Van Nederveen Meerkerk National overview Netherlands, Textile conference IISH, 11-13 Nov. 2004
Textile workers in the Netherlands. Part 1: 1650-1810
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
International Institute of Social History
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Introduction
Until 1568, the northern Netherlands had belonged to the Habsburg Empire. A combination of economic crisis, power struggle between the Dutch gentry and the Spanish king over his policy and taxes, and religious differences, led to the revolt of several provinces in the north against the Spanish Crown. This revolt resulted in a war for independence that would last for 80 years, until the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. In 1588, seven provinces had proclaimed the Dutch Republic of United Provinces (in the following: ‘the Republic’).[1] The Republic was governed by the Estates General, in which all provinces were represented. Despite the ongoing warfare, relative peace existed in the economically most important provinces of the Republic, Holland and Zealand, after 1585. In the southern Netherlands, the war against the Spanish troops continued, resulting in the loss of their key position in trade and industry. Thousands of protestant migrants fled from the southern parts of the Netherlands to the safer cities in the north. This migration provided the northern Netherlands with a new labour force. Furthermore, many of the refugees were rich merchants from cities like Antwerp and Ghent, who brought capital and knowledge, giving an economical impulse to the Dutch cities in which they settled.[2] The then unstable international situation, with England and France at constant war, continued for almost a century. Due to all these circumstances, the Dutch Republic became the centre of the world economy from the 1580s until at least 1650. The Dutch leading role in shipping and trade led to the development of a large staple market in the city of Amsterdam, where people dealt in goods from all over the world.[3]
Because of the Republic’s primacy in world trade, historians have mainly focused on this aspect of the early modern Dutch economy. Lately it is recognized, however, that industry has also been very important for the economic development of this region.[4] Especially the export-oriented textile industry was considerably large in certain parts of the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. Much of our knowledge of the textile industry in this period is based on the vast work on the wool industry of the largest textile-producing city of Leiden, that N.W. Posthumus wrote in the first half of the 20th century.[5] Other research is also mainly regionally oriented. Here, we will try to extend this knowledge, by looking at several textile-producing regions within the northern Netherlands at the same time, and by analysing major shifts and interdependencies between them.
The Dutch textile industry: general developments 1650-1810
The Dutch economy was actually on its way down after 1650, although several sectors continued to flourish for quite some time. At the beginning of the 17th century, the production of woollen cloth was carried out in most parts of the Republic, albeit not always export oriented production on a large scale. However, the undisputed centre of woollen textiles had been Leiden, a city in the province of Holland, on the west coast of the Republic. Most other cities of Holland could not compete with Leiden, and in the first half of the century their production of woollens declined or vanished. In cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, textile entrepreneurs started to specialize in the finishing and trade of cloth instead.[6] The woollen industry in Leiden reached its peak in 1664. From then onwards, the city was gradually losing its position as the main cloth-producing centre of Europe. International competition increased, and within the Republic itself new production areas rose as well. This happened especially in the more peripheral agrarian regions, where labour costs were relatively low. For the spinning and weaving of wool, it was a village in the south of the Republic, Tilburg, that became important. Especially in the course of the eighteenth century, more and more villages on the countryside of Brabant developed a cloth industry.[7] Nevertheless, Leiden remained the most significant cloth producer until the end of the pre-industrial period.
The decreasing number of weavers’ guilds illustrates the decline of woollen weaving in the Dutch cities (see table 1). Of course, these figures can only give an indication. Although in most textile-producing areas there was a weavers’ guild, this was not the case in Leiden (abolished in 1561) and in Tilburg (only established in 1767), notably the most important production centres.
Table 1 - Number of wool weavers’ guilds in the Republic, 1600-1800[8]year / total / in the province of Holland
1600 / 25 / 7
1650 / 23 / 6
1700 / 18 / 3
1750 / 12 / 2
1795 / 12 / 1
Based on: Database Guilds IISH
After wool, linen was still the second most important textile product in the 17th and 18th century. The Holland city Haarlem had been the leading linen producing area, but it declined rapidly after 1650. From the 1650s onwards, the production of linen in the peripheral eastern parts of the Republic increased drastically.[9] The Dutch production of cotton fabrics, on the other hand, was still underdeveloped in this period. Cotton yarn was used in some sectors as an ingredient for mixed fabrics like fustians or bombazines, but it was not produced in the Netherlands on a large scale until the end of the 18th century. Only after the mechanization of the Dutch textile industry in the course of the nineteenth century, the production of cotton yarns and fabrics became really important. Therefore, we will mainly focus on the woollen industry for the early modern period. Where possible, some remarks will be made on the production of cotton, which occurred in the form of mixed fabrics and – again – mostly in the eastern part of the Netherlands.[10]
Size of production and work force
It is hard to measure the size of cloth production and the work force, because there are no national statistics for production and labour in this period. Coherent series of total output cannot be reconstructed with the scarce information that is available. In the city of Leiden, production figures were probably best documented. Posthumus has produced series of numbers of woven woollen cloth in Leiden for the early modern period (see figure 1). Although these figures are by no means representative for the whole Republic, they do give us an indication of the economic trend in cloth production in this period.
