Surat is the port. Besides all these, there is an endless variety of fabrics, many of which are known in the markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The commerce of the Indians in these fabrics has been extensive, from the Christian era to the end of the last century. For many hundred years, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Abyssinia, and all the eastern parts of Africa, were supplied with a considerable portion of their cottons and muslins, and with all which they consumed of the finest qualities, from the marts of India. This commerce existed in the last age, and is described by the Abbé Raynal[1] and Legoux de Flaix. The blue calicoes of Guzerat were long bought by the English and Dutch for their trade with Guinea. The great marts of this commerce on the west coast of India were Surat and Calicut, the former of which is near to Baroche, the manufacturing capital of Guzerat, in which province a considerable part of the exported cottons of India were made; and on the east coast, Masulipatam, Madras, and St. Thomé, whence the varied and extensive products of the Coromandel coast are exported.
Owing to the beauty and cheapness of Indian muslins, chintzes, and calicoes, there was a period when the manufacturers of all the countries of Europe were apprehensive of being ruined by their competition. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch and English East India Companies imported these goods in large quantities; they became highly fashionable for ladies' and children's dresses, as well as for drapery and furniture, and the coarse calicoes were used to line garments. To such an extent did this proceed, that as early as 1678 a loud outcry was made in England against the admission of Indian goods, which, it was maintained, were ruining the woollen manufacture,—a branch of industry which for centuries was regarded with an almost superstitious veneration, as a kind of palladium of the national prosperity, and which was incomparably the most extensive branch of manufactures till the close of the eighteenth century. A few extracts from pamphlets
- ↑ Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, tom. ii. liv. iv. ch. 4.
