Silk Road, Cotton Road or . . . . Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times
STEPHEN F. DALE "Silk Road, Cotton Road or . . . . Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times". Modern Asian Studies, Published online by Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0026749X07003277
Modern Asian Studies Vol. 43 Issue 01, pp 79-88.
"Silk Road, Cotton Road or . . . . Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times"
STEPHEN F. DALE
OSU Department of History, 367 Dulles Hall, 230 West 17th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA Email: dale.1--at--osu.edu
Abstract
India and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world prior to the industrial revolution. However, whereas the Western historiography usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton and silk were also exchanged between India and China. Indeed, Indian cotton and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged between these civilizations. Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued, usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization.
Please note that the above details were correct on the day this post was published. To suggest an update, please email the site's editor at tmciolek@ciolek.com
Modern Asian Studies Vol. 43 Issue 01, pp 79-88.
"Silk Road, Cotton Road or . . . . Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times"
STEPHEN F. DALE
OSU Department of History, 367 Dulles Hall, 230 West 17th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA Email: dale.1--at--osu.edu
Abstract
India and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world prior to the industrial revolution. However, whereas the Western historiography usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton and silk were also exchanged between India and China. Indeed, Indian cotton and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged between these civilizations. Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued, usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization.
Please note that the above details were correct on the day this post was published. To suggest an update, please email the site's editor at tmciolek@ciolek.com
posted by tmciolek at 10:07 AM
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