Introduction

This chapter discusses the patterns of weavers' migration from United Provinces to other parts of India to locate the implications both for the migrants as well as for the world they left behind in a given socio-economic background. It talks about the Indian Ocean communities rather than migrant Indian communities. In traditional demographic or geophysical historiographies, there has been a broadly accepted division of peoples into the 'nomadic' and the 'settled'. Famines occurred at frequent intervals with disastrous consequences for the economy and left a crippling impact on all artisanal communities, including the weavers, resulting in large-scale migrations. During the eighteenth century, evidences refer to the regional courts patronage and better prospects as significant impetus for migration of weavers. There was a physical alienation of weavers from their weaving villages into the Black Towns. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.