The British first came to trade in Indian textiles that were in great demand all over the world. India accounted for one fourth of the world’s manufactured goods in the seventeenth century. There were a million weavers in Bengal alone in the era of the Maharani of Travancore (1930). Note the Western shoes and the modest long-sleeved blouse. This style had become common among the upper classes by the early twentieth century. However, the Industrial Revolution in Britain, which mechanized spinning and weaving and greatly increased the demand for raw materials such as cotton and indigo, changed India’s status in the world economy.

Political control of India helped the British in two ways: Indian peasants could be forced to grow crops such as indigo, and cheap British manufacture easily replaced coarser Indian one. Large numbers of Indian weavers and spinners were left without work, and important Muslin textile weaving centers such as Murshidabad, Machilipatnam and Surat declined as demand fell. Yet by the middle of the twentieth century, large numbers of people began boycotting British or mill-made cloth and adopting khadi, even though it was coarser, more expensive and difficult to obtain.