In the 17th century, a worldwide market for new products linking Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas emerged. Among these goods, the cotton fabrics from India, known as indiennes, became remarkably popular in the 18th century and gave rise to an imitation industry in Europe. The third largest cotton centre after England and France, Switzerland was at the crossroads of this era’s big business and its commercial and financial networks – the international Huguenot community – controlling both the sources of supply and the European, West Indian and African sales market. Indiennes were then not only everyday objects, pieces of clothing or interior decoration in Europe, but also constituted the money of exchange for people enslaved on the African coasts. Part of the lucrative worldwide trade markets of indiennes, several large firms in Geneva, Neuchâtel and Basel also made profits from the Atlantic slave trade, at its height in the late 18th century.
B. Veyrassat