Global Markets and Regional Industrialization: The Emergence of the Saxon Textile Industry, 1790–1914

Abstract

Saxony is commonly regarded one of the main industrial regions of 19th-century Germany. Industrialization processes started early and appar-ently this was closely connected to the region’s ‘proto-industrial’ roots. Saxony had been producing goods for markets outside the region itself ever since silver ore had been discovered in the mountainous woodlands bordering Bohemia. For centuries the Erzgebirge – Ore Mountains – region was virtually scattered with mines, foundries and forges where quite an impressive range of metals and minerals was extracted and proc-essed: silver, copper, tin, iron, zinc, nickel, cobalt, even uranium. Home workers produced cutlery and other household goods, musical instru-ments or wooden toys. Lace-, ribbon- and border-making had spread throughout the Ore Mountains from the 16th century onwards. Many other textile goods were manufactured in the lower regions north and west of the Erzgebirge proper: in the Vogtland as well as in the Chemnitz area, and further east in Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz). But ore mining had been declining ever since the heydays of the silver boom in the 1490s to the 1520s and thus played only a minor role in the Industrial Revolution. More important for the industrial transformation of Saxony in the 19th century were certainly the various branches of textile manufacture.¹