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Prasannan Parthasarathi

Prasannan Parthasarathi

Professor of History, Boston College, USA

Professor Parthasarathi is a professor of History at Boston College, USA. He teaches courses on modern South Asia, global history, and environmental history. He is now engaged in a study of environmental change, agriculture, and labour in nineteenth-century South India. His books include The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 and Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not

Author Articles

Colour photograph of a cotton ceremonial hanging made on the Coromandel Coast for the Indonesian market
By Prasannan Parthasarathi

The Indian challenge and the rise of Manchester

Cotton’s global ascendancy has been attributed to the rise of Manchester in the late eighteenth century. This paper argues that Indian cotton textiles were a global commodity long before British industrialisation. Manchester’s rise was a response to an Indian challenge.