Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India (review)

Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India. By Tirthankar Roy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 252 pp. $64.95.

Eighteenth-century manufacturing in India was as advanced, diverse, and productive as it was anywhere else in the world. India produced more cloth for the international economy than any other world region. As Indian manufacturing exports declined to almost nothing during the nineteenth century, India's de-industrialization under colonialism became a central tenet in the nationalist critique of British imperialism. That India's economy became largely rural and agrarian was a tenet for national development planners after independence, when heavy industry became top priority. The fate of traditional industries during the colonial period emerged as a research problem for economic historians from the 1970s, when it became clear that they remained a vital sector for employment, entrepreneurship, and potential export expansion. Today, despite headline news about the computer industry, traditional manufactures represent India most prominently on world markets, employing many millions and attracting more attention from economists than ever before.

Roy's book is the first monograph that compiles all-India data on the history of traditional industries under colonialism. It deals specifically with handloom cloth, gold thread, brassware, leather, and carpets. It begins with a brief account of the author's revisionist argument that, rather than being destroyed by British rule, these industries were drastically reorganized inside modern markets. This transition was hard on the workers but led to the revitalization of industries that remained traditional only in a categorical sense. This modern market reformulation parallels that which occurred in other parts of the world. By indicating similarities with industrial restructuring in Europe, Roy opens a new line of inquiry for historians of organizational change in premodern manufacturing enterprises during transitions to modernity.

Roy's chapter on "markets and organization" can serve as a template for studies of structural change in old industries. Rather than being relegated to a small traditional niche in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, old modes of manufacturing were radically reorganized. Their operations expanded in their new institutional environment. Roy indicates the broad outlines of how this reorganization occurred in his discussion of handloom weaving, the most famous manufacturing sector, but the chapter is, unavoidably, more an overview than a full study. More books on this topic will be needed to explore the regional diversity and organizational complexity of the handloom industry. The central point established definitively is that handloom weaving did not die; in fact, it thrived, though in some regions more than others. Everywhere, however, it adapted to changing conditions. Since decline was specific to certain regions and products, it needs to be explained in each setting, not assumed to be the structural trend against which all others are measured.

The chapter on gold-thread making represents one feature of organizational and technological change in the handloom sector concentrated in the cities of Surat and Benares. The chapters on brassware, leather, and carpets are truly pathbreaking; they will stand as the foundation of new research for years to come. Leather is especially important for the international picture because, starting the late nineteenth century, it grew steadily as an export product and continues to grow even today.

This book is a must for any scholar concerned with transformations of traditional enterprise in the modern world economy. The extensive bibliography, solid revisionist argument, and detailed evidence also make it a new classic in the economic history of modern South Asia.

David Ludden
University of Pennsylvania

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