SILK 



Improvement 



INDIAN SILKS 



Dutch. 



Surat the 

 British Centre. 



Kasimbazar. 



Improve- 

 ment. 



Country Wound. 

 Wilder. 



Pouchon. 



Oppressive to 

 the Natives. 



Bounty on 



Mulberry 



Growing. 



Wiss. 



Robinson. 

 Aubert. 



Success 

 Attained. 



manner of silken goods. The practical silence of Muhammadan writers on the 

 subject is, however, significant, and tends to the conclusion that until the advent 

 of the East India Company, little progress was made toward extending and 

 improving the Native industry. Of the European traders, the Dutch were 

 probably the first to find their way to the Bengal silk districts. It seems, in 

 fact, to have taken the British the greater part of a century before their know- 

 ledge of the Bengal production took definite shape and they had assumed direct 

 control. Most of the early books of travel, in discussing silk, speak either of the 

 silks of Gujarat or of Masulipatam. Mandelslo (Travels, 1638, in Olearius, Hist. 

 Muscovy, etc., 83) discusses the " Cotton and Linen Cloaths " and " Silk Stuffs " 

 either conveyed to Surat or worked up there. In fact the British merchants seem 

 to have striven hard to make Surat the chief centre of their Indian silk traffic, 

 though they do not appear to have ever made the attempt to rear the silkworm 

 there nor to build filatures at Surat. They carried the raw silk from Bengal 

 to their looms. It is, therefore, surprising how Ovington could have written 

 his most admirable account of the silkworm to which reference has been made 

 above (p. 995). 



Sir Henry Yule, in his Biographical Sketch of Sir Streynsham Master (Diary 

 of William Hedges, ii. ( app., ccxxxvi.), gives passages from a letter by Master de- 

 scriptive of Kasimbazar, in which he speaks of all the country being planted with 

 mulberry trees. Sir Henry fixes the Company's establishment of an agency in 

 Kasimbazar at 1658 (I.e. iii., cxciv.), though they had occasional agencies there 

 as early as 1653. The reader will find much interesting information regarding 

 the establishment of the East India Company's silk industry in the late Mr. 

 C. R. Wilson's Early Annals of the English in Bengal (i., 39, 55, 375-8, 394 ; ii., 

 196, 228, 369). 



EXPERIMENTS AT IMPROVEMENT OF INDIAN SILK. Between the dates 

 mentioned for the establishment of the agencies and the records of the Company's 

 erection of filatures in Bengal, there is a gap of a century of which we know 

 little more than has been indicated. In the volume of Reports and Documents 

 published by the East India Company in 1836 (to which repeated reference has 

 already been made) much interesting information will, however, be found. It 

 is there stated that the trade of the Company in raw silk was inconsiderable in 

 extent before the middle of the last century. The chief places then producing 

 silk were " Cossimbazar, Commercolly and Rungpore." The class of silk pro- 

 curable was described as country wound. But it was freely admitted that the 

 fault of that silk was its inequality, some portions being single, others double or 

 even quadruple. Accordingly, in 1 757, Mr. Richard Wilder, a gentleman trained 

 in every department of the silk industry, was sent to Bengal to examine into 

 the cause of the defective quality of Bengal raw silk. Wilder continued in 

 India until his death in 1761, and was enabled to lay the foundation of great 

 improvements in the winding of silk. Mr. Joseph Pouchon was appointed to 

 succeed Wilder, and he claims to have so improved the reeling that Bengal 

 silk became equal to that of Italy or any other country. In 1768 the Court 

 of Directors advised the Government of India that it was to the increase in 

 raw silk that they looked chiefly for the means of bringing home their revenue. 

 Subsequently the Court advised the Government that although there was 

 no branch of their trade which they more ardently wished to extend than that 

 of raw silk, still they could not think of effecting so desirable an object by 

 any measures that might be oppressive to the Natives, and, therefore, no com- 

 pulsory methods were to be adopted to increase the number of the silk-winders. 

 With regard to planting mulberry, it was suggested that deductions from rent 

 should be made on lands planted with it so as to amount to a bounty by rendering 

 it more profitable than any other article of culture. 



But complaints continuing to be made by the purchasers of Bengal silk, 

 it was resolved to adopt the methods of winding practised in the filatures of 

 Italy and other parts of the Continent. For this purpose the services of experts 

 (both English and foreign) were secured and located at the Company's agencies. 

 For example, Mr. James Wiss, a native of Piedmont, was stationed at Commer- 

 colly with four Italians under him, engaged as drawers and winders. Mr. J. 

 Robinson was stationed at Rangpur with three Italian experts under him. 

 While Mr. W. Aubert, with three expert reelers from Languedoc, was appointed 

 to another aurung, but Aubert died at Madras in 1771, and thus never reached 

 Bengal. The first report on the silks produced was to the effect that Mr. Wiss 

 had succeeded to admiration in drawing a tolerable silk from the most ungrateful 



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