The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes | 67 comments (67 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 6)

European Tribune - The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes

As the Industrial Revolution took hold, the Europeans reversed their historical competitive disadvantage in textiles as the abundant labor and more productive agricultural systems of India and China became less important than the productivity of the grim "Satanic Mills" of the English Midlands.

Not so much productivity as political power.

Economy of India under Company rule - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"It was stated in evidence (in 1813) that the cotton and silk goods of India, up to this period, could be sold for a profit in the British market at a price from 50 to 60 per cent. lower than those fabricated in England. It consequently became necessary to protect the latter by duties of 70 or 80 per cent. on their value, or by positive prohibition. Had this not been the case, had not such prohibitory duties and decrees existed, the mills of Paisley and of Manchester would have been stopped in their outset, and could hardly have been again set in motion, even by the powers of steam. They were created by the sacrifice of the Indian manufactures. Had India been independent, she would have retaliated; would have imposed preventive duties upon British goods, and would thus have preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. This act of self-defence was not permitted her; she was at the mercy of the stranger. British goods were forced upon her without paying any duty; and the foreign manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not contend on equal terms." -- James Mill in The History of British India^[21]

So selective tariffs to destroy the competition.

The history of cut thumbs, is however hard to find a good source on. But if it is a myth no one appears to have tracked down the roots of that either. So, hm.

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by A swedish kind of death on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 04:36:51 AM EST

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

The history of cut thumbs, is however hard to find a good source on.

I have also had problems documenting this allegation. I first read of it in a summary of British Colonialism in India by an Economics Masters student with whom I was collaborating in an interdisciplinary study in 1964-5. I will inquire of him. Perhaps he recalls the source he found. Have to have a source before it can be evaluated. :-)

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 01:35:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 5)

Googling "British cutting the thumbs of Indian weavers" gives several links.
From the Telegraph-Calcutta:

Found: Raj-razed town
The British had chopped off their forefathers' hands in Bengal a generation ago, so the weavers of Mahua Dabar in Awadh cut off a few British heads during the turmoil of 1857. Erased from the face of the earth by the Raj's revenge, this lost town has been found again thanks to one man's effort, reports Tapas Chakraborty

George Monbiot recites the story and immediately afterward cites Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy...by Ha-Joon Chang:

India gets serious on climate change Guardian
Indians are also painfully aware that the rich nations in the past deliberately prevented their nation from developing. England, for example, banned the import of calico (cotton cloth) from India, in order to protect its own textile industries. It went on to smash Indian looms and cut off the thumbs of Indian weavers in order prevent them from making their superior products. As Ha Joon Chang shows in his book Kicking Away the Ladder, England's industrial revolution was made possible by preventing India's. Many people there suspect that attempts to limit India's future greenhouse gas emissions have the same purpose. (I may well buy Kicking Away the Ladder which may or may not document the incident)

Indian Models of Economy, Business and Management - Page 42 by Kanagasabapathi (Google books) extends and provides a source for Chang's quote:

(H H) Wilson made it clear when he wrote that the British manufacturer "employed the (arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competetor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms...They even took the extreme step of cutting off the thumbs of weavers..."

This appears to come from The History of British India by James Mill and H H Wilson pub. J. Madden, 1848. H H Wilson was an Orientalist and became a scholar of Hindi literature while in India working for the British East India Corporation, and who extended Mill's work posthumously.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 03:12:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 0)

(Gotta love the wonders of html. By the time I had all my links working correctly I forgot to check the syntax.)

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 07:29:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 16)

I happened to have a copy of Kicking Away the Ladder handy. In the relevant passages, Ha-Joon Chang is discussing tariffs and similar policy. He does not mention thumbs at all, as far as I can tell. The relevant passages of Chang's discussion cite Eric Hobsbawm's Industry and Empire.

by External Student on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 10:25:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 6)

Welcome to European Tribune, External Student.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 12:22:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 5)

longtime listener/first-time caller. Thanks.

by External Student on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 09:52:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 4)

And the concept of Kicking the Ladder Away is quite apt on its own here ... the adoption of Free Trade dogma by the UK after its previous protectionist policies had served their purpose, the increasing adoption of Free Trade dogma by the United States once it was the largest, most productive economy in the world, setting aside 160 years of protectionist industry development from 1790 through 1950.

