Paper and the British Empire

The Quest for Imperial Raw Materials, 1861–1960

Timo Särkkä

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000337662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Commodities
• Index: Business

Paper and the British Empire examines the evolution of the paper industry within British organisational frameworks and highlights the role of the Empire as a market and business-making area in a world of shrinking commerce and rising trade barriers.

Drawing on a valuable range of primary sources, this book covers the period 1861–1960 and examines events from the establishment of free trade backed by the gold standard to Britain's membership of the European Free Trade Association. In the field of the paper industry, the speed and intensity of the industrialisation process around the globe have been shaped by a wide variety of variables, including the surrounding institutional framework; entrepreneurial and organisational strategies; the cost and accessibility of transport; and the availability of capital, knowledge, energy resources, and technology. The supply of papermaking raw materials has also been key and has historically been the most important determinant for geographical location and dominance. The research in this work focuses on the roles played by such variants, on the one hand, and demand characteristics on the other. In particular, it considers developments connected to a quest for Empire-grown raw materials in order to tackle the problem of the lack of indigenous raw materials and the resulting dependence on Scandinavian wood pulp imports.

This text is of considerable interest to advanced students and researchers in economic history, business history, and the paper industry, and will also be useful to organisations working within the pulp and paper industries.

1 Introduction

In the field of the paper industry, the speed and intensity of the industrialisation process around the globe have been shaped by a wide variety of variables, including the surrounding institutional framework; entrepreneurial and organisational strategies; the cost and accessibility of transport; the availability of capital, knowledge, energy resources, and technology, and, in particular, the constant supply of papermaking raw materials, which has historically been the most important determinant for geographical location and dominance. In previous studies, historians have been able to explain how these variables have all played a role – to different degrees – in determining which countries have been able to dominate the industry and how they did so (Lamberg et al. 2012; Särkkä et al. 2018).

Technological development and market demand characteristics have played the key role in the success of the industry. Sometimes dominance was achieved because the industry aggressively embraced the latest technological innovations (Bergquist & Söderholm 2018) and at other times because the opposite was true (Kuhlberg 2018). Typically, a lack of indigenous raw materials and the resulting lack of financial support for research and development work in the field of cellulose chemistry were enormous impediments to the paper industry (Dadswell 2018; Roche 2018; Särkkä 2018). Then again, even a bountiful supply of raw materials has not always guaranteed long-term growth, for the reason that the institutional framework into which the new technology is applied is a crucial consideration that affects the process of industrialisation (Gutiérrez-Poch 2018; Nykänen 2018).

By taking a longitudinal perspective on these dynamics, Paper and the British Empire examines the evolution of the paper industry within British organisational frameworks and highlights the role of the Empire as a market and business-making area in a world of shrinking commerce and rising trade barriers. The research focuses on the roles played by the availability of technology, knowledge, and capital, on the one hand, and demand characteristics on the other, and, in particular, considers developments connected to a quest for Empire-grown raw materials to tackle the problems of the lack of indigenous raw materials and the resulting dependence on wood pulp imports.

This is the setting for Paper and the British Empire, which uses in-depth and rich historical descriptions to illustrate the often troubled road the paper industry travelled from the establishment of a free trade system backed by the gold standard in 1861 to the British entry into the European Free Trade Association in 1960. The research takes its inspiration from the changes in the British paper industry’s structure since the beginning of the 1960s and looks back at its performance while it was a leader in world markets in contrast to times when its leading role was challenged by various competitors. It is motivated by the realisation that analysing the evolution of the paper industry by using longitudinal and global history approaches is a very revealing way of illustrating the often troubled road the British paper manufacturing has travelled in the past, and of exposing the complexities the paper industry is still facing today.

The research premise, aims, and objectives

The most significant paradigmatic objective of the investigation is to renew, readjust, and even restructure the contemporary study of the British paper industry making use of hitherto less consulted primary sources. With respect to the British paper industry, there is a notable lack of systematic research. In contrast to the detailed examination of the pre-1861 history by Coleman (1958) and Spicer (1907), modern paper industry historians have studied subsequent developments less. The turbulent interwar years are particularly understudied. The most comprehensive investigations of papermaking in the British Isles are those by Shorter (1971) and Hills (1988). Magee (1997a, 1997b) covers the years from 1860 to 1914, and Owen (2000) includes a chapter on the paper industry within a framework of a broader post-Second World War analysis of British manufacturing industries. Existing studies on various paper mills and papermakers tend to lack consistency of method in investigating the history of the paper industry. However, they do provide powerful insights into the lives of the manufacturers behind the development of the industry. The business histories of Bowater (Reader 1981) and Reed (Sykes 1981) may be mentioned as illustrative examples. The lack of earlier research invites in-depth study of the British paper industry.

The second objective is to introduce new ways of reading primary sources. In his seminal study Industry and Empire (1968 [1999]), Eric Hobsbawn famously asserted that Britain’s relative decline as a leading technological innovator (he was witnessing this process in the 1960s) was due to its early and sustained involvement as a leading international industrial power. To understand why the Industrial Revolution and many of the technological innovations attendant upon it took place in Britain and not another country, Hobsbawn claimed that we must focus on the world economy of which Britain was a part. In other words, he was referring to the ‘advanced’ areas of (mainly) Western Europe and North America and their relations with the colonial or semi-colonial dependent economies. More recently, an increasingly global perspective in business history has emerged. It advocates the study of the behaviour of firms over extended periods of time and an understanding of the global framework, composed of markets, institutions, and organisations, in which this behaviour occurs (e.g. McNeill 1990; Pomeranz 2000; O’Brien 2006). With this case method, it is hoped information will be provided that will add to our understanding of the British paper industry’s history and possibly extend or clarify the history of the paper industry as a whole.

