1 - Weavers and merchants 1720–1760

Summary

It is no easy matter to reconstruct the relationship between weavers and merchants in the early eighteenth century. Much of the material in the European Company records, the major source for the social and economic history of the period, deals largely with the Companies' external trade and their commercial activities in South India. However, the ninety years of documents, from 1670 to 1760, which comprise the English East India Company's Fort St. George and Fort St. David Consultations and upon which this chapter is based, also contain occasional glimpses of local social and economic life. Some of the most valuable insights are found during crises in cloth production. At these times the English interrogated their merchants to understand the reasons for the shortfalls in cloth production and delivery. On occasion, Company servants themselves ventured into the weaving villages. These moments are veritable gold mines for the historian.

In this chapter, the early eighteenth-century sources are supplemented wherever possible with material from later in the century. The later material is much more plentiful and far more detailed, but I have used such evidence carefully. It is not used to introduce new elements to the picture or argument and it is only drawn upon when it is consistent with evidence from the first half of the century. I have used it to fill out the picture – to give it flesh and blood, so to speak. The skeleton, however, has been constructed from early eighteenth-century material.