The product, areas of supply, and trends in European demand

The import of raw silk from Persia, India, and China by the European trading companies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sharply underlines the technological difference between the production of silk and cotton piece goods in a pre-machine age. The trade in silk yarn and other materials within Europe as well as from outside owed its existence to the development of a silk weaving industry in Italy, France, and later England. The silk-producing centres of Italy were not new. But the successful establishment of the industry in Western countries contrasting with the failure to create a comparable cotton textile craft needs some explanation. A tentative hypothesis about the diverging history of the two crafts may be sought in the qualitative difference between raw silk and raw cotton as basic ingredients in spinning yarn. The twisting of silk thread out of the fibres reeled from cocoons was a less difficult process than the manufacturing and preparing of yarn from raw cotton which was to be used in weaving fine high-quality cloth. The grading of the yarn and the relative variations in texture were to a great extent predetermined by the silk moths and the exact quality of the thread was less a function of human dexterity. The fact that silk rearing was a practicable art in Europe not only made it possible to rely on local supplies of the raw material but also encouraged experimentation in manufacture.