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On Estimating the Employment Implications of European Trade for the Eighteenth Century Bengal Textile Industry—A Reply

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Om Prakash
Om Prakash
Affiliation:
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
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Extract

Elsewhere in this number, Sushil Chaudhury has provided a critique of a part of Chapter VIII of my book The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630–1720 (Princeton University Press, 1985). An earlier version of this part of the chapter had appeared as ‘Bullion for Goods: European Trade and the Economy of Early Eighteenth Century Bengal’ in The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1976. Chaudhury is worried about the bad influence I have had on fellow researchers such as Michael Twomey who have found it useful to follow in their own work the methodology that I had developed. Chaudhury is even more concerned about the use of my work and of the conclusions I had arrived at by fellow scholars such as Peter Marshall, Niels Steensgaard and John Richards.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , May 1993 , pp. 341 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 This calculation is based on Bengal's ‘response to orders’ (beantwoorde eisch) for 1701–02, available in Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Koloniaal Archief (K.A.) 1556, ff. 38–147.Google Scholar

2 Orders list dated 9 March 1716, K.A. 265. The volume is not foliated.Google Scholar

3 See Bengal export invoices of 1674–75 for Europe (K.A. 1189, ff. 575–80, K.A. 1196, ff. 596–603), 1676–1677 for Europe (H.B. 29.8.1676, K.A. 1204), 1685–1686 for Coromandel (H.B. 18.3.1686, K.A. 1318) and 1704–1705 for Europe (H.B. 21.10.1704, K.A. 1584, ff. 193–8).Google Scholar

4 Stapel, F. W. (ed.), van Dam's, PieterBeschryving van de Oost-Indische Compagnie, vol. II, pt II (The Hague, 1932, R.G.P. 76), p. 456.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 461.

6 For an example of Bihar khasas ordered from Holland, see the orders list of 4 March 1710, K.A. 264. For similar orders from Persia in 1704, see K.A. 1584, ff. 46–80, II section.Google Scholar For an example of the actual export of these khasas to Europe in 1715–16, see the export invoice of the Bredenhof that left Hugli on 28 December 1715 in H.B. 28.12.1715, K.A. 1776, f. 44, I section. For an example of Bihar malmals being procured by the Dutch Company, see K.A. 1556, ff. 207–11.Google Scholar

7 The memoir is dated 7 November 1763. For this particular reference, see an enclosure to the memoir entitled ‘Index to the piece goods, namely the textiles and silk stuffs produced and procured in Bengal and Bihar and constituting an enclosure to the memoir by outgoing director Louis Taillefert for his successor George Louis Vernet’. Hooge Regeering Batavia (HRB) 246.Google Scholar

8 Stapel, F. W. (ed.), Beschryvinge, vol. II, pt II, ff. 457 and 449.Google Scholar

9 The year in which 500 pieces were sent was 1715–16 (H. XVII. 29.10.1715, K.A. 1755, f. 12vo), while the immediately following one of 1716–17 was the one when only 100 pieces were sent (H.B. 15.1.1717, K.A. 1788, f. 39). The Ceylon invoice for 1707–08 is in H.B. 31.12.1707, K.A. 1653. f. 37, while that of 1714–15 is in H.B. 30.1.1715, K.A. 1760, f. 30.Google Scholar

10 This was the case both in the lists in the note to table 5.3 (p. 139) as well as in the section describing the textiles exported by the Dutch East India Company (pp. 62–3). Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Taillefert, memoir dated 27 October 1755, K.A. 2741, ff. 188vo–89.Google Scholar

12 Calculated from Chaudhuri, K. N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660–1760 (Cambridge University Press, 1978), Table C22, p. 545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The rate of exchange between the £ Sterling and the Rupee was £1 = Rs 8.

13 Calculated from K. N. Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, Table C2, p. 510 and Haudrère, Philippe, La compagnie française des Indes au XVIIIe siècle 1719–1795 (Paris, 1989), vol. 4, Table IIG, p. 1199.Google Scholar The corresponding years in Haudrère are 1740/41 to 1744/45, 1745/46 to 1749/50 and 1750/51 to 1754/55. The rate of exchange between the £ Sterling and the Livre Tournais has been assumed to be £1 = L.T.24.

14 See Sushil Chaudhury, ‘The Asian Merchants and Companies in Bengal's Export Trade, circa mid-Eighteenth Century’, Paris Conference Paper, 1990.Google Scholar

15 For details, see Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company, ch. II, particularly Table 2.1 (p. 28).Google Scholar