Articles and Studies Websites

Paper presented at the 2006 Helsinki XIV International Economic History Congress, assessing the thesis that the de-industrialising impact of colonial rule explains the near-absence of a cotton textile industry in colonial Indonesia. Author: Pierre van der Eng.

Extensive excerpt of a book on the development of the textile industry in Mississippi, USA. Author: Narvell Strickland.

Series of Ford Lectures about sheep and wool production, the development and organization of the wool trade, the taxation of wool, the staple system, and the wool trade and the middle classes. First published in 1941. Author: Eileen Power.

Collection of essays, photographs, images, letters and songs related to the daily life of cotton textile workers on Lowell, Massachusetts, during a period that lasted nearly a century. From the Center for Lowell History.

Paper presented at the XIV International Economic History Congress in 2006, discussing the historical importance for regional and global trade of cotton textile exports from India from the late 17th Century to the end of the 18th Century. Author: Prasannan Parthasarathi.

Research paper discussing the wage discrimination between men and women working in the early English cotton textile industry, using a labor sorting model as an alternative explanation of how discrimination could be transmitted from established labor markets to the new factory labor market. Author: Douglas A. Galbi.

Working paper on economic history examining the changes in the organization of the Spanish cotton textile industry from 1720 to 1860 in its core region of Catalonia. Author: Joan R. Rosés.

Short narrative about flax cultivation, fiber processing and linen textile manufacturing. From Scholehouse for the Needle, a resource and forum for sharing educational information about embroidery from the 17th to 19th centuries. Author: Alison Smith.

Draft paper prepared for the International Economic History Congress of 2006, suggesting that the cotton textile industry in India lost the competition with Japan in the period between the two World Wars as the leading center of supply because of its inferior labor organization. Author: Tirthankar Roy.

Working paper analysing the historical developments which caused the international wool auction market to shift decisively from Britain to Australia during the period between 1880 and the start of the Second World War. Author: Simon Ville.

Extensive paper about the impact of monetary and labor policies on the Flemish cloth industry, dealing with the period between 1390 and 1435. Author: Prof. John H. Munro.

Discussion paper examining the relative advantages of urban and rural locations for cloth manufacturing in later Medieval England and the Low Countries in the period between 1270 and 1570. Author: Prof. John H. Munro.

European University Institute 2007 working paper, revisiting and situating the historiography of Ottoman cotton textiles within ongoing debates concerning the emergence of a world economy through the lens of the cotton industry as the first global industry. Author: Athanasios Gekas.

Part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history, containing excerpts from historic articles and texts highlighting the opposition to the introduction of mechanised spinning and weaving. Edited BY Paul Halsall.

Article written by Prof. Andrew Ure in 1835, enthusiastically promoting the development of mechanised textile manufacturing in the factory system invented during the Industrial Revolution. From the Modern History Sourcebook.

Paper published in 1990 by the Business History Conference about the explosive growth of organic chemicals and synthetic polymers since World War II, resulting in a move away from using natural fibers in favor of man-made fibers. Author: Amy L. Hardin.

Working paper arguing that the industrial crisis of the traditional English textile towns during the period 1290-1340 was caused by a far reaching economic crisis afflicting their major cloth markets in the Mediterranean basin, rather then the emergence of supposedly superior, lower-cost rural competition. Author: John H. Munro. Text abstract. Full text on PDF document.

Review of the circumstances which resulted in Merino wools to become the chief woollen cloth in the southern Low Countries during the later fifteenth and early sixteenth Century. Author: John H. Munro. Text abstract. Full article on PDF document.

Reconstruction of a Flemish basket of consumables price index for the period 1350-1500, aimed to determine the value of luxury broad woven woollen cloth related to income. Text abstract. Full article on PDF document. Author: John H. Munro.

Working paper presenting a macro- and micro-economic historical study of competition in the West European woollen textile industries, from ca 1000 to 1500. Author: John Munro.

Article on the major changes in textile products, production costs, prices, and market orientations during the era. Author: John Munro.

Extensive working paper on the effects of urbanization of the textile industry on cloth manufacturing in the Low Countries and England between 1280 and 1570 CE. Author: John H. Munro. Text abstract, and full text on PDF document.