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A history of artisan production in colonial and post-independence India, and its role in the country's society and economics.
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The historical and global contexts of artisan production; 2. Consumers, merchants, and markets; 3. Artisanal towns; 4. The organization of production; 5. Small town capitalism and the living standards of artisans; 6. The colonial state and the handloom weaver; 7. The paradox of the Long 1930s; 8. Weaver capitalists and the politics of the workshop, 1940-60.
About the author
Douglas E. Haynes is Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He is the author of Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928 (1991), and co-editor of Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia (1992) with Gyan Prakash and of Toward a History of Consumption in South Asia (2010) with Abigail McGowan, Tirthankar Roy and Haruka Yanagisawa.
Summary
This book charts the history of artisan production in the Bombay Presidency from 1870 to 1960. Using extensive archival research and numerous interviews, this book explores the role of weavers, merchants, consumers and laborers in the making of what the author calls 'small-town capitalism'.
