Excerpts from
Speech on Indian Trade Textiles
for The Asia Society
Sydney, 29/04/99
Michael Abbott

A little later on tonight I want to take you on a sea voyage. It will be a voyage that will take us from Surat on the west coast of India in Gujerat to Batavia, as it then was, in Java. It is a voyage under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, and we will see at first hand how the trade in Indian textiles was supervised and operated by the Dutch.

It is stating the obvious to say that the Dutch were not the first in the field. However with their passion for precision and order, (and as a result of their trading connections with Europe) the Dutch were able to make a much more profitable operation than any other trader in the area. But there were other traders. Indeed, sources from the first century AD, for example the Periplus Maris Erythraei mention three specific areas famous for the production of textiles. These three areas were present day Gujerat, the Coromandel coast in south west India and the third area being near Madras on the Bay of Bengal; the three were responsible for textile exports from time almost immemorial.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to document this trade For example, Tome Pires, the author of the Summa Oriental written between 1512 and 1515, commented on the stranglehold which the Gujarati traders had on the textile trade.
It is obvious therefore, that the Dutch arrival in the Indian Ocean and the East Indies was in a sense, imposing on an existing trading and cultural operation.

Excavations & Recoveries from FOSTAT
We have learned much of the origins of the Indian trade textiles in pre European times from the excavations at Fostat, sometimes called "Fustat," a town south of Cairo which was traditionally known as old Cairo and which was connected by a canal to the Red Sea.

Fostat appears to be the western most point and therefore the western most trading post for the produce of the Indies, other than that which went by the Silk Road from China and in its heyday was obviously a very large and flourishing community.
Excavations at Fostat have revealed Gujarati resist textiles with patterns identical to those which have been discovered in recent times in Indonesia. The excavations at Fostat date from the late 13th - 14th centuries to the 17th century and have produced fragments of cotton resist textiles, the majority having an origin which could loosely be described as Gujarati.

Most of these textiles have been done with blocks, although there is some evidence of some hand drawn pieces. The age of these textiles should come at no surprise since cotton has been used in India for at least 3,000 years and fragments have been found at the Indus Valley sites of Mohenjo Dharo etc referable to the 2nd century BC. Mohenjo Dharo is of course geographically close to the area what is now modern day Gujarat.

So what does this tell us? This tells us that there was a long standing tradition of trade in Indian resist and block printed textiles, not just throughout the Indian Ocean rim but also with the Mediterranean countries, via Fostat. It tells us also something about these textiles because they were obviously meant to be used, and to last, for a very long time. Historically in most cultures, textiles were a part of the dowry that a bride bought to her new family. Obviously in times past, textiles were in far greater use as household items than they are today. Walls, floors and furniture all required an extensive use of textiles and increasingly Indian cotton textiles with fast colours. Because India virtually had a monopoly on these types of textiles, Indian traders were obviously big sellers in the whole area.