The Development of European Manufacturing

¹⁶ A taste for the finer and more improved manufactures was introduced by foreign commerce into countries which had no such works.

When this taste created a big demand, the merchants naturally tried to establish the same manufactures in their own country to save transportation costs.

Hence, the origin of the first manufactures for distant sale that were established in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman empire.

No large country ever did or could subsist without some manufacturing industry. Whenever any such country has no manufactures, it must always be understood to be of the more improved kind that are fit for distant sale. In every large country, the clothing and furniture of most people are made by their own industry. This is even more universally true in poor countries which have no manufactures, than in rich countries which have many manufactures. In rich countries, more of the clothes and furniture of the poor come from abroad.

¹⁷ The manufactures fit for distant sale were introduced in 2 ways.

¹⁸ 1. Sometimes they were introduced by the violent operation of merchants who imitated foreign manufacturing.

Such manufactures are the offspring of foreign commerce. An example is the ancient manufactures of silks, velvets, and brocades, which flourished in Lucca, during the 13th century.

Those manufactures were banished there by the tyranny of Castruccio Castracani, one of Machiavelli’s heroes. In 1310, 900 families were driven out of Lucca.

31 of them retired to Venice, introduced the silk manufacture there with 300 workers, and were given many privileges.

Another example is the ancient fine cloth manufactures of Belgium. They were introduced into England in the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign. Such are the present silk manufactures of Lyons in France and Spitalfields in London. Manufactures introduced in this way are generally imitations of foreign manufactures employed on foreign materials. When the Venetian manufacture was first established, the materials were all brought from Sicily and Syria.

The more ancient manufacture of Lucca was also done with foreign materials. The cultivation of mulberry trees and the breeding of silkworms were uncommon in northern Italy before the 16th century. They were introduced into France in the reign of Charles 9th [1560-1574]​. The cloth made in Flanders was done chiefly with Spanish and English wool. Spanish wool was the raw material of the first cloths made fit for distant sale. More than half of the current raw materials of the cloth made in Lyons is foreign silk. When it was first established, the whole material was foreign. None of the raw materials of the Spitalfields manufacture in London will ever likely be the produce of England.

The seat of such manufactures introduced by a few individuals is sometimes established in a maritime city or in an inland town, according to their interest, judgment, or caprice.

19 2. At other times, manufactures for distant sale develop naturally by the gradual refinement of coarser manufactures.

Such coarse manufactures must always be done even in the poorest countries and generally employ local materials. They were frequently first refined in inland countries. The inland countries were far from the sea coast. A naturally fertile and easily cultivated inland country produces many surplus provisions. It may be difficult or expensive to transport this surplus abroad. Abundance renders provisions cheap, which then encourages more workers to settle in the neighbourhood. They find that their industry in the inland country gets them more necessaries and conveniences than in other places. They work up the raw materials and exchange their finished work. They give a new value to the surplus rude produce by saving the transportation cost. They give the cultivators something in exchange for the surplus that is useful to the workers on easier terms. The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce. They can buy other conveniences cheaper. They are encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus by further land improvement and cultivation. As land fertility gave birth to the manufacture, so the manufacture re-acts on the land and increases its fertility. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood. They then supply more distant markets as their work improves. The rude produce and coarse manufactures could not support transportation costs, but the refined manufactures can. Refined manufactures contain the price of much rude produce in a small bulk.

For example, a piece of fine cloth, weighing only 80 pounds, contains the price of=

• 80 pounds of wool, and
• several thousand pounds of wheat.

In this way, wheat is virtually exported in the finished product. It may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world, which could have been carried with difficulty abroad in its own shape.

The manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton grew up naturally this way.

Such manufactures are the offspring of agriculture. In modern European history, their extension and improvement was generally posterior to the offspring of foreign commerce. England was noted for fine cloths made of Spanish wool more than a century before any of the manufactures of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton were fit for foreign sale. The extension and improvement of the latter only happened due to the extension and improvement of agriculture.

Agricultural improvement is the last and greatest effect of foreign commerce and of manufactures. I shall now explain how commerce leads to this.