Unfortunately for the domestic US economy, economies aren't static, and we actually still needed that ladder to keep climbing ourselves ... but for the Neo-Aristocrats, its not much issue whether the shares are yielding income from income-led growth in the US or from grabbing a larger share of income from wage earners, or from distributing production around the world, so long as the income to the ownership shares keeps flowing.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:00:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 2)

Of course. Raise the drawbridge after me.

by rifek on Mon Sep 9th, 2013 at 01:23:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

I took a stab at finding the 1848 version online, but no luck. It is in ten volumes and I have not able to locate them all.

It is not in Mill's original (only six volumes), that one only mentions thumbs in relation to religious practices etc.

The claim could of course also appear in Indian litterature on subject, which might have other sources. Hm.

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by A swedish kind of death on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 10:01:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Weavers' thumbs: a source (4.00 / 5)

I found a contemporary British source for you: Considerations on India affairs - William Bolts - Google Books, published in 1772. The passage mentioning thumb-cutting is at the bottom of page 194. However, it was "winders of raw silk" not weavers, and it wasn't to end weaving in India, but to enforce the British East India Company's monopoly (all weavers were to work for them through exclusive deals).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 02:31:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Secondary sources (4.00 / 5)

Actually I misread: the winders cut their own thumbs off to get out of their crippling obligations. The passage in William Bolts's 1772 book is quoted in later works.

A year later, The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature - Google Books quotes the passage with the claim on chopped-off thumbs at length, predicting in a comment that such practices will lead to the decline of "the trade of the East India Company".

More importantly, the first Indian source on the thumbs story I found is another quote of the William Bolts book in the 1902 book The Economic History of India by Romesh Chunder Dutt (page 27, pdf page 25). Here a more complex narrative is set: the combination of the enforced monopoly with extreme profit-taking by the middle-men and tariffs first suppressed Indian manufacturing, and then the price competition from cheaper machine-produced imports was the death knell of India's hand-woven industry. The same passage and the same narrative is repeated in Economic History of India: 1857-1956, edited by Viv Bahadour Singh and first published in 1965.

From what I have seen, all Indian sources with the simplified narrative and the thumb-chopping story located in the early 19th century are later than this, so it is possible that they are an apocryphal misinterpretation of this source.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 03:20:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Yes, this is my point exactly ... (4.00 / 4)

... " Economic History of India: 1857-1956"

By 1857, England does have a pronounced advantage in textile productivity. But over the period 1760 to 1810, the productivity gains were rather catching up to the most productive textile production in the world ... its only after the Napoleonic Wars are over that it pushes ahead into world-leading productivity in textiles (and mostly just in textiles ~ which is part of the reason why the US was able to pass the UK by the early 1900's).

And that advantage was not the result of just fate, it was the consequence of a series of policy regimes which each were effective for the conditions of their day, until they fell behind the times and were replaced. Neither the industrial protectionist policies nor the so-called "Free Trade" policies would have been as effective a part of the whole process of the establishment of British dominance in textile exports without the other.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:58:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Yes, this is my point exactly ... (none / 0)

" Economic History of India: 1857-1956"

Come on, the title of the book is irrelevant to the timeline of the thumbs-cutting story.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 06:09:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Yes, this is my point exactly ... (4.00 / 2)

The timeline of the thumb cutting story? If the relevance of the timeline of the thumb cutting story is to prove that the British East India Company used barbaric methods in its effort to enforce its lucrative monopoly on exports out of its territory of control, that tends to indicate that those exports were still lucrative in the late 1700's.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:17:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

More sources (none / 1)

Two more Indian sources accessible only in parts in which I had to mine the full passages piece by piece.

