1 The evolution of the linen industry prior to mechanisation, 1700–1825
Linen had already emerged as Ireland’s most important industry during the eighteenth century. This chapter will briefly trace the evolution of the industry in the pre-factory era, when some of the groundwork was laid for the subsequent industrial development of Ulster. In this period, new technologies were utilised for bleaching and finishing Irish linens, new trading frontiers were opened up and new systems of raising credit and marketing cloth were adopted. Linen at this point was used for a range of household furnishings and clothing right across the social spectrum from infants christening gowns to shrouds for the dead; from the coarse cloth worn by slaves in the West Indies and America to the more refined products demanded by the British and Irish gentry. Flax could also be used to make sailcloth, sacking and tents.1 The home market was clearly an important source of demand in the eighteenth century, although this is difficult to measure. It has also attracted considerably less attention than the dramatic expansion of exports, which rose from about 2 million yards in 1713, to over 47 million yards by 1796, when linen, flax and hemp accounted for over 56 per cent of the value of all Irish exports.2
It has been generally argued that the export orientation of the linen industry distinguished it from other Irish industries, as its early development was not dependent on the Irish market. Participation in extra-regional markets made it more resilient and dynamic. With the assistance of legislative support in the form of protective tariffs, Ulster linens were out-selling continental rivals on the London market by 1740. Duty-free access to the British market (the largest free-trade area in Europe and the fastest-growing market in the eighteenth century) was critical, according to Harte. In 1696, the English parliament enacted that Irish linens should enter the British market free of all duties, to reduce British dependence on foreign linens and encourage the settlement of foreign Protestants in Ulster. These advantages were further enhanced from 1705, when the Navigation Acts were modified to allow Irish linens to be exported to the colonies duty free. Harte argued that this official support in the mercantilist era enabled the Irish industry to compete in terms of cost and quality with the major continental linen producers, Germany and Holland.3
However, the importance of Irish linen in the British market should not be exaggerated. Irish linens had certainly not displaced European linens in the English market by 1756, when 30,000,000 yards of linen were imported to England from the continent, compared to a mere 12,000,000 yards from Ireland, and a similar quantity from Scotland (while another 26,000,000 yards were produced in England).4 Despite the impressive growth of Irish exports in the first half of the eighteenth century, this indicates that Irish linen had by no means yet become the major supplier to the English market.
While drapers and bleachers played an important role in establishing a local framework for finishing and marketing cloth, landlords also eagerly assisted the growth of the industry during the eighteenth century. They saw its potential for increasing their rental income and invested in improving transport infrastructure and provided market facilities and housing for spinners and weavers. The landlord interest also played an important role in the establishment of the Linen Board in 1711 as a vehicle to promote the industry.
The growth of demand for linen in Britain and its colonies is generally seen as the vital dynamic factor which brought about an expansion of the industry in the Ulster countryside. By 1784, the province accounted for over four-fifths of Irish linen output, according to Gill’s estimation, which implied a total output for Ireland of 48,700,000 yards of linen cloth, of which 26,700,000 yards was accounted for by exports and the balance by home consumption.5 These estimates imply that Irish demand accounted for roughly 45 per cent of output, which if correct, would require some modification to the widespread notion that the industry depended largely on exports. A notable feature of the export trade at this point was that Ulster was beginning to dominate the supply of fine linen to the British and colonial markets, which had important implications for Ireland’s subsequent specialisation in this area.6 However, a large part of the Irish export trade was still coarse linen.
Linen manufacture was particularly suited to Ireland, since most processes (with the exception of bleaching and finishing) were labour intensive. Labour was cheaper in Ireland than in Britain, which became an increasingly important factor in an industry which proved far more resistant to mechanisation than the cotton and woollen industries. The cultivation and spinning of flax, and the weaving of yarn into cloth were activities which were well suited to smallholders in Ulster, as they took up the slack periods in the farming calendar. By the mid-eighteenth century, yarn spinning was already undertaken outside Ulster, spreading westward into Connacht and also southwards into north Leinster and parts of Munster (notably Co. Cork), thus increasing the supply of yarn. Much of this was sold on for use in the weaving districts in Ulster, while some was retained for the manufacture of coarse linen manufacture as it began to become established in other parts of Ireland.7
While exports data provides evidence of dramatic expansion during the eighteenth century, the growth in native flax supplies (which accounted the bulk of raw material inputs) provides more comprehensive evidence of expansion the first quarter of the nineteenth century; the acreage sown increased from 80,000 in 1800 to 140,000 in 1825. Gray’s detailed work on the surviving household returns of the 1821 census for 15 parishes in Cavan (an important yarn-producing county) reveals that 52 per cent of all households in her sample had at least one resident flax spinner. This is not surprising since in the preceding quarter of a century Cavan had been one of the many counties in the northern half of the country where the number of spinners increased (in areas with poorer land) in response to the rising demand for linen yarn. Producers drew on family and kinship networks to expand the spinning workforce.8
The dramatic expansion of domestic linen production during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has spawned an Irish variant of the debate on proto-industrialisation. The development of the Ulster linen industry displays many characteristics highlighted by the proponents of the theory; it was predominantly rural and carried out by families who combined flax cultivation and spinning and or weaving with farming, while expansion was supposedly export driven.9 Almquist’s work on the 1841 census has demonstrated that there was a strong correlation in Ireland between rural domestic industry, population density, smaller holdings and a lower average age of marriage and higher fertility. Population in Ulster rose from about one million to two million people between 1760 and 1841, by which time the province had the highest population density in Ireland. Linen is certainly one of the stronger candidates to explain this. Almquist argues that the transition to full industrialisation occurred in east Ulster, which was precisely the area where preindustrial textile production had been most intense. Armagh, at the heart of the linen triangle, was the county with the highest population density.10 Trying to fit Ireland into the wider European debate on proto-industrialization has had the salutary effect of providing a greater focus on the contribution of rural households and women to economic development. Gray, in particular, has drawn attention to the importance of the exploitation of domestic female labour in facilitating the accumulation of capital further down the production chain, with the family unit of production thus contributing to the growth of capitalism within the industry.11
However, the proponents of proto-industrial theory have not provided many new insights on the dynamics of Irish industrialisation. Unfortunately, the first source which can be utilised for the entire island, the 1841 census (on which much of the Irish debate has focused), only provides a snapshot some years after the advent of factory-based spinning in the 1820s.12 Partially as a consequence, the Irish variant of proto-industrial theory has focused more on areas which ‘de-industrialised’ (or more correctly de-proto-industrialised). Collins, for example, has suggested that emigration from Ireland in the second quarter of the nineteenth century was greatest from regions where the linen industry experienced decline, notably counties Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan, Leitrim and Longford. These were the areas where, prior to the advent of wet spinning, households had been predominantly engaged in cultivation of flax and the spinning of yarn.13 The focus of proto-industrial theory on rural contexts and exports has failed to illuminate anything about the significance of cotton production, bleaching, merchant capital and foreign capital to the development of the industry.14 It has unfortunately downplayed the significance of Irish market and the urban context of much of the industry.15 Many of the dynamics of nineteenth century industrialisation in Ulster were not to be found in the countryside.
