Handloom Weaving Research Articles

Determinants of Technical Inefficiency of Handloom Weaving Industry in Kushtia District of Bangladesh: A Tobit Model Approach

This paper is an attempt to analyze the determinants of technical inefficiency of handloom weaving units operating in Kumarkhali Upazila of Kushtia District in Bangladesh. The study is mainly based on primary data that are collected through structured questionnaire from handloom unit owners in the study area. A total of 57 handloom units are randomly selected for the study. Cobb-Douglas production function model is employed to obtain the technical efficiency of handloom units and technical inefficiency index is calculated from the obtained efficiencies. Tobit Model is used to identify the factors of inefficiency in the handloom weaving units. From the analysis, average inefficiency of handloom units in the study area is found to be 0.245. The major findings of the study show that education, experience, size of unit, and age of owners are significant factors influencing technical inefficiency of handloom weaving units.

‘The high state of culture to which this part of the country has attained’: Libraries, Reading, and Society in Paisley, 1760–1830

Between 1760 and 1820 Paisley in the west of Scotland was a pioneering industrial community based on the textile industry. Most of the labour force consisted of well-paid, highly skilled handloom weavers who were able to support both reading societies and a subscription library. Associational activity was widespread among both the working and middle classes, and libraries formed part of this movement. Additionally, the town was a major centre of provincial publishing, and the town’s printers were pioneers of provincial serial publication. There were several circulating libraries and a middle-class subscription library, the Paisley Library Society, founded by the town’s civic leaders in 1802. It formed an administrative model which was copied by the Trades Library, founded in 1806, and the church libraries founded soon after. Paisley, fuelled by the Evangelical Revival, was one of the first towns in Scotland to develop church libraries and also libraries aimed primarily at children. Libraries attracted the support of local community activists, who were often involved in more than one type of library. After 1820 activity declined as handloom weaving was replaced by machinery and attention turned to mechanics’ institutes and eventually to a rate-supported solution.

Good Fortune, Mirrors, and Kisses

Wiebe Bijker, in his plenary lecture on the occasion of receiving SHOT's 2012 Leonardo da Vinci Medal, traces the history of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and interweaves this with observations on the development of the history of technology during the last three decades and with some biographical reflections. His collaborations with Thomas P. Hughes and Trevor Pinch figure prominently. He concludes with two examples from his current research collaboration with Indian researchers: on the making of the first Scanning Tunnel Microscope in India, and on reinventing a more sustainable socio-technology of handloom weaving.

Weaving Hierarchies: Production Networks of the Handloom Industry in Colonial Eastern Uttar Pradesh

This article discusses the complex nature of handloom weaving in market relations and the household production in the north Indian region of eastern Uttar Pradesh in the first half of the twentieth century through studying a Muslim weavers’ community known as Julahas. The entire community chain active in the process of handloom production in a micro-region was appropriated in a new relation of commodity production. Therefore, the article focuses on the emergence of capitalist conditions that enabled connections, affiliations, and exclusions in the networked relationships of social communities. In basically a labour-intensive, low-cost household production, the structure of the production process was defined by the need to purchase yarn and pay for living expenses of the weaver and his dependents while the cloth was being woven. The historically unequal connections operated through the social power balance of community and those in families (between husbands and wives, parents and children) found new meanings in bargaining situations of labour markets. A direct involvement with the loom and weaving ensured that the master weaver would directly come from the weaving population and should be Muslim as well. The mechanism of advances and karkhanadar’s/grihasta’s position in the community ensured that weaver/labourer would remain under a constant moral and social pressure to follow the ‘capitalist mode of production.’

Handloom Weaving — State of Art of Tribes of Kullu Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India

There are a myriad of craft traditions in India, which depend on social, economic and regional factors. The present status of craft in India owes much to the rich craft traditions of the past. The tribals of Himachal Pradesh are well known within and outside the country for the fabrication of woollen clothes of several kinds like shawls, pattus, patties, lahang etc. Kullu shawls like Manipuri and Naga shawls are very popular all over the country (Chauhan et al. 1989). Owing to rough terrain and remoteness of many areas, most of the age-old traditions and costumes have been preserved to date without succumbing to outside influence. Kullu; the valley of Gods is tranquil heaven known for its international Dussehra celebrations, its warm, woollen hand woven shawls and its innumerable temples. The earlier historic reference to Kullu dates back to 5th century BC. According to legend, Kullu once the land of Gandharvas and celestial musicians and has derived its name from 'Kuluta'- people who participated in the Mahabharata. In the olden times, it used to be an important centre on the great trade route to central Asia - to Tibet and China. Though Tibet is no longer a free country and travel to China is restricted, Kullu today has lost its multinational character to certain extent.

Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780–1840 (review)

Reviewed by: Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780–1840 Robert Glen (bio) Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780–1840. By Gail Fowler Mohanty. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Pp. xii+278. £45. This monograph is based on Gail Mohanty’s 1984 University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation, and four of the book’s nine chapters have also appeared as articles. Although Mohanty’s title gives no indication of her geographical focus, she deals primarily with the state of Rhode Island. The main strength of Labor and Laborers of the Loom lies in its analysis of the transition from handloom weaving to power-loom weaving, presented at a level of empirical detail that is unprecedented. Mohanty deserves special praise for her intensive study of a wide range of manuscript materials, including not only major collections like the papers of Almy and Brown and [End Page 1095] Samuel Slater but also civil records (births, deaths, marriages, land evidence, wills, and probate) in no fewer than fifteen Rhode Island town halls. This is clearly research in depth. As is true with most historical scholarship, the more the author unveils the findings of her research, the more complex the picture becomes. Handloom weavers included at least three categories: independent artisans; outworkers employed by a range of entrepreneurs, including factory owners; and those who worked in factory settings, typically in “weave sheds,” as Mohanty calls them. By assiduous collating of documents, Mohanty shows that one weaver might be included in more than one of these categories (or variants thereof), either successively or simultaneously. It was never a simple matter of independent workmen being dramatically overtaken by technological change. This is all the more true because, as Mohanty repeatedly demonstrates, women played prominent roles in the handloom weaving workforce, which also included many children and immigrants. One of the high points of the study is Mohanty’s insightful discussion of the complicated technical breakthroughs during the 1810s and 1820s that led to the triumph of powerloom weaving. Yet the book has numerous weaknesses. Since not everyone is wellversed in Rhode Island geography, Mohanty should have included at least one map. The research for this work was mostly undertaken more than a quarter of a century ago, and Mohanty has not done enough to take recent scholarship into account. To be sure, she cites some works published from 1984 to 1990, but only a few after that, and she rarely incorporates the actual findings and conclusions of those works into her text. Her writing veers from the serviceable to the clumsy and solecistic. She informs her readers in one place: “The fabrics produced also represent similar qualities and varieties so that it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate except based on gender that does not relate to the outcome or the product” (p. 37). This reviewer’s favorite is not one of these all-too-common “huh?” sentences, but a long purple passage in which, among other things, “water powered textile mechanisms hearkened the awakening of the soon to be industrialized world” (p. 44).When mechanisms hearken, it becomes clear that Mohanty and her editors at Routledge should have been more diligent in preparing this work for publication. Mohanty only occasionally discusses the relative quiescence of the handloom weavers when faced with ominous technical changes. In the British cotton textile districts, handloom weavers were often the leading occupational group in the disturbances that occurred between 1800 and 1830. Mohanty never satisfactorily explains why Rhode Island handloom weavers —and American handloom weavers in general—accepted their obsolescence so passively. Merely asserting that the American weavers were more flexible than their British counterparts begs the question. This national contrast defies easy explanation, but perhaps a glance at political issues [End Page 1096] would have provided some clues. In Britain, weavers often blamed an unresponsive and corrupt government for their predicament, and this wider political argument then gained support from philosophic radicals and others who had little direct interest in the fate of handloom weavers. Perhaps such arguments had much less impact when aimed at American democratic institutions. In such circumstances, “flexibility” may have been the easiest alternative...

Juxtaposing handloom weaving and modernity: building theory through praxis

This article investigates the interaction between the processes of building development theory and development practice, arguing that theory must start with practice – and should not be top–down, starting with the ‘outside gaze’ of a supposedly detached academic or policy maker. The questions posed point to critiques of mainstream development narratives and notions of innovation through the diffusion of new technologies. The authors suggest that the assumptions embedded in mainstream development processes lead to unequal access to global and local markets, and that when they are imposed from the outside without a real understanding of the context, the development project is bound to fail. Parameters for assessing and evaluating outcomes also need to be based upon a close understanding of context – and this often comes through active involvement within it and not through being ‘detached’ and outside it. The assumption that an outside gaze is ‘objective’ is based in an implicitly colonial discourse, while building theory by being involved in the practice produces better methodologies for action and development.