I now found the earliest version of the Brits cutting the weavers' thumbs claim in The Modern Review - Google Books (1953). This version is still fitting the historical context by claiming that the measure was punishment for those not respecting the Company's monopoly:
The East India Company can be accused not only for the negligence towards the promotion of the industries but also for imposing abominable hardships on the efficient craftsmen by levying even corporal penalties of which the most detested one was the cutting of the thumbs of the efficient muslin weavers of Dacca who were prohibited from weaving the muslin except for the Company and in the factories of the East India Company.
I also found older Indian books mentioning both thumbs claim(s) in a sceptical tone. The second from 1978 is an obvious plagiarism of the first, which is Economic transition in the Bengal presidency, 1793-1833 - Hari Ranjan Ghosal - Google Books (1966). This one says:
...The popular story about the weaver's thumbs suggests itself in this connection. There are two versions of the story. One is that the Company's servants with a view to force British manufactures into Bengal cut off the thumbs of the indigenous weavers, so that they might be permanently disabled for weaving. The other is that in order to be relieved from the obligation of working for the Company the weavers themselves cut off their thumbs. The first one may be forthwith rejected as incredible. The Company, instead of discouraging cotton manufacture in Bengal, rather forced advances on the manufacturers for piece-goods. Whether the second one, as Dr. J. C. Sinha supposes (op. cit. pp. 84-85), is based on the passage in Bolts's Considerations where it is said that winders of raw silk cut off their thumbs to escape compulsory winding, is a point on which opinions differ. But in the absence of any other contemporary reference to it, Sinha's contention may be accepted as right.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:24:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: More sources (none / 0)

That reminds me of the hundred year war story, were the french cut off the thumbs of all captured english archers.

by IM on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:40:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secondary sources (none / 0)

"the winders cut their own thumbs off to get out of their crippling obligations."
This raises more questions in my mind as it answers. It seems questionable that a significant number of spinners would make such a choice. How many people are capable of cutting off their own thumb? Sending their families away first and then leaving after work and not returning would seem more likely. However, it could also be blame shifting by the perpetrators. "They did it to themselves."

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 12:37:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secondary sources (none / 1)

It is the one and only contemporary claim of thumb-cuttings, without specific details on when and where it was supposed to have happened and how the author learned of it (it only narrows it down in time to the rule of Shuja-ud-Daula until the book's publication, that is 1754-1772), hence the scepticism expressed by an Indian author referenced upthread. If we are to speculate on the basis of this scant evidence, then blame shifting is unlikely in a tract critical of the Company, it would be more likely that the author gave credibility to unchecked rumours.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 12:36:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secondary sources (none / 0)

I did say blame shifting by the perpetrators.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 01:39:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Secondary sources (none / 1)

Bolt was an independent spirit and it appears he might have been planning on becoming an 18th Century whistle-blower. From wiki:

He spent some time working in Lisbon in the diamond trade, according to a deposition he made in 1801, before he went out to Bengal in 1759 where he was employed in Calcutta as a factor in the service of the English East India Company. He learned to speak Bengali, an addition to his other languages, English, Dutch, German, Portuguese and French. Later he was appointed to the Company's Benares (Varanasi) factory, where he opened a woollens mart, developed saltpetre manufacturing, established opium works, imported cotton, and promoted the trade in diamonds from the Panna and Chudderpoor (Chhatarpur) mines in Bundelkhand.
He fell foul of the East India Company in 1768, possibly because diamonds were a favourite means for Company employees to secretly remit to Britain the ill-gotten gains of private trade in India which they were officially forbidden to engage in. He announced in September of that year that he intended to start up a newspaper in Calcutta (which would have been India's first modern newspaper), saying that he had "in manuscript many things to communicate which most intimately concerned every individual", but he was directed to quit Bengal and proceed to Madras and from thence to take his passage to England. Company officials declared him bankrupt, "to the irretrievable loss of his Fortune", he later claimed. He never seems to have been able to redeem himself in the eyes of the Company, and in London and elsewhere fought a rearguard action against his many opponents within it. In 1772 he published Considerations on India Affairs, in which he attacked the whole system of the English government in Bengal, and particularly complained of the arbitrary power exercised by the authorities and of his own deportation. The book was translated into French and enjoyed wide circulation, which contributed to his fame on the Continent.

