Abstract

The rearing of silkworms and the added-value chain underpinning silk fabrics are attested in Central Asia since antiquity, but how this sector adapted when the region entered the ‘age of steam’ is unclear. Central Asia’s sericulture figures marginally in Giovanni Federico’s landmark account of the silk industry in the 19th-early 20th centuries. True, this was a very small, and declining, share of the global silk trade. However, when seen from colonial Central Asia itself, the importance of this sector is striking.

First, according to contemporary sources, up to 80 percent of Turkestan’s cocoons were exported to European markets, especially Milan and Marseille. The pebrine epidemic and the consequent search for ‘pure’ silkworms had pushed Italian merchants to procure cocoons from the region already during the Russian advance, as Zanier documented. The advent of drying technology, though, greatly expanded the potential for trade in cocoons. At the turn of the century, Corsican entrepreneur Joachim Aloisi became, by mandate of the Tsarist colonial authorities, the ‘official’ purveyor of ‘pasteurized’ silkworm grains, guaranteed against pebrine and flacherie. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and scientific personnel (e.g. physicians) opened ‘grain stations’ in several Turkestani cities, employing local women. Aloisi’s biography, the impact of new science and technology (dryers, microscopes) on previous silk-rearing practices, and the economy of cocoons exports remain opaque, and form another part of my research.

Second, Central Asia’s raw silk (undyed skeins) had become a key export from the region into north-west India in the first half of the 19th century. For Jagjeet Lally, such silk replaced imports from Bengal, until Chinese silk became widely available after 1842. Silk-reeling in Central Asia itself through the whole 19th century, nonetheless, remains unexplored.

In this paper I present the preliminary results of my quest to cast new light on the development of sericulture and silk reeling in the colonial period, particularly in the light of the global connections outlined above.