Here’s the version that I have heard, don’t remember where I got it from but it wasn’t the Internet!
When we twist fibers around each other, this gives rise to a clinging friction between the fibers that prevents them from sliding away from each other. So despite cotton fibers only being about 1.25 inches / 30 mm long, we can make them into a long, strong thread without adding glue or anything else to keep them together. This is the ancient craft that we call spinning. Humankind may have learned this from the wind – I have myself seen small lumps of naturally shed wool caught on a thorn bush and pulled into a long thread by the vortexes of the passing Atlantic winds.
How many fibers to we need to do this? My dear mentor Lars Wålstedt at his studio mill in Dalarna (now in its fourth generation!) could spin yarns that were only seven fibers in width on a drop spindle, using uncarded fleece of Swedish Rya fleece (a close relative of Icelandic), without looking at his hands, while lecturing.
Do we need at least seven? Well, since we need the fibers to hug each other in a spiral, we need at least two. But two isn’t quite enough, because we need a new fiber to have joined the hug before we reach the end of either of the original two. So we need at least three fibers.
And in fact there have been cadres of exceptionally skilled spinners in various fiber cultures that regularly span yarns only three fibers in width. In India, these masters of the craft span cotton fibers to yarn that could be woven into cloth so sheer that when it was laid on the grass you couldn’t see it as cloth, just as a whitish shimmer on the grass that gave it the name morning dew.
In order to spin this incredibly fine yarn, the spinners used a tiny hole drilled through the tip of their thumbnail. According to my (forgotten) source, when the occupying Brits saw this tiny hole, they would immediately chop off the thumb of the person concerned. So it was not weavers who were losing their thumbs – I think you could probably weave quite well without thumbs – but spinners.
It seems incredibly brutal to ruin the livelihood of an innocent person in this way, but the two hundred years of British occupation of India was studded with massacres and hangings. And it is very clear from British industrial history that the colonies were always intended to be new markets for British exports.
Here’s the version that I have heard, don’t remember where I got it from but it wasn’t the Internet!
When we twist fibers around each other, this gives rise to a clinging friction between the fibers that prevents them from sliding away from each other. So despite cotton fibers only being about 1.25 inches / 30 mm long, we can make them into a long, strong thread without adding glue or anything else to keep them together. This is the ancient craft that we call spinning. Humankind may have learned this from the wind – I have myself seen small lumps of naturally shed wool caught on a thorn bush and pulled into a long thread by the vortexes of the passing Atlantic winds.
How many fibers to we need to do this? My dear mentor Lars Wålstedt at his studio mill in Dalarna (now in its fourth generation!) could spin yarns that were only seven fibers in width on a drop spindle, using uncarded fleece of Swedish Rya fleece (a close relative of Icelandic), without looking at his hands, while lecturing.
Do we need at least seven? Well, since we need the fibers to hug each other in a spiral, we need at least two. But two isn’t quite enough, because we need a new fiber to have joined the hug before we reach the end of either of the original two. So we need at least three fibers.
And in fact there have been cadres of exceptionally skilled spinners in various fiber cultures that regularly span yarns only three fibers in width. In India, these masters of the craft span cotton fibers to yarn that could be woven into cloth so sheer that when it was laid on the grass you couldn’t see it as cloth, just as a whitish shimmer on the grass that gave it the name morning dew.
In order to spin this incredibly fine yarn, the spinners used a tiny hole drilled through the tip of their thumbnail. According to my (forgotten) source, when the occupying Brits saw this tiny hole, they would immediately chop off the thumb of the person concerned. So it was not weavers who were losing their thumbs – I think you could probably weave quite well without thumbs – but spinners.
It seems incredibly brutal to ruin the livelihood of an innocent person in this way, but the two hundred years of British occupation of India was studded with massacres and hangings. And it is very clear from British industrial history that the colonies were always intended to be new markets for British exports.
Yes, it is true that during the 18th century, the British East India Company imposed heavy duties on Indian muslin and also implemented policies that led to the decline of the muslin industry in Bengal. There are historical accounts of harsh measures being taken by the British to suppress the local textile industry, including the cutting off of the thumbs of muslin weavers to prevent them from producing fabric. These actions had a significant impact on the traditional muslin production in Bengal.
First of all, nobody heard about the textiles or clothing industry in Britain, not in the way Dakha muslin silk was popular all over the world, from Europe to Persia to Rome. Muslin silk was very rare and hard to make. Afterall, the The British tried to copy and make their own versions, but it could never match the original as the threads were so delicate they would snap if tried to produce through machinery. The Bengal muslin silk producers and the comparison of a teenage girl making much more cloth is expected as different types of cloth are being weaved by the Bengal and by the British beca
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Yes, absolutely. William Bolts, a merchant in his book “Considerations on India Affairs” recorded instances of extreme brutality against silk weavers including cutting off their fingers. I am an Indian Bengali, and this is also very well-known here.
The British also systematically destroyed the muslin production by levying a 70–80% tax on domestic muslin fabrics and a meager 2–4% tax on factory-made clothes imported from Britain. (It is amazing how western countries built much of their wealth and industry on obscenely mercantile policies and now insists on “free trade” with less developed nations because that suits them better now. E.g. the US successfully challenged India in the WTO and stopped us from incentivizing domestic manufacturers of solar panels.)
Anyhow, long story short, as a result of all their policies: the production of muslin suffered greatly, both in quality and quantity, and never recovered. The weavers: whose only skill was muslin-weaving, were thus plunged into abject poverty and an important industry was destroyed. Yay colonialism!
Per my answer to: Has the British rule in India adversely affected the Indian textile industry?
after the Battle of Plassey, Clive introduced import and export monopolies in Bengal, forcing any merchant attempting to import cotton or silk from another state to pay a >30% duty, and forcing all export bound cotton and silk to be sold to the EIC, failing to do so resulted in fines, imprisonments, floggings and / or forced indenture, in an EIC factory; that the local weavers were on occasion reported to have cut their own thumbs off to avoid, for example:
Considerations on India affairs: particularly respecting the present state . By William Bolts, 1772
So spinners cutting their own thumbs off, appears to have happened, but was performed to stop the EIC profiting from their Labour, rather than to stop production. Which the export figures back, eg.
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