From Kings to Kids: Refashioning Akan Adinkra Symbols as ‘African’ Motifs in a Nineteenth-Century British Cloth Design

In the nineteenth century, British textile companies began making factory-printed cloth with adinkra motifs for African consumers. These symbolic designs were previously reserved for hand-stamped cloths among Akans of present-day Ghana. Such textiles illustrate the complexities of re-presenting history and shaping cultural knowledge through cloth and colonial exchanges. This article focuses on the design and circulation of one specific British textile design with adinkra symbols made during the 1890s to 1930s, the earliest recorded evidence I have found of adinkra in factory-printed cloths. This textile pattern reveals how merchants, designers and printers historically transformed adinkra symbols from Akan society to become global markers of Africa.     

Entangled Histories: Translocal Textile Trades in Eastern Africa,c. 800 CE to the Early Twentieth Century

In the recent efflorescence of studies on ‘global’ textile trades, eastern Africa has been mostly conspicuous for its absence. This special volume of Textile History seeks to redress this situation by mapping many of the major historic textile trades of this vast area, and demonstrating their importance to the global story. The introduction provides the rationale for the volume, positions the textile trades of eastern Africa over the longue durée and connects them to wider geographical and conceptual frameworks, and presents its five essays, contextualising them within the unfolding history of the western Indian Ocean and its several ‘cloth zones’, while elucidating their potential contributions to the field.     

The “Coptic” textiles of the “Museo Egizio” in Torino (Italy): a focus on dyes through a multi-technique approach

The Coptic textile collection of the Museo Egizio in Torino (Italy) has been the object of a broad project aimed at investigating the production techniques, at documenting the conservation state and at reconsidering the attributed age. The collection was also analysed by non-invasive and micro-invasive techniques with the aim of detecting the dyes that have been employed to obtain the colours, in order to complete the set of technological information available for each textile. The data collected in the present work have been compared with published results from other Coptic textile collections, with the aim of highlighting a possible link between the age of the textile and the dyes that were employed. Moreover, the combined use of spectroscopic and chromatographic techniques allowed us to compare the results for the non-invasive and the micro-invasive approaches and to go deeper into the dyeing technology by detecting unexpected combinations of dyes. In particular, the use of a double dyeing with madder and Indian lac dye was revealed in some Roman-Byzantine and Byzantine textiles from the collection.     

Sails from the Roman port at Berenike, Egypt

A 1st-century AD midden deposit at Berenike, a major port on the trade route between the Roman Empire and India, has produced cotton textile fragments reinforced with a rectangular grid-pattern of cotton strips, interpreted as the remains of sails. Webbing fragments of cotton and linen, in some cases attached to stout cotton or linen cloth, may also have come from sails. The only published example of a Roman-Period sail is a linen sail of 1st-century BC-AD date from Thebes in Egypt, to which the Berenike fragments bear a close resemblance. The S-spun linen sails were presumably manufactured in Egypt. Most of the Berenike material, however, was of Z-spun cotton: an import, it is argued, of Indian origin. The construction of Mediterranean-type sails entirely from Indian materials has implications for the presence of Westerners on the Indian sub-continent.     

‘It Was an Imitashon to be Sure’: The Imitation Indian Shawl in Design Reform and Imaginative Fiction

Indian Cashmere shawls were costly accessories in nineteenth-century Britain, and they were ‘imitated’ in Edinburgh, Norwich and Paisley. This article argues that shawls were at the centre of a key debate within the design reform movement, which viewed imitations as clumsy copies of a perfectly designed textile. It examines Victorian texts such as design reformers’ publications and works of fiction, to suggest that their understanding of shawls that imitated Indian designs was linked, in part, to class prejudices. Paisley shawls’ stereotyping as an article emblematic of bad taste and a lower-class desire for social mobility was thus not limited to the writings of a small coterie of design reformers, but was found also reflected in works of best-selling writers such as Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and Wilkie Collins.     

NEW PATRIARCHAL ECONOMIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Analyses seriously considering the importance of gender in the process of restructuring have been scarce, yet altered gender relations have been integral to these changes at all geographical scales. Vital interconnections exist between a restructuring capitalism and a reconstituting patriarchy. Initially, I clarify the concepts and the feminist politics which inform the analysis, and then I situate the Australian textile industry in a global context of new divisions of labour and capital. Connecting these global changes to a particular national economy provides the necessary background to understanding the transformations which have occurred in one textile plant in Geelong, Victoria over the last twenty years. At all scales, patriarchy and capitalism have interconnected in such a way as to ensure that renewed profitability and reasserted male authority are linked during restructuring. Restoration of capital accumulation in the Australian textile industry has thus been built on a redefined but also reaffirmed patriarchal economy.     