Sounds like he was planning on busting some of the EIC operatives based on what he knew from the diamond trade and they retaliated. But he did learn to speak Bengali in addition to his several European languages. The above summary does not indicate that he was ever posted where he would have had direct contact with weavers or spinners but indicates that he dealt in woolen goods and diamonds. This inquiry into the 'cutting of thumbs' issue seems like paleontology, where one is at the mercy of the fossil record.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 08:38:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (4.00 / 3)

Cutting off hands or thumbs was apparently used on several occasions and in different circumstances both to incapacitate competitors and as exemplary violence or terrorism. This and other sordid exploits had given the British East India Company a bad reputation amongst many upper class English and was the basis for criticism of the Government by the landed gentry, who generally were threatened by the rising power of merchants in general. I saw Walpole quoted criticizing English atrocities in India in some of my reading on this subject in the last two days.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 03:44:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (4.00 / 2)

Cutting off hands or thumbs was apparently used on several occasions and in different circumstances both to incapacitate competitors and as exemplary violence or terrorism.

We are trying to find credible sources for this oft repeated claim. I found none thus far, though I did find lots of evidence of torture and mistreatment in various forms (including applying the thumb-screw to whole villages, although not against weavers).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:25:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (4.00 / 4)

I had not seen your second post when I made that comment. This documents the destruction of Muhua Dabar in 1857 in the report of a British soldier who survived the beheading of the six British soldiers by the residents of Muhua Dabar:

Mohammad Latif Ansari, 65, had been leading a nondescript life as the owner of a tailoring establishment in Mumbai for many years. But an inexplicable force kept drawing him to a spot near his native village of Bahadurpur, about 15 km south of Basti, a town in central UP. Ansari's forefathers were weavers from Murshidabad in Bengal and had fled that province in the late 18th century to escape atrocities on Bengal's famous weavers by the British who were keen on promoting their textiles by eliminating India's native weaving industry.
Archives at the National Library in Kolkata, accessed by Open, show that the British chopped off the thumbs and hands of master weavers in Bengal, and many of them fled with their families to other parts of India. About 20 such families sought refuge from the Nawab of Oudh, who settled them at Mahua Dabar, a centre of weaving and dyeing near Basti. By the mid-19th century, Mahua Dabar had become a prosperous town of about 5,000 people. But the descendants of the refugees from Bengal could not forget the persecution that their grandfathers and great grandfathers suffered at the hands of the British, and, when an opportunity presented itself to take revenge in 1857, they killed six British army officers on 10 June that year. A little over a week later, British forces surrounded Mahua Dabar, looted it, massacred its inhabitants, demolished all structures, set them on fire and levelled them to the ground. The killings, plunder and destruction took nearly two weeks. By 3 July 1857, Mahua Dabar was no more.

This repeats the claim of the cutting of thumbs in a specific incident at a specific place with twenty specific families in the late 18th century. I have e-mailed Sudheer Birodkar, who has a cited blog on Indian history and culture, about eyewitness testimony as to the original cutting of the thumbs. As I noted previously I do believe this probably happened more than once, but it would be good to better substantiate those occurrences.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 07:36:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (4.00 / 2)

I saw that already when askod quoted it, but I don't find it credible. (The source, not the notion that the British colonial empire would condone such acts.) To be precise: it is a more or less detailed source on the much more gruesome slaughter in 1857 but a (secondary) source severely lacking in details on the late-18th-century thumbs-chopping claim, and I don't trust it on a correct paraphrasing of what it found in the original sources. This is because at the end of the first paragraph, it is conflating the East India Company's late 18th century monopoly enforcement for the selling of textile at a profit with the elimination of India's native weaving industry in the 1810s-1830s (which changed the equation for the Company, too). Thus, the lacking detail and inconsistency of the text throws up several questions and regarding possible (mis)interpretations:

