The Calico Printing Industry of Lancastria in the 1840s

ANALYSES of the heavy concentration of textile manufacture in Lancastria have been made so frequently by economists, historians and geographers that yet another account would seem to be superfluous but for the fact that previous studies have largely ignored the development of textile finishing. Calico printing in particular gave great stimulus to the early development of the factory cotton industry, and was itself to benefit greatly from the rapid expansion of the cotton trade. Like other branches of textile manufacture in Lancastria, calico printing has exhibited marked locational conservatism, and the pattern of distribution established by I850 was modified only in detail during the following century or so. It is fortunate that substantial documentary evidence survives to permit an analysis of the formative years of the industry's development, for the data are far more informative than those which exist for other branches of the cotton trade at this time. The range of information available makes it possible to produce a detailed picture of the pattern of distribution of print works in the I840s, at a time when the industry was undergoing a transformation from dominantly manual to largely mechanized production

Forensic engineering · Engineering · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Historical Studies on Spain