US Textile Production in Historical Perspective

US Textile Production in Historical Perspective by Susan Ouellette explores the development of a provincial textile industry in colonial America. Immediately after the end of the Great Migration into the Massachusetts Bay colony, settlers found themselves in a textile crisis. They were unable to generate the export commodities necessary to import English textiles in the quantities needed.

This study examines the promotion of domestic textile manufacture from the level of the Massachusetts legislature down to how individual communities organised productive efforts. While other historians have examined early cloth production in colonial homes, they have often dismissed domestic cloth-making as a casual activity among family members rather than a concerted community effort at economic development.

This research closely looks at the networks of production and examines the methods by which households and communities organised themselves to meet a critical need for cloth of all kinds. It is a social history of cloth-making that also incorporates the economic and political elements of Massachusetts Bay to tell their story.