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1. ConceptsMetrology is the study of weights and measures. It includes today international and national organizations devoted to standardizing and exactly determining weights and measures, guaranteeing the exact calibration of measuring equipment, and the training and further training of calibration officials. Metrology arose in the 19th century with the international establishment of the metric system (see below, 3.). Historians also use the term metrologists to refer to authors working in the 1…

1. Scope, structure, and long-term evolution As a rule, the early modern textile industries used plant or animal fibers of local origin to make woven textiles – usually fabrics, but also small articles like kerchiefs and handkerchiefs, veils, ribbons, galoons, braids, lanyards, and buttons. The end products could be left unfinished or bleached, dyed, and/or imprinted or otherwise finished (see Textile technology). In relationship to the clothing trade, the textile industries should be categorized as upstream producers.Until well into the 19th century, in most nationa…

1. SurveyWeaving is a technique for making fabric out of yarn. Two threads are crossed at right angles; the pre-loaded warp threads constitute the base into which the so-called weft is inserted. To serve as a base, the warp threads must be firm and stressable; weft threads on the other hand can be both finer and fuzzier. The choice of weft therefore has enormous influence on the quality of the fabric. In the early modern period, the finished products were usually in the form of cloth or fa…

1. Definition On an aggregated level, real earnings can be thought of as real national income per capita (see Economic growth), and on a disaggregated level usually as real annual household income. In contrast to nominal income, real income is adjusted for changes in the level of prices over time (Value, monetary; Inflation). As a rule, it is represented by an index. Real income is one of the most important statistics for describing material well-being.Real income includes income from all sources – from work as well as from capital and land ownership. Real wages,…

1. IntroductionTogether with the linen industry, at the beginning of the early modern period wool processing was the most important branch of the European textile industry using indigenous fibers. Industrial regions often emerged as a result of a “commercialization of rural technologies” [3]. Only the rise of cotton and silk production in the course of the 18th century ended the dominant position of the wool industry. In England, however, in 1801 it still represented the most significant economic sector in terms of value added…

1. Definition and useUntil well into the 19th century, textiles were products of plant and animal fibers. Most took the form of woven material (Weaving technology), but there were also knotted, braided, and knitted products (see Carpet; Lace; Hosier). The primary use of textiles was in the realm of apparel and household textiles (including bedding, curtains, and tablecloths). But textiles were not just consumer goods (Consumption); they were employed in trade and industry, with emphasis on shipping…

1. Processing stagesUntil the 19th century, textiles were produced mainly from plant or animal fibers (Fiber plants; Wool; Silk) in the form of woven fabrics. In a few small sectors, however, yarns were not woven but knotted, braided, or knitted (see Carpet; Lace; Hosier). Production involved essentially four steps [2]:1) Preparation of the fiber. This involved various cleansing processes, but especially (except for continuous raw silk, which consists of a single unbroken thread) combing, which lays the fibers to be spun parallel to one another.2) Spinning. This transforms t…

1. IntroductionThe communities that inhabit mountain ranges differ markedly from those of their lower-lying surroundings in their agricultural land use systems, their agrarian constitutions, and their social organization. Historically, the exploration and crossing of mountain ranges has often posed a technical challenge (Alpine passes). Ever since Fernand Braudel set the antithetical tone of his history of the Mediterranean by subtitling the first chapter “...tout d’abord, les montagnes!” (“First of all, the mountains!”) [1], it has been clear that the close int…

1. DevelopmentCompany settlements provided family housing for members of the workforce of an enterprise, constructed and financed by the firm itself. Usually these settlements were built on land owned by the firm and were managed by the firm. In certain early cases, the industrial plant and the residence were on the same piece of land; soon, however, separation of the workplace from the residence became the norm, although the settlement was built as close as possible to the factory. Besides this …

Ribbons (passements) were used to decorate articles of clothing from the late Middle Ages on, especially between the 17th and 19th centuries. Most were made of silk, but linen, wool, cotton, and mixed fabric were also used.In the later 17th and early 18th centuries, the ribbon loom came into widespread use in ribbon weaving, initially in the form of the multi-stage tread loom, which replaced the single-stage loom (Weaving technology). Although still powered by hand, it enabled the production of multiple ribbons in the same operat…

