Weaving Histories

After obtaining her Ph.D from the University of Delhi, Karuna Dietrich Wielenga was a Newton International Fellow at Oxford University. She is a historian of south Asia and her research interests span economic, social and labour history. She has worked on the history of handlooms, labour legislation, and the emergence of the informal sector in India. Her papers have been published in Modern Asian Studies and the International Review of Social History among other journals. She currently teaches at Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India. She is a research associate of the Centre for South Asian Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies.

In Weaving Histories, Karuna Dietrich Wielenga mobilizes an impressive range of sources to show that for at least south India many of the truisms often repeated are, if not incorrect, then surely imprecise. To understand the important revisionist work of this book, the author provides a careful analysis not just of weaving but also of raw cotton cultivation and spinning.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1: The Geography of Weaving: South India in the Early Nineteenth Century2: Statistics, Looms and People: The Changing Contours of the Handloom Industry3: From Cotton to Cloth: The Linking Threads4: Weaving: Changing Structures5: Caste and Work6: Solidarity and Action7: The State and the WeaverConclusionAppendix: Note on the Loom TaxBibliographyIndex