ENCHPOPGOS Conference 2017. Keith Sugden. Coal and the Location of the English Textile Industry

Duration: 17 mins 11 secs

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ENCHPOPGOS Conference 2017. Keith Sugden. Coal and the Location of the English Textile Industry's image

Description:	A talk by Dr Keith Sugden, University of Cambridge, given at the inaugural meeting of the European Network for the Comparative History of Population Geography and Occupational Structure (ENCHPOGOS) held at Robinson College, Cambridge in September 2017

Created:

2018-01-09 15:14

Collection:

Economic and Social History

Publisher:

University of Cambridge

Keith Sugden

Language:

eng (English)

Distribution:

World

(not downloadable)

Keywords:

Economic History; Textile Industry; Coal; Location; Occupational Structure;

Credits:

Photographer:

Cheng Yang

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Aspect Ratio:

16:9

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Abstract:	This paper, written with Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Sebastian Keibek explores the changing locational geography of the English textile industry from the late medieval period to the early nineteenth century using male occupational data. The key finding is that as the textile industry became increasingly over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, textile production increasingly took place on coalfileds or in locations directly connected to coal-fields by navigable water. This attraction to te coal fields began long before the shift to steam powered production began with the mechanisation of cotton spinning in the 1780s. This raises the question as to why the textile industry shifted to the coal fields in the pre-steam era. Our tentative argument, following observations by Adam Smith and Daniel Defoe, is that the need for cheap space heating for textile workers was likely the most important consideration. More tentatively we hypothesise that the rising cost of wood in the tradional textile regions of southern England during the eighteenth century was a key factor.

Abstract:

This paper, written with Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Sebastian Keibek explores the changing locational geography of the English textile industry from the late medieval period to the early nineteenth century using male occupational data. The key finding is that as the textile industry became increasingly over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, textile production increasingly took place on coalfileds or in locations directly connected to coal-fields by navigable water. This attraction to te coal fields began long before the shift to steam powered production began with the mechanisation of cotton spinning in the 1780s. This raises the question as to why the textile industry shifted to the coal fields in the pre-steam era. Our tentative argument, following observations by Adam Smith and Daniel Defoe, is that the need for cheap space heating for textile workers was likely the most important consideration. More tentatively we hypothesise that the rising cost of wood in the tradional textile regions of southern England during the eighteenth century was a key factor.

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ENCHPOPGOS Conference 2017. Keith Sugden. Coal and the Location of the English Textile Industry