page_title: History of cotton
section_title: India
hierarchical_section_title: History of cotton / Early modern period / India
context_page_description: The history of cotton can be traced to domestication. Cotton played an important role in the history of India, the British Empire, and the United States, and continues to be an important crop and commodity.
  The history of the domestication of cotton is very complex and is not known exactly. Several isolated civilizations in both the Old and New World independently domesticated and converted cotton into fabric. All the same tools were invented to work it also, including combs, bows, hand spindles, and primitive looms.
context_section_description: India had been an exporter of fine cotton fabrics to other countries since the ancient times. Sources such as Marco Polo, who traveled India in the 13th century, Chinese travelers, who traveled Buddhist pilgrim centers earlier, Vasco Da Gama, who entered Calicut in 1498, and Tavernier, who visited India in the 17th century, have praised the superiority of Indian fabrics.
  The worm gear roller cotton gin, which was invented in India during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th–14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire some time around the 16th century, and is still used in India through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in India some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The production of cotton, which may have largely been spun in the villages and then taken to towns in the form of yarn to be woven into cloth textiles, was advanced by the diffusion of the spinning wheel across India shortly before the Mughal era, lowering the costs of yarn and helping to increase demand for cotton. The diffusion of the spinning wheel, and the incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin, led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during the Mughal era.
  It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labour was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly.
  During the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. The Mughals introduced agrarian reforms such as a new revenue system that was biased in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton and indigo, providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand.
  The largest manufacturing industry in the Mughal Empire was cotton textile manufacturing, which included the production of piece goods, calicos, and muslins, available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. India had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan. The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka.
  Bengal accounted for more than 50% of textiles imported by the Dutch from Asia, Bengali cotton textiles were exported in large quantities to Europe, Indonesia, and Japan, and Bengali Muslim textiles from Dhaka were sold in Central Asia, where they were known as "daka" textiles. Indian textiles dominated the Indian Ocean trade for centuries, were sold in the Atlantic Ocean trade, and had a 38% share of the West African trade in the early 18th century, while Indian calicos were a major force in Europe, and Indian textiles accounted for 20% of total English trade with Southern Europe in the early 18th century.
caption: A woman in Dhaka clad in fine Bengali muslin, 18th century.
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