Indiennes Material for a Thousand Stories
Indiennes Material for a Thousand Stories Swiss National Museum (ed.) Christoph Merian Verlag
Contents
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Andreas Spillmann Foreword
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Joya Indermühle Weaving the Urban Fabric – Bombay, Cotton and Urban Development
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Isabella Bozsa and Stephanie Lovász The Basel Mission and its Business Activities in India, 1834–1914
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Peter Pfrunder Gandhi in Private – the Mahatma in Walter Bosshard’s Photographs
Pascale Meyer, Andrea Franzen, Joya Indermühle Introduction
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Harald Fischer-Tiné The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950
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Avalon Fotheringham Indian Textile Production in the 17th and 18th Centuries
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André Holenstein The Indiennes and Switzerland – Far More Than the Story of a Colourful Fabric
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Lea Haller Swiss Merchants Overseas – a Gigantic Business
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Helen Bieri Thomson The Indienne Fabrics from the Xavier Petitcol Collection – a Gain for the Swiss National Museum
Christof Dejung Swiss Merchants and Colonial Rule – the Company Volkart Brothers in British India
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From India to Winterthur Interview with Andreas Reinhart, former Chairman of Volkart Group
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Appendix Recommended Literature Authors Glossary Imprint
Indiennes – Material for a Thousand Stories
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Foreword
In the recent past, cotton, or ‘white gold’ as it is also called, has become a focal subject in the study of history. Historians like Sven Beckert and Giorgio Riello have portrayed a complete history of capitalism on the basis of this fibre, while historian Lea Haller examines merchanting trade’s significance to the Swiss economy in her book ‘Transithandel: Geld- und Warenströme im globalen Kapitalismus’ (Merchanting: Commodity Trade in the History of Global Capitalism). Also in textile research, considerable attention has been paid to so-called indienne fabrics. What could be more appropriate then, than to combine these two interesting branches of research in an exhibition? In 2016, the Swiss National Museum had a unique opportunity to acquire a significant collection of printed and painted cotton cloths – indiennes – built up by art historian Xavier Petitcol in France. The museum presented this collection to a wide audience in the 2018 exhibition ‘Indiennes: Un tissu révolutionne le monde!’ in Prangins Castle. From 2020 onwards, a new study centre for indiennes is to be set up in Prangins, as a place intended to encourage the study of these historic fabrics.
Prior to this, however, a selection of these magnificent indiennes can be enjoyed at the National Museum Zurich – supplemented by the cultural history of cotton, the history of India and the corresponding links to Switzerland. Several of the numerous interweaving strands can be seen in the production of indiennes in Switzerland, the Basel Mission’s textile factories in India, textile production in Glarus and the transit trade of the firm Volkart Brothers. Switzerland, a small country in the middle of Europe, played a major role in the trade, production and distribution of a global product. My thanks go to the authors of this publication. Their articles serve as a record of this cultural and textile history revolving around cotton. I would especially like to thank the lenders, in particular the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Museum Rietberg in Zurich, Museum der Kulturen Basel, the British Library, Fotostiftung Schweiz and many others. Scenographer Alex Harb has once again succeeded in providing a worthy setting for the magnificent fabrics and other objects. My heartfelt thanks go to him as well as to the exhibition organisers, project manager Pascale Meyer, and curators Andrea Franzen and Joya Indermühle. Finally, a big thank you goes to the many other parties who helped the exhibition and accompanying publication to come about. Andreas Spillmann
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Foreword
Introduction
Until well into the 20th century, cotton was one of the most important global commodities. Alongside raw cotton, the fabrics made from this plant, which only grows in the world’s tropical and subtropical regions, were among the most important of all commercial products. India played a key role in this regard, as the dyeing and printing techniques that had developed there over centuries long remained unsurpassed and set an example for fabric printers in Asia and Europe alike. In the 16th century, Indian fabrics with unusual motifs started to reach Europe. These would later be called ‘indiennes’. Clever tradespeople imitated them in the 17th century and caused a veritable storm of enthusiasm among European consumers in the 18th century. Soon, Swiss companies also became heavily involved in the business because France closed its borders to protect its domestic silk production. Already at the end of the 18th century, the Europeans managed to make industrially manufactured indiennes competitive, consequently reversing the trade flows: India imported cheap cotton fabrics from England and the once thriving cottage industry ran into difficulty. Small-scale farmers lost work, poverty and hunger escalated. Bombay, however, became the centre of the cotton trade and a rapidly growing independent textile industry established itself there in the second half of the 19th century. In 1851, the Swiss trading company Volkart Brothers founded its first branch in Bombay and would go on to become one of the world’s largest cotton exporters by the end of the 19th century. Swiss employees worked on site; in photos, they can be seen maintaining a colonial lifestyle in their offices.