Handloom weaving in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire in the 19th century: the building evidence

This paper reviews the building evidence for the survival of the home as workplace in 19th-century Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. Handloom weaving prospered rather than declined in the immediate aftermath of the introduction of mechanized spinning, and this prosperity is reflected in the numbers of purpose-built houses containing weaving shops in these two counties. Most were built not by the weavers or clothiers, but by people outside the textile industry as a source of income. The authors have attempted to classify the surviving stock of handloom weavers’ houses into a number of types and to account for their distribution. Documentary evidence has been utilized to determine for how long handloom weaving survived in a domestic context, and it is suggested that in some areas the domestic handloom remained in active use for at least 40 years after the first introduction of the power loom into Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. The paper is therefore a contribution to the archaeology of resistance, showing how this particular group of artisans cherished their illusory independence and resisted integration into the factory system for as long as possible.

Kanakalatha Mukund and B. Syama Sundari. Traditional Industry in the New Market Economy: The Cotton Handlooms of Andhra Pradesh. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001. 169 Pages. Hardback. Rs 395.00.

The authors set out to examine the competitiveness of the handloom weaving industry in modern India from the market point of view. The three themes, which the authors themselves point out in the introduction, deal with cotton handlooms in the general context of traditional industry, present a detailed description of the situation in Andhra Pradesh and evaluate the effectiveness of government policy. An the heart of the argument is the need for policy-makers to make their decisions on the basis of “empirical data rather than received wisdom” (p. 19). The fact is that in spite of being regarded as a “...residual subsistence activity” (p. 16) handloom weaving has maintained its share of output through the decades, competition from power-looms notwithstanding.

Traditional Industry in the New Market Economy: The Cotton Handlooms of Andhra Pradesh

Introduction Handloom Weaving as Traditional Industry Some Issues Handloom Weaving in India in the Twentieth Century A Review Government Policy and Perceptions Handloom Weaving in Andhra Prades Recent Trends Weaving Centres of Andhra Pradesh A Profile Weavers and Marketing Channels The Economics of the Handloom Sector Why do Weavers' Cooperatives Fail? The Apex Society and Primary Cooperatives Government Programmes An Evaluation Conclusion References Index

Reviews and Short Notices: Late Modern

Deux Enragés de la Révolution: Leclerc de Lyon et Pauline Léon. By Claude Guillon. Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory. By Marilyn Yalom. Napoleon's Children. By Susan Normington. The Longman Companion to Napoleonic Europe. By Clive Emsley. The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era. Edited by Mark Traugott. Death and the Afterlife in Modern France. By Thomas A. Kselman. Charles Renouvier, Philosopher of Liberty. By William Logue. A Case of Child Murder: Law and Science in Nineteenth‐century Tuscany. By Patrizia Guarnieri. The Last Shift: The Decline of Handloom Weaving in Nineteenth‐century Lancashire. By Geoffrey Timmins. The Victorian Post Office: The Growth of a Bureaucracy. By C. R. Perry. The Victorian City: A Reader in British Urban History, 1820–1914. Edited By R. J. Morris and Richard Rodger. Manchester. By Alan Kidd. Hanging in Judgment: Religion and the Death Penalty from the Bloody Code to Abolition. By Harry Potter. The Convert Cardinals: John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning. By David Newsome. The Church in Victorian Northampton: Visitation Records of Bishop Magee, 1872–1886. Edited by Victor A. Hatley. Birth Weight and Economic Growth. Women's Living Standards in the Industrializing West. By W. Peter Ward. ‘We are but Women’: Women in Ireland's History. By Roger Sawyer. The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada and the United States, 1880–1940. By Ann Shola Orloff. Surgery and Society in Peace and War: Orthopaedics and the Organization of Modern Medicine, 1880–1948. By Roger Cooter. Sport and the Making of Britain. By Derek Birley. Bombardier Billy Wells: The Life and Times of a Boxing Hero. By Stan Shipley. Labour's Apprentices: Working–class Lads in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. By Michael J. Childs. Deutsche im Ausland. Fremde in Deutschland: Migration in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Edited by Klaus J. Bade. The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War 1898–1914. By M. B. Hayne. At the Heart of a Tiger: Clemenceau and his World, 1841–1929. By Gregor Dallas. Trial by Friendship: Anglo‐American Relations 1917–1918. By David R. Woodward. Rajani Palme Dutt: A Study in British Stalinism. By John Callaghan. Oxford and the General Strike 1926. By Robert S. Sephton. Parliament and Politics in the Age of Baldwin and MacDonald: the Headlam Diaries 1923–1935. Edited by Stuart Ball. Trading with the Bolsheviks. The Politics of East‐West Trade, 1920–39. By Andrew J. Williams. Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization. Edited by William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum. Joseph Stalin: From Revolutionary to Despot. By John Laver. Stalin's Russia. By Chris Ward. The Long Shadow: Inside Stalin's Family. By Rosamond Richardson. Romania's Diplomatic Relations with Yugoslavia in the Interwar Period, 1919–1941. By Eugene Boia. Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War. By R.A. C. Parker. Assassinating Hitler: Ethics and Resistance in Nazi Germany. By Robert Weldon Whalen. OSS against the Reich: The World War II Diaries of Colonel David K. E. Bruce. Edited by Nelson D. Lankford. Spheres of Influence: The Partition of Europe from Munich to Yalta. By Lloyd C. Gardner. Hitler and Nazism. By Dick Geary. In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in Southern France 1942–1944. By H.R. Kedward. Church and Schools in Vichy France, 1940–1944. Nicholas Atkin. Sectoral Changes in Industry after World War II. Edited by Waltraud Falk and Václav Pru̇cha. The Civilian in War: The Home Front in Europe, Japan and the USA in World War II. Edited by Jeremy Noakes. The Labour Party since 1945. By Kevin Jefferys. The Long Death of British Labourism: Interpreting a Political Culture. By Willie Thompson. Britain and European Unity, 1945–1992. John W. Young. The Rise of Regional Europe. By Christopher Harvie. Liberalism and Modern Society. By Richard Bellamy. The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. By John B. Dunlop. New Directions in Soviet History. Edited by Stephen White.

