ABSTRACT
One of the main discoveries made by the European companies attempting to develop the textile trade from India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the existence of a vertical link between marketing and industrial production. The Indian weavers seemed to have adopted two distinct approaches to the problem of adjusting output to demand. There weie those who wove traditional and well-known varieties of cloth for the open market. But more often they appeared to work for particular merchants who provided working capital in return for a guaranteed supply of cloth which was frequently of a special type suitable only for certain export markets. The functional distinction between the two systems does not necessarily imply that they were mutually exclusive in practice. The same weaver who worked to order during the busy export season might decide to work at his own risk during the slack months. The Company's Factory Records are replete with examples. In August 1673, for instance, Isaac Reynardson writes from Broach that he has postponed buying the type of clolh known as sovaguzzes because they are coarse and expensive and that he will go into the market later on when nobody else was advancing money.55 But whichever system was in operation, it was unlikely that the weaver would be in direct contact with the final customers without any intermediaries at all. Irrespective of whether his source of capitalization was mercantile or self generated, he was strongly dependent on the wholesale dealer for marketing his products. Not the least reason for this was the differentiated character of the Indian textile industry. The technology of production involved many intermediate stages, and the separation of functions was social as well as technical. The comments made by Orme were relevant in this connexion. Whereas most craftsmen in India were able to perform singly all the different stages of the production process and were hence at the mercy of tyrannical princes who wished to commandeer their services, the textile industry required the combined skills of several separate
himself to be paid for the rest of his life.87 Towards the close of our period, we may conclude, in some areas
of India the textile workers had come perilously near to being wage labourers. Control by merchants had increased both in western and southern India. Of the three regions supplying textiles to the overseas export markets, Bengal alone seems to have escaped any fundamental changes in industrial organization, though the ravages of the Marathas had ruinous consequences for the merchants. In remote areas, cut off from trade, the artisan of course still pursued the unchanging and recurrent rhythm of activity which characterizes a closed economy.88 The advance financing of production for a market was a vertical system, with the force of integration coming from the top rather than below. In its pure form it allowed the artisans considerable initiative in decision-making and gave them a certain measure of economic independence. But when its twin pillars of support, an established social and political order and a steady demand, were shaken, both the merchant and the weaver were compelled to seek modifications. Direct employment by merchants gave the artisan an assured source of income. But it reduced the flexibility which he bad previously possessed, and it was the merchant who now stood to benefit from the operation of competitive market forces.
