The organizational, technical and gender divisions of labour of the eighteenth-century silk industries in India, China, and Europe show many differences. The geographical division of labour in India, was however, similar to Europe and China. In all these regions, silkworm rearing and mulberry cultivation were carried out in rural areas. Silk reeling was also mostly carried out in rural areas or in close proximity to sericulture.64 These regional similarities are due to the technological limitations of eighteenth-century silk production – there was no method to preserve cocoons for long periods of time, and without timely reeling the quality of cocoons deteriorated.65
63 Ibid., 15 January 1759.
64 Davini, ‘History of Bengali Raw Silk’, p. 6.
65 The long-distance transportation of cocoons was not possible until the method of the drying of cocoons developed in the nineteenth century because without drying cocoons easily got spoilt. Claudio Zanier, ‘Silk and Weavers of Silk in Medieval Peninsular India’ (Unpublished Paper presented at the Conference ‘Historical Systems of Innovation: The Culture of Silk in the Early Modern World (14th-18th Centuries)’, Berlin, December 2010).
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Source: British Library, 10327952, Piedmontese Silk Manufacturing, Antonio Alessandro Scarselli, Miniature, Italy, 18th Century, © De Agostini/British Library Board.
Figure 1.4. Images of Silk Reeling in China and Piedmont
Before the EEIC’s direct involvement in silk production, gendered divisions of labour were similar in many instances in Bengal, Europe and China. Women reared silkworms, while mulberry cultivation was a male task.66 There were however
differences. In Europe and China silk reeling was a female occupation; in India, however, it was undertaken by men and women (Figure 1.2).67 Figure 1.4 illustrates the gender division in Europe and China. When compared to Figure 1.2, the differences in gender division among China, Europe and Bengal clearly stand out. In India men were
66 Jordan Goodman, ‘Cloth, Gender and Industrial Organization towards an Anthropology of Silkworkers in Early Modern Europe’, in Cavaciocchi (ed.), La Seta in Europa, p. 231.
67 Kuhn, ‘Textile Technology’, p. 204; Goodman, ‘Cloth, Gender and Industrial Organization’, p. 231.
Source: British Library, 081649, Geng Zhi Tu – Silk Reeling, 15268.b.2, Jiao Bingzhen, China, 1696, © British Library.
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involved if reeling was carried out by cuttanies instead of being done in the households.68 As argued by Jordan Goodman, the gender division of labour in the silk industry was different compared to other European textile industries. Goodman illustrates how at least the first part of the proverb ‘women spin and men weave’ was inaccurate for the European silk industry, as throwing and spinning were typically done by men.69 In India men were involved in the production of silk even more heavily.
Moreover, the Company’s demand for raw silk created new demand for male re- winders.70
In China silk production relied predominantly on small-scale, peasant households. Several imperial workshops were established but large scale-production was not widespread.71 Sericulture was a labour-intensive activity and as argued by
Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, the supervision of sericulture (the processes of mulberry cultivation and silkworm rearing) would have been expensive. Therefore, they argue that “decentralized production evolved as the cost effective choice”.72 Moreover,
reeling was also organised on the household level, particularly due to inexpensive hand- reeling machines that peasants could afford.73 Therefore, the organisation of the Chinese
silk industry was similar to the Bengal silk industry, although in China the government
68 This is illustrated in [G.L.], 1775 fol.: Williamson, Proposals, pp.17-8, it can be observed also from the images.
69 Goodman, ‘Cloth, Gender and Industrial Organization’, pp. 231-34.
70 Although this is not explicitly stated in any document, the materials make no allusion to re-releers being female.
71 The number of imperial workshops expanded particularly during the seventeenth century. It is said that the workshops in Hangchow, Nanking and Soochow employed some 7,000 artisans and 1,863 looms in 1685. Flynn and Giraldez, ‘Silk for Silver’, p. 54.
