India was a leading manufacturing nation at least at par with pre-industrial Europe. A variety of manufactured foodstuffs, oil, butter, ghi, salt and sugar, were among the staples of the inter-regional trade. The Mughals spent freely on the construction of the chief cities and the nobles embellished Delhi at their own expense to gain the monarch's favour. The country's leading manufacture, cotton textiles, was produced in every part of the country. The metal was produced in the Mughal provinces of Bengal, Allahabad, Agra, Berar, Gujarat, Delhi and Kashmir. In the 1660s, the Dutch began to export iron products from Coromandel to Batavia. Manufacturing in Mughal India was predominantly a rural activity though most urban centres also had their artisan industries, especially production of certain luxury and semi-luxury goods. In parts of southern India, several occupations - carpenters, braziers, goldsmiths and stone-cutters, were included in the same caste-group allowing a certain degree of horizontal mobility.