishers - British Library, 2002.
'Giants of an Earlier Capitalism':
The Chartered Trading Companies as Modern Multinationals," Ann Carlos and
Nicholas, Stephen.
1988. " Business History Review. 62 (Autumn): 398-419.
4. The Trading World of Asia and
the English East India Company, 1660-1760.- A review of reviews -Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. K. N. Chaudhuri. 1983. South Asia Research
(
London
) 3 (1) (May): 10-17.
Cotton
Textile Timeline:
The old land based silk routes
[via central & south Asia] were effectively made obsolete finally by the
technology of the European "Clipper" ships [the clipper at
Greenwich
carried tea in a record voyage time of 2 weeks between
India
and
London
]. The European traders, namely the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English
[Dutch - Oostindische Compagnie- East India Company] traders with their
supremacy at the seas, found that in order to buy spices from the Indonesian
and south Indian growers, they had to use Indian textiles or gold.
The gold and silver that the
Spanish and Portuguese plundered from the Americas eventually went to India and
China, to pay for the spices and the textiles luxuries - famously the gold
which Sir Francis Drake, the buccaneer /pirate, with the support of Queen
Elizabeth I, had been busy plundering from the Spanish Galleons off the coast
of South America in the years 1570-1580.
The cotton weavers of Gujarat in
India
produced three million pieces a year for export. Indeed the most powerful
monarchs in the world during the periods 1400-1800 at the end of the
seventeenth century were not Louis XIV or Peter the Great but the Chinese
emperor, K'ang-hsi (1662-1722)- of the Ching Dynasty, and the Mughal emperors
of
India
.
China
and
India
had about 150 million inhabitants in 1750, each of them twice the population of
Europe.
Both the Dutch and the British
East India Companies were the fore-runners of modern day Multinational
Corporations and their excellent accounting records show this fascinating tale
of Indian Textiles exports to not just the East Indies [ Indonesia &
Malaya] but the western Europe and the
Americas
. The records of the Dutch & East India Companies show that the
textile trade was a story of an exponential / explosive growth.
1580
- Mughal Emperor Akbar fertilizes Indian Textiles with an infusion of Persian
carpet weavers for production of Persian Carpets to his palace at
Agra
.
India
has been weaving and dyeing cotton and silk cloth of the most exotic sort since
3000 BC.at MohenjoDaro & Harappa.
1600:
A Royal Charter forms the East India Company in London.[ fore-runner of today's
Multi-National Corporation.]
1610,
European-and Asian-owned ships carried freight of about ten million yards of
cloth to Southeast Asia and the Middle East, plus a few yards of samples to
Europe.
1613-14:
British East India Company gets permission from the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir,
to establish its factory in
Surat, western
India
. This was followed by factories in
Madras
(Chennai),
Bombay
(Mumbai) and other locations. In Bengal, the Company established factories at
Hooghly, Cassim Bazar and English Bazar. In
1658 all the Company settlements in
India
were brought under Fort St George,
Madras
.
1615-18:
Mughals grant
Britain
right to trade and establish factories in exchange for English navy's
protection of the Mughal Empire, which faces Portuguese sea power
1620
- 50,000 pieces of painted and printed chintz were brought into
Britain
.
1625 -
the within-Asia Textile trade volume of these two companies doubled.
1650
- the Asian trade had begun to level off at 25-30 million yards, but several
million now went to Europe and
Africa. A trickle was even reaching the new
colonies in North America - one of the first Americans to own an Indian textile
was the accused witch, Anne Hibben, who in 1636 was said to have a number of
items made of imported calico in her
Boston
home.
1665
- 1670 - European imports crossed the ten million mark and continued to
rise sharply, reaching a yearly average of between 35 and 40 million yards by
the early 1680s.
1684 -
the English East India Company alone imported 45 million yards of Indian cloth
-- more than six yards for each man, woman, and child in Great Britain.
Additional exports to Dutch colonies, Europe, and Arab countries together with
exports to
Britain
totalled more than 100 million yards.
1690-
Complete ban on the use or wearing of all printed cotton / calicoes in
France
.
1699
-
London's silk weavers riot & storm East
India House in protest of cheap imports from
India
.
1700-
Complete ban on the use or wearing of all printed calicoes in
England
.
Holland
fails to pass the required legislation against Indian Textiles.
1750
- Indian textiles are 60 % of the total value of the East India Company sales
in
London
. A typical eighteenth-century order, to
Bengal
for the season 1730-31, called for 589,000 pieces of 38 different types of
fabric, further divided into 98 varieties.
1750
- Indian textile industry dominated the world and was virtually clothing the
world. From 1600-1800
India
became the greatest exporter of textiles the world has ever known.
1757,
the East India Company troops defeated Siraj-ud Daulah in the Battle of
Plassey, which is said to have lasted only a few hours. From being traders, the
Company turned kingmakers in
Bengal.
