Connecting the Indian Ocean World by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000841589
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the reasons behind the rapid growth of Pondicherry’s textile industry in the early 19th century and argued that political, economic, and social situations in both France and Senegal around 1830 shaped the trajectory of the industrial development in a South Asian colonial city in the following decades. Senegal served as the sole large market for guinées produced in Pondicherry at that time, but the other side of the coin is that there was “the precariousness of Pondicherry’s export-driven industrial strategy”, to borrow Roberts’s phrase (Roberts 1996a: 155). Nonetheless, the European reliance on Indian guinées for the gum trade in Senegal led to the survival of non-European products in the age of industrialisation (Kobayashi 2019: 201).

In the early 19th century, Pondicherry was rebuilt under the initiative of the Governor of Desbassayns de Richemont, who felt an increasing threat from the competition from the British machine-made textiles, and the colonial port city witnessed the development of textile industry in which the steam machine was introduced to spin cotton yarns. However, in France, Pondicherry’s manufactured goods faced a tough challenge of the French protectionist policies that not only prohibited guinées to enter the metropolitan markets but also banned direct trading between colonies. Under these circumstances, Senegal offered the largest market for guinées, so these indigo-blue cotton textiles were trans-shipped via the French ports such as Bordeaux into Saint Louis, from which guinées were further carried along the lower Senegal River to be exchanged for gum arabic there.

The demand in Senegal for guinées also hinged on the combination of multiple factors. The existing works on the guinée trade revealed the consumer’s preference for the quality of guinées produced in Pondicherry instead of that of European imitations, and its influence on the trade in gum arabic and thereby on the development of industrialisation in Western Europe. Such a consumers’ choice had its roots in the tradition of local textile production, social meaning of wearing dyed or/and imported fabrics, and the regional ecology. In addition, this chapter cast light on the significance of the extensive circuits of guinées as another reason of the lasing demand for the Indian textiles. One circuit extended from Saint Louis of Senegal via the lower Senegal River into the Sahara Desert, which required guinées to be constantly supplied from outside West Africa to maintain the monetary role in market transactions in West Africa. Another extended from Saint Louis through the lower Senegal River into the upper river and eventually reached what is western part of modern Mali.

To sum up, the production and supply of guinées in Pondicherry increased from around 1830 through interactions with global circumstances. To put it another way, economic linkages that connected the Indian Ocean with the Atlantic made contribution to the rebuilding of Pondicherry during the 19th century.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.