Processes and products

Abstract

NEXT to food and shelter, in all parts of the world outside the tropics clothing is a requirement for human life. For almost all the year, north-west Europe would certainly be uninhabitable without it. Hence for uncountable centuries even before the Roman occupation of Gaul and Britain, sheep’s wool was there being spun into yarn for weaving into cloth for garments. Long before ad 1500 this ancient industry had reached a high point of development in England, where it was practised over most of the country. A parliamentary statute of 1337¹ had encouraged and protected domestic clothmaking by forbidding the import of foreign woollen textiles. The only sources of competition were therefore those provided by furs and skins, too scarce for widespread use; linen, which was too light; and silk, which was too costly. Cotton was conveniently available as an alternative material for the clothmaker only from the very late sixteenth century; and its use for the production of textiles grew at the expense of the linen rather than the woollen industry. Thus during the quarter of a millennium covered by this survey, English manufactures had little rivalry to encounter in the home market.