Last updated 27/06/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2016
Throughout much of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries linen textile production made an important contribution, in terms of output, exports, employment and capital accumulation, to the economy of north-east Ireland. However, for a brief period of a few decades, from the 1780s to the 1830s, the dominance of linen was challenged by a mechanised cotton industry centred on the Belfast area producing both mill-spun yarn and hand- and machinewoven piece goods. This period witnessed a shift of local resources of capital and labour from linen into cotton and back into linen in the space of half a century.
The story of Belfast’s brief flirtation with cotton is a difficult one to put together. Both narrative and analysis are constrained by a lack of records, especially by a dearth of statistics on inputs and on output. The traditional view has been that the industry was made up of units of production which, smaller than their British rivals and lacking supplies of local coal, produced at an uncompetitive unit cost. Its relatively brief existence was sustained by a combination of war and protective tariffs and with their removal the cotton industry in Belfast, unable to compete with its rivals in Great Britain, quickly disappeared. The validity of this view has been challenged recently. It has been shown that at least for the 1830s when data are available horse power per establishment was not significantly lower in Belfast than for the United Kingdom as a whole; nor was the absence of local supplies of coal a major disadvantage given local wage costs. These revisions cast doubt on the notion that Belfast cotton spinning establishments were inherently uncompetitive. Not every observer is convinced however. Ollerenshaw in his essay on industry in nineteenth-century Ulster remains certain that the exit from cotton spinning was to a large extent forced and that wet spinning was a timely and fortuitous alternative. Similarly Cullen argues that the local industry was uniquely unable to withstand the depression of 1825 and after.
1 Monaghan, J.J., ‘The rise and fall of the Belfast cotton industry’ in I.H.S., iii, no. 5 (Mar. 1942), pp 1–17 Google Scholar; Green, E.R.R., The Lagan Valley (London, 1944), ch. 4Google Scholar; Goldstrom, J.M., ‘The industrialisation of the north-east’ in Cullen, L.M. (ed.), The formation of the Irish economy (Cork, 1969), ch. 8Google Scholar.
2 Geary, Frank, ‘The rise and fall of the Belfast cotton industry: some problems’ in Irish Economic and Social History, viii (1981), pp 30–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mokyr, Joel, Why Ireland starved: a quantitative and analytical history of the Irish economy, 1800–1850 (London, 1983), ch. 6Google Scholar.
3 Ollerenshaw, Philip, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’ in Kennedy, Liam and Ollerenshaw, Phillip (eds), An economic history of Ulster, 1820–1939 (Manchester, 1985), p. 67 Google Scholar; Cullen, L.M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (3rd ed., London, 1987), pp 105-8Google Scholar.
4 Ellison, Thomas, The cotton trade of Great Britain (London, 1883), pp 170-71Google Scholar; Baines, Edward, History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835), p. 318 Google Scholar; Chapman, S.H., Lancashire cotton industry (Manchester, 1904), pp 118-24Google Scholar.
5 Daniels, G.W., ‘Early history of a Manchester cotton spinning firm’ in Economic Journal, xxv, no. 1 (1915), p. 180 Google Scholar; Fitton, F.S. and Wadsworth, A.P., The Strutts and the Arkwrights (Manchester, 1958), pp 284-5Google Scholar; Lee, C.H., A cotton enterprise (Manchester, 1972), pp 97–100 Google Scholar.
6 Monaghan, Belfast cotton industry, p. 5; Green, Lagan Valley, p. 97.
7 P.R.O.N.I., D654/1/2/1.
8 Holden’s Triennial Directory (5th ed.), p. ii; Belfast News Letter, 1 July 1800, 6 Sept., 6 Oct. 1805.
9 Ellison, Cotton trade, pt II, ch. 1; Buck, N.S., The organisation of Anglo-American trade (New Haven, 1925), ch. 1Google Scholar.
10 Kane, Robert, Industrial resources of Ireland (Dublin, 1835), p. 392 Google Scholar.
11 P.R.O.N.I., Out-letter book of James Boomer & Company MSS, D245/2/1 (hereafter Boomer MSS).
12 Letter to Kearsley & Sons, at Liverpool, 4 Apr. 1827 (Boomer MSS).
13 Letter to Alexander Tennent, at Glasgow, 27 Oct. 1827 (ibid.).
14 Letter to Orr, Robinson & Cunningham, at Liverpool, 8 Mar. 1828 (ibid.).
15 Letter to Orr, Robinson & Cunningham, at Liverpool, 11 Feb. 1828 (ibid.).
16 Letter to J. Kearsley & Sons, at Liverpool, 6 Jan. 1827 (ibid.). The Leeds was one of the steam packets plying between Liverpool and Belfast.
17 Letter to J. Kearsley & Sons, at Liverpool, 2 July 1827 (ibid.). 120s refers to yarn at 120 hanks to the pound. The more hanks to the pound the finer the yarn.
