Descripción de las pruebas psicológicas utilizadas.

The British silk industry is often equated with Spitalfields silk weaving. In spite of the fame that the Spitalfields production attained between 1730 and 1760 and the scholarly attention it has received over the past two generations, the majority of the British silk production was of lower quality in comparison to other world producers and was mostly focused on small items rather than high-quality cloth.3 The British silk industry produced mostly smaller wares and haberdashery. The typology of the wares produced underpinned the demand for raw silk on the British market. Whereas broad weaving necessitated silk thread of the highest quality (in most cases the threads needed to be thrown into organzine before they could be used), most of the British silk weaving

3 _{Spitalfields’ reputation was made by the accomplished work of designers such as Joseph Dandridge,} John Vansommer, Christopher Baudouin, James Leman and Anna Maria Garthwaite. Natalie Rothstein.

Spitalfields Silk (London: Stationary Office, 1975), pp. 1-2. See also: Frank Warner, The Silk Industry of the United Kingdom: Its Origin and Development (London: Drane´s, 1921), p. 42; Natalie Rothstein, ‘The Silk Industry in London, 1702-6’ (Unpublished MA Thesis, University College London, 1961); Id., Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century: From the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990); and Gail Malmgreen, Silk Town: Industry and Culture in Macclesfield 1750- 1835 (Hull: Hull University Press, 1985), p. 8.

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industry only needed medium-quality raw silk.4 _{The silk used was neither too fine nor}

too coarse and had to be easily workable – i.e. without the need to re-reel it prior to utilisation. Thus, the EEIC did not necessarily need to produce the finest raw silk in Bengal, but silk of a quality good enough to produce small wares.

The British silk industry was primarily a producer of silks of middle to low quality and specialized in smaller wares, such as small articles of haberdashery; ribbons, trimmings, buttons, handkerchiefs, gloves, hosiery, stockings, galloons, and bandannas, and fabrics such as bombanzines, crapes and gauzes, and sewing silk.5 In the eighteenth century, the principal silk manufacturing regions were London, Norfolk, Dorset, the Midlands, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire. Spitalfields, in London, was a major centre of manufacture focusing principally on the production of broad textiles. The West Midlands region, and especially Coventry, focused instead on the production of ribbons; Cheshire on mixed fabrics and Norwich on the production of bombanzines and crapes. Moreover, Macclesfield was a centre of silk throwing, whilst Lancashire produced ribbons.6

The climatic conditions of the British Isles would not allow the cultivation of mulberry trees and silkworm rearing. The British silk industry was therefore totally

4 _{The quality of raw silk was extremely important in determining the quality of the final product – silk} cloth or a smaller ware such as ribbon. Luca Molà has mapped out that the variety of the different types of raw silk used in the Italian silk industry in the early modern period. Molà also points to the fact that raw silk was divided according to the regions it came from, as well as according to its quality into several classes. Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 55-56.

5 _{Warner, Silk Industry of the United Kingdom, p. 42; Malmgreen, Silk Town, p. 8; D. C. Coleman,}

Courtaulds: An Economic and Social History, Volume I The Nineteenth Century Silk and Crape (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969),p. 23.

6 _{Gerald B. Hertz, ‘The English Silk Industry in the Eighteenth Century’, English Historical Review 24} (96), 1909, p. 714; Jean-Francois Fava-Verde, Silk and Innovation: the Jacquard Loom in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Ebook: Histancia, 2011), p. 6.

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dependent on imports of raw silk. In the eighteenth century, most of the raw silk used in England was procured from Italy, the Mediterranean, Turkey, China and India. In the early eighteenth century most of the lower-quality raw silk was procured from Turkey, Spain and Portugal and was used in the production of smaller wares. Silk from Turkey was used, for instance, in the production of damasks, galloons and stockings.7 The best- quality raw silk was imported from Italy from where Britain imported also thrown silk. Only Italian raw or thrown silk was used in broad weaving.8 High-quality Chinese silk was also imported as it was appreciated for its whiteness. It was used principally in the production of hosiery and gloves.9 Bengal raw silk, by contrast, was considered of the lowest quality to be found on the market and its use prior to the 1770s was limited.10

British weavers either bought thrown silk directly on foreign market or imported raw silk and had it thrown into yarn in mills outside London.11 According to Gerald B. Hertz, some 947,000 lbs. of raw silk was thrown per annum in Britain in the period 1785 to 1812.12 In spite of the increasing quantities of raw silk thrown in Britain, the manufacture of silk cloth and other products was not without problems. First, there were problems with the quality of raw silk available for throwing. Second, the sector often experienced fluctuation in demand for thrown silk. In the 1720s, Britain lost access to

7 _{Hertz, ‘English Silk Industry’, p. 711.}

8 _{Goldsmiths’ Library [G.L.], 1796 fol. 16654, Considerations on the Attempt of the East-India Company}

to Become Manufacturers in Great Britain (London, 1796), pp. 12, 18 and 31. The best-quality thrown silk came from the region of Piedmont and was called organzine. Hertz, ‘English Silk Industry’, p. 711, Coleman, Courtaulds: An Economic and Social History, pp. 16-17.