Tanūnapāt: Kalos,Philos, and the Vestiges of Trace

This essay probes the aniconic and iconic elements that pervade Indian visual culture and, more specifically, the aniconic impulse that has structured, for nearly two millennia, the cultivated indifference of Indian, especially Sanskrit, reflective traditions toward the plastic arts. Over the last hundred years, inquiries have concentrated largely on the historical and formal aspects of Indian temples, idols, and images. These attempts, however, are based entirely on the conceptual-theoretical frameworks of the Western tradition. By drawing on Sanskrit reflective traditions, I analyze the relations between symbol, icon, desire, and the body, in order to show the epistemic contrasts between the European and the Indian reflective traditions and their implications for differential modes of being.     

Immigrants and Apprentices: Solutions to the Post-War Labour Shortage in the West Yorkshire Wool Textile Industry, 1945–1980

After the Second World War, the wool textile industry faced a significant labour shortage as its traditional workers escaped the poor wages and conditions of wool mills for better-paying, cleaner jobs. Three broad solutions to this crisis were adopted: the employment of immigrants, mainly from the Indian Subcontinent and Eastern Europe, the re-formatting and promotion of apprenticeships and the recruitment work undertaken by the Wool Industry Training Board. Of these solutions, employing immigrants was by far the most successful in bringing workers into the industry, while the latter two were resounding failures. In prioritising the recruitment of young, white, British men, the industry, trade unions and government missed a key opportunity to train immigrants and women to take the places of the skilled workers they so desperately sought.     

History to Prehistory: an Archaeology of Being Indian

This paper explores a conception of being Indian in New Orleans that complicates and localizes Indian histories and identities. It poses that the notion of “being Indian” may be approached not only through the history and archaeology of persons but also as an identity such that being Indian itself is an artifact produced by a wide range of people in the development of New Orleans in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Employing a critical reading of intercultural relations, I explore archaeological evidence that suggests colonial New Orleans was created in both Indian and non-Indian terms through exchange. In this process archaeology shows that being Indian was part of a widely-shared colonial strategy that places a fluid Indian identity at the center of local history. The paper also considers how the marginalization of Indian people in the early nineteenth century was one way New Orleans and the greater southeast connected with dominant American sensibilities. Developing with the idea of “prehistory,” nineteenth-century Native Americans were distanced as a cultural other and pushed to margins of New Orleans society. The subsequent internal tensions of assimilation and removal derailed Indian challenges to White domination they had employed over the previous 100 years. As this action coincides with the invention of American archaeology as the science of prehistory, the paper concludes with a critical reflection on archaeological terminology.

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Re′sume′ Cet article explore l’idée d’être Amérindien à la Nouvelle-Orléans qui rend plus complexes et plus spécifiquement locales les histoires et caractères identitaires amérindiens. Il suggère que la notion d’ ? être amérindien ? peut être appréhendée non seulement à travers l'histoire et l'archéologie des personnes, mais également par le biais d’une identité à proprement parler, procédant de l’acceptation qu’être Amérindien est en lui-même une construction empruntant à un large éventail de personnes de la région de la Nouvelle-Orléans durant la période coloniale et post-coloniale. Utilisant une lecture critique des relations interculturelles, j'explore les faits archéologiques qui suggèrent que la Nouvelle-Orléans coloniale fut créée selon des principes à la foi amérindiens et non amérindiens par l’entremise d’échanges. Dans ce processus, l'archéologie démontre qu' ? être amérindien ? faisait partie d'une stratégie coloniale largement utilisée et qui se servait d’une identité amérindienne polyvalente comme point central de l'histoire locale. Cet article traite également de la fa?on dont la marginalisation du peuple amérindien au début du 19ème siècle fut un moyen par lequel la Nouvelle-Orléans et plus largement le sud-est sont entrés en adéquation avec la sensibilité américaine dominante. En même temps que se développait l’idée de ? préhistoire ?, les amérindiens du 19ième siècle furent écartés en temps qu’? autre culture ? et repoussés aux marges de la société de la Nouvelle-Orléans. Les tensions internes qui ont suivi, liées à leur assimilation et déplacement, ont entravées les efforts des Amérindiens contre la domination des Blancs, efforts déployés au cours des 100 années précédentes. Ceci co?ncidant avec l’invention de l’archéologie américaine comme la science de la préhistoire, cet article termine avec une discussion critique de la terminologie archéologique.

