Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/517

 DESCRIPTION OF ARTICLES, &C. 501 fancies of his customers, will be sure of carrying on a beneficial and agreeable intercourse with them. Among the important articles of importation in- to the islands, cotton Jhbrics, — from the long usage of the people, — their suitableness to the climate, — the dearness and imperfection of their own stuffs, — and the capacity of modern manufacturing Europe to afford a cheap and abundant supply, hold the first place. The taste for foreign cotton fabrics among the islanders is of a date long prior to the in- tercourse of Europeans with them, and is probably coeval with their first connection with the country of the Hindus, from which, as far as regarded their foreign consumption, they were, until the last few years, almost exclusively supplied. In the earlier periods of commerce, they appear to have been supplied from Malabar and Coromandel j and in later times, vvitli cheaper fabrics from Bengal. The quantity of Indian cottons described by our own East India Company two centuries back, as con- sumed in the Archipelago, omitting several import- ant stations of trade, is no less than 200,000 Spanish dollars, or L. 45,000 worth. The im- portance of the trade in European cotton goods bears date from the capture of Java in 1811, and more particularly from the enlargement of the trade in 1814. Its progress in the few years which have elapsed since then has been remarkably rapid. Before the year 1811, the whole consumption of