INTRODUCTION

The province of Languedoc contained the largest concentration of textile production of any area of France during the pre-industrial period. As one French historian has written, the cloth industry occupied a similar place in the region's traditional economy to that occupied by the vine today, and, as anyone who has travelled across the Lower Languedocian plain will be aware, this ‘place’ occupied by the vine today is overwhelming – the area has been described, without exaggeration, as a ‘wine factory’. Indeed, it is possible, in view of the fact that the province was the largest textile centre in what was probably Europe's greatest industrial producer in the pre-industrial era, that it is accurate to describe Languedoc as Europe's most important proto-industrial centre. Yet this region has received little attention from historians in recent years, and only passing mention from participants in the discussions about proto-industrialisation. So large a historiographical gap would, in itself, justify the devotion of space to the consideration of the province's industrial development, and there would seem to be all the more advantages obtainable from doing so in that the province's industry was of a type, and its experiences of a nature, that have not, as yet, received much attention from participants in the proto-industrialisation debate. Thus the most important sectors of the industry consisted in high-quality, expensive, woollen broadcloth (whereas the major preoccupation in the debate has been with cheap, low-quality goods, and largely linens); in addition, the major centres for the trade were urban (whereas analysis has to date largely been focussed upon rural production), and Languedoc's extensive proto-industrial development, despite apparent, impressive industrial growth during the eighteenth century, was a preliminary not for industrialisation but for a near-total de-industrialisation.