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[[File:Badminton_India.jpg|thumbnail|650px350px|left|"The new game of Badminton in India",from <i>The Graphic</i>. 25 April 1874]]

[[File:Toulmouche_Bride.jpg|thumbnail|350px250px|left|The Reluctant Bride, 1865, Auguste Toulmouche. The woman on the left is shown wearing a large Kashmir Shawl.]]

[[File:Woman's_Shawl_LACMA_60.46.12_(1_of_5).jpg|thumbnail|350px250px|left|Woman's Shawl, India, Kashmir, mid-19th century, Goat-fleece underdown (cashmere wool) twill with double-interlocking tapestry-weave patterning, pieced, with wool embroidery, in the Collection of the Las Angeles County Museum of Art.]]

Against this domestic Victorian background a larger struggle was occurring throughout India, one which took the power out of the hands of the Mughal and other ruling dynasties at the beginning of the 19th century and placed the subcontinent as the shining gem in the British Imperial crown by the end of the century. In many ways, the influx of British women, the development of Victorian moral ideals, and the textile trade were extremely influential in that change. In the late 1700’s 1700s and the first couple of decades of the 1800’s 1800s when there were very few women coming from Britain to India, it was far more commonplace for British men working and living in India to assimilate into the Indian culture of the time.<ref> Lawrence James, <i>aj: the making and unmaking of British India</i>, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998) 221.</ref>

Those women who were making the journey were women who were interested in the adventure of the situation or women taking advantage of the lack of European women in India to find a husband. For these women the journey to India was very difficult, taking up to six months via a dangerous ocean journey around the tip of Africa. While on the ship there were two main ways for women to interact with textiles, through their nightgowns and chemises and through the small comforts they were able to bring on board. <ref> MacMillan, <i>Women,</i> 16-21.</ref> Lengths of chintz were recommended to be brought along - these lengths of textiles could be used to create privacy curtains on either side of the sleeping accommodations women found themselves in. For some women, their sleeping quarters were as simple as a hammock hung above a cannon while dirty water rushed across the floor below - in these situations being able to create a small enclosure from a brightly printed piece of fabric would have been one of the very few comforts available on board onboard ship. Later women traveling on the more comfortable steamers were also advised to bring old clothing with them as well as their own linens, chintz laundry bags, and once again chintz curtains for privacy.<ref> Ibid.</ref>

<dh-ad/> Chintz by the earliest parts of the 19th century was already an accepted part of the British textile culture. Originally meaning an Indian hand -printed cotton, patterned using mordants and resist dying - two techniques which were perfected in India before Europe, coming from a Hindustani word for “spotted”. The term came to mean a cotton fabric which that was usually glazed with a floral print, regardless of where it was made. In the 19th century, chintzes were being made throughout England using resist dying and roller printing techniques. These British chintzes were more affordable than the original handmade Indian pieces and were a textile used throughout all levels of British society for both furnishing and clothing. Many of the patterns used by Western textile producers for their chintz cotton were variations on patterns which had been designed in India for export to the European market. This means that while the patterns were Indian in nature when they were taken by British women to India they did not match the products of the native textile industry.[[File:Chintz dresses, Victoria & Albert Museum, London - DSCF0380.JPG|thumb|Chintz dresses, Victoria & Albert Museum, London - DSCF0380]] <ref>Lucy Trench, <i>Materials & techniques in the decorative arts: an illustrated dictionary,</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) 86. </ref>

Women coming to India were advised by the myriad of guidebooks available on what they needed to pack. This included according to the <i>Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook</i>, a guide published in the 1890’s by a woman who had made the trip with her own husband, 12 nightgowns of calico, silk and wool, 12 combinations of the same, 12 merino and silk vests, 12 calico and trimmed muslin bodices, 24 pairs of stockings, 18 petticoats including both flannel and warm ones, four evening combinations of trimmed calico, 18 gowns plus as many evening gowns as the woman saw fit, 11 pairs of shoes/boots and evening slippers to match the gowns. An earlier guide, <i>Real Life in India</i>, recommended a staggering 36 calico nightgowns with 36 matching nightcaps.  As neither of these lists includes the complete amounts suggested within the texts what can be clearly seen is the staggering amount of clothing which women were instructed to bring with them. Many women who had been to India wrote home with suggestions for those who would follow and the most oft-repeated of these was to bring everything you would need from “Home” (with the capital H always referring to England, even among those people of mixed Indian and Anglo ancestry who had never been to the British Isles and who would not have been accepted as British had they made the trip). With a social structure centered around entertaining and outdoor activities women were expected to change their outfits several times a day, an accepted fact of Victorian England, yet, with the added subtropical heat more changes were required in India than would have been at Home. <ref> Ibid. 66</ref>

If women were bringing all their clothing to India with them, how was there a connection between the land where they resided and the clothes which they wore there? Simply put, Britain claimed India for a colony for its agricultural benefits and among those were the fibrous exports of cotton and wool. Between March 31, 1870, and March 31, 1871, the British Empire exported 577,600,764 pounds of cotton from India, making India one of the largest exporters of cotton in the world.<ref>Peter Harnetty, "Cotton Exports and Indian Agriculture, 1861-1870," The Economic History Review 24, no. 3 (1971): 414.</ref> While this was at the end of India’s time of pre-eminence amongst cotton exporters, earned during the American Civil War when their largest competitor was out of commission.  Wool was also exported in large quantities. At the end of the 19th century, the Indian wool exports comprised approximately 13% of all British wool exports.<ref>C. E. W. Bean, "The Wool Industry in the British Dominions," <i>Journal of the Royal Society of Arts</i> 61, no. 3143 (1913): 328.</ref> These millions of pounds of cotton and wool exported from India went to the cotton mills of Britain where they became fabric of varying quality. The lower quality fabrics were then sent back to India for use in the native population while the higher quality textiles were made into different fabrics for use among the British population, including, of course, the ubiquitous chintz and Kashmir shawls which filled the domestic interiors. These same textiles were being used to create the clothing of British women. In this way the textiles of India, even after claimed by the British, made a full circle back to the location which they came from.