A rough fabric woven from unbleached cotton containing parts of cotton seeds in the weave and often printed with designs that vary by region. Named after the city of Calicut (now Kozhikode) in Kerala, Calico is prized for its durability and versatility. The fabric simple but close criss-cross pattern produced by a tabby or plain weave.

While scholars believe that the fabric was first woven in eleventh-century Kerala, the earliest evidence of Calico printing comes from a fifteenth-century patterned cloth made in Gujarat and discovered in Egypt — likely a result of extensive trade across the Indian Ocean. Trade of cotton fabrics was regularly conducted by merchants and intermediaries plying between the eastern African and western Indian coasts.

Due to its low cost and high durability, the plain fabric was preferred by Arab and coastal African traders for the clothing of enslaved or indentured workers during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and later, until the mid-nineteenth century, by European powers engaged in the transatlantic slave trade. Printed Calicoes were popular among wealthier buyers from across western Asia and Africa, with Vaniyas — upper-caste merchants from present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu — commanding most of the market and often crowding out Portuguese textile traders in colonies such as Mozambique. By the seventeenth century, printed Calicoes featuring floral motifs on light backgrounds gained popularity in Europe and North America and were used to make dresses, quilts and home furnishing. In pre-colonial India, the cloth was used primarily for sarees and was typically dyed in darker colours.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the growing popularity of Indian fabrics such as Calico and chintz eventually led to a British monopoly on most finished cotton textiles in the world. Prior to this, Indian producers still commanded much of the cotton market. To shield its own textile economy from high-quality, imported cotton fabrics, Britain passed the Calico Acts that effectively banned the import and sale of most cotton textiles in England and indirectly promoted its native wool industry. However, the growing promise of control over a colonial market caused a change in attitudes so that by the 1730s, exemptions were made for the import of unbleached Calico cloth. The British East India Company’s hold on cotton weaving in India ultimately allowed them to make Calico weavers — often already exploited lower caste groups such as the Saliyas — produce the plain fabric at low rates for export to Britain, where the cloth was printed and sold in Europe and North America.