Finally, our objective is to present new perspectives on interpretation to strengthen the points being made. Research to date has firmly advocated firm-specific or country-specific history, while the role of the Empire as a market and a business-making area has been largely neglected. The British paper industry was historically deficient in terms of the industry’s traditional fibre resources, and it was initially forced to satisfy its domestic demand for pulp through imports. This shortcoming was an impediment to the growth of the industry. Since the mid-nineteenth century, industry and papermakers cooperated to overcome their fibre challenge by using various strategies. The most notable of these was the introduction of esparto grass to the British paper industry. Nonetheless, the demand for raw materials was in no way satisfactorily met. The First World War was both a short-term curse and a long-term blessing for many pulp and paper makers, and the conflict certainly highlights how necessity is truly the mother of invention. This investigation underscores how the shortage of pulp in the UK was the impetus behind its producers searching for alternative supplies of raw materials, and how their quest led them to the Empire and its enormous stock of fibrous raw materials. This was the precursor to a colonial policy that sought first to foster the development of the native pulp and paper industry in the dominions and colonies, and to later efforts by both local and British firms to develop the technology to process these fibrous resources into marketable paper products.

Research questions

Britain was the first country in the world to possess the capital, enterprise, and skill necessary to develop its industrial capacity in the field of mechanical papermaking. This process began when experiments were undertaken with papermaking technology at Frogmore Mill, on the River Gade, near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, and the adjoining Two Waters Mill, where the first Fourdrinier papermaking machines were installed in 1803 and 1804 (Mokyr 1990).

Immensely strong cotton and flax fibres in the form of rags from cotton and linen fabrics formed the principal and almost sole source of fibre in British mills from the eighteenth century, when large quantities of Indian fibres started to be imported into Britain. The use of rags as the primary papermaking material started to show symptoms of saturation in early-Victorian Britain – the first ‘journalising’ society in the world (i.e. the mass media has been interpreted as the ideological environment of the early-Victorian society) (Shattock and Wolff 1982, xiv; Willinsky 1994, 118). The extension of education and literature, and the increased literacy and heightened social consciousness directly increased demand for paper.

Furthermore, the mechanisation of the industry indirectly gave people and institutions more reason to need paper. During the first part of the nineteenth century, British paper mills and printing presses were undergoing technical and organisational changes that made them capable of producing a much higher output than they had ever done before. Technological developments from 1801 to 1817 connected to the invention of the steam-powered printing press allowed for the mass production of penny and halfpenny newspapers, journals, magazines, reviews, and cheap editions of books; they thus came within the reach of the very poorest members of society. By the mid-nineteenth century, mechanisation had become widespread in the British paper industry, which by 1848 had 407 papermaking machines at work (Munsell 1876, 115; Coleman 1958, 179–183).

The stimulus given by this early mechanisation revolutionised the whole process of paper manufacturing, and with the introduction of the free trade principle in October 1861, the world of mechanised papermaking was established in Britain. The reasons behind this early British industrial success were related to the improvements in technology. In addition, the manufacturers in Britain were operating with other significant advantages on their side, including a supply of cheap and accessible coal and craftsmanship within a relatively orderly society that had an efficient transport system (Mokyr 1990). The productivity of the industry, however, was relatively low, not least because of a raw material shortage that threatened to cripple the industry’s development. By the mid-nineteenth century, the demand for paper had become so great that there was a permanent famine in cotton and linen rags. The more economical methods of manufacture and larger output to meet larger demand led to the quest for a new raw material.

As it transpired, it was esparto, which constitutes two perennial grasses both endemic to the Western Mediterranean, that first offered a solution to the raw material shortage in Britain. Since its introduction to the British paper trade in the 1850s, esparto formed the mainstay for supplying the British raw material markets. The competitive advantage of esparto, being a wild grass, lay in the simplicity of the harvesting process, which basically required merely pulling by hand. Instead of converting esparto into ‘half-stuff’ for export, only the drying and baling were carried out in Southern Spain and North Africa, keeping the cost of raw material low. Another explanation for the affordability of esparto as a papermaking material was the very liberal terms on which concessions were granted by the French Government to develop the alfa trade, as well as relatively low transport costs. Despite its being an excellent papermaking material and available at low cost, it was difficult to assure the continuity of esparto supply at a constant price. By the late 1880s, esparto was getting both scarce and dear for British papermakers. Supplies from Spain had been almost exhausted, as they were too in North Africa. Furthermore, there were fears of protective customs duties in North Africa because of French interference there.

As the supply of esparto started to wane, wood pulp began its steady rise to prominence in the British raw material markets. Mechanical wood pulp’s first obvious advantage was in being the cheapest to produce because it was manufactured in locations where the very large amount of waterpower required for grinding wood cost little apart from the cost of harnessing waterfalls (e.g. in Norway and Newfoundland). The transport costs were also relatively low, because pulp was dried and baled before being transported. After the mid-1870s, chemical pulping units were built adjoining wood-grinding plants, and gradually these two products, dry mechanical and chemical wood pulp, replaced esparto, straw, and rags as the primary raw material in the British markets. Finally, the First World War revealed Britain’s vulnerability in terms of the supply of raw materials, which led to a quest for Empire-grown raw materials to tackle the problems of the lack of indigenous raw materials and the resulting dependence on foreign imports.

The outlook of the global paper industry changed dramatically in the course of the twentieth century. Britain was surpassed by its much more competitive rivals in countries like Canada, Sweden, and Finland, who – endowed with hydroelectric power for energy, coniferous softwoods as a raw material, and an efficient transport networks of lakes, rivers, and canals, as well as ports for ocean-going vessels – became major players in the field of paperm...