Milestones in Textile
Industrialisation:
1733 - John Kay
perfects the flying shuttle.
1765:
James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny. Until this time, spinning has been
a cottage industry. Automation results in one man operating 16 spindles.
1774-
Beginning of the Industrial age -- Boulton and Watt engines replace uneconomic
Newcomen's [original designer] designed steam engines.
1793-
Eli Whitney invents the automated cotton GIN [short for engine].
1800-
In the late 18th century, height of Indian Textile exports to U.K, £650,000
worth of
Dacca
cloth passed through customs in one year.
1830-
George Stephenson's Rocket Steam Locomotive starts Liverpool-Manchester
Railway. Cotton industry now employs 800,000 people. Sales of cotton and cotton
goods now account for half of
Britain
's exports.
Industrial Age & Britannia
rules the waves and
India
as well.
Manchester
Textile mills ship 40 million yards of cotton cloth to
India
. This reverses the situation when
India
exported 45 million yards in 1680.
1851-
At the Great Exhibition,
Crystal
Palace
in
London, one of the "woven winds" muslins from
Dacca
catches public eye. It was ten yards long, one yard wide, and weighed just over
three ounces.
1868-
German chemists Carl Graebe & Carl Liebermann, synthesize alizarin or
madder [ red] .
1882-
Committee formed to survey route for a ship canal between
Manchester
and the
Mersey
estuary. Thomas Edison installs power-producing dynamo at Holborn Viaduct
Station, in
London
.
1884:
Charles Parsons patents the steam turbine.
1924-
Sakichi Toyoda (1867-1930), founder of TOYOTA INDUSTRIES CORPORATION invents
the Toyota Type G Automatic Loom with Non-stop Shuttle Change.
1930-
Mahatma Gandhi -
starts "Swadeshi" movement with the manual spinning wheel- the Charkha .
Start of the boycott of British Goods. Manchester & Lancashire prosperity
takes a dive which has only recently been resuscitatedGlobal
Picture 2004- Cotton Textile & Apparel Markets
China
produces 17 million and the
USA
16 million bales of cotton. A bale of cotton weighs 227kg.
USA
- After a marked
slow down from 2000-2002,
US
domestic clothing sales picked up in mid-2003. Textile exports rose 2.9% in
January-July 2003 but clothing fell 6.2%.
US
imports surged, especially from
China
and
Vietnam
. By August 2003 textile output was down 9.8% and clothing 13.3%.
Several big players filed for bankruptcy in the
U.S.
South America- In Brazil output was boosted by recovery in the
Argentinean market. Argentinean clothing exports also bounced back while
Colombia
benefited from special
US
access under ATPDEA. But
Mexico
struggled as competition rose from Asian and CBI suppliers.
The EU textile and clothing deficit fell in 2002 for the first time in
six years as the textile surplus rose by 14% and clothing import growth slowed
markedly-despite a 17% surge in imports from Turkey. But textile output fell by
5.2% and clothing output by 12.1%.
Eastern Europe - EU membership and the end of
quota protection in 2005 will result in increased production costs in many
countries. Cheap Asian imports will grow. Russian output is set to
expand significantly under the country's light industry development plan.
South Africa
- The stronger rand has made producers less competitive.
But trade agreements with the EU and other countries in the region have opened
up export markets and boosted production.
Japan
-
Industry shrank in the first half of 2003 as domestic demand remained weak and
exports of most items fell in volume, although values picked up.
China
- Export growth remained strong but price falls reduced profit margins. Output
rose in all the main sectors, leading to pressure on raw material supplies. In
Hong Kong
only re-exports were strong. Local firms are pinning their hopes on the Closer
Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with
China
.
Far East- In South Korea falling exports and domestic demand affected
output. Exports fell in
Taiwan
. In
Thailand output
increased due to rising exports, especially to
China
.
Indonesia
was down due to rise in costs and in the rupiah exchange rate. Malaysian
clothing did well and Vietnamese exports to the
USA
soared.
South Asia:
India's
export recovery failed to raise output but
Pakistan
's exports of cotton fabric, towels and garments have soared as a
result of trade concessions, due to the Frontline status of war on terror.
Pakistan
's plan to start new "garment cities" will focus on higher value
clothing. In
SriLanka
fast export growth boosted output but sales to the
USA
and EU were weak. Slow growth in EU and US markets also hit exports from
Bangladesh
.
WTO 2005 - Impact on South Asian Textiles
Post WTO - 2005 - McKinsey-DHL-
Report Summary
In the years 2005 and beyond,
India
could be the next big winner after
China
in the post quota period to the detriment of other Asian suppliers, says a
report commissioned by DHL and authored by Mc Kinsey. The following are the
report recommendations of areas that need to be improved: [the report
interviewed 40 DHL customers].