In Tilburg, the second most important cloth producing area in the Republic after 1650, the general picture is somewhat different. Textile production was very much restricted outside the cities. Furthermore, industrial products from the province of Brabant, where Tilburg was situated, were heavily taxed. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs from cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam tried to stimulate woollen production in the area of Tilburg. In most cities of Holland, the finishing and trading of cloth had become very important and the influential merchants were treated with leniency by the central government when they sent their wool to be spun and woven in Tilburg, where labour costs were much lower than in Holland, without being taxed. In 1687, in spite of protests by textile-producing Holland cities like Leiden and Haarlem, the merchants even managed to get an official agreement, which was called “the Concession of Tilburg”. From now on, they were definitely free to put out their production on the countryside, albeit in this village alone. Unfortunately, there are not many production figures for Tilburg, but it appears that cloth production rose by more than 125% from 1650 to 1810. This was quite a lot, considering the fact that the first technological innovations were introduced around 1800.[11]
With regard to the numbers of spinners and weavers we have some – though not much – more information. The data are heterogeneous and hard to compare, but the textile industry was certainly an important employer. In its heydays, it must have provided thousands of people – men, women and children – with work. Posthumus estimates that around 1650, more than 36.000 inhabitants of Leiden must have been depending on the cloth industry.[12] Unfortunately, solid numbers are not known for the whole of the Republic. Although Leiden was the main production centre, there was also weaving activity in many other cities and on the countryside – there were still 23 wool weavers’ guilds in the Republic in 1650. Therefore, at least several thousands more people must have been working in this industry at this time. Surely, this number declined drastically during the last part of the 17th and the 18th centuries. Table 1 shows, for instance, that in cities like Gouda and Utrecht, where a reasonable cloth production existed before 1650, there were very few weavers left in 1671. In Leiden, the number of weavers dropped as well, from over 2500 in 1650, to not even 1500 around 1750 and less than 900 in 1810. Nevertheless, still more than 13.000 people in the Netherlands worked as spinner or weaver in the woollen industry in 1810.[13]
Table 2 – Some numbers of wool and cotton weavers and spinners in the Dutch Republic, 1650-1810
place / year / no. ofwool
weavers / no. of
wool
spinners / no. of cotton
weavers / no. of cotton
spinners / Source
Amsterdam / 1642 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Delft / 1642 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Gouda / 1642 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Haarlem / 1642 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Utrecht / 1642 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Delft / 1650 / Posthumus (1939) 946-947.
Leiden / c. 1650 / 2535 / Posthumus (1939) 936-938.
Leiden / 1661 / 3365 / Posthumus (1939) 938.
Tilburg / 1665 / 139* / 205* / RHCT, 380-II
Leiden / 1667 / 3400 / Posthumus (1939) 938.
Gouda / 1671 / 14 / Geselschap (1972) 146.
Utrecht / 1671 / 35 / Klinkenberg (1991) 13.
Leiden / 1749 / 1446* / 1587* / VT 1749
Tilburg / 1810 / 592 / 2466 / VT 1810
Leiden / 1810 / 880 / 3289 / Jansen (1999) 306.
Twente / 1810 / 1032 / Jansen (1999) 316.
North-Brabant / 1810 / 170 / 179 / Jansen (1999) 318.
Netherlands total / c. 1810 / 2781 / 9658 / 539 / 1670 / Jansen (1999) 133.
* Only heads of households
Cotton, on the other hand, was on the rise. Until 1800, this raw material was mostly used for the production of mixed fabrics. Large-scale mechanization of the industry would only take place after 1810, but since the late 18th century some entrepreneurs in the peripheral regions of Twente and North Brabant had introduced new machinery like the spinning Jenny. This innovation accelerated after 1810, and resulted in a rapid increase of cotton spinners and weavers. With this development, important conditions for the future were created. Twente and North Brabant would remain the core of the Dutch textile industry until the second half of the 20th century.
Organization of production and institutions
In most cities of the Dutch Republic, industries and trades were regulated through guilds, which had been established since the thirteenth century, with the rise of the cities in this area. These guilds were corporative organizations, which operated with local government support to protect the economic and social interests of the members of their specific trade. They were mostly founded in cities, although there were some guilds on the countryside.[14]
Woollen weaving in the cities was also mostly organized within a guild. Therefore, the presence of a guild can give us an indication of export oriented woollen industry in a certain city or region (see figure 2).