9 _{Dionysius Lardner, A Treatise on the Origin, Progressive Improvement, and Present State of the Silk}

Manufacture (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea Chestnut Street, 1832), p. 68. 10 _{Ibid., p. 67.}

11 _{Fava-Verde, Silk and Innovation, p. 6.} 12 _{Hertz, ‘English Silk Industry’, p. 721.}

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the best-quality raw silk available on the market – the Piedmontese raw silk.13 _Without

access to the Piedmontese raw silk, the silk yarn thrown in British mills could never compete with thrown silk produced in Italy. That could have been a minor problem considering that broad weaving – which required the highest quality silk - was only a small part of the entire British production. However, although lower-quality silk was sufficient for the weaving of ribbons and smaller wares, it frequently broke when being thrown in mills. This had a negative impact on the quality of thrown silk as well as on the efficiency of mill throwing. Complaints about the quality of silk threads and their frequent breakages were common especially for the Bengal raw silk.14

Silk throwing was also negatively affected by periods of stagnation in silk weaving. Figure 4.1 shows the fluctuation of the exports of British silk manufactures: the industry went through phases of expansion followed by stagnation. After a stagnation period lasting from the 1720s to the 1750s, the industry went through a phase of expansion in the 1760s as the British silk industry captured most of the French trade in silk during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). The slump that the industry suffered once peace was established could only be overcome by a prohibition of the import of all

13 _{The decision of the King of Savoy to ban exports of Piedmontese raw silk to Britain was a retaliation} against the setting up of a hydraulic silk throwing mill in Derby by the Lombe brothers in 1718. John Lombe obtained the designs of the technology in Italy illegally and his story became one of the best known cases of pre-modern industrial espionage. [G.L.], 1795 fol. 16280, Reports of the Committee of Warehouses of the East-India Company relative to Extending the Trade on Bengal Raw-Silk (London, n.p., 1795), p. 2; Lardner, Treatise on the Origin, p. 62; S. R. H. Jones, ‘Technology, Transaction Costs,

and the Transition to Factory Production in the British Silk Industry, 1700-1870’, Journal of Economic History 47 (1), 1987, pp. 75-77; Giuseppe Chicco, La Seta in Piemonte 1650-1800: Un Sistema Industriale d'Ancien Regime (Milano: Franco Angeli, 1995), pp. 71-96.

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foreign silks and velvets.15 _{Unfortunately, the stagnation of the industry could not be}

reversed and low levels of production and export continued until 1810s.16

Figure 4.1. Exports of British Silk Manufactures, 1750-1808

Source: Data adapted from B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 364.

The stagnation of the British silk weaving industry obviously had also negative consequences on the demand for raw silk. However, fluctuation in the demand for raw silk on the British market was not the sole factor that negatively affected the demand for Bengal raw silk. The quality of the Bengal silk remained the main issue affecting the demand for Bengal raw silk throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. First, not all of the Bengal raw silk was of quality high enough to be used in production of even small wares. Complaints about the coarseness and inequality of threads continued even after the implementation of the Piedmontese system.17 Moreover, some

15 _{Coleman, Courtaulds: An Economic and Social History, p. 18.} 16 _{Ibid., p. 20.}

17 _{IOR/E/4/623, 4July 1777 p. 635; IOR/E/4/625, 9 April 1777, pp. 176-84; IOR/E/1/66 ff. 422-424v:} ‘Letters 212-213 James Wiss in London to Peter Michell’, 10 May 1780, p. 422.

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of the Bengal silk was not easily workable because it needed to be re-reeled before use. The ease with which it could be used was one of the reasons for the popularity of Italian silk.18 Moreover, Bengal raw silk frequently broke, especially during throwing. This was caused by the improper handling of cocoons. Cocoons often went mouldy when stored in the Company’s filatures. This had a negative effect on the quality of the silk thread as mouldy cocoons had their gummy substance – which makes silk thread strong and flexible – weakened. Also the use of unclean water in reeling weakened the flexibility of the thread.

Despite the fact that the consumption of silk textiles spread beyond the elites already in the late Middle Ages, and silk started to be consumed by wider social strata, the quality of the silk thread still played a key role.19 _{The quality of the thread was}

regulated by the market demand not by a state-imposed institutional framework or by guilds.20 Silk thread necessary for dress accessories such as bonnets, hats, gloves, belts, stockings, and shoes – items of common use also among the less wealthy social strata – did not need to be made of such high-quality thread as broad weaving.21 Yet, in spite of

18 _{[G.L.], 1796 fol. 16654, Considerations, pp. 3 and 12-13.}

19 _{For changing consumption patterns of finished silks see: Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, ‘East &} West: Textiles and Fashion in Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Social History 41 (4), pp. 890-92. 20 _{Such approach was taken by the French and English government in the eighteenth century but only in} respect to finished products. Philippe Minard, Pierre Gervais and Judith Le Goff, ‘Colbertism Continued? The Inspectorate of Manufactures and Strategies of Exchange in Eighteenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies 23 (3), 2000, p. 479; William J. Ashworth, ‘Quality and the Roots of Manufacturing “Expertise” in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Osiris 25 (1), 2010, pp. 238-44.

21 _{John Styles has shown that haberdashery made of silk was commonly worn by the lower social strata in} the eighteenth-century England. See John Styles, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 30-32; Id., ‘Clothing the North: The Supply of Non-Élite Clothing in the Eighteenth-Century North of England’, Textile History 25 (2), 1994, pp. 155-56. Apart from haberdashery, the production of mixed textiles also used silk thread of lower quality. For instance, the Italian silk industry started producing waste and second-choice silks already from the fifteenth century despite the fact that the practice was treated unfavourably by the guild officials. Molà, Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, pp. 90 and 163-67.

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the specialisation of the eighteenth-century British silk industry in the production of smaller wares rather than on the highest quality broad silks, the Company’s focus on increasing the quality of the Bengal thread was well reasoned. Without quality improvements, the Company-imported silk could not gain higher market shares because its use remained limited even in the production of haberdashery. Haberdashery necessitated silk of certain standards of quality as to be ready to be used and without the need to be reworked prior to throwing and reeling.22