Coir, a natural fibre used extensively to make brush, spin yarn, twist rope, and weave carpets, is obtained from coconut. The coconut tree (Cocus nucifera) grows in many tropical countries but chiefly in India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Within India it grows best on the southwest coast of Malabar, especially in the state of Kerala. Europeans and Arabs used to refer to it as the Indian Nut. One of the earliest references to its production in Kerala appears in a temple inscription of tenth century, which refers to the fruit as tengai and lists it as a major source of revenue to the temple. Tenmeans the south, probably indicating its arrival from South Sea Islands and/or Sri Lanka by the sea. While there is inscriptional evidence of coconut groves from this period, really large‐scale cultivation – turning almost the whole region into a vast coconut grove – begins from the sixteenth century. For the people of Kerala, the coconut tree is what the reindeer is to the Eskimos;...
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Caldwell, R. C. ‘The Good Sir Gammon Row’. The Chutney Lyrics: A Collection of Comic Pieces in Verses on a Variety of Indian Subjects. Madras: Higgin Bothams and Co., 1871. 23–9.
‘Coco, Cocoa, Cocoa‐nut, and (vulg.) Coker‐nut’. Hobson‐Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. Comp. H. Yule and A. C. Burnell. 1886. New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1994. 228–29.
‘Coir.’ Hobson‐Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. Comp. H. Yule and A. C. Burnell. 1886. New Delhi: Rupa and Co., 1994.
Forbes, J. Oriental Memoirs: Selected and Abridged from a Series of Familiar Letters Written during Seventeen Years of Residence in India: Including Observations on Parts of Africa and South America, and a Narrative of Occurrences in the Four India Voyages. London: White, Cochrane and Co., 1813.
Isaac, T. M. T. Class Struggles and Industrial Structure: A Study of Coir Weaving Industry in Kerala. Ph.D. Dissertation. Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies, 1984.
Isaac, T. M. T., P. A. Van Stuijvenberg, and K. N. Nair. Modernisation and Employment: The Coir Industry in Kerala. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992.
Mateer, S. Native Life in Travancore. London: WH Allen & Co., 1883. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1991.
Nair, Bindu. ‘Women's Health in a Traditional Sector: A Study of Coir Yarn Spinning Industry in Kerala’. IASSI Quarterly April–June 1997: 115–22.
Nieuwenhuys, Olga. Angels with Callous Hands: Children's Work in Rural Kerala (India). Amsterdam: Vrija Universiteit, 1990.
Playne, S. Comp. Southern India: Its History, Resources, People, Commerce and Industrial Resources. London: The Foreign and Colonial Computing and Publishing Co. 1914.
Rammohan, K. T. ‘Understanding Keralam: The Tragedy of Radical Scholarship’. Monthly Review. 43.7 (1991): 18–31.
‐‐‐. Material Processes and Developmentalism: Interpreting Economic Change in Colonial Tiruvitamkur, 1800–1945. Ph.D. Dissertation. Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies, 1996.
‐‐‐. Technological Change in Kerala Industry: Lessons from Coir Yarn Spinning. Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Research Programme on Local Level Development, 1999.
‐‐‐. ‘Kerala Model’, Labour and Technological Change: A View from Rural Production Sites. Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Occasional Paper 172, 2000.
Rammohan, K. T. and R. Sundaresan. ‘Socially Embedding the Commodity Chain: An Exercise in Relation to Coir Yarn Spinning in Southern India’. World Development 31.5 (2003): 903–23.
Sharma, S. R. The Economics of Coir Industry (Coir Spinning in Malabar). Feroke: S. Rajam and Co., 1923.
Subrahmanian, K. K. and P. Mohanan Pillai. Kerala's Industrial Backwardness: Exploration of Alternative Hypotheses. Economic and Political Weekly 21.14 (1986): 577–92.
Sundaresan, R. Technology, Labour and Capital: A Study of Interlinkages in Coir Yarn Spinning Industry in Kerala. Ph.D. Dissertation. Thiruvananthapuram: University of Kerala, 2002.
Venkataraman, K. S. Coir Industry and Trade on the Malabar Coast. Journal of the University of Bombay Part 1 (1940): 52–87; Part 2 (1941): 154–83; Part 3: 61–86.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Rammohan, K.T. (2008). Coir in India: History of Technology. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8516
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_8516
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-4559-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-4425-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawReference Module Humanities and Social Sciences