Contents
1 Introduction: The Ocean’s Many Cloth Pathways 1
Pedro Machado and Sarah Fee
Part I Regions of Production
2 Textiles and Silver: The Indian Ocean in a Global Frame 29
Prasannan Parthasarathi
3 Cloth and Commerce: Understanding Indian Economic History 55
Lakshmi Subramanian
4 Handkerchiefs, Scarves, Sarees and Cotton Printed
Fabrics: Japanese Traders and Producers and the
Challenges of Global Markets 79
Seiko Sugimoto
5 Kanga Made in Japan: The Flow from the Eastern to the
Western End of the Indian Ocean World 105
Hideaki Suzuki
6 A Worn Insecurity: Textiles‚ Industrialization and
Colonial Rule in Eritrea During the Long Twentieth
Century 133
Steven Serels
Part II Trade, Exchange and Networks of Distribution
7 Distributive Networks, Sub-Regional Tastes and
Ethnicity: The Trade in Chinese Textiles in Southeast
Asia from the Tenth to Fourteenth Centuries CE 159
Derek Heng
8 Textile Reorientations: The Manufacture and Trade of
Cottons in Java c. 1600–1850 181
Kenneth R. Hall
9 ‘The Dearest Thing on the East African Coast’: The
Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Trade in ‘Muscat Cloth’ 209
Sarah Fee
10 Converging Trades and New Technologies: The
Emergence of Kanga Textiles on the Swahili Coast
in the Late Nineteenth Century 253
MacKenzie Moon Ryan
Part III Cultures of Consumption
11 Warp and Weft: Producing, Trading and Consuming
Indian Textiles Across the Seas (First–Thirteenth
Centuries CE) 289
Himanshu Prabha Ray
12 The Decline of the Malagasy Textile Industry,
c. 1800–1895 313
Gwyn Campbell
13 Contemporary Geographies of Zanzibari Fashion: Indian
Ocean Trade Journeys in the Run-Up to Ramadhan
Festivities 359
Julia Verne
14 The Fabric of the Indian Ocean World: Reflections
on the Life Cycle of Cloth 385
Jeremy Prestholdt
Index 397
Abbreviations
ANOM Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer
BEFEO Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient
CIF Cost, Insurance, Freight
CSS Chūgai Shōgyō Shimpō
ECAI Ente per il Cotone dell’Africa Italiana
EIC East India Company
EPLF Eritrean People’s Liberation Front
GHQ General Headquarters
HS Hōchi Shimbun
IMF International Monetary Fund
IOWC Indian Ocean World Centre
JCEA Japan Cotton Exporters Association
KKS K okumin Shimbun
KS Kōbe Shimbun
MAE Archives du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Paris)
MS Mainichi Shimbun
NAK British National Archives, Kew
NASPPE National Agency for the Supervision and Privatization of
Public Enterprises
OAS Ōsaka Asahi Shimbun
OMS Ōsaka Jiji Simpō
PEM Peabody Essex Museum
SCCE Società per la Coltivazione del Cotone nell’Eritrea
SHY FY SHY Fanyi
SHY ZG Songhuiyao jigao (1236), Zhiguan
SIA Società Imprese Africane
SOAS/LMS-MIL SOAS/LMS Archives, Madagascar: Incoming Letters
SPS Sudan Plantation Syndicate
SS Songshi (1345)
SSHRC Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
UAE United Arab Emirates
USNA United States National Archives, Washington, DC
VOC Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie)
WXTK Ma Duanlin: Wenxian tongkao
List of Figures
Japan, c. 1600. From a pair of six-panel screens: ink, colour,
gold, and gold leaf on paper (Private collection) 33
Fig. 2.2 Cotton and cloth prices in Cairo, 1687–1797 36
Fig. 2.3 Value of chintz exports (millions of rupees) from
Machilipatnam (South India) to Iran, 1812–1836 44
Fig. 4.1 Calendar distributed to customers, based on a Japanese
woodblock print. Kawamata Silk Refining Co. Ltd., ca.
1910. Ukiyo-e, hand-print with woodblock on paper,
375 mm × 250 mm. (With permission and courtesy
of Silk Museum, Narita collection, no number) 83
Fig. 4.2 Handkerchief for North American markets,
Narita Co. Ltd., ca. 1924–1926. Silk printed with
engraved woodblocks (tonton-nassen), 215 mm × 210 mm.
(With permission and courtesy of Silk Museum,
Narita collection No. 128) 84
Fig. 4.3 The specialized production system of handkerchiefs
and scarves based on historic kimono production system.
(Research center of the economy of Kanagawa 1981a: 2) 85
Fig. 4.4 Embroidered handkerchief for the Egyptian souvenir
market, Narita Co. Ltd., ca. the end of the 1920s.
Embroidered silk, 220 mm × 193 mm. (With permission
and courtesy of Silk Museum, Narita collection No. 225) 89
Fig. 4.5 Quantities and varieties of Japan’s exported fabrics in 1937
(unit: 1,000 yen; based on the statistics of Futami ed.