Book reviews

Books reviewed in this article:GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELANDC. E. Challis, ed., A new history of the Royal MintBarbara Harvey, Living and dying in England, 1140‐1540: the monastic experienceRoger Mason and Norman MacDougall, eds., People and power in Scotland: essays in honour of T.C. SmoutIan W. Archer, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan LondonJacob M. Price, Perry of London: a family and a firm on the seaborne frontier, 1615‐1753Rachel Lawrence, Southwold River: Georgian life in the Blyth ValleyJoel Mokyr, ed., The British industrial revolution: an economic perspectiveP. Hudson, The industrial revolutionD. C. Coleman, Myth, history and the industrial revolutionPatrick K. O'Brien and Roland Quinault, eds., The industrial revolution and British societyW. D. Rubinstein, Capitalism, culture and economic decline in Britain, 1750‐1990Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian city: the food supply of Manchester, 1770‐1870Geoffrey Timmins, The last shift: the decline of handloom weaving in nineteenth‐century LancashireFelix Driver, Power and pauperism: the workhouse system, 1834‐1884Robert Woods, The population of Britain in the nineteenth centuryGeoffrey Jones, British multinational banking, 1830‐1990Panikos Panayi, ed., Racial violence in Britain, 1840‐1950Austin Bourke,‘The visitation of God? The potato and the great Irish FamineS. N. Broadberry and N. F. R. Crafts, eds., Britain in the international economy, 1870‐7939R. P. T. Davenport‐Hines and Judy Slinn, Glaxo: a history to 1962Oliver M. Westall, The Provincial Insurance Company, 1903‐38: family markets and competitive growthMary E. Daly, Industrial development and Irish national identity, 1922‐1939Tim Rooth, British protectionism and the international economy: overseas commercial policy in the 1930sAndrew Land, Rodney Lowe, and Noel Whiteside, Development of the welfare state, 7939‐7957: a guide to documents in the Public Record OfficeDerek H. Aldcroft, Education, training and economic performance, 1944‐1990H. Mercer, N. Rollings, and J. D. Tomlinson, eds., Labour governments and private industry: the experience of 1945‐1951GENERALJean‐Luc Pinol, Les mobilites de la grande ville: Lyon, fin XIXe ‐ debut XXe siecleTheo Balderston, The origins and course of the German economic crisis: November 1923 to May 1932Herbert Giersch, Karl‐Heinz Paqué, and Holger Schmieding, The fading miracle: four decades of market economy in GermanyLeslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans: migration in western Europe since 1650John R. Gillis, Louise A. Tilly, and David Levine, eds., The European experience of declining fertility: the quiet revolutionColin G. Pooley, ed., Housing strategies in Europe, 1880‐1930Geoffrey Jones and Harm G. Schroter, eds., The rise of multinationals in continental EuropeElena Frangakis‐Syrett, The commerce of Smyrna in the eighteenth century (1700‐1820)Jonathan Brown and Mary B. Rose, eds., Entrepreneurship, networks and modern businessBarry E. Supple, ed., The rise of big business

