Lakshmi Subramanian

Bio: Lakshmi Subramanian is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Colonialism & Politics. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 4 citations.

The Political Economy of Textiles in Western India: Weavers, Merchants and the Transition to a Colonial Economy

Abstract: This chapter analyzes the structure of textile production in late eighteenth century western India, to understand the responses of merchants and manufacturers to the disciplining weight of the early colonial state and its consequences for the region's commercial society. It examines the nature of relations between labour and capital in the half century of transition to colonial rule. The chapter identifies the strategies that both merchants and manufacturers deployed to deal with the changing situation and analyses the way in which these reflected the inherent anxieties of transitional politics. It concentrates on Surat and its immediate vicinity in south Gujarat, the principal manufacturing centre for cotton textiles and an area which escaped the direct subjugation of British rule until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Commercial society in Gujarat was a multi-tiered one, accommodating a miscellany of castes and ethnic groups. Keywords: colonial rule; Gujarat; merchants; Surat; textile production; western India

Clothing and the colonial culture of appearances in nineteenth century Spanish Philippines (1820-1896)

Abstract: The purpose of this research is to reconstruct the clothing culture of 19th century Spanish Philippines and to discover the importance of dress in Philippine colonial society. This study explores the unique and complex interplay of clothing and appearance with race, class and culture in the context of the social, cultural and economic changes that took place between 1820 and 1896. The objective is to recreate an impression of colonial life by turning to clothes to provide insights on a wide range of race, class, gender and economic issues. For the first time, this uses the study of clothing to understand the socio-cultural and economic changes that took place in 19th century Philippine colonial society. The different racial and social groups of the Philippines under Spanish colonization were analyzed in light of their clothing. This locates the study of Philippine clothing practices in the context of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural colonial society. After centuries of colonization, 19th century Philippines was – and continues to be- an amalgam of indigenous, Western and Chinese cultures. This study of clothing practices as an element of colonial life points to a broader study of cultural interactions, colonial lifestyles, human relations and social behavior. Clothing and appearance were analyzed to understand the ethnic, social and gender hierarchies of that period. This work crosses the frontiers between the disciplines of Philippine studies, colonial history and costume studies.

Homes of Capital: Merchants and Mobility across Indian Ocean Gujarat

Abstract: Homes of Capital: Merchants and Mobility across Indian Ocean Gujarat by Ketaki Pant Department of History Duke University Date: _________________ Approved: ___________________________ Engseng Ho, Supervisor ___________________________ Sumathi Ramaswamy __________________________ Janet Ewald __________________________ Philip J. Stern __________________________ Ajantha Subramanian An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2015 Copyright by Ketaki Pant 2015

How Should we Approach the Economy of Early Modern India

Abstract: Tirthankar Roy's recent synthesis on the economic history of early modern India claims to provide a new, overarching narrative placing this period within the broader sweep of the history of what Roy defines as ‘capitalism’ in India in the very long term. This article provides a detailed critique of Roy's monograph, suggesting that it suffers from some serious methodological deficits, arising not least from a future-oriented paradigm that imposes anachronistic concepts on this period, including the very notion of ‘India’. Furthermore, Roy's view of the economy as being fundamentally driven forward by the rise of a coastal polity, expanding inwards from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, sits awkwardly with his repeated claim that colonialism was of little significance for Indian economic history. Finally, this article suggests that this period might be more fruitfully approached not only by abandoning the telos of what we know of India's future, but also by adopting both regionally focused and comparative approaches, turning away from long-distance trade as the primary lens through which to view the economy, and instead examining endogenous factors in the economies of individual regions and enriching our understanding of them by reference to studies of other world regions with comparable patterns of development in the same period. More nuanced ways of approaching economic change in the very long run, including the importance of developments in modes of consumption and market- and profit-oriented economic behaviour, are suggested as a better means of understanding both the economies of the late pre-colonial centuries in the Indian subcontinent and the development of capitalism, which should also be understood in a more specific manner than Roy allows.

Craft and small scale production in the global economy : Gujarat and Kachchh in the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries

Abstract: India's production of fine luxury and craft goods for world markets was discovered and exploited by Europeans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Textile producers in Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast, and Bengal applied fine craft skills to European designs, colour codes, and textile lengths and widths. Through the intervention of the East India Companies and private traders as well as their intermediaries, brokers and local merchants, weavers, and printers produced the goods to satisfy Western markets just as they had done for Eastern and African markets in the centuries before.Today Indian craftspeople are engaging in a new phase of production for global markets. They are using traditional techniques of the kind that attracted Western buyers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: hand weaving, hand block printing, and natural dyes. Accessing the niche national and international markets needed to provide a future for these crafts is a major challenge. This article focuses on the artisans, skills and markets in one area of India—the region of Kachchh in northern Gujarat, even now considered a remote part of the new global India. It sets this within a wider context of Gujarat and the earlier and more recent history of its textile industries. Douglas Haynes's recent book, Small Town Capitalism in Western India (2012) provides a framework for the study of small-scale industry, and the article will address his subject and methods. The new sources used are a collection of oral histories of craftspeople in a range of industries. These oral histories address skills and training across generations, and how these crafts have adapted and continue to adapt to the demands of national and world markets.

Exploring Capitalism in the Economy of Early Modern Gujarat: The Structure and Organization of Textile Production and the Market in Surat in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract: Objective/Context: This study has two main goals. First, it explores the structural and organizational dynamics of the textile industry and the market in early modern India, eighteenth-century Gujarat in particular. In this context, the paper also examines how the ascendancy of the English East India Company in the political economy of Western India and the region’s transition to a colonial economy impacted the industry, the market, and the relationship between weavers and merchants. Methodology: This paper draws on the literature on textile production and trade, as well as on capitalism in early modern and colonial India, and uses evidence about Gujarat from the records of the English and Dutch East India Companies. Originality: This paper argues that the relationship between weavers and merchants in Surat/Gujarat was dynamic, complementary, and at times, contentious. None of them was able to dominate the relationship, and the English East India Company could not substitute a coercion-based production relation for a market-based one. Conclusions: The dynamics—such as product specialization and innovation, division of labor, the contract system, and forward buying—point to the existence of commercial capitalism in the textile economy. The paper also argues that because of the extraordinary diversity of people engaged in the industry and their varying professional and transactional experiences, it is relevant to recognize that commercial capitalism represents a mode of production that co-existed with others in the economy.