English Wool Research Articles

Adam Smith revisited: the relationship between the English woollen manufacture and the availability of coal before the use of steam power

AbstractThe timing of textile de-industrialisation in eastern, southern, and western England and the concomitant shift of the woollen manufacture to the West Riding of Yorkshire is examined in temporal detail. The study shows that the manufacture was moving to settlements with cheap coal, low cost of living and running water as early as the sixteenth century. These settlements became key woollen manufacture centres and remained so until the nineteenth century. The industry was located on the West Riding of Yorkshire coal field long before the industrial revolution and the demand for coal to generate steam power.

Friedrich List’s Critique of the Methuen Treaty

This article examines Friedrich List’s critique of the Methuen Treaty. The Methuen Treaty removed all restrictions on English wool entering Portugal and reaffirmed England’s commitment to import Portuguese wines at two-thirds the tariffs of French wines. Friedrich List argues that the agreement hurt Portugal’s textile industry and slowed Portugal’s economic growth. List’s critique of the Methuen Treaty is a strong representation of his resistance to Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say, but it is isolated from his robust theoretical framework. One possible explanation for the discontinuity is that the knowledge problem undermines List’s theory. The lack of local data makes it difficult to conduct an accurate and straightforward policy analysis of the Methuen Treaty, making the analysis vulnerable to normative interpretations. Specifically, List’s disagreement with Adam Smith’s cosmopolitanism pushed him further away from a straightforward application of his theory.

Wool smuggling from England's eastern seaboard,c. 1337–45: An illicit economy in the late middle ages

AbstractThe medieval English wool trade was a commercial activity of huge economic importance. The historiography of the medieval wool trade, however, has focused overwhelmingly on its legitimate side. This article uses the evidence of legal proceedings prosecuted in the royal courts to provide the first detailed account of wool smuggling in the fourteenth century, a time of heavy governmental regulation and hugely increased taxation. It demonstrates that a substantial number of merchants responded to these challenges by participating in a flourishing trade in smuggled wool which was considered a serious threat to crown fiscality. In particular, the article explores how smaller‐scale smuggling took place along under‐regulated areas of coastline away from customs ports; how major export operations were able to smuggle wool through the customs system itself; and how concerns over smuggling influenced a series of administrative reforms designed to improve the efficiency of commercial regulation.

Mites and merchants: the crisis of English wool and textile trade revisited, c. 1275–1330†

AbstractOn the basis of 7,871 manorial accounts from 601 sheep‐rearing demesnes and 187 tithe receipts from 15 parishes, this article addresses the origins, scale, and impact of the wool and textile production crisis in England, c. 1275–1350. The article argues that recurrent outbreaks of scab disease depressed sheep population and wool production levels until the early 1330s. The disease, coupled with warfare and taxation, also had a decisive role in depressing the volumes of wool exports. Despite this fact, wool merchants were still conducting business with major wool producers, who desperately needed access to the capital to replenish their flocks.

The Clothiers’ Century, 1450–1550

Abstract:In the hundred years from 1450 to 1550, the great success enjoyed by the English woollen industry in continental markets was a result of clothiers organising the rural cloth industry in the West Country, Suffolk/Essex, the Kentish Weald and Newbury and its surrounds, to produce cloth that London merchants required. To do this they allocated extensive capital to cloth production: buying wools, sorting and dyeing them, organising their carding and spinning, putting the yarn out for weaving, and then in some cases owning the mills that fulled the cloth and finally shearing it in-house. The leading clothiers carried wool and cloth inventories, developed strong buying networks and offered merchants credit. Clothiers' control over production declined after 1550 as the government exercised greater control over cloth quality and clothiers' freedoms, and as price competition intensified from coarser cloths and new draperies.