The Rolt Memorial Lecture, 1993 Industrial Archaeology: Continuity and Change

Abstract Interpretations of the process of industrialisation based on documentary sources tend to over-emphasise the dramatic nature of the changes which took place. Some revisionist economic historians have highlighted the plight of various groups of domestic workers who survived into the nineteenth century, but have not really assessed the scale of the problem. The author argues that close examination of the surviving physical evidence enables the existence and type of domestic workplaces to be identified from other sources, particularly maps, and the spatial distribution of nineteenth-century domestic industry to be assessed. This is illustrated by study of various industries, including boot and shoe, hosiery, nail and chain-making and handloom weaving. She argues that the application of social theory as utilised in mainstream archaeology can assist the industrial archaeologist to identify changes in patterns of industrial organisation and relationships between employer and employed, thus redressing th...

The Survival of Handloom Weaving in Rural Canada Circa 1870

Handloom weaving with a mixture of wool and cotton yarn was common in late nineteenth-century Canada. The hand technology survived using industrial inputs and part-time female labor whose opportunity cost was relatively low in rural areas. The demand for homespun was income-sensitive and reinforced by the cold Canadian climate. The patterns of weaving by men and women differed, but both produced for the market in addition to home consumption. Cloth constituted a significant share of farm production, especially in low-income areas.

Size and structure of handloom weaving in the mid-thirties

Size and structure of handloom weaving in the mid-thirties

Experimentation in Textile Technology, 1788–1790, and Its Impact on Handloom Weaving and Weavers in Rhode Island

Experimentation in Textile Technology, 1788-1790, and Its Impact on Handloom Weaving and Weavers in Rhode Island GAIL FOWLER MOHANTY The landmark studies in British labor history published by Sid­ ney Pollard and E. P. Thompson in the 1960s prompted numerous complementary explorations of American labor’s response to fac­ tory work. In “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing Amer­ ica, 1815-1919,” Herbert Gutman described the process of adapting to mechanization and to the regularity and discipline of mill employment. Like Gutman’s, similar studies published subse­ quently focused primarily on 19th-century evidence.1 Actually, texDr . MOHANTY is director of administration and curator at the Charles River Mu­ seum of Industry and Adjunct Assistant Professor of American and New England Studies at Boston University. In 1986, the paper from which this article is derived was awarded the Levinson Prize by the Society for the History of Technology. The au­ thor would like to thank the following individuals who offered criticism and encourage­ ment: Anthony F. C. Wallace, Robert L. Schuyler, Judith A. McGaw, Merritt Roe Smith, Gary Kulik, and Harold Kemble. The Museum of American Textile History supported the research by means of the William F. Sullivan Fellowship in 1984. ‘Sidney Pollard, “Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 16 (1963): 254—71; E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56—97; Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963); Herbert Gutman, “Work, Culture, and Society in In­ dustrializing America 1815-1919,” American Historical Review 78 (1973): 533; Thom­ as Dublin, Mwien at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachu­ setts 1826—1860 (New York, 1979); David Montgomery, Worker’s Control in America: Stud­ ies in the History of Work, Technology and Labor Struggles (New York, 1979); Daniel J. Walkowitz, Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton Workers’ Protest in Troy and Co­ hoes, New York (Urbana, Ill., 1978); Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810—1860 (New York, 1983); and vol­ umes of collected articles such as Peter N. Stearns, comp., Workers in the Industrial Revo­ lution: Recent Studies of Labor in the United States and Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1974); Daniel J. Walkowitz and Michael Frisch, eds., Working Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana, Ill., 1983). Barbara Tucker touches on the early period of textile manufacture (1787-90) only briefly in her volume enti­ tled Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry 1790-1860 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984). Tucker’s primary emphases are on Slater’s Oxford and Webster, Mass., factories and not on his Pawtucket interests.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2901-0001J01.00 1 2 Gail Fowler Mohanty tile manufacturers had incorporated hand-operated machinery into their workshops well before the end of the 18th century. The organi­ zation of spinning and weaving establishments in such places as Beverly and Worcester, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, had already altered the workplace to a large extent during the Federal period (ca. 1787—1801) and had initi­ ated changes in the regulation of time and labor.2 This article addresses the response of Rhode Island handloom weavers to shifts in their work environment and routine. It ad­ vances the view that the mechanization of spinning and consequent rise of weaving workshops owned and managed by entrepreneurs rather than master craftsmen led to changes in the associated handcrafts earlier than suggested by studies of 19th-century industri­ alization. Further, it indicates that trained full-time or professional handloom artisans responded to attempts to alter their craft classifica­ tions, their work habits, and their art by avoiding factory or merchantowned weave shed employment, by shifting from job to job, and by investing in independent competitive weaving workshops.3 More im­ portant, weavers formerly employed by entrepreneurs opened their own weave sheds, contracted to manufacture fabrics for the mills, and wove cloth from machine-spun yarns for sale themselves. As Barbara Tucker suggests in her study of Samuel Slater’s tex­ tile businesses from 1790 to...