What kind of archives did Open access in that library? Contemporary sources like the Surat Factory Diary or official letters, 100 year old books, 20 year old books? Or did it access any sources at all? (Similar claims are in the two years older The Telegraph - Calcutta article also quoted by askod, but without any sourcing.)
If Open didn't misread a source with a claim identical to William Bolts's, who were "the British" who were claimed to have chopped off fingers: soldiers, East India Company British agents, the Company's native agents, or local soldiers doing the dirty work? (Hand-chopping wasn't unheard of in Indian kingdoms, nor 'cooperation' with the British in the exploitation of the underclass.)
What was the reason for the claimed chopping according to the original source?
Were the 20 families who fled to the Nawab of Oudh specifically known to have fled after their thumbs were chopped, or before their thumbs were to be chopped, or have they just fled the Company's general oppression of weavers?
Do sources say that the reason for the killings was the persecution that happened to the killers' grandfathers and great-grandfathers, or is that the Open author's speculation? (The more detailed account in the linked article says nothing on motives; the Calcutta Telegraph article claims that the weavers settled in that village in the 1830s only; and a 2010 article in the Telegraph - India references an unspecified early 19th century British crackdown.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 10:47:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (none / 1)

BTW, here are two more original sources I skimmed yesterday:

A Letter from the Marquis Wellesley, Governor-general in Council ... (dated 19 July 1804): this was still written at the time India exported textile under the Company's monopoly. the then new Governor-general lambastes the Company's export monopoly with frequent allusion to (unspecified) inhumane and unjust practices vs. native workers (f.e. paragraphs 50-53), argues that giving freedom to workers is not actually against the Company1s interests (next two paragraphs), and suggests (in paragraph 47) that the purpose of the monopoly was not the exclusion of rival British traders but the total control of the weavers' labor and thus the profit from their trade.
In a 1831 parliamentary debate on the East India Company, in the testimony of a Mr. Robert Richards, there is a lengthy discussion of the Company's practice to coerce workers prior to 1811 [when he left India] (paragraph 2846). On several prior pages, Richards argues that the company1s 1813 claim that it conducts British-Indian trade at the highest level possible is not true and more would have been possible if natives were allowed free trade, and claims that authorities undermined an 1813 law partially lifting the Company's trade monopoly. (Other testimonies already discuss the then recent flood of British textile imports and consequent job loss for locals.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 11:43:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (none / 0)

The claims of cutting off of thumbs was passed down by oral tradition in the families of Mahua Dabar in Awadh, where, indeed, they had reestablished their trade by teaching their children to weave and had a successful village business in cloth manufacture until some of them exacted revenge on British officers for acts most likely committed by EIC officials or their local hirelings. Oral tradition is not proof, but it is substantiation and I, at least, would not dismiss it in this context.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:48:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Weavers' thumbs: a source (none / 1)

The destruction of Muhua Dabar was in 1857 but the slaughter of the British soldiers that provoked that destruction was revenge for the mutilation of their ancestors in the late 18th century by EIC operatives. In the late 18th century the British could find little that could compete legitimately in the Indian market, so they destroyed the competition by various means. The genocide in Muhua Dabar was retaliation for the descendents of those having thumbs cut off taking revenge.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:47:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Craftsmen: Superfine Saree Weavers of Bengal (4.00 / 2)

How British Rule Ruined the Life of of Artisans and Craftsman in India
From the very day, the British won the Battle of Plassey, the East India Company and its servant's exploited the craftsmen of Bengal. The British pursued the policy of coercion and terror. The artisans were forced to sell their products below the market price. The price was determined by the Company and it was not profitable for the craftsmen. The services and the labour of the craftsmen were hired at very low wages. It was impossible for the craftsmen to adopt their traditional profession.
So they were force to abandon those crafts. The worst affected were the weavers of Bengal and textile industry of Bengal was virtually closed. It was said that the thumbs of the weavers were cut off. Actually it meant that thousands of weavers were made jobless due to closure of weaving industry.
"While such fine skilled craftsmanship was much relevant in the middle ages. With the coming of mechanization, and mass production, craftsmanship became irrelevant and a waste of manpower. Whenever the British saw competition from craftsmen, it suppressed their arts as in the case of the cutting off the thumbs of the skilled superfine saree weavers of Bengal." [Source: link]