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Resumen Esta ponencia explora una concepción de ser Indio/a en New Orleans que complica y localiza historias e identidades Indias. Propone que se puede abordar la noción de “ser Indio/a” no sólo a través de la historia y la arqueología de las personas, sino también como una identidad que hace que ser Indio/a sea en si mismo un artefacto producido por una amplia porción de gente en el desarrollo de New Orleans en los períodos coloniales y post-coloniales. Usando una lectura crítica de relaciones interculturales, exploro la evidencia arqueológica que sugiere que el New Orleans colonial fue creado en términos Indios y no-Indios por el intercambio. En este proceso la arqueología demuestra que ser Indio/a era parte de una estrategia colonial extensamente compartida que ubica una identidad India fluida en el centro de la historia local. La ponencia también considera la manera como la marginalización del pueblo Indio al comienzo del siglo XIX fue una forma a través de la cual New Orleans y el gran sudeste se conectaban con las sensibilidades norteamericanas dominantes. Al desarrollarse con la idea de “prehistoria”, los Nativos norteamericanos del siglo XIX fueron distanciados como un otro cultural y desplazados a los márgenes de la sociedad de New Orleans. Las tensiones internas subsiguientes de asimilación y extirpación torcieron el curso de los desafíos Indios al dominio blanco que habían estado usando en los últimos cien a?os. Como esta acción coincide con la invención de la arqueología norteamericana como la ciencia de la prehistoria, la ponencia concluye con una reflexión crítica de la terminología arqueológica.

     

The Book of Marriage: Histories of Muslim Women in Twentieth‐Century Australia

From 1860 to the 1920s, Muslim merchants and workers from across British India and Afghanistan travelled to Australian shores to work in the extensive camel transportation network that underpinned the growth of capitalism in the Australian interior. Through marriage, South Asian women in addition to white women and Aboriginal women became part of families spanning the Indian Ocean. Yet, the life‐worlds of these women are absent from Australian historiography and the field of Indian Ocean studies alike. When women do appear in Australian histories of Muslim communities, the orientalist accounts work to condemn Muslim men rather than shed light on women's lives. Leading scholars of Indian Ocean mobilities on the other hand, have tended to equate masculinity with motion and femininity with stasis, omitting analyses of women's life‐trajectories across the Indian Ocean arena. In this article, I rethink the definitions of ‘motion’ that underpin Indian Ocean histories by reading marriage records as an archive of women's motion. Using family archives spanning from Australia to South Asia, this article examines five women's marriages to South Asian men in Australia. Challenging the racist accounts of gender relations that currently structure histories of Muslims in Australia, I turn to the intellectual traditions of colonised peoples in search of alternatives to orientalist narratives. Redeploying the Muslim narrative tradition of Kitab al‐Nikah (Book of Marriage) to write feminist history, this article proposes a new framework to house histories of Muslim women.     

Theming Cities, Taming Places: Insights from Singapore

This paper explores the 'thematic development' of Singapore's Little Historic District and the socio-spatial effects of this thematic enhancement scheme. Specifically, I argue that when landscapes are 'themed', which is often the case in urban tourism planning, places will be 'tamed' as a result. This argument is substantiated by the case of Singapore's Little India which was designated a historic district in 1989. I contend that as Little India is redeveloped as an Indian theme district with a mix of modern and traditional activities, it is tamed in three ways. The taming process is exemplified by: (1) a decline in traditional Indian-owned retail outlets and activities; (2) Little India's conversion into a retail attraction rather a place of residence; and (3) a dimming of its rich Indian cultural identity. The taming of activities , community and identity , I shall show, has also generated vociferous reactions from the grass-roots which can be described as anything but tame. Indeed, as gross-roots agencies (comprising merchants and residents) resist the government's development approach, there has been a fundamental rethinking of what Little India means to its people and a re-evaluation of their communal ties to the place. As a result, a reassertion of Indian identity and community occurs even as Little India is being themed and tamed.     

近代新式棉纺织企业工头制管理方式浅析

本文采用交易费用经济学分析框架,借助于民国时期棉纺织企业佣工的相关数据,解释了当时企业内部管理方式的演变.根据史实论断,当时企业内部的人员(企业所有者、管理者和工人)形成了一个社会网络,所有者和管理者(工头--所有者的代理人)可以认为是社会网络上的节点.当企业的规模较小时,这个社会网络可以节省工头管理工人的交易费用;然而,当企业规模越来越大时,由于网络内信息传递成本的提高,社会网络反而成为增加交易费用的原因.最终,企业所有人会倾向于采取新型管理方式,摆脱工头制度对企业发展的束缚.     

Indian Water Settlements: The Prerequisites of Successful Negotiation

Beginning in the late 1970s, the federal government adopted a policy of negotiating, rather than litigating, conflicts over Indian water claims. In the ensuing years numerous settlements have been authorized by Congress. According to the literature on dispute resolution, successful negotiations are usually characterized by a specific set of conditions. This paper assesses the extent to which Indian water settlements are characterized by these conditions.     

