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JayGrym wrote

Tbf, they do state the finished product has a thread count of 300 and a traditional pure Dhaka muslin had a thread count of 800-1200. It is a pretty cool achievement, though. I also appreciate how the article appropriately placed blame on consumerism and colonialism for the lost methods, villager debts, and extinction of the plant.

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Hopium wrote (edited )

Since the industrial revolution, production of goods has moved more and more from a labour-based mode to a capital-intensive mode, and one interesting side-effect of this is a general deskilling.

Skills and crafts that haven't been totally killed off are kept alive by a handful of people, when there used to be a significant chunk of the population who were good tailors and cobblers and gardeners and that.

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ziq wrote

people from that region say the british empire cut off the weavers thumbs so they could no longer make the fabric when the uk decided to build factories in europe and didn't want the competition to impede their peddling of their own mass-produced cheap low thread count fabric

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JayGrym wrote

Sounds true enough. The British did horrible things (genital mutilation included) all over the world.

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ziq wrote

When the British were in charge here, my grandparents had to work in the fields all day and everything they produced was taken and shipped to Britain. Literally all they got from the British to live on was some hard bread and 2 olives for each family member, once a day. They had to forage for weeds at night or "steal" (from their own land) to stay alive.

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JayGrym wrote

What was the crop? Is it still grown there today?

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ziq wrote

depends on the season. olives, carobs, hemp, buckwheat, etc

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JayGrym wrote

I assume crop rotation must have been used back then as well. What long term affects were there as a result of British occupation?

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ziq wrote

natural environment: they planted invasive thirsty plants to drain all the wetlands, cut down all the forests to export the lumber (but much later replanted some of the forests), banned nomadic shepherds to allow the replanted forests to grow, then burned them down to kill guerillas and bandits that took to hiding in them, banned growing certain traditional crops and made everyone grow crops that were valuable to the british, then seized all the crops as taxes at harvest

society: made new laws and taxes (even higher than the debilitating taxes imposed by the previous colonial government), started courts to try people who broke those laws or didn't pay those taxes, built prisons, started a newspaper to normalize british propaganda, undertook widespread archeological looting but destroyed any archeological finds that they found undesirable, started a police force and only let one of the (minority) ethnic groups be part of it (a divide and conquer tactic), which turned all the other ethnic groups against them because they were constantly being arrested, fined and beat up by them (which caused decades of war and division that continues today), forced everyone to fight and die in their foreign wars, built huge military bases (that are still in operation) to attack other countries in the region from

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JayGrym wrote

Wow, so really everything changed. Makes me wonder how many species of fauna and flora were lost as a result of all that.

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JayGrym wrote

I've been attempting to learn some primitive/medieval skills (flint knapping, woodworking, etc.) and it is difficult to find someone that can "mentor" me lol There aren't a lot of people around me using the old ways or the old tools (much like the tool they had to craft for the production of the Dhaka muslin, some of the skills and tools for primitive woodworking are near lost as well). I have to find niche youtube videos and scour the internet for hours to find some stuff. Skills that promote self sustainability are what I'm after. De-skilling is a real issue lol

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[deleted] wrote

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JayGrym wrote

Sure! Would you happen to know which forum would be most appropriate for old skills related things?

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MHC wrote

First I coarse sand with a power tool. Then I manually work around nails, and finish.

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ziq wrote

great read

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