The cotton industry has become a global industry
The journey of cotton
There are at least three stages from cotton to fabric. Growing, spinning and weaving. To the best of our knowledge, his cotton technique developed independently in at least three regions of the world (South Asia, Central America and East Africa) and spread to the rest of the world. Through migration and trade routes, it went north from Mesoamerica. From East Africa to West Africa. The subcontinent played a key role in this. From there his expertise spread and Asia became the center of the global cotton industry and remained so until the middle of the nineteenth century. The center then moved to Europe, and by the end of the twentieth century it had returned to Asia.
Cotton traveled west from India. Via Turkestan to the Middle East and then to the Mediterranean. It reached Persia, Mesopotamia and the Palestinian territories 2,000 years ago. It was cultivated as far as Nineveh, Assyria and Anatolia. Like Africa, the advent of Islam played an important role in spreading its skills of growing, spinning and weaving in the Middle East.
The "cotton boom" came to Iran in the ninth and tenth centuries. Cotton Sent to urban centers here. Most to Baghdad. During his travels, Marco Polo saw cotton and cotton fabrics everywhere from Armenia to Prussia.
It also went east from India and especially to China. China is today the center of the world's cotton industry, but the plant is not native here. In Chinese, the words for cotton and its fiber are derived from Sanskrit. It had reached China in 200 BC. But for the next thousand years it was confined to the southwestern frontier.
The art spread to China during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD). And it replaced Rami, which was the traditional fiber in China in addition to silk. Until 1433, the Chinese people could pay their taxes in the form of cotton. Through this tax, the government provided clothing to soldiers and government officials.
The Ming dynasty, which came after the Yuan dynasty, was expansionist. During the Chinese conquests of this period, cotton production reached new heights. By the time his rule ended in 1644, China had produced 20 million bales a year. Farmers in the north sold raw cotton to people living near the Yangtze River. Textiles were made here, some of which were sold back to the north. A quarter of the trade in the Chinese Empire was cotton. Until the seventeenth century, almost all Chinese women, men and children wore cotton clothes. When the Chinese population doubled in the eighteenth century (reaching 400 million), its cotton industry was the second largest after India. In 1750, the annual production had reached 700 million kilograms, which was equal to the production of the United States.
Cotton technology spread from India to Southeast Asia. With the development of production skills, cotton cloth became the second most valuable commodity after food.
Buddhist monks took it to Java between the third and fifth centuries. Much later, between 1525 and 1550, cotton cultivation reached Japan. By the seventeenth century, it had become an important crop in Japan. Small farmers used to grow it with rice to earn extra income to pay taxes. With its arrival in Japan, India's cotton culture had spread to almost all of Asia.
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African, American and Asian farmers and weavers have been working for thousands of years. Cotton and cloth were produced on a small scale. It used to happen in homes. Some farmers sold their cotton in the market. Many times there was trade for a long time and many rulers also paid a part of it but no farmer depended only on the cotton crop. And so it was in many parts of the world until the twentieth century.
It was grown with other crops. In the Maya civilization, it was cultivated with lentils and corn. In West Africa, it was grown in the middle of the millet crop. In Gujarat, its bushes were planted between rows of rice. Before the eighteenth century, it was rare to grow only cotton on a plot of land. And where such a monoculture arose, as well as hunger because it needed land and labor. It could not be eaten. In such a case, the availability of food in the market depended on its price.
Like cotton cultivation, its industry was at home and remained so until the nineteenth century. It was a family industry in the Aztecs, Africa, China, Asia and the Ottoman Empire. At home, the family made clothes for themselves. Some were sold in the market.
The requirement to work on the field varied with the weather. Cotton would be broken and stored, and work would be done when there was not much work to be done. The women had to do the housework and also usually made clothes by spinning the wheel.
In every society there has been a gender divide in labor. In almost all cultures, women have been involved in textile production. With the exception of a few civilizations, women have the job of spinning. Spinning did not require continuity. Spinning could be done when there was time for household chores, including childcare and cooking. The connection was so deep that in many places women were buried with their wheelbarrows. In some cultures, including India, weaving has been done by men, while in China and North Africa it has been done by women. The gender division of labor later appeared in the factory system as well.
In the eighteenth century before the mechanical revolution, it took an Asian woman a month to spin a pound of cotton and a month to make ten yards of cloth. Since it was "free" labor, there was little focus on increasing productivity. Another aspect was that where the rulers imposed higher taxes, they did not focus on selling their labor in the market. It was only for domestic needs.
Another aspect was the shortage of raw material supply. Raw cotton could not be shipped remotely. Transportation was limited. Until the turn of the nineteenth century, a large portion of cotton was harvested within a few miles of its place of growth.
From sowing crops to becoming cloth was a laborious task, so it was very valuable. In Aztec, China, and Africa, the tax was levied on clothing. Textiles continued to be used as currency in China, Africa, South Asia and Mesopotamia. It could have been taken away, it wouldn't have gone bad. Food and other products were bought in exchange for clothes.
India remained at its center. In 1647, the Ottoman official complained, “Gujarati merchants empty our coffers in exchange for Indian products. Wealth is accumulating in India. ”
In the sixteenth century, fifteen loaded ships used to reach Malacca in the east. In 1503, the Italian merchant de Vartma wrote of the Gujarati port of Kambe, "From this city all goods reach Persia, Tatar, Turkey, Syria, Ethiopia, and Berber." In Sanskrit, the word kardapasi, used for cotton products, entered many languages. There are similar words for clothes in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, Arabic, Armenian, Malay, Uighur, Mongolian and Chinese.
Initially the domestic industry was transformed into a global industry in the eleventh century due to increasing demand and it was the first genre to have global consumers. The growing demand created professional weavers in India whose job it was to create long-distance trade and wealth to pay tribute to the rulers. There was a textile workshop in Dhaka where cloth was made for the Mughal family under strict supervision. It was the first workshop in Andhra Pradesh in the fifteenth century to have more than one khadi. Bengal was famous for muslin. For coromandel splinters and sticks. Surat for all kinds of cheap clothes. In the Indian caste system, weavers were on the rise.
(to be continued)
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