Tradespeople were not the only Swiss to be found on the subcontinent in the 19th century though. The Basel Mission, founded in 1815, started sending its missionaries to convert the mostly Hindu Indians in 1834. At the same time, its newly established welfare institutions, hospitals and schools had to be financed. Brickworks, printing works and weaving mills made money, but also triggered a debate on whether it was permissible to generate profits with the mission. In Switzerland itself, the canton of Glarus became a textile printing hub in the 19th century. Glarus textile companies exported their fabrics to the Levant, Turkey, Egypt and India. In the 20th century, cotton once again took on new significance in India. From 1930 onwards, khadi, hand-spun and hand-woven cotton clothing, became a symbol of India’s political liberation and a hallmark of Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi. Swiss press photographer Walter Bosshard recorded this with his camera. His 1930 photo-reportage showed Gandhi spinning by hand, as a kind of ‘home story’. The photos went around the world. This exhibition presents selected Indian and European fabrics that bear witness to tremendous artistry. It also shows how Swiss companies were embedded in the ‘white gold’ trade: an entangled story, demonstrating by way of example, that Swiss history is always global history as well. Pascale Meyer, Andrea Franzen, Joya Indermühle
Indiennes – Material for a Thousand Stories
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Indiennes – Material for a Thousand Stories
The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950 Harald Fischer-Tiné
Indiennes – Material for a Thousand Stories
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2.01
Cotton
2.02
Spinning wheel and loom The spinning wheel probably reached India via West Asia at the start of the 14th century. On the subcontinent, the processing of cotton with simple spinning wheels and looms largely took place in rural households, which were often concentrated in communities and villages of weavers. Watercolour on paper, 19th century, probably Northwest India, 18.7 x 23 cm, © The Trustees of the British Museum
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The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950
There is evidence of cotton in India dating all the way back to the time around 2600–1900 BC . Cotton cultivation also spread in other tropical and subtropical regions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. In Europe, cotton was planted relatively late and only with moderate success, from the 10th century onwards in the Mediterranean region. Cotton boll, seeds, from Orissa, Cuttack, India IIa 6466, photographer: Omar Lemke, 2018 Museum der Kulturen Basel
For more than half a millennium, from the 13th century to the start of the 19th century, the Indian subcontinent was the undisputed global centre of cotton growing and cotton textile manufacturing. Cotton plantations and cotton processing were concentrated in a few regions of South Asia. Gujarat on the Arabian Sea in the west of India, the Coromandel Coast in the south (in what is now the Indian state of Tamil Nadu) and Bengal in the east evolved into the most important textile production centres on the subcontinent. They each put their individual mark on their cotton products because the dyeing and decoration of cloths and textiles differed not only according to price and quality, but also according to regional origins. At these locations, and several others, there were already tens of thousands of farmers and artisans working in the cotton business in the late 16th century. The execution of the various processing steps was often monopolised by those belonging to very specific castes considered particularly suitable for the respective activity.
