Report on the conference 'A Global History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000'

The conference 'A Global History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000' was based on national overviews of the history of textile workers in 17 countries. The overviews focussed on cotton and wool. On the basis of the national overviews, 10 comparative papers on different aspects of textile producing have been written, which led to a lively debate. As Prasannan Parthasarathi concluded in one of these, the long distance trade in cotton goods started centuries before 1650. Both his paper and that of Andrea Komlosy focussed on the spatial development of textile production. The original centre of cotton production, India, was long able to compete against technological advances pioneered in England. Only in the early 1800s the centre of cotton production moved to England.
In general, a move to areas where labour costs in textile production could be lowered occurred for the whole 1650-2000 period, both within countries and on a global scale. This meant for instance that wool production moved from production in a guild context in urban areas to putting-out, usually on the countryside. Donald Quataert in his paper warned against adopting the term proto-industrialisation for the latter formation, as putting-out often did not lead to industrialisation. In general, from the papers it is clear that in many cases traditional ways of producing yarn and cloth remained viable surprisingly long, with guilds, hand spinning, hand weaving and putting out persisting well into the 20th century in some parts of the world. Different production relations were present at the same time, competing on the same global markets with cloth and yarn produced with different technologies. The employers were very effective in adopting measures to increase production, but only when these paid for themselves. In this global competition employers re-located their production to areas with lower labour costs.
This meant that trade unions were fighting an uphill battle. Workers had to defend themselves against deteriorations of working conditions often. When they were successful, they ran the risk that production would be moved elsewhere. Lars Christensen therefore had to paint a rather bleak picture of workers' resistance, with English textile workers as the most important group which for a prolonged time did not personally suffer from the drive to lower labour costs. The innovative technology of the Industrial Revolution made the combination of lowering labour costs and rising real workers' income for some decades a possibility.
Globally, a high number of female and young workers were employed in the textile industry. As they were usually paid less than adult males, their employment formed yet another way in which labour costs were kept low. Some states for some time protected their national textile industry from the world markets through tariffs, and thus could afford labour costs above the global level. This happened for instance in a number of young states, which had recently gained independence from a previous coloniser.
The national overviews and comparative papers will be revised to reflect the outcome of the conference, and will then be published in book form.

See also these photo impressions of the conference.