According to the DHL-McKinsey
Apparel and Textile Trade Report, the value of the global textile and
apparel industry will most probably go up to $248 billion by 2008, with
China,
India
and
Pakistan
expected to be the "clear winners". The report forecasts that
India
has the potential to increase her share from the current 4 per cent to 6.5 per
cent valued at $16 billion by 2008.
Pakistan
can grow from $ 5 billion to about $ 10 billion by 2008.
The report noted that by 2013,
exports from
India
could grow 15 per cent to 18 per cent annually amounting to over $30 billion,
provided reforms are implemented.
Report Caveat
:- the window of opportunity is small [ 1 year ] . Existing export growth is
going to be only 8 per cent per year if required reforms are not implemented.
Post WTO- Reforms needed for
India
&
Pakistan
:
1. De-Regulate & Improve
Logistics.
India's market share will
depend on the way the
United States
and the European Union impose specific textile safeguards in order to limit the
surge in shipments from
China
, the "white paper" explains.
Scenario 1. Taking shares to
declining Asian suppliers.
US and EU would not try curbing
apparel imports from the PRC and China would take a 50% share of global market
by 2008.In the four coming years, China's apparel exports would therefore rise
16.6% per year to US$124 billion.
Scenario 2 .
Brussels
and
Washington
would re-impose quotas on a series of apparel categories from
China
whose apparel exports would "only" increase by 7.3% per year to US$64 billion
in 2008. The rest of Asian countries would be the first victim of quotas'
removal and
China
's consecutive expansion.
Falling Exports:
Hong Kong,
Korea,
Indonesia,
Thailand, the
Philippines
and
Taiwan
.
Unchanged Exports
: Low-cost countries notably
Vietnam,
Bangladesh
and
Sri
Lanka
.
Rising Exports:
China,
Pakistan
and
India
would gain from quotas' elimination, with
India
's exports growing by 8 to 10% per year to US$12 to 16 billion by
2008 while Pakistani sales would be up 6% per year to about US$4 billion in the
fourth year of the post-quota era.
2. Improve productivity
The rise in
India
's exports will actually depend on a series of domestic
improvements, from deregulation in labour laws to investment in updated
equipment, Mc Kinsey says.
India
already enjoys low
labour costs, wide availability of textile materials and large market shares in
specific categories. Indian plants suffer from very low productivity, however,
compared with the
United
States
and
China
.
"Productivity of Indian exporters
is 35% of US levels, compared with Chinese exporters that operate at 55%,"
according to another study by Mc Kinsey about men's shirt producing plants.
"The overall productivity of the
Indian and
Pakistan
industry, including tailors and domestic manufacturers, is only 16% of the
US
," the report adds.
Regarding production of men's
shirts, for instance,
India
should improve workflow, invest in better technology, reduce faults in fabrics,
expand the size of factories and more importantly shift from tailors to
manufacturers.
3. Reduce delivery delays:
India
also suffers from an absenteeism rate of 13% versus 5% for the rest of
Asia. "Rejection levels are 3.3% versus 1.8%
for rest of Asia, and delayed shipments are 19% versus 9% for rest of
Asia." Reducing lead times should be a major
priority since
US
brands and retailers such as Gap and Nike intend limiting their apparel product
development lifecycle from 12 down to only 9 months. Domestic environment of
Indian companies should also be improved. Import tariffs and other barriers
should be reduced while new laws should allow women working during the night,
according to the report. So-called "de-reservation" of Indian industry should
be extended to hosiery and knit fabric manufacturers, allowing large units to
develop their activities. The Infrastructure should also be improved, Mc Kinsey
said.
4. Critical Success Factors
identified in the report
include:
Increase Textile Industry
incentives Create
level domestic market playing fields by extending de-reservation, uniform
application of excise taxes; reduction in import duties on apparel, textiles
and machinery
Revise labour laws
[flexible exit policy], improving
infrastructure [that is, reduce power outages and port delays]; improve
availability of high quality textile technologies in order to increase FDI
[foreign direct investment].
Establish bilateral agreements
with US and EU under the
quota free regime, to be competitive against other low cost exporters [
Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh,
Vietnam
]
Improve Training
for workers via Educational
Institutes for Improved Training skilled operators on textile engineering
techniques.
Adopt US & EU Textile
Compliance Standards
Local manufacturers
recommendations:
Quality Control Management
[Six Sigma, etc] to reduce
absenteeism, rejection levels and delays.
Increase Technology Investments
to speed production and gain
scales of economy.
Invest in Marketing
by developing working
relationships with the right customers and local Fashion Industry.
Implement Supply Chain Management
Technology:
Improve time-to-market [opportunity costs] and logistics costs, reliability,
security and visibility.
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