For over three millennia, Bangladesh has been providing the world with fashionable fabrics, and now, it has become an important supplier of readymade garments. Few can rival Bengal in the history of fabric making.
The first woman, who flaunted the first garment of woven cotton to admiring tribal members of her settlement on the low alluvial rock ridge above the ancient Mangrove swamps of Bangladesh, must have felt as proud as any socialite today, showing off her unique designer piece of real, upmarket “glad rag.”
Fabrics of silk and cotton, as well as of wool, the raw materials of which have been produced in the lands of Bangladesh for millennia, have long been one of the mainstays of local exports.
Shapeless small pieces of rock, many of them basalt, with holes in them, are in the unique Pathan collection of local antiquities at Wari Bateshwar in Narshingdhi. Anyone with experience of archaeological sites around the world could readily identify them; however, consensus is lacking.
Clearly, they are loom weights designed to tighten the weighted, vertical, warp yarns for vertical wooden looms, probably originated from the Neolithic period, over 5,000 years ago.
Indeed, impressions of woven cotton have been found in Harappan sites of the Indus Valley, perhaps dating from about 7,000 years ago, and there is no reason to suppose such impressions might not be found in Bangladesh, in the lands of the Ganges delta. These lands were, after all, the gateway to trade with the Ganges Basin civilisation.
Such weights can be found on Neolithic sites across the world, and, as recently as the twentieth century, were still used by hand weavers of Scandinavia, as well, quite probably, still, by craft weavers and hobbyists, everywhere.
Vertical looms facilitated weaving wider pieces of cloth, permitting the weaver to walk with the weft yarn across a wider frame.
That such woven cloth was widely manufactured in the 3rd millennium Ganges Basin civilisation, the first, known, “industrialised” civilisation in the world, will be no surprise, and that such weaving was carried out in the city that we now know by the names of the two villages of Wari Bateshwar, is no surprise, either.
Wari Bateshwar was, after all, one of the great cities of the ancient trading centre based around the delta of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna, and as a human settlement, it certainly dates back to Neolithic times judging from some of the rather crude stone tools, also in the Pathan Collection, it may have been as old as the 12,000-year-old Palaeolithic times.
What we can be reasonably sure of is that since the cloths for which traders from Arabia, Africa and early Europe headed to the Ganges delta, as early as the first half of the last millennium BCE, included both cotton and silk, it was, at latest, from those days that the skills of weaving in the lands of Bangladesh developed.
The mid 1st century edition of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a merchant guide to trade in the Arabian and Indian oceans, mentions of specifically silks and cotton cloth, suggesting that the early civilisations around the Mediterranean Sea were eager buyers of what was seen as high fashion cloth.
The first Roman Emperor, Augustus, passed Sumptuary Laws, forbidding the wearing of silk, favoured by the wealthier citizens, because of the cost to the Roman exchequer of the precious metals to pay for it.
It has been suggested that the silk bought in the delta originated in China, and was traded from China, down what was probably the first Silk Road, the last part of which was the Brahmaputra River, terminating in the delta. There is, however, a school of thought suggesting that, in fact, the silk moth was also native to Bangladesh, and that high quality silk was also produced in the Ganges basin, at least as early as in China.
It is, however, the fine cotton cloths for which these deltaic lands became particularly world famous as the cutting edge of fashion for the rich and powerful.
The ancient Egyptians, like the Greeks and Romans, were amongst those who first prized what became known as Muslin. It was certainly a cloth of high fashion, a fashionability that lasted, at least until the cotton industry of Britain burgeoned with the onset of powered looms, late in the 18th century. Inevitably, mass production generally resulted in lower quality, and the affordability for a wider market reduced its fashion value.
It is argued that such industrialised weaving could never emulate the craftsmanship of hand weavers, and the sheer quality of the output. And it is also equally arguable that every effort was made by the increasingly politically powerful industrial barons of the west to suppress the import of the original hand made product.
In fact, Muslin, despite the many competing claims, almost certainly originated in the lands of Bangladesh. Certainly, the claims of Dhakeshwari origins seem to be supported by many different sources. That one of the finest variants, Jamdani, named after the interwoven floral motifs, originated around Dhaka, despite whatever the petite bourgeoisie of Calcutta may claim, there is also no doubt.
Wikipedia may suggest that muslin cloths were introduced to Europe in the mid 17th century, and it is true that such a dating would accord with the Da Gama led Portuguese rediscovery of the Indian sub continent. It is, however, beyond much doubt that, Europeans of classical times were familiar and fond of the soft cotton fabrics traded from, probably, at least the middle of the 1st millennium BCE.
It was then that the great 6th century BCE cartographer, Hecataeus of Miletus, living in lands that are now Syria, about 500 BCE, drew his world map that appears to mark the Ganges River. Clearly, traders that he knew were familiar with the geographical layout of the region.
There is no doubt that by the end of the 17th century, Muslin and Silk were the stuff of high fashion for European courts, and wealthy women everywhere. The light, breathable quality of Muslin, especially, made the many layers of cloth that were a part of the highest fashions ideal for the often over-warm salons of palaces and mansions in their public rooms.
What Regency novelty is complete without its references to this luxurious cloth, transported over thousands of miles from its exotic origins, to adorn the most voluptuous of beautiful women; not to forget the undergarments of the well-dressed male?
As the raw material of such glad rags, muslin was paralleled, and often preferred, to silk and such derivatives as satin. But then came the industrial revolution, and rising middle classes who might aspire, but could not always afford, such exotic luxury.
This revolution in manufacturing process, driven by such as the newly invented steam-powered mechanical weaving machines, with productivity levels hundreds of times more efficient than hand looms, saw vastly-increased exports from Bangladesh to Britain of the raw materials.
Competition to supply those materials came, also, from the newly independent USA, and West Indies, whilst a reverse of agricultural specialisation came with ever increasing demand for sugar and opium from Bangladesh. Slowly, but surely, cotton diminished as an export of value from the country.
The arrival of the potential for the supply of ready-made garments, inspirationally identified by local entrepreneurs when the newly-created state of Bangladesh was still struggling to overcome the bleak legacy left by its period under the yoke of Pakistan, brought a new era in supplying fashion goods to the world.
Few of the garments that, today, annually, contribute over 13% to the national GDP of Bangladesh could reasonably claim that much of what is exported would constitute anything other than low cost fashion. Garments, rather than fashion, more what the fashionistas who once would have killed for cloth of Bangladesh origin, would call, perhaps, “sad rags.”
And perhaps, too, the, over 4 million workers employed in the production would regard what they make as a mixed blessing. The work creates employment, but at an evident risk, and for them, at modest reward. A sad state, some might well think, for a fabrics industry with such an ancient history, and such a tradition of producing some of the most treasured garment fabrics in the world.
