People, Markets, Goods:
Economies and Societies in History
Volume 7

Slavery Hinterland

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People, Markets, Goods:
Economies and Societies in History
ISSN: 2051-7467
Series editors
Barry Doyle – University of Huddersfield
Nigel Goose – University of Hertfordshire
Steve Hindle – The Huntington LibraryJane Humphries – University of Oxford
Kevin O’Rourke – University of Oxford
Willem M. Jongman – University of Groningen

The interactions of economy and society, people and goods, transactions
and actions are at the root of most human behaviours. Economic and social
historians are participants in the same conversation about how markets
have developed historically and how they have been constituted by economic
actors and agencies in various social, institutional and geographicalcontexts. New debates now underpin much research in economic andsocial, cultural, demographic, urban and political history. Their themes
have enduring resonance – financial stability and instability, the costs ofhealth and welfare, the implications of poverty and riches, flows of trade
and the centrality of communications. This new paperback series aims to
attract historians interested in economics and economists with an interestin history by publishing high quality, cutting edge academic research inthe broad field of economic and social history from the late medieval/
early modern period to the present day. It encourages the interaction ofqualitative and quantitative methods through both excellent monographs
and collections offering path-breaking overviews of key research concerns.
Taking as its benchmark international relevance and excellence it is open toscholars and subjects of any geographical areas from the case study to themulti-nation comparison.
Previously published titles in the series arelisted at the end of the volume2264 (Boydell - Slavery Hinterland).indd 2

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Slavery Hinterland
Transatlantic Slavery andContinental Europe, 1680–1850

Edited byFelix Brahm and Eve RosenhafttHe boydell Press

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© Contributors 2016
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright ownerFirst published 2016
The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978-1-78327-112-2

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Typeset by BBR, Sheffield

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Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

vii
ix
xiii

Introduction: Towards a Comprehensive European History of Slavery
and Abolition 
Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft

1

1. Ship’s Surgeon Johann Peter Oettinger: A Hinterlander in the
Atlantic Slave Trade, 1682–96 Craig Koslofsky and Roberto Zaugg

25

2. ‘Citizens of the World’: The Earle Family’s Leghorn and Venetian
Business, 1751–1808 Alexandra Robinson

45

3. Basel and the Slave Trade: From Profiteers to Missionaries Peter Haenger
4. Spinning and Weaving for the Slave Trade: Proto-Industry inEighteenth-Century Silesia Anka Steffen and Klaus Weber
5. There Are No Slaves in Prussia? 
Rebekka von Mallinckrodt

65

87
109

6. Julius von Rohr, an Enlightenment Scientist of the Plantation
Atlantic 
Daniel Hopkins

133

7. A Hinterland to the Slave Trade? Atlantic Connections of the
Wupper Valley in the Early Nineteenth Century Anne Sophie Overkamp

161

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viContents

8. Abolitionists in the German Hinterland? Therese Huber and the
Spread of Anti-slavery Sentiment in the German Territories inthe Early Nineteenth Century Sarah Lentz

187

Afterword213
Catherine Hall
Bibliography of Secondary Works Cited
Index

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223
253

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Illustrations
0.1

Stammbuch of Johann Carl Tutenberg, Entry by C. Heynec.1781 (Stadtarchiv Göttingen, Stabu Nr. 33, p. 20)0.2

Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune: ‘Ce qui sert à vos plaisirs
est mouillé de nos larmes’. Illustration from [JacquesHenri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre], Voyage à l’Isle deFrance … (Amsterdam, 1773) (John Rylands Library, Manchester) 2

0.3

Newspaper advertisement for the German Anti-slavery
lottery, 1891. Wöchentliche Anzeigen für das Fürstenthum
Ratzeburg No. 92, 24 November 1891, p. 4 (Landesbibliothek
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Günther Uecker)

