The Early Development of the Cotton Industry, 1600–1760

Abstract

MOST of what is known about the early development of the cotton industry in Britain can be found in Wadsworth and Mann’s The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780. It appears that the manufacture of cotton came to Britain from the Low Countries in the sixteenth century, one of the range of ‘new draperies’ that was transforming the textile industry in the later Tudor period. It was brought to East Anglia by Walloon and Dutch immigrants who settled in Norwich and other towns and established the manufacture of fustian, a mixture of linen with cotton imported from the Levant. Towards the end of the sixteenth century fustian reached Lancashire and began to oust the woollen industry from the western side of the county.