The Wealth of England: The Medieval Wool Trade and Its Political Importance 1100–1600 by Susan Rose

Reviewed by: The Wealth of England: The Medieval Wool Trade and Its Political Importance 1100–1600 by Susan Rose Sybil M. Jack Rose, Susan, The Wealth of England: The Medieval Wool Trade and Its Political Importance 1100–1600, Oxbow Books, 2017; hardback; pp. 304; b/w and colour illustrations; R.R.P. £40.00; ISBN 9781785707360. Susan Rose has recently published a number of nicely illustrated books, initially on the wine trade and the history of Calais, intended to bring together various aspects of English trade and the sea during the Middle Ages and early modern period. This is a further work in what is effectively a series. Her coverage in all these books can be described as comprehensive and thematic. In The Wealth of England, Rose relies heavily on surviving monastic material to cover the management of sheep farming, including the types of sheep involved, and the size and location of the flocks. She goes on to the role of the Crown and the ways in which it exploited the dependence of other countries on English wool as well as taxes on the product. She concludes with a survey of the behaviour of merchants and clothiers at different periods and the reasons why, towards the end, the English wool trade was in decline. Rose does not, however, attempt to assess the relative importance of the trade of one of the smaller more peripheral countries of Europe compared to that of the wealthier, more sophisticated states, nor does she attempt to set the trade in wool [End Page 233] into the overall English trade in all goods. This is a pity, as to appreciate fully the total wealth of any country it would be necessary to consider how each item of both outgoing and incoming product contributed to the well-being of the land. And yet, to judge the individual importance of one source of state finance, the whole structure of the taxation department including customs and excise would need to be evaluated. This would be a massive research undertaking and Rose understandably confines herself to the one or two contemporary attempts made by royal servants to calculate crown resources. Rose leaves unresolved the reasons why English wool was so highly regarded, avoiding commitment in the long-running debate about the early existence of distinctive sheep breeds despite the increasing evidence that material from archaeology and parchment are making available. In order to link the production of wool to its final use she seeks to draw together aspects of the subject that have elsewhere been treated separately by researchers. Her strength lies in the recounting of specific examples that illuminate the way in which the business was carried on. In some cases these descriptions, such as that of the experiences of the Johnsons in the 1540s, could have usefully been extended, as they reveal all too well the pitfalls of the dealer’s life. Rose confines herself fairly narrowly to trade, treating the manufacturing of cloth in England as a side issue, so that the percentage of the wool produced that was employed locally at any given period remains unclear. The possible level of owling in the period is not discussed. Unfortunately, she does not repeat in the present book material she used in her history of Calais about the structure and role of the merchants of the Staple, which would improve the current reader’s understanding of the political and military role of the institutions involved in managing the English wool trade. She focuses on the long-term official bodies such as the staplers, who claimed a monopoly over the trade, largely ignoring other major players such as the Italian traders who came to Southampton with private royal grants. This means that the role of the local ports in the trading patterns is not examined. The overall result, while she develops some interesting details, is somewhat unbalanced. For instance, she refers in various places to the problems of exchange without fully clarifying what these were and how the system worked. As she fully acknowledges, she has drawn much of her material from the work of T. H. Lloyd, but she restricts herself narrowly to the trade in wool and...

17. Yüzyılda İngiliz Tüccarlar ve İpekyolu: Keşifler Dönemi'nde İngiliz Tüccarların İpek Yolu'na Ulaşma Teşebbüsleri

British merchants provided silk from Venetian merchants during the 16thcentury. The profit of this exchange was low and unsatisfactory. English merchants and adventurers, thus, with the support of the English Monarchy attempted to find out new and alternative routes to Persian silk. At the beginning, not to face the Ottomans British Merchants and adventurers tried to access Persia through Russia. They first established a Venice Company. Then, they established Levant Company at the end of the 16th century. Routes to Caspian Sea through Russia was almost vacant and not practical but British merchants insisted using alternative directions during this period. In 1581 Newberry, a British merchant and adventurer, sailing over the Euphrates River accessed to Baghdad and Persian Gulf through Felucca for the first time. He was the first British merchant who used this route Great Caravan Road which was already known and frequently followed by the merchants from Portugal to access India. Silk is the main reason to access Persia for British merchants because it was the main commodity and raw material of British and European industry after the end of the 16th century. There was a great profit in silk industry and trade in European mainland. The British could work out Persian silk and market it to European countries, thus, earn great profit out of this exchange. The profit was even better once British Merchants use English wool instead of cash. Therefore, British merchant has never given up their desire and attempts to access Persian silk and Silk Road. This paper aims to investigate British desire to access Silk Road using alternative directions and routes

坂巻清著, 『イギリス毛織物工業の展開-産業革命への途-』, 日本経済評論社, 二〇〇九・二刊, A5, 四一六頁, 六五〇〇円

坂巻清著, 『イギリス毛織物工業の展開-産業革命への途-』, 日本経済評論社, 二〇〇九・二刊, A5, 四一六頁, 六五〇〇円

坂巻清著, 『イギリス毛織物工業の展開-産業革命への途-』, 日本経済評論社, 2009年, iv+416頁

坂巻清著, 『イギリス毛織物工業の展開-産業革命への途-』, 日本経済評論社, 2009年, iv+416頁

Vladimir Jankovic Confronting the Climate: British Airs and the Making of Environmental Medicine, Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. x $+ $ 227, $80.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-2301-0475-4.

