![]() ![]() Evidence to support this claim is provided from comparative learning and competition between British products and the finest quality Indian cotton textiles - muslins. Indeed, machine-intensive yarn production continued to compete against hand-intensive cotton yarn well into the 1860s, and beyond. My article reports that this innovative impulse did not disappear following the development of mechanised spinning. Further, this evidence shows that the process of imitation of Indian cotton textiles provided solutions for two critical bottlenecks within Britain: the ability to make all-cotton textiles, and the ability to make ‘fine’ all-cotton textiles (Figure 1 and Figure 2). This finding demonstrates a material shift towards lightweight, washable, affordable, and fashionable cotton textiles. Microscopic examination of textile samples from this period reveals that cloth quality, measured in terms of thread per inch count, in the British cotton industry almost doubled between 17. Because imitation involves emulation of the characteristics of a particular product, the respective qualities of British and Indian cloth merits closer inspection. ![]() British product quality mattered materially because such products were competing with an Indian product which was responsible for creating and feeding a growing British demand for cotton textiles. Consumers demanded the characteristics of Indian cotton textiles which were characterised as fine, lightweight, and airy. British manufacturers aimed to match the quality of Indian cotton textiles because their products competed with Indian textile goods in the global markets. ![]() The writings of contemporary British traders, merchants, entrepreneurs, and observers indicate that consumers were concerned with product quality and cost. Using surviving British and Indian cotton textiles between 17, I extract relevant quantitative data to test for an innovative impulse from the East. My article examines how products from the East were imitated in the West by assessing how the growth and evolution of the British cotton textile industry was influenced by imitating Indian cotton textiles. Yet what forms this impact may have taken – and how it may be empirically discerned – remains debatable. It has been argued that Asia exercised a tacit and demonstrable impact on the growth of western manufacturing. The temptation to view the first industrial revolution as uniquely British, even European, is hard to resist, yet evidence increasingly suggests that both knowledge and materials from across the globe were involved. Recent research has shown that the origins of industrialisation may be more globally diffused than previously understood. This post appeared originally on the EHS blog ‘The Long Run’ and is a summary of Alka’s article which was recently published on early view in the Economic History Review. The original blog is available here. The full article is available here. ![]() Yet, even by the mid-nineteenth century European manufacturers could not successfully imitate the strength and fineness of Indian cloth despite a century trying to catch up. By examining contemporary textile samples microscopically, Alka Raman reveals threads per inch achieved by British manufacturers almost doubled during the industrial revolution. ![]()
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