Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not provides a striking new answer to the classic question of why Europe industrialised from the late eighteenth century and Asia did not. Drawing significantly from ...the case of India, Prasannan Parthasarathi shows that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the advanced regions of Europe and Asia were more alike than different, both characterized by sophisticated and growing economies. Their subsequent divergence can be attributed to different competitive and ecological pressures that in turn produced varied state policies and economic outcomes. This account breaks with conventional views, which hold that divergence occurred because Europe possessed superior markets, rationality, science or institutions. It offers instead a groundbreaking rereading of global economic development that ranges from India, Japan and China to Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire and from the textile and coal industries to the roles of science, technology and the state.
This essay was delivered as a keynote presentation by Professor Prasannan Parthasarathi at a conference, Historical Threads, held at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum in November 2022. Up to ...that point, many of us in the audience had probably felt reasonably knowledgeable about the role of cotton production in the growth of Manchester and in what we call the Industrial Revolution. This essay was a revelation, presenting an entirely new, global perspective on the long history of international cotton trading, and positioning Manchester’s growth as a competitive response to what had for centuries been an Indian success story; one that was swiftly rewritten by nineteenth century British historians and industrialists. This museum has for over thirty years featured a much-loved Textiles Gallery, highlighting regional innovations, such as Richard Arkwright’s water frame, and the global and social impact of industrialisation and mass production methods developed in and around Manchester. But we have never told the story that is told in this essay, nor properly framed Manchester’s growth within a world context. The museum, as part of the Science Museum Group, is now committed to presenting more inclusive narratives, developing displays to feature previously untold stories and provide global perspectives. There are few more painful or problematic histories than that of the cotton trade, and this conference was a first step towards creating a ‘Cottonopolis’ gallery, which will set Manchester’s textile history in a bigger, harsher yet ultimately richer context. This essay is a first step towards that retelling. Note: Professor Parthasarathi is the first in a series of keynote speakers who will be invited to give presentations on subjects crucial to the Group’s major projects or research themes and whose lectures will be published in the Science Museum Group Journal. Note: Professor Parthasarathi is the first in a series of keynote speakers who will be invited to give presentations on subjects crucial to the Group’s major projects or research themes and whose lectures will be made available online and published in the Science Museum Group Journal.
This essay was delivered as a keynote presentation by Professor Prasannan Parthasarathi at a conference, Historical Threads, held at Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum in November 2022. Up to ...that point, many of us in the audience had probably felt reasonably knowledgeable about the role of cotton production in the growth of Manchester and in what we call the Industrial Revolution. This essay was a revelation, presenting an entirely new, global perspective on the long history of international cotton trading, and positioning Manchester’s growth as a competitive response to what had for centuries been an Indian success story; one that was swiftly rewritten by nineteenth century British historians and industrialists. This museum has for over thirty years featured a much-loved Textiles Gallery, highlighting regional innovations, such as Richard Arkwright’s water frame, and the global and social impact of industrialisation and mass production methods developed in and around Manchester. But we have never told the story that is told in this essay, nor properly framed Manchester’s growth within a world context. The museum, as part of the Science Museum Group, is now committed to presenting more inclusive narratives, developing displays to feature previously untold stories and provide global perspectives. There are few more painful or problematic histories than that of the cotton trade, and this conference was a first step towards creating a ‘Cottonopolis’ gallery, which will set Manchester’s textile history in a bigger, harsher yet ultimately richer context. This essay is a first step towards that retelling. Note: Professor Parthasarathi is the first in a series of keynote speakers who will be invited to give presentations on subjects crucial to the Group’s major projects or research themes and whose lectures will be published in the Science Museum Group Journal. Note: Professor Parthasarathi is the first in a series of keynote speakers who will be invited to give presentations on subjects crucial to the Group’s major projects or research themes and whose lectures will be made available online and published in the Science Museum Group Journal.