We know much more about Irish linen exports than those consumed on the Irish market. The expansion of trade within the Atlantic world opened up new markets for Irish linen in the Americas. Growing shipments of flaxseed from America in the middle decades of the eighteenth century complemented the growth of exports of linens from Ireland to North America.16 Truxes suggests that the relatively high and rising cost of labour in the American colonies compared to Ireland made good-quality Irish linens attractively priced in the American market. He identifies the bounties (on re-exports of Irish linen through British ports) after 1745 as the most important encouragement for the transatlantic trade, enabling Irish linen to displace German cloth. Re-exportation through Britain also provided more extensive and regular options for conveyance to the Americas in addition to a superior range of marketing and financial services. But the trade was sufficiently large to leave room for a direct trade from Irish ports, notably from Dublin, which was also the major retailing centre for the Irish market. While higher-quality goods (which could not avail of the bounty) could be ordered directly from Ireland (notably Dublin), the bulk of the trade in more inexpensive cloth was ordered through English merchants. The Caribbean trade likewise was routed through London since it was largely inexpensive cloth for slaves clothing.17 The returns relating to foreign exports and bounties in the 1820s indicate that by that decade at least the great bulk of Irish linen exported to trans-Atlantic markets were coarse cloths which qualified for the bounty.18
The rapid growth of Irish linen cloth exports during the eighteenth century peaked in 1796 when exports stood at almost 47,000,000 yards. The export trade stagnated in the following decades not surpassing that level until 1818.19
A significant part of the explanation for this slow-down was the advance that cotton cloth was making in competing with linens, while the Scottish were providing strong competition in coarser-quality linens.
Table 1.1 reveals the extent of the Irish industry’s export markets and puts their relative significance in context.
The industry’s reach could not be described as global. Its markets predominantly fell within the Atlantic world. Irish penetration of the continental European market was minimal. Far-off Latin America accounted for marginally more of the export trade than the whole of continental Europe. The United States and the West Indies collectively dominated the entire overseas trade and it appears that the bulk of the linens for these markets were coarse.20 Great Britain still remained by far the most important market, demand there having grown dramatically since the mid-eighteenth century, despite competition from British cottons. By the advent of wet spinning in the late 1820s, the Irish linen industry had achieved a dominant position in the British market.
Essentially, expanding demand within Great Britain and Ireland provided the core source of expansion for the Irish linen industry between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the mid-1820s, while trans-Atlantic demand from the Americas and the West Indies provided an additional source of trade. Continental Europe, Asia and Africa were of relatively minor consequence at this point for the Irish linen trade (see Table 1.1). If Gill’s rough estimate of Irish home consumption of linen cloth of 40 million yards in 1821 is credible,21 it implies that the Irish market at this point was the most significant source of demand for Irish linen. The important point here is that the Irish industry by the 1820s essentially depended on the dramatic expansion of United Kingdom demand, and to a far lesser extent on the growth of trade within the wider Atlantic world. Within the United Kingdom, the Irish market probably took a greater share of the cheap lower-quality linens, while conversely Great Britain took a higher share of the more expensive finer-quality cloth. But coarse-cloth production still accounted for a greater share of Irish output at this point.
Table 1.1 Irish linen exports, 1827 (yards)
British consumption was ultimately therefore far more important in the rapid expansion of the Irish industry than all other centres of the export trade combined. In the second and third decades of the eighteenth century this was concentrated more in the middling qualities of cloth, at a point when cotton had not yet become fully established. The Irish also supplied smaller amounts of finer cloth, whilst they were losing out to Scottish producers in the market for coarser linens. Rapid population growth in Britain and rising incomes created conditions where consumers could take advantage of the superior laundering and fashionable qualities of linen for shirting, dresses and other clothing. Linen also retained its superior reputation for household goods such as table cloths, napkins and sheeting. By 1758 linen cloth and yarn made up 80 per cent of Irish total exports to Great Britain, and linen cloth remained the largest single item in A...