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The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950
Great demand Until the mid-18th century, South Asia itself remained the main sales market for the region’s cotton products, but long before European trading companies appeared, there was already considerable demand for Indian textiles in Southeast and East Asia, as well as in Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the rest of the Islamic world. In the Indian Ocean in particular, dense trading networks already existed in the 15th century. The increasing involvement of Portuguese traders and mariners in the cotton business from the 16th century onwards, as well as the Dutch, English and French East India Companies from the early 17th century onwards, resulted in considerable further expansion of the emerging ‘worldwide web of cotton’. It now also encompassed the Atlantic market, as the affordable cotton products from South Asia soon found a rising number of buyers in Europe in particular, but also in both Americas and in West Africa. Eventually, in the final third of the 18th century, two interrelated processes began, which would continue until the mid-19th century and have an unfavourable impact on the development of the Indian cotton proto-industry. Firstly, in the power vacuum left by the fall of the Indian Mughal Empire, the English East India Company (EIC ) had begun to establish itself as a significant regional power and to gradually contest the Indian competitors’ dominance in the region. Due to their military potency and the fact that they now
acted as official territorial rulers, the British were able to dictate the conditions of cotton growing, textile production and trade, in an unprecedented manner, from around 1770 onwards. As a result, the production of cloths and textiles became more strongly export-oriented. In the Province of Bengal, the centre of British power on the subcontinent, the company’s new powers led to the brutal exploitation of local farmers, weavers and other groups working in textile production. These excesses, known as the ‘Plunder of Bengal’, also caused quite a stir in Britain, triggering a series of structural reforms with the aim of giving the Crown and parliament greater control over the EIC. In the meantime though, the miserable working conditions and low wages had driven many of the affected Indian textile artisans back to agriculture.
Indian textiles were no longer price-competitive with cheap mechanically produced goods from Manchester and other Northern English cities. Meanwhile, any transfer of the new technologies and corresponding know-how was deliberately prevented by the colonial government, as there was no desire to create unnecessary competition for the flourishing Northern English textile industry. Thus, in a very short time, India regressed from being the world’s leading exporter of cotton textiles to a solely importing country. In South India and Gujarat in particular, only a number of niche markets still occupied by Indian artisans were able to survive – most of those working in textile production in Bengal, however, had to seek another source of income. The crisis also affected many farmers who had previously grown cotton for local manufacturing, because the new steam-powered cotton gins and mechanical looms in Europe were much Consequences of Europe’s better suited to the longer fibres of North Amerindustrialisation ican cotton, which soon dominated the global This commencing ‘re-agriculturalisation’ of India market and caused Indian raw cotton exports to was reinforced by a second historic transformation drop off dramatically. Around 1840, the demise process around the turn of the 19th century: the (the extent of which varied from region to region) triumphant progress of the so-called Industrial of the Indian textile artisanry that had once led Revolution in Europe and especially the British the market worldwide, was largely complete and Isles. Technical innovations like the mechani- the former indocentric cotton-trading network cal loom and the steam engine, in combination had been replaced by an Atlantic ‘cotton system’, with higher wages and falling costs of energy and in which primarily British textile magnates and transport, enabled the rapid rise of the English planters in the southern states of the USA contextile industry in the first two decades of the trolled the market conditions and prices. Also 19th century. From 1820 at the latest, handmade in other areas of the world, such as the Middle
Indiennes – Material for a Thousand Stories
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East and China, the popularity of Indian cotton products had, in the meantime, led to calls for import substitution and encouraged experimentation with the establishment of domestic cotton production and textile industries. However, none of these undertakings was anywhere near as successful as the textile industry in Great Britain, the self-declared ‘workshop of the world’.
Indian producers
and Maratha traders originated in the profitable opium trade with China, which not only European, but also Indian traders and moneylenders had made money out of since the 18th century. This example shows that, despite the uneven distribution of power under the conditions of colonial rule, the indigenous elite were also able to be among the winners in the economic system imposed by the colonial power. Nevertheless, the accusation that the British had deliberately fuelled the demise of the Indian textile industry out of greed for profit soon became the constant topos of the anticolonial nationalism that gradually began to gather pace upon the founding of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885. It is therefore not entirely surprising that cotton textiles played a key role in the first anti-British mass demonstrations at the start of the 20th century. Between 1905 and 1908, in protest against an unpopular British administrative measure, representatives of the INC’s radical wing called for a boycott of cotton products from England and staged public burnings of imported textiles. This so-called Swadeshi Movement (swadeshi: of one’s own country) unquestionably helped to strengthen the domestic cotton industry.
