Vasco da Gama during his short stay at Melinda had little time for inquiring into the condition of the cotton trade of the country on whose shores he had landed, and it does not seem to have been forced upon his attention as it was on that of Columbus. But when Odoardo Barbosa, of Lisbon, visited South Africa eighteen years afterwards (in 1516), he found the natives wearing clothes of cotton. In 1590, cotton cloth woven on the coast of Guinea was imported into London from the Bight of Benin, and modern travellers in the interior of Africa concur in the opinion that cotton is indigenous there, and in stating that it is spun and woven into cloth in every region of that continent. From the beauty of the dye and the designs in some of the cotton dresses, it is justly inferred to be a manufacture of very ancient standing. We have evidence, therefore, that in Africa, as well as in Asia and America, the cotton plant had a separate centre of indigenous growth, and that from a very remote period its vegetable wool was manufactured into useful and ornamental articles of clothing.[43]
[43] The cotton plant was also found indigenous in the Sandwich Islands, the Galapagos, etc. It is doubtful whether the cotton found in the Bornean Archipelago had not been carried eastward from India.
The Portuguese took every possible precaution to secure the prize which by the courage and perseverance of their admiral they had been enabled to grasp, and to maintain the rights which priority of discovery was, in those days, supposed to confer. A chain of forts or factories was established for the protection of their trade; whilst for the extension of it they took possession of Malacca, and their ships visited every port from the Cape to Canton.
The Venetians saw with alarm the ruin that impended over them through the successful rivalry in trade of the Portuguese, but were powerless to prevent a competition against which their merchants were unable to contend. They therefore formed an alliance with the Turks under the Sultans Selim and his successor, Solyman the Magnificent, and incited them to send a fleet against the prosperous Portuguese. They even allowed the Turks to cut timber in the forests of Dalmatia with which to build their ships; and when twelve of these were finished, Solyman manned them with his Janissaries, and sent them to harass the Indian trade. The Portuguese met them with undaunted bravery, and, after several conflicts, vanquished the Ottoman squadron, and remained masters of the Indian Ocean.
The immediate effect of direct communication with the East by sea was the lowering of the prices of Indian produce. Commerce naturally sought the cheapest market. The trade of Venice was annihilated, and the stream of wealth that had flowed to her treasury was dried at its source. The merchandize of India was shipped from the most convenient ports, and conveyed cheaply, safely, and directly to Lisbon, and thence was distributed through Europe. A plentiful supply of Indian goods at reasonable rates caused a rapid increase in the demand for them, and amongst the trades to which this gave an impetus was that in cotton.
Up to this period no cotton was woven in England; the small quantity that was used for candle-wicks, &c., came either from Italy or the Levant. Linen was first woven in England in 1253, by Flemish hands; but for nearly a century afterwards almost all the cotton, woollen and linen fabrics consumed there were manufactured on the continent, and a great quantity of British wool was exported to Flanders and Holland. Edward III., however, gave encouragement to foreign skill, and in 1328 some Flemings settled in Manchester, and commenced the weaving of certain cloths, which, though composed of wool, were known as “Manchester cottons,” and thus paved the way for the great cotton manufacture for which that part of Lancashire is now famous.
In 1560, England imported, through Antwerp, cotton brought from Italy and the Levant, as well as that carried from India to Lisbon by the Portuguese, and showed some anxiety to compete in its manufacture with foreign countries. An impulse was given to this ambition in 1585 by a fresh influx of Flemish workpeople, who, driven from their own country to escape the cruelties of the Duke of Alba during the religious persecution of the Low Countries by the Spaniards, found an asylum in England, and brought with them the skill in workmanship which adjoining States had long envied.
India, however, continued far in advance of every European country in the spinning and weaving of cotton to nearly the middle of the eighteenth century. The activity of the trade in her piece goods was looked upon as ruinous to the home manufacturer, though most profitable to the merchant, and we find Daniel Defoe, in 1708, thus lamenting, in his ‘Weekly Review,’ the preference for Indian chintz, calico, &c.
“It crept,” he says, “into our houses, our closets, our bedchambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and, at last beds themselves were nothing but calicoes and Indian stuffs, and, in short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade.... The several goods brought from India are made five parts in six under our price, and, being imported and sold at an extravagant advantage, are yet capable of underselling the cheapest thing we can set about.”