The Industrial History of England — Reading Notes

The Cloth Trade's Regional Specialization

One of the most concrete patterns in the excerpts is the meticulous geographic breakdown of cloth manufacturing in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Gibbins lists counties and their specific fabrics: Kent, York, and Reading produced heavy cloth of 66 lbs per piece; Worcester, Hereford, and Coventry made lighter fabrics; the eastern counties turned out 'plunkets, azures, blues, long cloth, bay, say, and serges.' Suffolk is noted for a 'fine, short, white cloth,' while Wiltshire and Somerset specialized in plunkets and handy warps. The author even records that Westmoreland was the seat of 'Kendal green' cloths and 'Carpmael' and 'Cogware' fabrics. This level of detail suggests a deep interest in how place names became brand names, and it reveals a decentralized, pre-industrial economy where manufacturing was scattered across the countryside alongside agriculture.

Foreign Artisans as Catalysts for Industry

Gibbins repeatedly emphasizes the role of immigrant craftsmen in boosting English industry. He describes how Flemish weavers infused 'fresh spirit' into the cloth trade, and later devotes a full passage to the Huguenot influx after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The text claims that 50,000 skilled artisans arrived with capital of about £3,000,000, improving the silk, glass, and paper trades. Gibbins states that 'Spitalfields long remained a colony of Huguenot silk weavers' and that their descendants are 'to be found in every part of England.' The author frames this as England profiting from its Protestantism, contrasting with France's loss. This pattern—treating religious persecution abroad as an economic windfall—is a recurring lens through which Gibbins interprets industrial growth.

Economic Data Embedded in Narrative

Though Gibbins says he avoids 'elaborate statistical figures,' the excerpts contain several precise numbers that ground his narrative. For example, he records that the value of wool shorn in England at the end of the 17th century was £2,000,000 from about 12,000,000 sheep, with manufactured cloth valued at £6,000,000 or £8,000,000. By 1741, sheep numbers rose to 17,000,000, wool value to £3,000,000, but manufactured wool value remained at £8,000,000—a point Gibbins uses to suggest that 'progress in invention had not done much to enhance the value of the manufactured article.' These figures are not presented in tables but woven into the prose, serving as benchmarks for economic change. The author also notes the weight and dimensions of cloth pieces (e.g., 'thirty or thirty-four yards long by six and one-half quarters broad'), adding a tactile sense of the commodities being traded.

Gibbins's approach rewards readers who attend to his regional inventories and his habit of linking industrial shifts to broader historical events—wars, religious policies, and population movements. The book's value lies not in comprehensive data but in the connections it draws between scattered manufacturing centers and the political forces that shaped them. Readers should expect a narrative that moves briskly through centuries, pausing to note the texture of local industries and the recurring theme of foreign expertise revitalizing English production.