The India that achieved its freedom at midnight on August 14-15, 1947, was the product of several thousand years of history and civilization and, more immediately, of just under two hundred years of British colonial rule. Learned British econometricians have tried to establish that the net result of this experience was neutral--that the British put about as much into India as they took out. The negative side of the ledger is easily listed: economic exploitation (often undisguised looting of everything from raw materials to jewels); stunting of indigenous industry (symbolized by the deliberate barbarity with which, on at least two occasions, the British ordered the thumbs of whole communities of Indian weavers chopped off so that they could not compete with the products of Lancashire).
Source: India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond
Chapter 2 - Two Assassinations and a Funeral: The Death of a Dynasty by Shashi Tharoor

Tapas Chakraborty: Weavers of Mahua Dabar in Awadh

How William George Peppe became Hero For East India Company (1857)

'Sapere aude'

by Oui (Oui) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 10:35:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Craftsmen: Superfine Saree Weavers of Bengal (4.00 / 6)

Sudheer Birodkar does not give sources (source mentioned as "link") in first blockquote.

In India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond
Chapter 2 - Two Assassinations and a Funeral: The Death of a Dynasty by Shashi Tharoor Google books can only find one mention of "thumbs" and that is in relationship to the Thumbs up brand of cola.

But wikipedia links to a page that links to:

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | At Leisure | Found: Raj-razed town

"I began from zero. There was no trace of the town; the Basti district map had no reference to it," Ansari, a textile exporter who began his search in 1994, told The Telegraph. "But I was adamant. I had to verify what I had heard from family elders about the town that our ancestors had fled after the British razed it during the 1857 revolt."
His persistence prompted the then Basti district magistrate, R.N. Tripathi, to set up a committee of historians from Lucknow who, after 13 years of research, have now confirmed that the town indeed existed, at a spot 15km south of Basti town.
Ansari feels he has paid off a debt to his ancestors -- which is what some of his forbears in Mahua Dabar too must have felt when, in the first weeks of India's first war of independence, they attacked a boat carrying British soldiers.
They had reason to feel vengeful.
In the early 19th century, the East India Company, eager to promote British textiles, had cut off the hands of hundreds of weavers in Bengal.
Twenty weavers' families from Murshidabad and Nadia had then fled to Awadh, whose nawab resettled them in Mahua Dabar and allowed them to carry on with their livelihood.
Many of the first-generation weavers had already lost their hands, but they taught the craft to their sons and the small town of 5,000 people soon became a bustling handloom centre.
It was around March-April 1857 when Zaffar Ali, a young man whose grandfather had migrated from Bengal, spotted a boat coming down the Manorama (a tributary of the Ghagra) on whose banks the town was located.
The historians' report names the six soldiers beheaded: Lt T.E. Lindsay, Lt W.H. Thomas, Lt G.L. Caulty, Sgt Edwards and privates A.F. English and T.J. Richie.
On June 20 that year, the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry surrounded the town, slaughtered hundreds and set all the houses on fire. The Raj decreed that no one could live in the place from then on. On the colonial revenue records, the area was marked gair chiragi (non-revenue land).
Mahua Dabar ceased to exist.

The Telegraph - Calcutta (Kolkata) | At Leisure | Found: Raj-razed town

The historians' committee -- headed by V.P. Singh and including J.P.N. Tripathi, both former Lucknow University teachers -- kept digging into the district museum archives.