With a focus by scholars on states and classes, the environment of India and its impact on agriculture has been neglected, except to provide a context—which was largely unchanging—in which states ...extracted and classes struggled. One example of environment as the backdrop is the distinction between 'wet' and 'dry' areas in Tamilnad and South India more widely. This distinction is based on the availability of water and on the local categorization of agricultural activity (nanjai versus punjai). There are two problems with this approach, however. First, it is a narrow treatment of the environment as it neglects other features of the land such as forests, grasslands, scrublands, and other so-called wasteland. Second, it sees the environment as a fixed entity, but the landscape has changed dramatically in the past, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. If changes in the environment are included in the mix, the development of agriculture in nineteenth-century Tamilnad may be seen in some new ways. Agricultural production existed in symbiosis with the complex and varied environment of the region. In the early nineteenth century Tamilnad contained extensive tracts of forests, widespread wastelands, and abundant surface water. This diverse environment made it possible to maintain high levels of agricultural productivity as it provided the resources to maintain the fertility of the soil and the supplies of water that were critical for agricultural enterprise, as well as the well-being of the rural population. The consequences of changing regimes of water is the focus of this article.
spinning world Riello, Giorgio; Parthasarathi, Prasannan
2009, 2011
Book
Cotton textiles were the first good to achieve a truly global reach. For many centuries muslins and calicoes from the Indian subcontinent were demanded in the trading worlds of the Indian Ocean and ...the eastern Mediterranean. After 1500, new circuits of exchange were developed. Of these, the early-modern European craze for Indian calicoes and the huge nineteenth-century export trade in Lancashire goods, and subsequent deindustrialization of the Indian subcontinent, are merely the best known. These episodes, although of great importance, far from exhaust the story of cotton. They are well known because of the enormous research energy that has been devoted to them, but other important elements of cotton's long history are deserving of similar attention. The purpose of this collection of essays is to examine the history of cotton textiles at a global level over the period 1200-1850. This volume sheds light on new answers to two questions: what is it about cotton that made it the paradigmatic first global commodity? And second, why did cotton industries in different parts of the world follow different paths of development? Essays included in the volume are authored by 19 scholars from eight different nations, all of whom are specialists in the study of textiles. They are drawn from a range of sub-disciplines within history and bring together their areas and periods of specialization to provide a global history. Therefore, the volume covers a wide variety of approaches to the study of history, which is essential for constructing a global picture. Some of the contributors are internationally well known for their publications on the history of cotton, as well as other textiles in different world areas. The volume also draws upon the research of a number of younger scholars whose work will form the core of the future development of textile history as a global discipline. Contributors to this volume - Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi Prasannan Parthasarathi Harriet T. Zurndorfer Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui Suraiya Faroqhi Colleen E. Kriger William Gervase Clarence-Smith Om Prakash Pedro Machado Kayoko Fujita Beverly Lemire Robert S. DuPlessis Marta Valentin Vicente Giorgio Riello Olivier Raveux John Styles Pat Hudson Patrick O'Brien Masayuki Tanimoto Bozhong Li Prasannan Parthasarathi and Ian Wendt
According to widespread belief, poverty and low standards of living have been characteristic of India for centuries. Challenging this view, Prasannan Parthasarathi demonstrates that, until the late ...eighteenth century, labouring groups in South India, those at the bottom of the social order, were in a powerful position, receiving incomes well above subsistence. The decline in their economic fortunes, the author asserts, was a process initiated towards the end of that century, with the rise of colonial rule. Building on revisionist interpretations, he examines the transformation of Indian society and its economy under British rule through the prism of the labouring classes, arguing that their treatment by the early colonial state had no precedent in the pre-colonial past and that poverty and low wages were a product of colonial rule. The book promises to make an important contribution to the economic history of the region, and to the study of colonialism.
Between 1600 and 1800 South Asia absorbed about a fifth of the new silver injected into the global economy and a number of historians have documented the commercial boom and monetization of economic ...life that followed. This article, which draws on evidence from South India, examines the use of money in rituals that marked life-cycle events such as birth, marriage and death, which is an element of monetization that has thus far gone unrecognized. Money was a critical part of the gifts that were given at ritual moments and coins were an essential object in rituals as they were believed to possess magical powers. The ubiquity of money in South Indian ritual life and its role in solidifying personal relations suggests that the classic social theories of money, which drew upon European thought and viewed it as a force that destroyed connections between people, must be rethought.
