Brilliant article by Alka Raman demonstrating that it was 'recognition of British spinners' lack of adequate spinning skills [that] motivated the move to mechanization, in order to match the quality of cotton products created & perfected over centuries by anonymous & highly skilled Indian artisans'
Yeah, exactly. It had nothing to do with skill but material availability. Cotton was a luxury item at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so of course, British home spinners would have no skill with cotton, but they were by no stretch of the imagination unskilled.
@b_sbarta@gkbhambra@histodons@sociology Ah, this probably also answers my question regarding automated fabrics allegedly being worse quality than the ones produced locally with more traditional methods. Thank you!
@gkbhambra@histodons@sociology Q: I remember reading a blog years ago that mentioned that the quality of textiles produced by automated looms was worse than (locally produced) handwoven textile at the time, but cheaper to produce. IIRC that was cited as an example against the progressivist notion that technology always gets "better".
Is that a conflicting narrative, or somehow complementary? I think they were talking about France and the first Jacquard looms, so I can imagine both being true.
I think that's a complementary narrative - linked to the British actively deindustrialising the cotton industry in India in order to facilitate the sale of inferior products
@gkbhambra@histodons@sociology I find it really interesting how the history of technology has evolved in recent years to become one of the fields most open to postcolonial, but also materialist modes of research and thinking. Most original contributions to the history of global capitalism come from here.
Yes, and I really like the way in which these histories flesh out the theoretical contributions made by scholars such as Utsa Patnaik in this piece ... think they could easily be paired in the teaching of sociologies of modernity / industrial revolution etc
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