Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.26

c6.s2.26

Several scores of British accounts (some more, some less detailed) pertaining to widely separated areas of India, and perhaps pertaining to about a hundred districts, are available on the Indian manufacture of iron and steel. Though some date to the 1790s, most were written during the period 1820-1855. That included in Chapter XV is probably the most graphic and detailed amongst them, while the one in Chapter XVI tries to provide some perspective and comparison of the different processes and corresponding details prevailing in different countries. Though there seems to be some fairly detailed accounts of the process of Indian iron and steel manufacture in other European languages dating back to the late seventeenth century,⁴³ that in Chapter XIV is probably one of the earliest British accounts of it.