The Filaments of the Textile Trade: Subtle and Broad Trends in Exports from South Asia to Maritime Southeast Asia

Abstract

This essay uses an eighteenth-century patolu—a fine silk double-ikat textile—as the jumping-off point to explore the complex trading relationship between South Asia and the islands of maritime Southeast Asia. Using the Dutch Textile Trade Project’s data and visualizations, this essay considers the loosening connections between specific localities (including Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast, and Bengal) and their characteristic textiles in South Asia in the early eighteenth century. The commerce in textiles was further transformed by the rise of the opium trade, a commodity for which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had established a monopoly by the eighteenth century.