• ISBN13: 9789380607573
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Fashion & Textile
• Publisher: Ratna Sagar
• Publisher Imprint: PrimusBook
• Publication Date: May 16, 2014
• Pages: 706
• Original Price: INR 2095.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 1110 grams

This book explores how, in the early modern world, Tamil textiles became a globally traded commodity, and in being circulated across the seas and oceans came to be consumed by a wide variety of societies in Asia, Europe, Africa and America. The author elucidates how global diffusion of woven, painted, printed, and dyed cotton textiles occurred mainly because of the skills of Tamil weavers and dyers, and depended in large measure on consumer choices, fashion, aesthetics, social hierarchies besides the political and the economic situation in the areas of trade. The officers of the East India Companies and missionaries investigated into the techniques of printing and dyeing and found them to be considerably more sophisticated than in Europe. The resultant exchange of technical and technological knowledge of textile production from the Tamil coast to Europe shaped clothing trends and taste as well as prompted innovations.

S. Jeyaseela Stephen is Professor of Maritime History at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal.