For much of the twentieth century, the history of industry in the Global South was written in terms of decline. Dependency theorists argued that the nineteenth century brought about the destruction of local industries as European and American manufacturers flooded peripheral markets with cheap textiles. In this view, artisans could not withstand the onslaught of imports and were reduced to supplying raw materials for the industrial core. The picture that emerged was one of sweeping deindustrialization.
Yet this is not what the evidence shows. Across Asia and Africa, many industries survived, adapted, and, in some cases, flourished despite the growth of global trade. Textiles—the industry most often cited as a victim of deindustrialization—provide the clearest counter-examples. From Java to Kano, from Mogadishu to Ethiopia and West Africa, producers found ways to remain competitive. They did so not by isolating themselves from global markets but by exploiting advantages of quality, cultural specificity, and adaptability. Consumers were active participants in this process, often preferring local cloth because it suited their tastes, traditions, or practical needs better than factory-made imports. The exception to this general pattern was the Lower Shire Valley of Malawi, where the collapse of the Mang’anja textile industry was driven not by foreign imports but by devastating local disruptions.
It is therefore more accurate to describe the nineteenth-century history of textiles in the Global South as a patchwork of resilience and adaptation punctuated by isolated cases of decline. The Lower Shire Valley was one such case, but it was hardly representative of the wider story. A closer look at the evidence makes clear why. The idea of a universal decline rests on shaky foundations. As one study observes, “the deindustrialization of the developing world is a myth” because modern manufacturing in the Global South extended not just to factory-based industries but also to the modernization of handicrafts, export processing, and other small-scale sectors. In India, for example, hand spinning declined under the influx of machine-made yarn, yet handloom weaving expanded by using that same yarn to supply massive domestic markets. Dyeing and printing likewise benefited from new industrial dyes. These cases demonstrate that handicrafts were not destroyed but reshaped, often strengthened by new inputs and opportunities.
Java provides one of the clearest illustrations of this dynamic. Dutch authorities tried to capture the Javanese market for Dutch-made textiles, assuming that factory cloth would easily replace local production. Yet Javanese batik manufacture not only survived but thrived. Artisans used imported cambric and industrial dyes to create ever more varied designs, and consumers continued to prefer batik because it carried cultural meanings and aesthetic qualities that factory cloth could not replicate. Rather than displacing local producers, imports became tools for their innovation.
Further, African cases reinforce this picture of resilience. In northern Nigeria, Kano remained a major textile hub into the twentieth century. Its weavers and dyers blended local and imported yarns to produce durable cloths that were valued across West Africa. The expansion of cash-crop agriculture did not eliminate this industry but actually reinforced it, as the income from exports created demand for textiles.
On the Benadir Coast of Somalia, weaving communities in Mogadishu adapted to changing consumer tastes, ensuring that their products remained competitive even when foreign goods were available. In Ethiopia, weaving remained vigorous and was integrated into regional trade, with demand persisting because local cloth met cultural and practical needs better than imports.
Similarly, the success of the Tiv people of Nigeria provides another striking case. By the mid-twentieth century, the Tiv of Nigeria still produced more than half of the cloth consumed in their region, even though imported cloth was widely available. They not only supplied their own households but also sold to surrounding markets. This shows that even under conditions of heavy import penetration, local industries could remain central to everyday life.
Set against these examples, the decline of the Mang’anja textile industry in the Lower Shire Valley appears unusual. In the mid-nineteenth century, the valley’s machila cloth was widely traded and highly regarded. But by the 1860s, weaving had ceased. At first sight, this might appear a textbook case of deindustrialization caused by imports. Yet the evidence rules this out. Imports into East Africa only increased dramatically in the last decade of the nineteenth century, long after the Mang’anja industry had collapsed.
The real causes were local and devastating. Slave raiding in the 1860s decimated the population, while famine and drought compounded the destruction. Labor shortages crippled weaving, which depended on cooperation across households. Even when raiding subsided, ecological change reshaped the economy. Falling river levels exposed fertile land along the Shire River, encouraging villagers to switch to cash-crop farming. With labor scarce and land newly abundant, agriculture offered better returns than weaving. The collapse of the Mang’anja cloth industry was thus the result of demographic catastrophe and ecological transformation, not foreign competition.
Indeed, the fate of industries in the nineteenth-century Global South cannot be reduced to the binary of survival or destruction at the hands of global competition. In many places, from Java to northern Nigeria to Ethiopia, textile industries thrived despite an influx of foreign cloth. They succeeded because they adapted, differentiated their products, and exploited their competitive advantages. Where decline occurred, as in the Lower Shire Valley, the reasons were local: population collapse, famine, and new agricultural opportunities.
Dependency theory’s sweeping claims obscure this complexity. Developing countries did not simply succumb to global capitalism; they competed within it. Their industries reveal a story not of inevitable deindustrialization but of resilience, adaptation, and agency in the face of global change.
