"Protectionism for native Brittish industry may have played a role, "
>May have ? I think that's what Imperialism was all about ; enriching the Mother country .
"and also the English may not have considered the Hindoos "civilized" enough (ie. industrialized enough) at the time to operate such factories properly, and I'm certainly not saying I'd agree with this, but it seems like maybe typical ethnocentric thinking for humans."
>If we consider the majority of steel E.W.'s coming out of India even today we are looking at spotty quality control at the best .
" Real good question though, Jens, and I wonder about it, too. As for 19th and early 20th century W European attitudes towards wootz, they seem to be a blend of horror/fear at the deeds its weilders could do with it, and the contempt in which most traditional (including European traditional) material culture was then held by an emergent culture mostly unmixedly proud of its own relatively new industrialism . "
> I would submit that the swords of Islam struck the Crusader era Europeans with awe and horror. When we get to the 19th 20th c. 'then' the ignorance and contempt becomes more apparent with the critical exception of the art connoisseur . Have you read Elgood's book on Hindu Arms ? In it he cites various on scene sources that said the native states were for the most part quite inefficient at war .
Anyway , my two cents worth .
