How India Clothed the World - (Paperback)

About the Book

Drawing on new research on textile trade and production in the regions that depended on the Indian Ocean, the book contributes to a new understanding of the role that Indian cloth played in the making of the modern world economy.

Book Synopsis

Cloth has always been the most global of all traded commodities. It is an illuminating example of the circulation of goods, skills, knowledge and capital across wide geographic spaces. South Asia has been central to the making of these global exchanges over time. This volume presents innovative research that explores the dynamic ways in which diverse textile production and trade regions generated the 'first globalization'. A series of experts connect this global commodity with the dramatic political and economic transformations that characterised the Indian Ocean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Collectively, the essays transform our understanding of the contribution of South Asian cloth to the making of the modern world economy.

Review Quotes

"There are few books that can equal [this book] in providing readers with an appreciation of the variety of interconnections between different regions of the world before the nineteenth century. Cloth, it clearly demonstrates, is an invaluable entry point into global economic history." - Douglas Haynes, Dartmouth College, in: H-Net
"How India Clothed the World is an ambitious book which takes a comprehensive look at South Asian textiles from the minutiae of technology and procurement to the global movement of products and 'invisible cargoes'." - Anand V. Swamy, William College, in: Journal of Economic History
"Until recently, the production and exchange of textiles were understood as purely economic activities in which production technology, weavers, merchants, companies, and markets played a prominent role. This volume, instead, invokes consumer choice, fashion, gender, social hierarchy, aesthetics, and the dissemination of knowledge as playing important roles in determining the consumption and production of textiles in both Asia and Europe." - Ghulam Nadri, Georgia State University, in: Economic History Review

About the Author

Giorgio Riello, Ph.D. (2002) in History, University College London, is Associate Professor in Global History and Culture at the University of Warwick. He has published on early modern textiles, dress and fashion in Europe and Asia.

Tirthankar Roy, Ph.D. (1989) in Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, is a Lecturer of Economic History at London School of Economics. He has published extensively on the economic and social history of modern and early modern South Asia, and has contributed to the textile history of the region in particular.