‘Political components of the industrial revolution: Parliament and the English cotton textile
industry, 1660-1774’, Patrick O’Brien, Trevor Griffiths and Philip Hunt.
This article focuses on the preconditions to the blossoming of the cotton industry within England,
and that it was important in providing the environment which the first industrial revolution could
then be born in. They say that the stories of growth of the cotton industry are ‘narrated as if
everything of importance began with the invention of spinning machines in the 1760’s’ – they aim to
disprove this, and suggest that significant developments occurred beforehand. This article also
focuses on the importance of legislation within this development, and they argue that most other
works on the industrial revolution are ‘devoid of any informed analysis of government’.
The domestic woollen and silk industries of England were in competition with the foreign
Asian textiles, consequently they formed a sort of alliance in protestation to the government
concerning the Asian traded textiles. O’Brien, Griffiths and Hun acknowledge the difficulty in
measuring the penetration of Asian textiles within the population, particularly with regards to
smuggling. Thus it is difficult to measure the actual threat. Initially, Parliament raised tariffs to suit
the interests of the woollen and silk industries, but this did not succeed in deterring consumers from
buying competitively priced Asian textiles. In France, the finishing or printing of Indian calicoes was
prohibited, and the wool and silk industries wanted to mirror this, to the greatest extent possible,
within England.
The East India Company defended its trade with Asia by saying that Asian imports created
commercial wealth and that bans would induce consumers to seek substitutes in other areas of
Europe, consequently fuelling England’s European enemies (such as France). Those who opposed
Asian trade claimed that it significantly threatened the woollen industry which would then result in
high levels of unemployment, promoting emigration to Ireland or France and thus transferring
valuable skills to other areas of Europe.
Government legislation in support of the woollen and silk industries included: Sumptuary
laws in 1666 and 1678 which prescribed the wearing of lighter cloth and made burial in anything
other than woollen shrouds illegal; prohibition of printed calicoes and wrought silks in England
during the 1690’s; 1701 – first restriction of trade with Asia – forbade the wearing of wrought silks
and other Asian textiles, and painted, dyed or stained calicoes (although plain calicoes could be
imported and then ‘finished’ in England); 1722 further measures to close the home market to Asian
textiles – forbade the wearing of ‘painted, stained or dyed calicoes under the penalty of forfeiting to
the informer the sum of five pounds of lawful money’. This demonstrated the woollen industry’s
powers to constrain competition and manipulate political opinion.
However, the result was that a domestic cotton manufacturing industry emerged, and
replaced Asian textiles as rivals of the woollen and silk industries. Parliamentary concessions against
the cotton industry which increased the price of linen yarn, in conjunction with the impact of the
wars of the eighteenth century, prompted fustian producers (a mixture of cotton and linen) to seek
technological solutions. Government legislation then supported the cotton industry – 1774 ‘pure’
cotton cloth could be dyed, printed and sold in Britain. O’Brien, Griffiths and Hunt argue that ‘By
fostering the manufacture of linen, fustian and by extension cotton cloth in England, parliament had
established ‘legislative foundations’ for the first fully mechanised factory industry to emerge’. The
role of the state should be given greater credit in the dismantling of mercantilist obstacles to the
diffusion and eventual triumph of free markets.