Experimentation in Textile Technology, 1788-1790, and Its Impact on Handloom Weaving and Weavers in Rhode Island

The landmark studies in British labor history published by Sidney Pollard and E. P. Thompson in the 1960s prompted numerous complementary explorations of American labor's response to factory work. In Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919, Herbert Gutman described the process of adapting to mechanization and to the regularity and discipline of mill employment. Like Gutman's, similar studies published subsequently focused primarily on 19th-century evidence.' Actually, tex-

Powerloom profitability and steam power costs: Britain in the 1830s

Tales of dramatic change in cotton textile production often begin the story of the British Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century. The textile revolution has provided economic historians with powerful symbols of the entire process of industrialization-the new machinery, the steam engine, and the “dark satanic mills” which housed them-but these innovations are not merely symbolic. They profoundly affected regional if not national economies, led to substantial increases in labor and capital productivity over the course of a century, and contributed to an early phase of modern economic growth. It is thus important to our study of what we call the Industrial Revolution that we continue to characterize, measure, and explain the impact of changes in production technologies. This should apply as much to the central symbolic industry of textiles as to other and perhaps more important sectors. In the story of the cotton industry, references to the new machinery usually emphasize the large productivity effects of the water frame and the spinning mule, and nod in the direction of Cartwright’s power-loom, all of which were late lSth-century devices. To be sure, the spinning inventions were important, but further development of spinning technology was embodied in a series of modifications whose cumulative impact was at least as significant as the adoption of the original machines (cf. Rosenberg, 1976). Cartwright’s powerloom, by contrast, was little more than a flash in the pan; it was not until after 1815 that powerlooms (of different design) began to play more than a negligible role in cotton weaving, and it was not until the 1850s that weaving by machine triumphed over the alternative, traditional subsector of handloom weaving. Over these years, in a pattern similar to that of spinning, power-loom technology was modified

Notes on the History of the Handloom Weaving Industry of India

Notes on the History of the Handloom Weaving Industry of India

The Ceremony of Erecting a Megalith among the Angami Nagas

DURING the now almost legendary slump of the early 1920's, for two cold-weather seasons I found myself out of a job as a Tea Planter in Assam where I had returned after War service in the Indian Army. So my wife and I decided to 'take to the hills'. We would get to know the tribes people and study their hand-spinning and weaving, vegetable dyes, poisons, methods of slash-and-burn cultivation and so on. This fitted in well with my wife's hobby of hand-loom weaving, learned from followers of William Morris, Luther Hooper and others after World War I, as well as my interest in Archaeology and Anthropology. During the cold weather of 1921-2, we lived among the Mikirs, the most unwarlike of all tribes either North or South of the Brahmaputra. And from them we heard much of their traditional foes, the Angami Nagas, erstwhile Head-hunters of the Barail Range that lay to the South. One day a couple of Angamis who had managed to slip past the Police Post with their spears suddenly appeared in the village, much to the consternation of the Mikirs. But they were on a peaceful trading expedition. During the next Monsoon I resumed duty on the Tea Gardens, but the next cold weather I was again free. I knew the Angamis still erected megalithic monuments from time to time when they could afford the outlay, so hoping for the best, I got a permit from the Commissioner to travel to and live in Kohima, a large and important village. In the War against the Japs Kohima later became famous for the hard battles that were fought there. Should we be able to see the ceremony known as Chisu, or stone-pulling? Who could tell. If we were lucky there might be one during our stay. Any Angami who was rich enough to rise in the social scale had to perform several ceremonies, spend his surplus wealth, and entertain his clan. The members of the clan would do the hard