IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/116881.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Review on Genesis, Growth and Development of Bengal Artisanal Silk Industry in India

Author

Listed:
  • Roy, Chandan

Abstract

This paper explores how the silk production in India started flourishing from mid of the seventeenth century when the demand for cheaper Bengal silk began to rise in European market. Initially Dutch merchants were collecting the silk from domestic market for exporting it to Europe and later English East India Company (EEIC) took over the control of silk trade spreading their tentacles in different parts of Bengal. In order to improve the quality, EEIC introduced Italian technology of reeling in Bengal in 1769, though Bengal sericulture was unable to adapt the technology. Bengal economy was going through several natural calamities and domestic disturbances. From 1813 the company started selling its filatures. The economic power of dadani merchant, money-lenders started growing from this period and they formed a new middle class while the situation of artisan and farmer classes deteriorated. The condition of native artisans of Bengal further worsened under the rule of British Monarch as the Industrial Revolution in West set in. Being potential competitor of Machester Silk, Bengal silk faced serious crisis and eventually Bengal silk industries were transformed into suppliers of raw materials, which was driven by the national interest interests of the British Monarch.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy, Chandan, 2022. "A Review on Genesis, Growth and Development of Bengal Artisanal Silk Industry in India," MPRA Paper 116881, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:116881
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/116881/1/MPRA_paper_116881.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Artisanal Silk; Piedmontese Technology; East India Company; Bengal Silk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N00 - Economic History - - General - - - General
    • N55 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Asia including Middle East
    • N95 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:116881. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.