Vladimir Jankovic Confronting the Climate: British Airs and the Making of Environmental Medicine, Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. x $+ $ 227, $80.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-2301-0475-4.

Calais: An English Town in France, 1347-1558

Exactly one hundred years after the publication of George Sandeman's Calais under English Rule Susan Rose has produced a timely book-length overview of the history of this northern French town under English governance. The book takes a narrative approach to some two hundred years of English rule, beginning with Edward III's siege in 1347 and ending with the town's capture by the duc de Guise in 1558. Other chapters explore its fourteenth-century history, the development of the wool staple, its role in the later Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses, and its economic and social history in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The book stresses the town's importance as a commercial centre, vital in the English wool trade with the Low Countries, rather than its military or diplomatic role. Rose's stress on the town's economic life might be due to her reliance on the wonderful letter collections of the Cely and Johnson families (both wool merchants). The account of mercantile life during the 1540s and 50s from the Johnson letters, for example, occupies as much space as her entire discussion of the administrative, diplomatic, military and religious developments of the early Tudor period (which witnessed the formal incorporation of Calais into the realm of England through its representation in Parliament from 1536). In this discussion, as elsewhere, Rose is reliant on the work of others; this is, first and foremost, a work of synthesis and the areas where she is weakest (the role of Calais in cultural exchange, for instance, particularly in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) are those where research is still in its infancy. Given the author's linguistic skills and knowledge of French history, however, it is disappointing that the book does not explore more fully the perception of the town and marches from the continent. This would have certainly given the book added value, but perhaps, as other have argued, Calais was indeed ‘un petit morceau d’Angleterre overseas’ after all? Nevertheless, this book should be welcomed. It is a well-written and lively account of one of the most overlooked towns of the late middle ages and should provide the basis for more research on the importance of Calais to both England and its continental neighbours.

“On the Pavement, Thinking About the Government”: The Corpus Christi Cycle and the Emergence of Municipal Merchant Power in York

As early as 1376, market towns all over England—from Newcastle to Bodmin, Chester to Norwich, and in between—were counting on the spectacle of religious theater to draw in crowds from the countryside and surrounding villages (King, “York and Coventry,” 22). 1 The growth of the English wool trade in the thirteenth century had quickly led to overseas trade in more diversified commodities, and the wealth that trade created spurred increased dramatic activity. York in particular appears to have channeled an exceptional portion of its wealth into civic drama in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries after the city enjoyed an increase in trade. 2 In 1415, more than sixty York guilds were listed as participants in the city’s largest dramatic spec tacle, the Corpus Christi play cycle, which lasted all day and played to a mixed audience of York citizens and visitors from the surrounding countryside (Johnston and Rogerson, York: REED, 16–26 and 11, trans. 697). John Coldewey notes that, “the centers where drama was first established were the successful commercial centers in the north and in the old Midland grain belt—York, Chester, Beverly, Coventry and Lincoln” (Coldewey, 81), but he also cautions that, “the connection between drama, society, and economic motive . . . is rarely direct except to say that it takes money to produce plays” (Coldewey, 80). Certainly, economic growth does not always lead to increased dramatic activity, but financial stability was integral to the creation of the York Corpus Christi Cycle. In fact, several plays in the cycle insist on the central importance of economic success to York’s civic drama by acknowledging the primary source of York’s economic prosperity—overseas trade—and by endorsing or indict ing the political climate created by the primacy of trade in the city’s economy. Some plays call upon ancient biblical authority to legitimize the newly formed civic power of merchants and elevate those

The English wool market,c.12301327 By Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul R. Dryburgh

The English wool market,<i>c.</i>12301327 By Adrian R. Bell, Chris Brooks, and Paul R. Dryburgh

Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, falsification, and the fate of the ‘English Model’ in eighteenth-century Italy

Franco Venturi famously emphasised the importance of the ‘English Model’ for Italian reformist culture in his Settecento riformatore. This essay contributes to the history of the development and evolution of the ‘English Model’ beginning with its influential appearance in Antonio Genovesi's 1757–1758 translation of John Cary's 1695 Essay on the State of England. The ‘English Model’ was not a stable concept and, in fact, one tradition inverted the model's meaning, rejecting the need for protectionism and instead embracing a providential faith in laissez- faire. This tradition began with an important, but falsified footnote in Carlo Denina's 1769–1770 Rivoluzioni d’Italia. In this note and the tradition that adopted it, Lorenzo de’ Medici's imagined English wool factories became the locus of this inversion, and, through a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, blaming the Medici as agents of Italy's aberrant historical development became an alternative to blaming English economic imperialism in late eighteenth-century Italy. The narrative of Medici involvement in the decline of Italy was finally realigned with Genovesi's original intention under the auspice of Pope Pius VI in 1794.

The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry

In this article, I seek to expand the relatively narrow focus of most work on commercial credit in eighteenth-century England by incorporating culture into an economic analysis. I argue that the various credit regimes that operated in the regional branches of the English wool textile industry are best understood as having a cultural dimension. A comparative analysis of business strategies in these regions suggests that the different cultures of credit had important implications for the development of the textile industry during the eighteenth century, shaping the character of the entrepreneurship of each region's merchants and producers.

The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry

In this article, I seek to expand the relatively narrow focus of most work on commercial credit in eighteenth-century England by incorporating culture into an economic analysis. I argue that the various credit regimes that operated in the regional branches of the English wool textile industry are best understood as having a cultural dimension. A comparative analysis of business strategies in these regions suggests that the different cultures of credit had important implications for the development of the textile industry during the eighteenth century, shaping the character of the entrepreneurship of each region's merchants and producers.

Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century. By John Smail. London: Macmillan, 1999. Pp. x, 198. $65.00.

This is a strong contribution to a cultural interpretation of the dynamics of industrialization. Critical of quantitative debates and their limited insights into the processes of change, critical too of polarized views about the primacy of supply (production) or demand (consumption), Smail's study is directed at the ways in which merchants and merchant manufacturers fought to reconcile the shape of supply with that of markets, and thus brought about fundamental changes in the processes of production and the source and scale of profitability. Smail's central thesis concerns the shift, as he sees it, from a Smithian to a Schumpeterian economy: from activity based upon the extension of operations and growing sophistication in the division of labor, to an economy founded upon continuous product and design innovation and intensive technological as well as organizational change. His concern is with the cultural and economic conditions under which producers and merchants shifted from maximizing profits by manipulating the marketing system (through niche products and niche markets) to maximizing profits by changing the mode of production. He dates this shift, in the case of the woolens sector, from the middle third of the eighteenth century. Focusing upon the interplay between production and marketing systems, he carefully documents change in the four major regions of manufacture in England: East Anglia, Devon, the West Country, and West Yorkshire. He places particular emphasis upon Yorkshire, which quickly emerged as the most responsive region and which dominated the trade in the second half of the century.

Merchants, Markets, and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (review)

Merchants, Markets, and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century (review)

Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century

Figures Introduction Products and Markets in the English Wool Textile Industry to 1730 The Manufacturer and the Market Around mid-Century The Merchant, the Clothier, and the Market Around mid-Century An Adventure to New York: The Export Trade in the Colonies Travellers: The Export Trade in Europe The End of the Century Boom and the Supremacy of Yorkshire Conclusion: Technology, Innovation, and the Industrial Revolution Notes Bibliography Index

John Smail. &lt;italic&gt;Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century&lt;/italic&gt;. New York: St. Martin's. 1999. Pp. x, 198. $65.00

Journal Article John Smail. Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's. 1999. Pp. x, 198. $65.00 Get access Smail John. Merchants, Markets and Manufacture: The English Wool Textile Industry in the Eighteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's. 1999. Pp. x, 198. $65.00. S. D. Chapman S. D. Chapman University of Nottingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 105, Issue 4, October 2000, Page 1387, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/105.4.1387 Published: 01 October 2000