Wednesday, 14th January 2026

Dr Alka Raman will be speaking to the Society on 'Indian cottons and European calico making and printing.'

Cloudy, soft and vividly coloured chintzes, calicoes and muslins from India, introduced into Europe during the early modern period, were vessels containing the knowledge required for their replication. Historians tell us that the import substitution of these Indian cotton goods in Britain contributed to industrialisation and economic growth. What did the process of import substitution entail?  What comprised the knowledge that was transferred from the Sub-Continent into Europe and how was it used in Europe for the purpose of making cotton textiles like the Indian chintzes? Extracting the knowledge embedded within textile objects and early modern texts relaying Indian printing-dyeing techniques, this talk unpacks the process of introduction of new knowledge from one region into another and its adoption, adaptation, or rejection in the new environment.

Dr Alka Raman is Assistant Professor in Economic and Social History in the Department of History at University College London, and Associate Editor of the Industrial History Review. She is a historian of technological change in global economic history with particular interest in changing technologies in cotton manufacturing. Previously, Alka was Hallsworth Fellow at University of Manchester, ESRC Fellow at the LSE and Economic History Society’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Guest Lecturer at the V&A. Alka has a PhD in Economic History from the LSE.