Yes, names! Haven't been able to find the actual report, but from an article about it:

Unearthing a Gory History | OPEN Magazine

Archives at the National Library in Kolkata, accessed by Open, show that the British chopped off the thumbs and hands of master weavers in Bengal, and many of them fled with their families to other parts of India. About 20 such families sought refuge from the Nawab of Oudh, who settled them at Mahua Dabar, a centre of weaving and dyeing near Basti.

So Indian sources it was.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 01:39:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

My Error (none / 0)

.
Same book, should be Chapter 1 - A Myth and An Idea - paragraph quote can de found on page 14.

My last link is also Indian sourced.

'Sapere aude'

by Oui (Oui) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 01:58:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

"Not so much productivity as political power" ...

... I don't see any contradiction to what I said, you've just gone into more detail how British textile production arrived at its productivity advantage by the mid-1800's. That alongside the tariffs on British steel rail in the US, are a big part of the inspiration infant industry development policy pursued in Latin America after WWII.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sun Sep 1st, 2013 at 07:15:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 3)

Well, if English textile could out-compete Indian without greater productivity, then it does not hinge on the productivity.

But mainly, you just triggered a pet peeve of mine.

Essentially, this view:

Whose thumbs were cut by the British in indian history? - Yahoo! Answers India

The British didn't cut off thumbs. They didn't need to. Their machine-made products were much cheaper and left the Indian buyers more money to spend on other things - including, eventually, weaving machinery.

Which is just far to common.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 03:47:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 3)

But that has the chronology wrong ... Western Europe was still a semi-peripheral region in the early 1800's, the catching up to and then passing East Asia did not occur until the middle of the 1800's.

Talking about actions of the East India Company in the late 1700's / early 1800's based upon the productivity advantage that English manufacture had developed by the 1850's is just a lazy reading of history, akin to the Eurocentric histories popular in the late 1800's which made the recent emergence of Europe as the core economy of Eurasia into an inevitable thing. Often including paeans to a Free Trade policy that would never have been of any use without the foundation of industrial development laid under the preceding protectionist policies.

The growth of English textiles in the Napoleonic Wars alongside growth in imports from India, and then the tariff protections once wartime demand began to ebb to protect the newly expanded domestic industry was only effective as infant industry industrial development because of the following increases in productivity. In 1813, most of it hadn't happened yet.

Much of this is obscured by the later fight to repeal protectionist policies once they had done their job and the industries that they had protected no longer required that protection.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 04:51:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

I found contemporary texts discussing the plight of Indian weavers as a consequence of cheaper imports produced with the power-loom. The texts date to the 1830s, and the problems described appeared in the 1810s.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:34:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

I found one of these sources again: it's in an 1841 newspaper and includes actual numbers on the dramatic decline in Indian exports.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:39:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 3)

And look at the details:

In 1800, 800,000 pieces of Indian cotton to the US, in 1930, "not 400"

In 1800, 1,000,000 to Portugal, in 1830, only 20,000.

Placing the Indian transition from net exporter of cotton textiles to net importer due to the productivity of English power looms as already having happened by 1813 is quite clearly premature. It happened in the decades after the ending of the Napoleonic Wars.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:48:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

Yes, your point in the diary stands, but I reacted to "the middle of the 1800's" and "by the 1850's": it happened two decades earlier.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 06:07:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 0)

But it wasn't an event, it was an extended ongoing process. The evidence you present that it was ongoing several decades earlier does nothing establish that it was completed by the 1830's, which is what you require to contradict my contention that the process was not completed until the 1850's.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 08:28:01 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

99.5% and 98% drops in export represent a pretty much finished state.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 12:06:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 0)

For the Indian domestic economy its only one step to the position that British textiles held in Indian domestic markets by the 1850's. It may have been inevitable once Indian textile exports were no longer a lucrative source of trade incomes for the East India Company, but inevitable or not, a process is not complete until it has played itself out.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 02:23:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 2)

That source, Fleet Papers, was presenting argumentation to British readers dealing with issues such as The Corn Laws and seems to have been misrepresenting, either deliberately or, more likely, through ignorance of the timing of the developments of the British Industrial Revolution, as it tries to claim that the cause of the unemployment of Indian weavers in ca. 1813 was superior British productivity and, worse, that this had been the entire reason for the collapse of Indian cloth manufacture.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 01:12:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