Of Fictional Cities and "Diasporic" Aesthetics

This essay considers the work of social reproduction as it unfolds within the cultural realm in both national and diasporic contexts. Beginning with a discussion of the creation of Malgudi—the quintessential Indian hometown created in the 1930s by one of India's most venerated writers, R K Narayan—I go on to argue that in the preindependence days, this Indian small town was created from an aesthetic position not unlike that of present-day diasporic artists. I then look at the novels of South Asian-American writer Indira Ganesan and the paintings by South Asian-American artist Arijit Sen to document the ways in which the works attempt to map alternative articulations of the space of home and community in a diasporic context. Together, these imaginary hometowns do the work of reproducing a viable social sphere through creative work that overcomes the constraints of colonial rule (in Narayan's case) and immigration (in Ganesan's and Sen's work).     

印度加尔各答华人的生存困境及其原因探析--心理文化学的视角

论文从印度加尔各答华人社区的衰落与生存困境、印度文明传统环境下华人的生存适应与社会融入障碍、中国文化传统影响下印度华人心理文化调适的局限等方面,探讨了华人在印度社会中的心理调适过程及其心理社会均衡的实现情况。华人在印度社会遇到的是种姓制度、宗教认同和单惠型为主的交换模式,与华人的家族及宗族认同、信用借贷型为主的交往模式产生了较大冲突。这种冲突使华人与印度社会形成隔绝,并难以实现社会地位、安全、情感等方面的满足。印度华人根据生存环境调整生存策略,以符合华人基本人际状态的方式,实现心理与社会的内外交互平衡,却又加剧了其封闭性、保守性,使其未能成功利用印度社会的制度和文化谋求自我发展、实现自我革新,因而诉诸外部世界,通过再移民来寻求解决这些问题的途径和新的发展机会。这是造成印度华人社会持续衰落的内在根源。     

Ajrakh: From Caste Dress to Catwalk

Ajrakh is a double-sided, block-printed textile worn as caste dress by cattle herders in the desert regions of Kachchh and Thar in north-west India and Sindh in Pakistan, where it is made by Khatri artisans. Readily identified by its distinctive combination of geometric and floral designs, traditional ajrakh is notably printed on both sides of the cloth and is dyed with indigo and madder. In the past forty years ajrakh has not only been transformed from a rustic block print into a popular fashion fabric, it has also become the signature cloth of the Khatri communities at Dhamadka and Ajrakhpur in Kachchh and is their most successful product. This article analyses the interventions that led to the successful adaptation of ajrakh as a regional product to a modern design milieu. It discusses early government initiatives that resulted in the introduction of artisan-designer collaborations in the 1970s, as well as later design developments that were led by Indian and foreign entrepreneurs. It traces the continuing trajectory of ajrakh from rural western India to the catwalks of New Delhi, Mumbai and beyond. Case studies of three fashion companies illuminate the factors that have influenced the commercial ascent of ajrakh. This textile is also considered in respect of recent initiatives to organise and protect the craft sector by the Government of India and by non-governmental organisations. In a final section, the article appraises the value of ajrakh as both a successful commodity and a cultural asset.     

政府介入与日本纺织业的转型

日本政府针对纺织产业衰退采取了相互结合的短期和长期政策。政策地实施维护了日本社会秩序和政治局面的稳定,实现了产业结构合理化和高级化,且在规模缩减的情况下,纺织产业重新焕发出活力。日本政府促进纺织产业转型的经验给我国提供了重要启示。     

纺织品类文物材质与染料分析方法

"丝绸之路"的起点位于中国/东亚,中国在"丝路"的发展中占有重要的地位。古代纺织品文物种类繁多,常用的纺织品科学研究方法有色谱、光谱、质谱等。本研究基于目前纺织品文物的分析现状,从纤维、染料两个重要角度,系统地阐述目前已有的扫描电子显微镜、傅里叶红外光谱、光纤光谱等纺织纤维分析技术,以及薄层色谱、高效液相色谱、拉曼光谱、光纤光谱等纺织品染料分析方法。对于纺织纤维鉴别,扫描电镜、傅里叶红外等方法可靠性较高;对于纺织品染料分析,高效液相色谱的分析精度更受认可;而拉曼光谱、光纤光谱技术具有原位、无损的优势,在纺织品文物研究中也日益被重视。对这些方法的原理、特点及其在古代纺织品分析中的研究进展与发展潜力的归纳与综述,将为纺织品文物保护相关研究提供参考与科学支持。