Even though the demise of Indian textile production is rightly cited as a prime example of deindustrialisation triggered by colonial exploitation, the fact that mainly Indian players profited from the second (much more modest) Indian cotton boom in the second half of the 19th century should not be overlooked. For several years, the American Civil War (1861–1865) severely hindered the export of raw cotton to Europe. This commodity shortage not only led to more cotton being grown in India for the global market once again, but also prompted financially strong Indian investors in Bombay and Ahmedabad to put money into local cotton mills and textile factories. Between 1870 and 1900, mainly in Bombay, a cotton-processing industry established itself, which, unlike the rest of the (still small) industrial sector on the subcontinent, was Anticolonial protest largely Indian-owned: 70 of the 81 cotton mills that existed in Bombay around the year 1920 were During the interwar period, anticolonial sentirun by Indian factory owners. Some of the capital ments intensified, and the swadeshi concept was that came into the cotton industry from local Parsi seized upon and developed further by M. K. Gandhi,
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The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950
the charismatic new leader of the INC. His largescale campaigns in the 1920s and 1930s went beyond a boycott of British textiles though. The individual spinning of cotton yarn, which Gandhi encouraged all INC members to engage in, and the promotion of plain Indian cotton garment (khadi) production in villages’ cottage industries were seen as ideal forms of protest, with which to severely impact the colonial state on both a symbolic and economic level. Not only did they symbolise a clear rejection of any kind of westernisation (in the form of western clothing), they also weakened the British textile industry, which subsequently saw a downturn in turnover on the subcontinent. This might be the reason why the spinning wheel (charkha) appeared on an early version of the national flag of India. When India became independent in 1947, the new state faced the difficult task of harmonising the twofold (cotton) legacy of the colonial era. On the one hand, it had to safeguard the existence of a sizeable textile industry with hundreds of thousands of workers, despite stiff competition on the global market. On the other hand, it was particularly intent on also preserving the economically less significant khadi tradition, which was inextricably linked to the national independence myth.
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2.03
Fabric printers The various implementation steps in Indian cotton and fabric production were often monopolised by specific groups, such as the Chhipa block-printing caste, for example. The printing and painting techniques of textiles were particularly complex. Master of the second generation after Nainsukh ‘Bhakta Chhipa, the Devout Cloth Printer’, c. 1800–1810, Pahari region, India, pigment painting on paper, 16.5 x 11 cm Donator: Lucy Rudolph, RVI 908, photographer: Rainer Wolfsberger, Museum Rietberg
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2.04
Stock The English East India Company (EIC ) was founded in 1600. From 1612 onwards, it was organised as a joint stock company, following the example set by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie). In the 18th century, the then British EIC evolved into a territorial power on the Indian subcontinent. East India Company stock, 1795, London Swiss Finance Museum, Zurich
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Textile fragment Indian textile producers were quick to perfect techniques like the dyeing of fabrics with indigo. Around the year 1500, Indian textiles made their way through complex trading networks to West Africa and the Far East. For this purpose, they were often adapted to local purposes and tastes. Fragment, 15th/16th centuries, Gujarat, India, found in Fostat, Egypt, cotton, plain weave, beige, indigo blue, Batik resist technique, III 16949, photographer: Christoph Lehmann Museum der Kulturen Basel
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The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950
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Mughal Akbar The Muslim dynasty of the Mughals ruled over large parts of India from the 16th to the 19th century. Under rulers like Akbar and Shah Jahan, the Mughal Empire grew and experienced a cultural boom. After further expansion carried out by Aurangzeb, it became harder to govern and its decline began. Mughal Akbar, c. 1678, India, pigment painting with gold on paper, 21.7 x 12.4 cm Donator: Danielle Porret, 2011.393, photographer: Rainer Wolfsberger Museum Rietberg
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2.07
Indian princes During British rule over India, there were also princely states, subordinate to the British Crown. Hindu princes (called maharajas, rajas or raos) and Muslim nawabs lived in magnificent palaces and had extravagant lifestyles. Photo album of Karl A. Krüsi, Group of Indian princes, 1884–1888, East India Swiss National Museum
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Women in the colonies The wives of European officials, missionaries and traders in British India lived the colonial lifestyle. This involved running the household with the aid of many Indian employees. European woman with Indian staff, c. 1871, India Dep 42/1809, Winterthur City Archives
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The History of Cotton in India, 1500–1950