Photo 979, 1

Imprint: Printed for the India Office, by George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty. London: 1866.

Full-leather bound volume measuring 280x380mm containing letterpress and nine original albumen prints (eight hand-coloured), each comprising a number of images. The volume was printed for the India Office by Eye & Spottiswoode under the editorship of (Sir) John Forbes Watson to complement the collection of 700 working textile samples in the India Museum, and with the intention of redressing the imbalances in the textile trade between Britain and the subcontinent. For the illustrations, Forbes Watson used a number of the photographs of Indian races which had been called for by the Governor-General in a circular of 1861 and which were then being used in the preparation of 'The People of India' (8 vols, 1868-75), edited by Forbes Watson and John William Kaye (for copies of which, see Photo 972/1-8 and Photo 973/1-8). For the 'Textile Manufactures', the India Office photographer William Griggs created copy prints incorporating several of the images in each illustration. These were then hand-coloured (in most versions at least: the prints Photo 979/2 are uncoloured). The hand-colouring, where possible, used as reference the notes on dress sent in with the original photographs (In plate 6, for instance, where most of the images are from photographs taken at Bhopal by James Waterhouse, the colourist has used in his work the photographer's detailed notes on the costumes worn). In his introduction, Forbes Watson writes: 'We know India now-a-days as a country whose Raw Products we largely receive. We pay for these partly in kind and partly in money; but India never buys from us what will repay our purchases from her, and the consequence is that we have always to send out the large difference in bullion, which never comes back to us, disappearing there as if it had been dropped into the ocean'. To address this problem, at least in the field of cloth manufacture, 20 sets of the textile samples had been prepared for distribution in Great Britain and India (thirteen in the former and seven in the latter), 'so that there will be twenty places, each provided with a collection exactly like all the others, and so arranged as to admit of the interchange of references when desired...The twenty sets of volumes may thus be regarded as Twenty Industrial Museums, illustrating the Textile Manufactures of India, and promoting trade operations between East and West, in so far as these are concerned. To make this series of Museums, however, accomplish more fully and properly the end in view, it was felt that something was needed beyond the mere bringing together of specimens, and this something the present volume is intended to supply'. India, Forbes Watson argued, 'is in a position to become a magnificent customer...for to clothe but a mere per-centage of such a vast population would double the looms of Lancashire', but despite this opportunity, there was little demand for British textiles in the subcontinent. This he put down to ignorance of Indian taste, for 'If we attempt to induce an individual or a nation to become a customer, we endeavour to make the articles which we know to be liked and needed, and these we offer for sale. We do not make an effort to impose on others our own tastes and needs, but we produce what will please the customer and what he wants. The British manufacturer follows this rule generally; but he seems to have failed to do so in the case of India, or to have done it with so little success, that it would appear as if he were incapable of appreciating Oriental tastes and habits.' The actual samples would show 'what the people of India affect and deem suitable in the way of textile fabrics...It was thought, however, that something more than mere specimens was needed to enable the manufacturer to do this intelligibly. It was necessary that he should know how the garment was worn, by which sex, and for what purpose - how, in short, the people were clothed, as well as the qualities of the fabrics they used. It was further necessary that he should know why certain arrangements of ornamentation were adopted, as well as the styles of ornamentation and the materials employed. Information on these points, and on many other similar ones, the present volume is also intended to supply.' Turning to the styles of Indian clothing, Forbes Watson notes that a large proportion 'consists of articles which are untouched by needle or scissors. These articles leave the loom in a state ready to be worn, and have their analogues in our shawls, plaids, and scarfs...They have appropriate lengths and breadths, and these must be considered; they have suitable modes or styles of ornamentation, and these too must be kept in view'. In order to assist the British manufacturer, the textile specimens had been ordered by use - turbans, dhotis, longhis, etc. - and by material, and the present work, following this arrangement, 'may be regarded as an analysis of the contents of the eighteen volumes, and a classification of them according to function, quality, material, and decoration...The photographs interspersed throughout the work illustrate fully the various modes of wearing them...and it is clear that the nation which desires to supply that clothing can only be succesful in doing so by offering garments of this character for sale.' In attempting to stimulate British exports to India, Forbes Watson was aware, as some of the photographs illustrate, that in many areas, particularly those of loom-made brocades and hand-embroidery, the mechanised output of Europe was simply not in a position to compete with Indian skills, where a combination of cheap labour, skill and 'refined taste' produced what he conceded were the finest cloths in the world. Therefore, while increased knowledge might bring imports of such superior stuff to Europe, 'the British manufacturer must not look to the upper ten millions of India, but to the hundreds of millions in the lower grade. The plainer and cheaper stuffs of cotton, or of cotton and wool together, are those which he has the best chance of selling, and those which he would be able to sell largely, if in their manufacture he would keep well in view the requirements and tastes of the people to whom he offers them.' And in an unconvincing argument, he asserted that the undercutting of Indian textile makers by the mechanised productions of Europe would be to the benefit of the Indian as well as the British economy: 'This is clear, however, that it will be a benefit to the masses of the people of India to be supplied with their clothing at the cheapest possible rate - let this be done by whom it may. If Great Britain can give Loongees, Dhotees, Sarees, and Calicoes to India which cost less than those made by her own weavers, both countries will be benefitted. In a great productive country like India it is certain that she will gain; for if supplies from Britain set labour free there, it will only be to divert it at once into other and perhaps more profitable channels.'