18 Buck, Anglo-American trade, ch. 1.
19 Edwards, M.M., The growth of the British cotton trade (Manchester, 1967), p. 119 Google Scholar.
20 Monaghan, ‘Belfast cotton industry’, p. 9; Green, Lagan Valley, p. 109.
21 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, p. 176.
22 Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, pp 67–8.
23 Ibid., p. 68.
24 O’Brien, George, The economic history of Ireland from the union to the famine (London, 1921), p. 417 Google Scholar, and esp. Customs tariffs of the United Kingdom from 1600 to 1897, pp 71, 119 and 409–10, [C. 8106], H.C. 1898, lxxxv, 71, 119, 409–10. My thanks to Dave Johnson for this valuable reference.
25 Monaghan, ‘Belfast cotton industry’, p. 8.
26 Ibid., p. 8; Green, Lagan Valley, p. 105; Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, pp 68–9.
27 Dickson, David, ‘Aspects of the Irish cotton industry’ in Cullen, L.M. and Smout, T.C. (eds), Comparative aspects of Scottish and Irish economic and social history, 1600–1900 (Edinburgh, 1977), p. 108 Google Scholar.
28 Edwards, British cotton trade, pp 130, 141; Lee, Cotton enterprise, p. 70.
29 Letters to Thomas Sheil & Company, Denny & Adams, John Todd & Company, at Glasgow, 26 Apr. 1827 (Boomer MSS).
30 Letter to Oswald, Stevenson & Company, at Glasgow, 2 Jan. 1828 (ibid.).
31 Letter to Watson & Lennox, at Glasgow, 24 Jan. 1827 (ibid.).
32 Letter to John Currie, at Belfast, 12 Aug. 1826 (ibid.).
33 Edwards, British cotton trade, p. 227.
34 Letter to Davidson & Chapman, at Glasgow, 22 Dec. 1829 (Boomer MSS).
35 Cited in Lee, Cotton enterprise, p. 73.
36 Memorandum, 6 Oct. 1826 (Boomer MSS). Note that the relationship here does not seem to be one of ‘putting-out’ since the ownership rights in the cloth appear to reside with the weaver.
37 Letter to J. Hagedorn, at Hamburg, 25 Nov. 1829 (ibid.).
38 Letter to Robert Barbour, at Manchester, 20 Feb. 1827 (ibid.). Cambric here refers to cotton cambric. In a range running from about 6°° to 30°°, 15°° was above medium quality. Blackburn 74 refers to the size of a loom reed and gives an indication of the number of warp threads to the inch. In this case Blackburn 74 was probably a medium weight muslin. My thanks to Bill Crawford of the Ulster Folk Museum and to Josselin Pomeroy-Hill of Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, for clarification on these points.
39 Green, E.R.R., Industrial archaeology of County Down (Belfast, 1962), p. 68 Google Scholar.
40 Letter to Dalgleish & Falconer, at Glasgow, 16 Aug. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
41 Edwards, British cotton trade, ch. 8.
42 Letter to Coopers & Holland, at Manchester, 17 Nov. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
43 Letter to John Dempster, at Glasgow, 9 May 1829 (ibid.).
44 Edwards, British cotton trade, pp 179ff.
45 Chapman, S.D., The cotton industry in the industrial revolution (London, 1972), p. 50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Letter to Messrs Bunch & Company, at Carthagena, Colombia, South America, 4 Jan. 1830 (Boomer MSS).
47 Letters to Kibble & Company, at Glasgow, 15 Sept., 3, 7, 25 Nov., 11 Dec. 1829 (ibid.).
48 Letters to Coopers & Holland, at Manchester, 8 Sept., 17 Nov., 18 Dec. 1827 (ibid.).
49 Memorandum, 6 Oct. 1827 (ibid.).
50 McCall, Staple manufactures, pp 472–3.
51 Atkinson, Anthony, Ireland exhibited to England (2 vols, London, 1823), ii, 273 Google Scholar.
52 Letter to William Henry, at Dublin, 13 Sept. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
53 Letter to White & Fannin, at Jamaica, 14 Sept. 1829 (ibid.).
54 Report from the select committee on manufactures, commerce and shipping, p. 238, H.C. 1833 (690), vi, 242.
55 Factories inquiry commission: supplementary report, part II, p. 238, H.C. 1834 (167), xx, 242.
56 Geary, ‘Some problems’, pp 31–8.
57 Letter to Gavin & Ord, at Glasgow, 29 Sept. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
58 McCall, Staple manufactures, p. 495.
59 Cited in Lee, Cotton enterprise, p. 73.
60 Beck MSS (P.R.O.N.I., D1286/2/6, p. 2).
61 Endorsement book of the Imperial Fire Insurance Co. (P.R.O.N.I., T, 1367).
62 Daniels, G.W., ‘Valuation of Manchester cotton factories in the early years of the nineteenth century’ in Economic Journal, xxv, no. 4 (1915), pp 625-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Gatrell, V.A.C., ‘Labour, power and the size of firms in Lancashire cotton in the second quarter of the nineteenth century’ in Economic History Review, xxx (1977), pp 95–125 Google Scholar.
