ABSTRACT
Large sums of money were advanced, much of it actually exported in bullion, to thousands of Indian weavers, in order to stimulate the production of calicoes and muslins and to increase the volume of their flow westwards. A beginning must have been made with this after 1770, as some Indian silk, wound on the new machines, was put on the market in 1772. The ideal Cathay of Hakluyt and his contemporaries was expected, not only to render England independent of the varied products of Europe, but also to furnish an adequate market for the surplus textiles that were trying to find a way eastwards through the Mediterranean and the Baltic. Energetic young agents, with bills of exchange in their wallets, pushed out hundreds of miles towards the source of some marketable product, and tried to set up a silk-winding establishment, a bleach-works, or even a weaving village.
