The attempt to introduce new methods of silk reeling into Bengal was not an isolated experiment. Trading companies and settler organizations such as the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia and the Virginia Company were keen to adopt sericulture and silk processing technologies also in other parts of the British Empire, especially in North America. All these attempts were supported by the British government through exemption on tariffs etc. – thus attesting the government’s interest to secure imports of raw silk from overseas dependent territories. It is important to perceive the English East India Company’s attempts to expand import of Bengal raw silk to Britain in the framework of other initiatives because the Company’s plan was guided by similar logic. At the same time, however, the attempt to introduce new silk processing technologies to Bengal has a special role in the history of silk technology transfers to the British colonies. In comparison to attempts to adopt sericulture and silk reeling in North America, silk production in Bengal was successful. Moreover, it was the only project that was carried out in a country already producing raw silk.
The first attempt to promote the overseas production of raw silk for the market took place in the seventeenth century and was initiated by James I in 1623.6 The plan and the king’s involvement was described by L. P. Brockett: “he [James I.] sent over the mulberry trees and the silk-worm eggs, and directed the company that who were
6 Gerald B. Hertz, ‘The English Silk Industry in the Eighteenth Century’, English Historical Review 24 (96), 1909, p. 716. Attempts to produce raw silk in England and its colonies were among the “new agricultural projects” initiated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 7; Charles E. Hatch, Jr., ‘Mulberry Trees and Silkworms: Sericulture in Early Virginia’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 65 (1), 1957, p. 3.
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managing the colony to follow up his order by suitable legislation.”7 In spite of the
encouragement in the form of financial rewards for planters producing silk and fines for those failing to cultivate mulberry trees, the project was unsuccessful. In comparison to tobacco production, silk was less profitable and the project of promoting raw silk production in Virginia was abandoned.8
Georgia was another of the several North American colonies that introduced raw silk production. According to Ben Marsh, the trustees advertised their keen interest to cultivate silk (together with wine) in order to appeal to the British Parliament and public to gain support and funding for the setting up of the colony.9 Marsh contends that in the first few years after the new colony was established, the trustees of the Georgia colony devoted considerable effort and funding to the implementation of silk production. The biggest challenge they faced was to secure a labour force willing to take up silk production and skilled enough for the task.10 To attract labour, the trustees offered financial, technological, and educational support as well as salaries, bounties, and bonuses.11 They also imported equipment and specialist literature, and institutionalised apprenticeship.12 In spite of these efforts, the experiment turned out to
be unsuccessful in the long term. Georgia lacked labour sufficiently skilled in silk production to succeed. By the 1780s sericulture was practically extinct. Mulberry
7 Linus Pierpont Brockett, The Silk Industry in America: A History (New York: George F. Nesbitt & Co., 1876), p. 26.
8 Hatch, Jr., ‘Mulberry Trees and Silkworms’, pp. 4-5, 9 and 50-61.
9 Ben Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony (London: University of Georgia Press, 2007), p. 53.
10 James C. Bonner pointed to the fact that labour was generally scarce in Georgia and that the fact that sericulture could rely on the cheaper labour of women and children was consired as an advantage. However, the labour force in Georgia lacked knowledge of sericulture. James C. Bonner, ‘Silk Growing in the Georgia Colony’, Agricultural History 43 (1), 1969, p. 143-44.
11 Ibid., p. 144.
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cultivation proved to be competing for land with rice and corn cultivation. Furthermore, knowledge of sericulture and silk reeling never became widespread in Georgia.13
Attempts to adopt silk production were made also in South Carolina and Connecticut in the eighteenth century. The silk produced in South Carolina was supposed to be of very high quality. Brockett argued in the nineteenth century that South Carolina’s raw silk was “said by Thomas Lombe… to have been equal or superior to any of the Italian”.14 In Connecticut, silk production was taken up in the
1750s and was supported by bounties towards mulberry cultivation. Silk production was attempted in various other places in North America such as New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Maryland. However, none of these places became important producers of raw silk.15 These attempts either failed altogether or at best, silk production was carried
out on a small scale as a domestic manufacture until the middle of the nineteenth century when it finally disappeared.16
According to Hertz, attempts to establish raw silk production in the American colonies failed because of high wages. Hertz points to the fact that both nominal and real wages were higher than in Italy – the main European producer of reeled and thrown silk.17 Slave labour could not be used because of the skills required. Ben Marsh argues that the high costs of labour combined with a lack of knowledge of sericulture and silk
13 Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women, pp. 56 and 59-61; Bonner, ‘Silk Growing in the Georgia Colony’, p. 144.
14 Brockett, Silk Industry in America, p. 29.
15 Nelson Klose, ‘Sericulture of the United States’, Agricultural History 37 (4), 1963, pp. 225-34. 16 Ibid., pp. 34-35.
17 Hertz, ‘English Silk Industry’, p. 718. He agrees with John Habakkuk’s thesis that the high wages and labour scarcity induced the adoption of labour-saving technologies in Antebellum America. John Habakkuk, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labor-Saving Inventions (London: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 4-11.
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reeling were the prime reasons for the failure of raw silk production in Georgia.18
Similar explanations for the failure of raw silk production in the American colonies were also given by Brockett.19 Yet he also draws attention to the competitive pressures that silk production was subject to in the colonies. In Virginia, silk had to compete with tobacco cultivation, and in Georgia with cotton and agricultural crops.20 Moreover, both Brockett and James C. Bonner observed the fact that the export trade was badly affected by the War of Independence, which left the American silk producers without a market.21
Another factor that undermined silk processing in North America was ‘imperfect reeling’. Problems with the quality of reeled silk were experienced in most of the areas of silk production in the world, perhaps only with the exception of Italy and China. This was the result of the technological problems, principal-agent problems, and the low quality of cocoons. Often one or more of these factors were present simultaneously, as for example in Bengal. It has been argued that in North America the problem lied principally in reeling, as noted by Brockett when he observed that the cocoons were excellent but that the reeling was very poor.22 The poor quality of reeled silk had damaging effects on the quality of woven textiles and was thus frequently addressed as a matter of priority. In most of North America hand-reel was used for reeling. In Georgia attempts were made to innovate silk reeling. The trustees in Georgia relied mostly on Italian immigrants to acquire the necessary knowledge of silk processing. Among the people who were entrusted to promote silk production in Georgia was Pickering Robinson, a silk specialist who was later commissioned by the
18 Marsh, Georgia’s Frontier Women, pp. 56-61.
19 The importance of having access to cheap labour for succeeding in the production of raw silk was also pointed out by Giovanni Federico, An Economic History of Silk Industry, 1830-1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 14-15.
20 Brockett, Silk Industry in America, pp. 28-29; Marsh, Georgia´s Frontier Women, p. 56.
21 Brockett, Silk Industry in America, pp. 28-29; Bonner, ‘Silk Growing in the Georgia Colony’, p. 147. 22 Brockett, The Silk Industry in America, p. 32.
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EEIC to supervise the adoption of Piedmontese silk reeling technology in Bengal.23 In
spite of the support, attempts to innovate silk reeling technologies ultimately failed. The failure attests to the difficulties presented by setting up silk production in new world areas. All these attempts to adopt silk processing technologies in the American colonies also attests to the importance given to supplying the British silk weaving sector with raw silk produced in areas directly or indirectly dependent on the British crown. Both the trading and settler companies followed mercantilist reasoning and made silk production one of the goals of their policies. The British government supported these efforts directly by supplying mulberry trees and silkworms, and more frequently indirectly by exempting raw silk from duties.24
2.2.The English East India Company’s Finance and Bengal Raw Silk after