Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 1-27

3. West African Seaborne Trade, 1750–1850: The Transition from the Transatlantic Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 29-80

4. Guinées in the Lower Senegal River: A Consumer-Led Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 81-125

5. Procurement of Indian Textiles for West Africa, 1750–1850

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 127-164

6. Western European Merchants and West Africa, 1750–1850: Continuity and Change

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 165-194

7. Conclusion

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages 195-209

8. Correction to: Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa

   • Kazuo Kobayashi

   Pages C1-C1

9. Back Matter

   Pages 211-258

   PDF

This book focuses on the significant role of West African consumers in the development of the global economy. It explores their demand for Indian cotton textiles and how their consumption shaped patterns of global trade, influencing economies and businesses from Western Europe to South Asia. In turn, the book examines how cotton textile production in southern India responded to this demand. Through this perspective of a south-south economic history, the study foregrounds African agency and considers the lasting impact on production and exports in South Asia. It also considers how European commercial and imperial expansion provided a complex web of networks, linking West African consumers and Indian weavers. Crucially, it demonstrates the emergence of the modern global economy.  

• Consumers
• Global trade
• Senegal River Valley
• Globalization
• France
• Britain
• European East Indian Companies
• Imports, exports
• Slave trade
• Slavery-based economy
• Eighteenth century
• Nineteenth century

“Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa is an ambitious new entry in this field. … This is a remarkable book, which masterly combines research and theoretical approaches. … This seems to be exactly what took place in the Senegambian region after the demise of the transatlantic slave trade.” (Gustavo Acioli, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 23 (1), 2022)

“Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa represents an important contribution to the burgeoning scholarly canon that centers Africa and Africans in the creation of the modern world. The book is structured thematically and regionally.” (Philip Gooding, Asian Review of World Histories, Vol. 10 (2), 2022)

“Kobayashi’s illuminating focus on African agency invites us to assess the evolution of the global economy and the modern world from a hitherto overlooked perspective. In doing so, this book lights up corners of economic history previously unexplored, posing many more questions and opening new avenues of research. … this book places long-ignored African consumers, Indian artisans, and the cotton cloth that connected them, at the centre of the premodern world, throwing global history wide open to newer insights and interpretations.” (Alka Raman, The Economic History Review, Vol. 73 (3), 2020)

“Kazuo Kobayashi’s book is an innovative and incisive study of consumer interests in the lower Senegal River region as well as their distant reverberations. By tracing out the global effects of West African demand for Indian textiles, Kobayashi not only elucidates South Asian production for African markets but also how West African demands shaped European-South Asian relations. Indian Cotton Textiles in West Africa thus offers a new perspective on global economic history and a fascinating window on linkages between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds.” (Jeremy Prestholdt, University of California, USA)

“This volume provides a new narrative in global history by considering the production, trade and consumption of cloth in Africa, Asia and Europe. For the first time West African consumers are presented as integral in global processes of economic change. Through meticulous research Kazuo Kobayashi demonstrates that the emergence of a global economy can no longer be narrated through Western categories and actors.” (Giorgio Riello, University of Warwick, UK)

 

• Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

  Kazuo Kobayashi

Kazuo Kobayashi is Associate Professor of Economic History at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His research and teaching focus on African and global economic history.

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