1958: 13–19) 90
Fig. 4.6 Sample fabric of a scarf for export to West Africa, with
feather pattern, in imitation of batik printing. Sanwa
Trading Company, ca. 1957. Synthetic fabric,
35 inches × 35 inches. (With permission and courtesy
of Industrial Technique Promotion Center, Economic
Affairs Bureau of Yokohama City No. 11762) 94
Fig. 4.7 Sample fabric of a scarf for export to Mombasa, Kenya,
with imagery of Queen Elizabeth and her children. Sanyo
Sangyo Co. Ltd., ca. 1957. Silk Satin. Half of a square
29 inches × 29 inches. (With permission and courtesy
of Industrial Technique Promotion Center, Economic
Affairs Bureau of Yokohama City No. 4649c) 95
Fig. 4.8 Gross volume of exported scarves for African markets
classified by materials (based on the statistics of the
Industrial Guild of Japanese Scarves for Export 1989:
pp. 145–155) 96
Fig. 4.9 Gross volume of exported scarves for Middle
East markets classified by materials (based on the statistics
of the Industrial Guild of Japanese Scarves for Export 1989:
pp. 145–155) 97
Fig. 4.10 Printed wrapper for African market, with fish and flower
motifs. Cotton printed and dyed with the ‘Green Wax’
printing technique, 1098 mm × 1610 mm. (With permission
and courtesy of the Kyoto Institute of Technology
Museum and Archivse, Daido-Maruta Collection No.
AN.5680-356) 98
Fig. 4.11 Photo made for a poster advertising Japanese synthetic
sarees featuring the actress Rekha. Teijin Co. Ltd., ca.
1970s. (Collection of the author) 101
Fig. 5.1 Total exports of Japanese cotton products, in 1000 yards,
1930–1931 (based on statistics provided
in Kōbe Yūshi Nippō, 17 January 1932) 115
Fig. 5.2 East African share in total exports of Japanese cotton
products, 1926–1939 (based on statistics provided
in Nihon menshifu yusyutu kumiai 1957) 116
Fig. 8.1 Thirteenth-century stone carving from Candi Jago East
Java. The textile held by a societal elite serves as the
focal point (Photograph by the author) 185
Fig. 8.2 Kain pajang batik (long cloth with batik embellishment),
product of the Yogyakarta court of central Java, c. 2004,
presented as a gift to the author. (Photograph by the author) 186
Fig. 8.3 Cap, or brass hand-stamps used for printing textile designs
in contemporary Java and Bali (Photograph by the author) 199
Fig. 8.4 Agencies and the flow of raw materials, tools, labour
and finished products in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century
Javanese textile production 202
Fig. 9.1 Man’s hand-woven turban, collected in Muscat
by Joest before 1899. Machine- and hand-spun cotton
with silk yellow stripes, checked blue, white and black
centre, with two colours of interlocking wefts,
120 × 308 cm. The piece is missing one of its red
borders, which has been digitally reconstructed here
to show how the full cloth would have appeared.
Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne 10732
(photograph © Rheinisches Bildarchiv) 215
Fig. 9.2 Portrait of Ahmad ibn Na’aman, 1840, by Edward
Ludlow Mooney. Painted on the occasion of Na’aman’s
visit to New York aboard the Sultanah. Peabody Essex Museum
M4473, gift of Mrs. William P. McMullan, 1918
(©Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Photography
by Jeffrey D. Dykes) 219
Fig. 9.3 One panel of the debwani striping pattern, from
the collections of Henry M. Stanley. Cotton, 525 × 66 cm.
Object i.d. HO.1954.72.194, collection RMCA Tervuren
(photograph J.-M.Vandyck. © RMCA Tervuren) 228
Fig. 9.4 One panel of the sahari striping pattern, from
the collections of Henry M. Stanley. Cotton, 485 × 65 cm.
Object i.d. HO.1954.72.196, collection RMCA Tervuren
(photograph J.-M.Vandyck. © RMCA Tervuren) 229
Fig. 9.5 One panel of the subaya striping pattern, industrially woven
in the Netherlands for the eastern African market, collected
in Zanzibar before 1895. Note the small centre field
and wide, multiple red bands at the two ends. Cotton,
456 × 74 cm. Object i.d. MAF8901, Courtesy of the
Grassi Museum fur Volkerkunde zu Leipzig, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden (photograph: Christel Treumer) 230
Fig. 9.6 One panel of the barawaji striping pattern, hand-woven
in Oman for the east African market, collected in Muscat
in 1895. Cotton, silk (yellow and red stripes), tapestry
joined weft. (12153 © Musée d’Histoire Naturelle de Lille) 232
Fig. 9.7 An Arab weaver near Mombasa using the narrow loom
to add an end band to a colourful Muscat cloth, c.1890
(photograph J. Sturtz, from Land und Leute in