Question

Which were the Indian products exported to Europe?

Answer 1

Hint: At the turn of the eighteenth century, China and India were the world's two main economies. These two regions produced nearly half of global GDP and just over half of the global industrial output at the time; Asia's share of global trade barely reached the amount it had in the 1720s in the 1980s and 1990s.

Complete answer:
According to written accounts of European travellers, India was economically more advanced than most European countries in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Traders from all over the globe came to trade their gold, silver, and other precious metals for cotton textiles, saltpetre, indigo, opium, silk, and other goods.

Before the arrival of colonisation, India was the world's largest exporter of textiles. Trade-in textiles and spices, which were essential for storing meat when refrigeration was unavailable, brought European traders to India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The entry of the Portuguese into India was accompanied by the arrival of other European communities, and the Europeans quickly monopolised India's coastal and maritime trade. During this period, India became mostly a raw material exporter, with a significant presence in Asian markets: cotton piece goods, indigo, and raw silk - the staples of the 1800s European economy, which accounted for nearly half of exports.

Therefore, Cotton piece goods, indigo, and raw silk were the Indian products that were exported to Europe.

Note: The European East India Companies' business strategy had performed well in the first half of the eighteenth century. Despite legal bans on the cotton cloth to defend domestic silk-weavers and heavy import duties on tea, demand for Indian kinds of cotton and Chinese tea grew in Europe and the Atlantic economy.