Unravelled Dreams: Silk and the Atlantic World, 1500–1840 by Ben Marsh

Abstract

Histories of individual commodities and products abound these days, but Marsh’s Unravelled Dreams differs from most of them in one important respect. Rather than spinning a tale of biological and commercial success, Marsh traces how and why silk production failed in so many different places and in so many ways in the Western Hemisphere during the early modern period. Indeed, his chronicle of serial miscalculations and disappointments involving silk brings to mind nothing so much as Beckett’s famous lines in Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”1On the surface, the reasons for the many attempts to develop a viable silk industry in the Americas during the early modern period are understandable. The natural fiber was highly valued and much in demand at the time, and, as Marsh demonstrates in his opening chapter, it had been cultivated and processed successfully in many parts of Afro-Eurasia after its appearance in China c. 5000 b.c.e. In hindsight, however, experimenters with silk could have proceeded with a bit more caution; myriad challenges had to be overcome merely to produce good silk, much less to do so efficiently and at a scale sufficient to create an industry.Silk is derived from the cocoons of domesticated moths classified by Linnaeus as Bombyx mori. Once moth eggs of this species hatch into larvae, they eat voraciously and continually, with a preference for the leaves of white mulberry trees. At a certain point in the growth process, the larvae enclose themselves in cocoons of raw silk, which is essentially a protein produced by their salivary glands. Silk is harvested by boiling the evolving moths inside their cocoons and then unravelling the single thread of silk from which each cocoon is made. The raw silk, which is quite delicate, then must go through an elaborate multi-stage processing sequence before it can transform into one or another variety of silk fabric. Silk processing during the early modern period occurred both at the household level on manual reels and in certain areas at larger facilities known as filatures, which often employed mechanical power of one type of another.The above description of silk production, however truncated, is sufficient to suggest the elements that comprised the complicated, entrepreneurial undertaking of silk production in the Western Hemisphere: transporting fragile moth eggs long distances to places where white mulberry trees flourished and finding/acquiring, and then retaining, skilled workers who could tend to the worms and reel the silk, as well as experts who could manage and coordinate the entire process. Difficult as these problems were, if solved, sellers still had to compete in markets with rivals from venerable centers of production in the Old World, ranging from China and India to Italy and France.Through a series of detailed case studies, March chronicles the various sericultural miscarriages in different parts of the Western Hemisphere—New Spain in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Virginia in the seventeenth century, French Louisiana and the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia in the eighteenth century, and New England and Pennsylvania in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In some instances, the major impediment was the inhospitable environment; in others, it was insufficient or inadequate labor. In certain areas, other economic activities displayed greater economic potential; in others, market competition from more efficient producers proved too formidable. Most often, however, some combination of these factors was decisive. As Marsh also shows, efforts in the early modern period to establish viable sericulture in parts of northern Europe, most notably in England, were hardly immune to such difficulties. Most of the failures detailed by Marsh occurred despite various types of governmental support.At the end of the day, sericulture’s failure to flourish in the Western Hemisphere during the early modern period is not surprising. Given the environmental and labor-market challenges and the opportunity costs associated with silk production, other economic activities undoubtedly offered better profit possibilities. That said, Marsh deserves praise for this fascinating and richly documented study of the trials and tribulations involved in trying to establish sericulture on American soil.