Employment in nineteenth century Indian textiles

Abstract

The “de-industrialization” of India has been a topic of extensive debate in the literature of political economy. Officials of the East India Company warned against it in the early days of the 18th century.’ That the growth of the Lancashire cotton mills came at the expense of Indian handicraft production has been widely accepted, especially among certain nationalist economic historians, led by Dutt (1956).’ A focal point in the recent academic discussion has been Morris’s (1963) article, reprinted, along with comments from other scholars, in the March 1968 issue of the Indiasl Economic and Social History Review, and in Morris et al. (1969), in which he declared “there is a strong likelihood that the traditional sector, generally speaking, did not decline absolutely in economic significance and therefore did not constitute a depressing element in the performance of the nineteenth century economy. It is even possible that absolute growth occurred, “3 Among other comments, critics painted to the weak statistical basis of Morris’s position. One important study he did cite is the Thorner (1962) analysis of the Indian census data of 1881 and 193 1)