72 Ibid., p. 36.
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was active in promoting silk production. Silk production was particularly promoted through taxation, which indirectly favoured an increase in the quality of production.74
The organization of production was a key difference between silk industries in Europe and India. Sericulture and silk reeling were less centralized and less specialized in India than Europe.75 In Europe and India sericulture was carried out at household level but because of the different number of harvests a year, the requirement of labour differed between the two world regions. In Europe there was one crop a year and peasants did not need to focus exclusively on sericulture. In Italy, the major European producer of raw silk, mulberries were cultivated on the edges of fields or intermixed with other crops and their cultivation did not require large amounts of labour.76 In Bengal there were between three and six harvests a year and mulberry trees were cultivated as shrubs, which meant that their cultivation required more labour and land than in Italy.77 If a peasant family decided to engage in sericulture in Bengal, the whole family had to be involved: men in mulberry planting, women in silkworm rearing and silk reeling. As a result sericulture was a “marginal, and low intensity activity” in Italy, it was a comparatively more land- and labour-intensive in Bengal.78
In Europe sericulture became a highly centralized sector under the influence of merchant-entrepreneurs and guilds.79 Silk reeling was also highly centralized. Master artisans retained control over specialised knowledge and possession of their tools but they came under the control of the merchant-entrepreneurs and the jurisdiction of guild
74 Flynn and Giraldez, ‘Silk for Silver’, p. 36. 75 Davini, ‘History of Bengali Raw Silk’, pp. 7-9. 76 Ibid., p. 8.
77 Ibid., p. 8, IOR, Bombay (Misc. Public Documents, etc.)., 1793.m.17: ‘Letter from Giuseppe Mutti’. 78 Davini, ‘History of Bengali Raw Silk’, p. 8.
79 Luce Boulnois, The Silk Road (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 214; Molà, Silk Industry, p. xiv; Franco Franceschi, Florence and Silk in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of a Long and Felicitous Union (Fiesole: Edizioni Cadmo, 1995), pp. 5 and 7-9.
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regulations.80 In these cases in which silk was produced through a putting-out system,
merchants owned the material throughout the whole production cycle and artisans were paid for their work by the piece.81 The most advanced systems of raw silk production in Europe were rather different. Several new features in the organization of production such as reeling in factory-like establishments, time wages in reeling etc. were developed in Piedmont in order to ensure the high-quality reeling and efficient production.82
In comparison to Europe, the system of organization of production in India allowed the producers more independence.83 Raw silk was produced under a system similar to the European putting-out system.84 However, as the towns and villages which cultivated mulberries and reared silkworms were scattered, alongside the EEIC’s requirement that silk needed to be rewound before exportation, meant that production of silk thread became increasingly fragmented.85 There were at least three stages: mulberry planting and silkworm rearing; reeling; and the re-reeling of silk and each was carried out by a different producer.
80 Molà, Silk Industry, p. xiv, In Florence spinners, weavers and dyers were forbidden to establish their own organizations and had to follow the regulations of the silk guild. In Lyon, the sector was regulated by La Fabrique Lyonnais. Franceschi, Florence and Silk, pp. 9 and 16.
81 Franceschi, Florence and Silk, pp. 8-9. 82 Davini, ‘History of Bengali Raw Silk’, p. 15.
83 Riello, Cotton, pp. 62-64; Bishnupriya Gupta, ‘Competition and Control in the Market for Textiles: Indian Silk Weavers and the English East India Company in the Eighteenth Century’, in Riello and Roy (eds.), How India Clothed the World, pp. 292-97.
84 The putting-out system varied in different parts of Europe. Thus, it is no surprise that it is still disputed whether the concept can also be applied to pre-modern Asia. In the case of the silk industry it is possible to argue along the lines of Frank Perlin, who argued that the system of organization of production in pre- colonial South Asia was similar to that of the rural industries of Europe. Frank Perlin,‘Proto- Industrialization and Pre-Colonial South Asia’, Past and Present 98 (1), 1983, pp. 84-94.
85 [G.L.], 1775 fol.: Williamson, Proposals, p. 15. The organization of production in pre-modern India was dependent on a large number of intermediaries also in other sectors. For cotton textile production in India see: Riello, Cotton, pp. 63-64.
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