64 Baines, Cotton manufacture, pp 384–95. The return for Lancashire was incomplete; Baines’s economy-wide estimate of 33,000 h.p. in steam engines and 11,000 in water wheels gives a national average of 3.0/1.
65 Letter to Peel & Williams, 18 July 1826 (Boomer MSS).
66 Factories inquiry commission: supplementary report, part II, p. 233, H.C. 1834 (167), xx, 237.
67 Ibid., p. 234.
68 Belfast News Letter, 27 Mar. 1810.
69 Cited in Lee, Cotton enterprise, p. 70.
70 Edwards, British cotton trade, pp 207–11.
71 Dubourdieu, John, Statistical survey of County Antrim (Dublin, 1812), p. 432 Google Scholar.
72 Belfast News Letter, 27 Mar. 1810.
73 Letter to Hewes & Wren, at Manchester, 23 Dec. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
74 Letter to Cocker & Higgins, at Manchester, 17 Apr. 1827 (ibid.).
75 Catling, Harold, The spinning mule (Newton Abbot, 1970), p. 47 Google Scholar.
76 Belfast News Letter, 27 Mar. 1810.
77 Lee, Cotton enterprise, p. 133.
78 Catling, Spinning mule, p. 47.
79 Edwards, British cotton trade, ch. 9; Geary, ‘Some problems’, p. 31.
80 Letters to Gavin & Ord, at Glasgow, 17 Jan. 1829; John Currie, at Belfast, 12 Aug. 1826 (Boomer MSS).
81 Report from select committee on handloom weavers’ petitions, p. 102, H.C. 1835 (341), xiii, 124; A return of the number of power-looms used in factories in the manufacture of woollen, cotton, silk and linen, p. 9, H.C. 1836 (138), xlv, 153.
82 Chapman, Industrial revolution, p. 26.
83 Green, E.R.R., ‘The cotton handloom weavers in the north-east of Ireland’ in U.J.A., 3rd ser., vii (1944), pp 30–41 Google Scholar.
84 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, pp 176–7.
85 Deane, Phyllis, The first industrial revolution (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1979), p. 97 Google Scholar.
86 Ollerenshaw, Phillip, Banking in nineteenth-century Ireland (Manchester, 1987), p. 2 Google Scholar.
87 Edwards, British cotton trade, pp 188–9.
88 Letter to H. Gore, at Manchester, 7 May 1828 (Boomer MSS).
89 Letter to H. Gore, at Manchester, 12 Aug. 1826 (ibid.).
90 Letter to Hewes & Wren, at Manchester, 19 Dec. 1826 (ibid.).
91 Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, p. 69; idem, Banking in Ireland, p. 2.
92 E.g. letters to Orr, Robinson & Cunningham, at Liverpool, 2 Aug. 1826; Oswald, Stevenson & Company, at Glasgow, 7 Oct. 1826; Orr Robinson, & Cunningham, 21 Oct. 1826; Hewes & Wren, at Manchester, 4 Nov. 1826; William Yates, at Manchester, 22 Jan. 1827; Oswald, Stevenson & Company, at Glasgow, 10 Feb. 1827; Cocker & Higgins, at Manchester, 1 May 1827; Kearsley, at Liverpool, 14 June 1827; Coopers & Holland, at Manchester, 17 Nov. 1827; Sharp, Roberts & Company, at Manchester, 3 Dec. 1828 (Boomer MSS).
93 E.g. letters to James Arthur, at Kells, 14 Nov. 1826; James McConkey, at Belfast, 25 Apr. 1828; William Arthur, at Ballymena, 26 May 1828; Samuel May, at Carrickfergus, 30 Apr. 1829 (Boomer MSS).
94 Geary, ‘Some problems’.
95 Monaghan, ‘Belfast cotton industry’ and, for the most recent exposition of this view, Ollerenshaw ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, pp 65–71.
96 Ibid., pp 66–7; Cullen, Economic history of Ireland, pp 105–8.
97 Baines, Cotton manufacture, p. 395; Gayer, A.D., Rostow, W.W. and Schwartz, A.J., The growth and fluctuation of the British economy, 1790–1850 (2nd ed., New York, 1975), i, 198, ii, 553Google Scholar.
98 Report from the select committee on manufactures, commerce and shipping, p. 554, H.C. 1833 (690), vi, 560.
99 Ollerenshaw, ‘Industry, 1820–1914’, p. 67.
100 Geary, ‘Some problems’, p. 35.
101 Mokyr, Why Ireland starved, p. 178.
102 I am grateful for the comments of Phillip Ollerenshaw and an anonymous referee on an earlier draft of this paper.
