Yes the wording of my post could be clearer. The direction of trade flow for textiles was primarily from South Asia to Europe.
In the late‑17th and early‑18th centuries about 95 % of British imports from Asia were Indian textiles, while the Dutch sourced ≈80 % of the silks and >50 % of the textiles they bought from Asia from Bengal. Bengal alone supplied ~ 25 % of global textile trade in the early 1700s.
Merchants, diplomats and travelers brought Indian garments back to Europe, where tailors reproduced the silhouettes but still relied on imported fabric because the raw material itself (the cloth) was what held value.
In Bengal, whole villages specialised in spinning, dyeing and weaving. The division of labour, combined with abundant cheap labour, kept costs low.
The Mughal administration encouraged cash‑crop agriculture (especially cotton) and provided infrastructure (river transport, ports) that allowed massive export surpluses. European producers, still largely artisanal, could not compete on price for the same quality of cotton.
Until the late‑18th century Europe lacked efficient cotton‑spinning machines. The water‑frame (1769) and later the spinning‑jenny only began to close the gap. Before that, Indian hand‑spun and hand‑loomed cotton was widely known to be of superior quality and consistency.
Indian dyers mastered natural dyes (indigo, madder, cochineal) and mordant techniques produced vivid, colour‑fast fabrics. European dyers were still developing comparable processes during this era.
Europeans had wool, linen and hemp in abundance locally but not cotton or silk, which was a major barrier to mass producing “luxurious” clothing indigineously.
This was a limitation of being in a colder climate. Gossypium cotton species require a long frost‑free period, plenty of sunshine and moderate humidity. Much of Europe’s temperate zone fails those requirements.
Gossypium needs ≥ 150 – 180 days of temperatures above 20 °C to flower, set seed and mature the boll. Most of Europe’s latitudes did not provide such a window at that time.
Europeans were eventually able to source a surplus of cotton from the Americas, which was cultivated via bonded labor ie the Atlantic slave trade.
Right, there was a period of time where this trade imbalance held. Before cotton started to be imported at scale into Europe, domestic fibres like wool dominated.
Yes the wording of my post could be clearer. The direction of trade flow for textiles was primarily from South Asia to Europe.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India
Merchants, diplomats and travelers brought Indian garments back to Europe, where tailors reproduced the silhouettes but still relied on imported fabric because the raw material itself (the cloth) was what held value.
In Bengal, whole villages specialised in spinning, dyeing and weaving. The division of labour, combined with abundant cheap labour, kept costs low.
The Mughal administration encouraged cash‑crop agriculture (especially cotton) and provided infrastructure (river transport, ports) that allowed massive export surpluses. European producers, still largely artisanal, could not compete on price for the same quality of cotton.
Until the late‑18th century Europe lacked efficient cotton‑spinning machines. The water‑frame (1769) and later the spinning‑jenny only began to close the gap. Before that, Indian hand‑spun and hand‑loomed cotton was widely known to be of superior quality and consistency.
Indian dyers mastered natural dyes (indigo, madder, cochineal) and mordant techniques produced vivid, colour‑fast fabrics. European dyers were still developing comparable processes during this era.
Europeans had wool, linen and hemp in abundance locally but not cotton or silk, which was a major barrier to mass producing “luxurious” clothing indigineously.
This was a limitation of being in a colder climate. Gossypium cotton species require a long frost‑free period, plenty of sunshine and moderate humidity. Much of Europe’s temperate zone fails those requirements.
Gossypium needs ≥ 150 – 180 days of temperatures above 20 °C to flower, set seed and mature the boll. Most of Europe’s latitudes did not provide such a window at that time.
Europeans were eventually able to source a surplus of cotton from the Americas, which was cultivated via bonded labor ie the Atlantic slave trade.
Right, there was a period of time where this trade imbalance held. Before cotton started to be imported at scale into Europe, domestic fibres like wool dominated.