ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how and when India's cotton industry was overtaken by Britain's and will argue that it was India that initiated the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the international economy. The primary objective of the Company was to sell their woollen textiles in Asia. At home, English textile producers were encouraged to manufacture goods similar to Indian calicoes. Britain's export of cotton cloth to India in 1835 was 65 times greater than it had been in 1814. In the seventeenth century, the Indian Ocean trade was seized by the English and the Dutch. Undoubtedly, spices and pepper, which were daily necessities as condiments and preservatives in Medieval Europe, were of primary importance to the West–East trade. The British colonies in America provided important markets for goods, and these markets greatly expanded, along with the triangular trade featuring African slave traders, planters in North America and the West Indies, and the merchants of Liverpool, Bristol, and London.
