Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c24.4

c24.4

2. Among the most extensive of the exports of England to India, is the trade of bar iron, which to Madras alone amounts to 1,000 tons per annum; and while India is known to produce malleable iron of a superior quality, it has been frequently proposed as a question whether she could not supply her own wants in this article at a cheaper rate than if procured from England, if improved processes were introduced in the reduction of the native ores. I am not aware that any satisfactory experimental investigation of this point has ever been instituted, or given to the public; but from the remarks in the reports of the Committee for investigating the coal and mineral resources of India, it would seem that little or nothing is as yet known upon the subject.