WH1 Topic 4 #4 Vocab Quiz Study Guide

Vocab:

Mordant: substance which helps dye adhere to cloth

Caste System: class system in India determined by birth, where one is born into a certain position or job, which is very difficult to change.

Cotton handloom industry in India makes most of the cloth in the world
The Golden Age of Indian Cotton is 100 CE to 1900 CE. It was the first true global industry.
In pre-industrial times, Indian cotton cloth was the most made and traded item.
As such, India got rich, being traded gold & silver.

Lack of education system such as that in Europe
Financial constraints
Aversion to change
Caste System - class system in India determined by birth where you were born into a certain position or job, which was very difficult to change

The most common plants used for producing dyes were Indigo, Madder, Turmeric, and Safflower.

The technique for dying cloth included:

Soak the cloth in dung [helps fix mordant (substance which helps dye adhere to cloth)]
Wash & bleach cloth
Soak cloth in oil & alkali (softens cloth & removes dirt)
Steep cloth in dye solution, and then in mordant solution

Europeans just wanted more and more of India's textiles.
The British East India Company oppressively taxed India (1700s-1800s ish) and by the early 1800, Britain had invented machines for spinning cotton.
These machines started outpacing India's hand-making techniques.
Now that Britain was making its own cloth, it bought India's cotton and sold textiles back to India, rather than buying textiles from India.
Britain eventually discovered American cotton worked better than Indian cotton in their machines, and once people set up textile machines in America, the U.S. took over the textile industry from India.