Remnants of colonialism?

The Bronteblog has a recent post regarding an interview with Andrea Galer, who spearheads the Power of Hands Project.
A previous post from the same source states that:

Andrea Galer the woman behind the Power of hands Project has always actively sought to include the work of craftspeople from across the world. As a film and television costume designer her long-held passion for traditional crafts has already taken her to India to work with handloom weavers. In the aftermath of the tsunami she determined to help the Sri Lankan lacemakers whose lives had been devastated. Andrea's collections and film costumes provide ongoing links to the lace, she has used the lace made by tsunami suvivors in her current production 'Jane Eyre' the BBCs big drama this autumn. The lace is also featured in her current bridal collection and she is currently designing the Limited Signature Editions profiling the lace from Galle.

I really think that it's great that she is employing the talents of impoverished women in Tsunami-devasted areas such as Sri Lanka, and giveing them an outlet as well as a means of income. In addition, she is striving to preserve the craft of lace-making, and that is commendable.

However, when considered in light of the production of Jane Eyre, this matter raises a different set of questions. We cannot ignore the fact that Bronte's novel was indeed written in the 19th century, when British Imperialism dominated South Asia, including Sri Lanka. And poor craftswomen making laces for those in the aristocracy would have been the norm back then. This situation seems to be strangely repeated if we think that the poor women in Sri Lanka are making laces for the likes of Blanche Ingram (although she is fictional, she is relatively wealthy and haughty). In some sense, through merging fact and fiction, it seems to me as if history is repeated, as if times havent' changed at all.