Figure 2 – Woollen weavers’ guilds in 1650 (left) and 1780 (right)
In general, citizenship was required to be admitted to a guild. To prove his skill and obtain his mastery in order to participate in the weavers’ guild, the weaver had to produce a ‘masterpiece’. It was necessary to be trained by another master of the guild for several years before a weaver was allowed to take this test. Once a master, the guild offered the weaver many advantages, like the right to weave within the city, with more or less fixed prices, guarding against uneven competition, and material support in case of sickness or death for him and his family. These advantages of course had its price: a yearly contribution was required, and if a weaver violated the guild’s regulations, he was (sometimes heavily) fined.[15] Moreover, the guild system excluded many groups in society. Non-citizens and unskilled workers could not join the club. Most guilds were also reluctant to admit women. In some guilds, widows could take on their deceased husband’s profession as a master, but married and unmarried women were usually excluded. This monopolistic policy is supposed to have driven women out of the weaving profession in the late Middle Ages. Spinning was, according to most sources, a predominantly female profession. Exactly this gendered division of labour is also often mentioned as the reason why spinning was hardly ever organized in a guild or otherwise.[16] I will come back to this issue in the section on the division of labour.
In spite of the importance of the guild system, the two major cloth producers of the 17th and 18th centuries did not have a guild for most of the period. In Leiden, the drapers’ guild had already been abolished in 1561. This did not mean that cloth production was not regulated in a corporative way. On the contrary, all the different woollen industries were organized as neringen, and each nering represented a different kind of fabric, like serge, cloth, baize etc. The neringen were established by the city council around 1585. All the workers of every stage of the production process were subjected to the administration and regulations of their specific nering. Furthermore, each nering had its own central building, the ‘hall’, where the workers brought their pieces of cloth to be examined, measured, and sometimes even sold. The neringen were governed by one or two superintendents and two to five governors. They had to make sure that all the workers observed the regulations and they were also supposed to settle differences between entrepreneurs and their employees.[17]
Until 1630, most Leiden drapers managed to stay independent entrepreneurs. The draper led the production process, and he employed several weavers, spinners, and other workers. More and more, however, some poor drapers came to lean on cloth finishers and merchants for their subsistence. From 1630 to 1670, most drapers lost a great deal of their independence. They started working as ‘middle men’ between a new group of capital owning entrepreneurs, the reders, and the actual workers. The spinners and weavers worked at home, or they were concentrated in small workshops. In the 18th century a new type of entrepreneur, the fabriqueur, appeared on the scene. This fabriqueur employed many workers who produced for him at home or in larger manufactures. It is likely that the fabriqueur was not a real merchant, but rather a producer of cloth. The processes of producing and selling were more and more separated in the course of the 18th century.[18]
In Tilburg, a woollen weavers’ guild was established as late as in 1767. Before this, cloth production was organized in various ways. First, there were independent drapers, who bought their own materials and sold their cloth themselves. Secondly, there were merchants from out of Tilburg, who brought raw materials to the village to be spun and woven there on a commission basis. In the second half of the 17th century, however, many independent weavers could no longer compete with the production of wealthier entrepreneurs. More and more, they started to weave for these ‘capitalist’ drapers and merchants in return for wages. The ‘putting out’ system that thus came into being, made most Tilburg weavers dependent on wage labour.[19]
Apart from their interference with the guilds and the neringen, the local government hardly meddled with textile production. Most occurrences of local government policy are meant to improve the impoverished cloth industries.[20] Even conflicts were usually not taken to court, but resolved within the guild or, in the case of Leiden, by the governors of the nering. Most conflicts were between individual workers and drapers or merchants, and the quarrel was almost always about wages. Organized protests by a great number of workers against ‘capitalist’ employers were remarkably rare or at least undocumented in this period.[21] Central government policy regarding textiles usually concerned trade and textile production on the countryside. Already in the 16th century many cities in Holland complained to the Estates General about the competition they experienced, and in the 17th century complaints and regulations were also enacted in Den Bosch and some cities of Twente.[22] In the long run, as we have seen above, nothing could be done to stop textile production moving to the more peripheral and more agrarian parts of the Dutch Republic.
The division of labour
We have already seen that there was an interregional division of labour in the Dutch woollen industry. This division concerns the merchant cities of Holland, where the dyeing and finishing of cloth were carried out and the area of Tilburg, where much of the spinning and weaving took place. However, this was an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary one. Leiden, although on its way back compared to its heydays in the mid 1600s, remained a very important weaving area within the Republic. In 1749, still approximately 1450 heads of households were registered as weaver, a number that Tilburg would never reach during the pre-industrial period. Still, in broad lines, major geographical shifts had started in the second half of the 17th century. Tilburg and other rural areas of Brabant became an increasingly important cloth-producing region during the 18th century.[23] The decline of woollen weaving in the cities can be illustrated by the rapid decline of the number of guilds in the 150 years between 1650 and 1800. Furthermore, linen production on the Brabant and Twente countryside became more and more important. Eventually, early in the nineteenth century, many textile producers in these regions would switch to cotton, because the demand for this fabric rose rapidly, which led to the mechanisation of the sector.[24]