The Triumph of Textiles: Industrial Dundee c. 1700–1918.Christopher A.Whatley and JimTomlinson, (Edinburgh University Press, 2024. Pp.291. ISBN: 9781399537827. PbK £19).
本书考察了苏格兰邓迪市黄麻产业的兴衰，从18世纪亚麻起步到19世纪黄麻主导，直至一战高峰，并探讨其与奴隶制、帝国殖民的关联，适合经济史和城市史研究者参考。
The city of Dundee was renowned for its dominance in the production of jute, a coarse hard waring textile, being responsible for more than 90% of total UK output. As with other industries of the first Industrial Revolution, the industry went into decline in the twentieth century. In Dundee's case, jute production ended in 1999. This book explores the rise of the jute industry in the city of Dundee, from the initial textile stages of flax and linen in the eighteenth century into the dominance of jute from the mid-nineteenth century through to its zenith during the First World War. As such, it provides a valuable adjunct to a range of focused social and economic business histories of the jute industry and the city of Dundee. The book takes a historical approach beginning with the rise of Dundee as a co-ordinating centre for regional out-working, growing due to its existing linen export trade with England, in the decades following the Act of Union in 1707. A specialization upon coarse, rather than fine, linen fabrics encouraged the subsequent development of exporting into the Americas, providing clothing for enslaved persons, and would eventually lead to the movement into other coarse textile products made from jute. This contrasted with centres of fine linen production on the west coast of both Scotland and England where cotton textiles would then emerge. Arguably the most important thesis explored in the following chapter is the identification of the origins of the pre-eminence of Dundee with jute through colonial control of India, and specifically, the linkages between Scottish technical engineers, overseers, and managers positioned in the East India Company. The rise of British textile industries’ links with enslavement and empire provide a more central role in this history, extending our knowledge beyond cotton, first to linen and the provision of textiles during enslavement and then into jute with colonial control of India. As the authors note, ‘it is noticeable how many of the scions of Dundee's merchant families found employment in India, thereby creating a direct channel of communication between Dundee and the Far East’ (p. 75). Chapters 3 and 4 examine the fitful start of early internalization of production in the factory system alongside the ‘chaos’ of rapid urbanization. Fortunes were made and lost by entrepreneurs in an industry in which the price and quality of the raw material could fluctuate significantly. A workforce of agricultural workers and migration from Ireland proved the supply of labour in what was rapidly transforming Dundee from a regional centre into a large city. Between 1755 and 1841 Dundee's population grew from 12,477 to 62,873 and further increased to 153,587 by 1891 (table 4.1, p. 134). As with other textiles, Dundee rapidly became identified with women and child labour, earning the city the moniker as a ‘women's town’. Technical innovation in spinning and weaving facilitated improvements in the consistency of output, and new markets in carpet backing evidence an early diversity of markets for jute products. However, it was the periodic wars of the late nineteenth century and the First World War that created the huge boom in demand. Chapter 5 examines the process of rapid industrialization in the city. The failure of the city's leaders to redevelop ‘New Towns’, as occurred in Edinburgh, left a legacy of some of the worst overcrowding in housing, poor sanitation, and ill health in Scotland. Alongside this, alcoholism, prostitution, and child neglect resulted in women workers in the jute industry being particularly vilified for these social problems. Periodic unemployment, due to fluctuating economic conditions in these early decades of jute's predominance, also provided fertile ground for anti-Irish sectarianism, albeit less prevalent than on the west coast. Chapter 6 focuses upon the rise of Indian competition in global markets for jute products, notably in the low-value areas of bags, sacks, and wrappings for agricultural goods. Dundee and British machine manufacturers provided the capital equipment for the establishment of Indian mills, whilst large fortunes could be made from passive British investors in the managing agencies established to run these mills. In contrast, Dundee's jute owners themselves diverted profits to finance capital investment within the United States through the creation of investment trusts, rather than investing in the jute industry itself. The final two chapters take the story from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the First World War. Whilst the growth of the industry slowed from the rapid expansion of mid-century, absolute output continued to grow. The industry became concentrated in the hands of a few inter-connected families. The wealth generated in the city led to the opening of its own stock exchange in 1879 (p. 218). However, increasing polarization with a working class developing its own agency through trade unionism, campaigns over food availability and prices, rent strikes, and political representation are all evident. Whilst Whatley and Tomlinson reject the notion that the city was ‘on the brink of revolution’ (p. 214), it certainly became sharply divided along class lines. There are, however, some weaknesses and challenges to the narrative contained in the book. Whatley and Tomlinson are to be commended on their emphasis upon positioning Dundee's rise in the wider post-colonial historical understanding of enslavement, empire, and imperialism. Whilst they do not reject earlier historiographies highlighting Dundee's links to the whaling industry and earlier textiles, first enslavement and then empire are prioritized. However, this sits somewhat at odds with the description of the relationship between Dundee and India as ‘symbiotic’ (p. 73). No matter how low wages were driven in Dundee they were never low enough to compete with Calcutta (modern day Kolkata) on labour costs. These were far from symbiotic features of the industry, but rather a divide which pitted workers in Dundee and Kolkata against one another to the benefit of employers in both centres. One area missing from the discussion is that of employers’ management of competition and eventual cartelization within the industry. Whilst the Chamber of Commerce is highlighted as important in this area as well as the co-ordination undertaken over wage levels, the book is silent on the employers’ trade associations that emerged by the end of the period, notably the Association of Jute Spinners and Manufacturers, formally launched in 1918 after the period of consolidation and concentration between the small number of families from the 1880s onwards (p. 216). The book is in many ways a book in two halves. The first three longer chapters examining the period to the end of the nineteenth century extensively examines the rise of jute. This is very much focused upon the named entrepreneurs as individuals who constructed the city's history, and is therefore a very traditional history from above, whereas the following four chapters, in many ways more interesting, cover the social and political impact of industrialization on the city with a greater focus from below. Rapid urbanization and slum housing, moral panic arising from women as the dominant component in the industry workforce ‘neglecting’ the double burden of employment and responsibility for the household, poverty, and the rise of working-class politics form the subjects of these shorter chapters. More could have been explored in this part of the book, for this reader at least. In conclusion, the book provides an important and valuable summary of the existing literature and adds new insights into the linkages between economic, social, and political developments which made and remade Dundee as a city over two centuries.