The Fleet Papers source of 1841 is actually quoting a Dr. John Bowring (MP for Kilmarnock District of Burghs) from a parliamentary hearing on hand-loom weavers on 28 July 1835 (which can be found in full here) and makes no claim about "the unemployment of Indian weavers in ca. 1813". It does claim that the entire reason for the collapse of Indian cloth manufacture between 1800 and 1830 was "the presence of the cheaper English manufacture, the production by the power-loom", which does add up (the manufacture did not collapse under the violently enforced East India Company monopoly half a century earlier).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 09:36:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 0)

It would appear that the "violently enforced East India Company monopoly" of ~ 1760-1810 had the effect of sheltering the development of a machine powered cloth industry in England by creating a market for that product in England and its colonies. Other parts of India continued to produce and export cloth to countries such as the US and Portugal until the price and quality of the power loom produced cloth drove them out of business later in the 19th century.

Somewhere in my recent reading of online sources, (keeping track of them through the jumble of comments is getting difficult), it appeared that a description about the cutting of thumbs was by Wilson and followed directly from the quotation of H H Wilson in the 1848 History of British India that both askod and I have cited. This was separate from Chang's quote of the same passage. This would be significant as Wilson had been in India as early as 1808 and learned to read the local languages. Many people who had witnessed the events of 1760 to 1808 were still present, and Wilson, while critical of EIC actions, seems unlikely to have invented or uncritically accepted invented stories.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 01:33:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 3)

The productivity improvements in textiles was from 1760 through to 1860, and it was in the mid-1860's that 2/3 of British cotton goods and 1/3 of British woolens were exported.

Any comparison of the pressures faced by Indian cotton textile producers that conflates the 1760's, 1810's and 1860's is going to give a deceptive picture.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 05:42:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (none / 1)

I apologise for this derailment by nitpicking the 1850s; just to be clear: you correctly point out that the guy in the Yahoo! Answers quote tries to explain away thumb-cutting with something that happened after them (whether they happened in the early 19th century or the second half of the 18th century).

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 06:16:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 2)

Politically speaking, from the late 18th century to the early 19th century the East India Company was more and more government controlled and less and less about (monopolized) trade and more about administration.

So the thump cuttings stories or at least their true core seem to belong in the late 18th century, when the Company was still a trade monopoly, less supervised and indian textile exports still relevant.

by IM on Tue Sep 3rd, 2013 at 12:29:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 2)

Indeed, the Act of 1933 stripped the East India Company of many of its earlier export monopolies, though not opium, and surely it is no coincidence that the period 1815-1835 was the collapse of Indian textile export markets and 1835-1855 the growing dominance of UK textile in domestic Indian textile markets. The Act of 1833 seems to represent in part the East India Company surrendering trade monopolies that were no longer lucrative, with the period 1935-1855 demonstrating their incapacity to operate as the de facto imperial government of the subcontinent.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Sep 4th, 2013 at 02:17:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Did it again ... the Act of 1833 (none / 0)

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Sep 10th, 2013 at 10:44:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes (4.00 / 5)

The sordid history of the British in India also came to be a factor in the American Revolution. Thomas Paine was aware of the details of some of the most disgusting aspects of British East India Company activities, including artificially induced famines, tying native 'recruits' unwilling to fight across the mouth of a cannon and firing the cannon , etc. and wrote of this in Philadelphia, among other places. He argued that the state backed monstrous behavior of the British East India Company in India was a harbinger of what was to come in the American Colonies. And, of course, it was British East India Company tea that was famously dumped into Boston Harbor during the original Boston Tea Party. The relationship between the British East India Company and the British Government of the time is not too dissimilar to that between large corporations and the US government of today. May the outcome of the current example be as propitious.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Sep 2nd, 2013 at 04:05:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

The Sunset Empire Shudders and Shakes | 67 comments (67 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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