Cotton is one of the most important materials for the manufacture of apparel in human history. As with silk, although silk always remained a luxury product in the west, a wide separation developed at an early date (from the 15th century) between regions that cultivated and regions that processed cotton. Industrialization of the late 18th and early 19th centuries was first and most strikingly reflected in the cotton industry. Cotton and cotton products were among the most important global commodities at this period.1. Areas of cultivation; global tradeCotton is cultivated in tr…

1. Definition and phases of economic globalization 1.1. DefinitionGlobal economic integration of regional and national economies was a product in the first instance of international trade in products and services along with international movements of capital (see Capital market), work forces, and technological knowledge. If international trade or capital flows increase in relationship to national income, for example, we can speak of a process of economic globalization.Second, global integration is also frequently understood as market integration. The latt…

1. Long-term evolutionSpinning is a process that produces continuous yarn for weaving from separate fibers (Weaving technology). It involves several operations: extracting and cleaning the fibers from a fiber mass, aligning the fibers by combing, drawing and twisting a fiber strand to form yarn, and finally spooling the yarn. Spinning is a basic requirement in the production of textiles and hence a basic human technology, attested in the Mediterranean area as well as Western and Central Europe sin…

1. Survey and long-term developmentEven more than gold, silver was the most important of the precious metals in the early modern period. Its outstanding significance was due to its use as a basis for the most important types of currency. In addition, it was used for cultic purposes – after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church stipulated the use of silver to decorate tabernacles and other furnishings of the church interior – for luxury household objects, and for the manufacture of jewelry (see Silversmith).In the early modern period, up to 1850, silver …

1. IntroductionThe concept of the “economy” relates to a society’s dealings with scarce goods (Economy). Those goods might equally be products of the industrial trades and crafts, agricultural produce, precious metals, or indeed production factors (i.e. goods required in production processes), such as viable soil, work, and capital mobility. It must be noted that the definition of a good as a scarce resource requiring husbanding is one constructed by society, and that it is sometimes ambi…

1. Definition In contrast to the concept of a land use system, which refers to the technical and operational aspects of agriculture, the term “agrarian constitution” refers to the institutional conditions that constitute the basis for economic activity in rural areas. Both formal norms such as law, contracts, legislation etc., and informal, culturally specific codes of conduct related to the control of goods and transactions (Property) may be considered institutions in an economic sense.Earlier German research on the agrarian constitution grew out of the legal histo…

1. ConceptA manufactory was a production plant in a preindustrial trade (Industrial trades and crafts), generally belonging to proto-industrial export industries (Proto-industrialization). Members of its labor force worked outside their own household economy under the supervision and coordination of a third person – a manager, a merchant-manufacturer, or a master manufacturer. The centralization of the production process might relate to a single production step (horizontal integration), but verti…

1. DefinitionThe term  Kaufsystem denotes a production regime, that is, the institutional embodiment of the organization of production and work relations in the export-oriented industrial trades and crafts in the period of proto-industrialization. A Kaufsystem involves a purely market-oriented relationship between independent commercial producers and the merchants who purchased their products and sold them on export markets [6. 202–210]. As soon as the relationship of the largely anonymous purchasing was supplemented by a production order (com…

1. Definition and origins“Industrial region” is a geographical term that describes an area where industrial operations occupy a relatively high percentage of space and there is also a generally high level of export of manufactured industrial trades and crafts. Historically, industrial regions were generally dominated by one industry, or a few related industries. Consequently, these regions reflected the complex organizational requirements of the dominant industry, which was structured very differen…

1. ScopeUntil the advent of industrialization, the weaving industry was one of the most important industrial trades and crafts; only spinning was more important, though hard to quantify (Textile industry). In Bavaria in the 1770s, weaving employed 13.2% of all employed individuals outside of agriculture [2. 44, 449]. In the industrial towns that specialized in textile production for export, this percentage could be significantly greater: in Augsburg in 1610, the weavers constituted a fifth of the taxpayers and two-fifths of the artisan households [1. 21]. For the textile…