22‘Von den Weibern und ihrer Kleidung daselbst’, detail.
Illustration from Johann Theodor and Johann Israel deBry (eds), Orientalische Indien, vol. 6: [Pieter de Marees],
Wahrhafftige historische Beschreibung deß gewaltigen
Goltreichen Königreich Guinea (Frankfurt a.M., 1603),
plate 3 (Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt,
von Alvenslebensche Bibliothek, Schloss Hundisburg)

39

2.1

Thomas Earle of Leghorn. Oil, School of Baton, n.d.
(Courtesy Mealy’s Images ©)

50

2.2

Venetian trade beads, seventeenth/eighteenth century(© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

57

3.1

Christoph Burckhardt-Merian (1740–1812). Oil, AugustFriedrich Oelenhainz, 1795 (Historisches Museum Basel,
Christoph Burckhardt-Merian, Inv. 1989.78)

68

Christophe Bourcard (1766–1815). Drawing, Anonymous
artist, c.1780 (Historisches Museum Basel, Christophe
Bourcard, Inv. 1995.402)

77

1.1

3.2

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viiiILLUSTRATIONS

3.3

Excerpt from the return account of the voyage of the
Cultivateur, 1817 (University of Basel, Schweizerisches
Wirtschaftsarchiv, HS 420, N 1, Alle Sklavenschiffe A–Z,
1782–1815, Le Cultivateur)81

4.1

Population in Silesia, 1663–1805

96

4.2

Prices in Silesia for grain, other foodstuffs, leather boots andmessenger’s fee per mile, 1377–1796

98

4.3

Grain prices in Silesia, 1781–1810

98

5.1

Portrait showing Wilhelmina of Prussia and her brotherFrederick with a ‘court Moor’ wearing a silver slave collar.
Oil, Antoine Pesne, 1714 (Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg,
Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz)

123

Invoice received by Abraham & Brothers Frowein from theiragent on St Thomas. ‘Negermiethe’ (negro rent) appears as
the third item from the top. At $4.73 it was the smallest of thecosts (Frowein Company Archive, Wuppertal, No. 261)

169

Abraham Engelbert Kretzmann (1765–1848), a long-standing
employee of Abraham & Brothers Frowein. Beside his rightarm can be seen packs of tape of the kind sent overseas. Oil,
Johann Jakob Verreyt, 1846 (Historisches Zentrum Wuppertal)

170

7.1

7.2

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Contributors
Felix Brahm is Research Fellow in Colonial History at the German Historical
Institute London. Publications: ‘Armed with an Umbrella. Alexander Mackay
and the Emerging Criticism of the East African Arms Trade’, Sources andMethods for African History and Culture. Essays in Honour of Adam
Jones, ed. G. Castryck, S. Strickrodt and K. Werthmann (Leipzig, 2016),
pp. 291–304; ‘Translokale Beziehungen und ihre Repräsentation. SansibarStadt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Historische Anthropologie 21:1 (2013),
67–84; ‘The Overseas World – and Hamburg: On the Postwar Recreation of
Locality in a German Port City’, Localities 3 (2013), 103–23; ‘“Techniqueséprouvées au cours des siècles”: African Students at the Former School for
Colonial Administrators in Paris, 1951–1967’, Comparativ 21/1 (2011), 76–88;
Wissenschaft und Dekolonisation. Paradigmenwechsel und institutioneller
Wandel in der akademischen Beschäftigung mit Afrika in Deutschland undFrankreich, 1930–1970 (Stuttgart, 2010); ‘Handel und Sklaverei am “Tor zu
Ostafrika”. Hamburger Kaufleute auf Sansibar, 1844–1890’, Hamburg –Sansibar. Sansibar – Hamburg. Hamburgs Verbindungen zu Ostafrika seit
Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, ed. R. Bake (Hamburg, 2009), pp. 45–67.
Peter Haenger teaches history at a Basel secondary school and works as
an independent historian. Publications: (on slavery and the slave trade):
Baumwolle, Sklaven und Kredite. Die Basler Welthandelsfirma Christoph
Burckhardt & Cie. in revolutionärer Zeit (1789–1815) (with Niklaus Stettler
und Robert Labhardt) (Basel, 2004); Slaves and Slaveholders on the Gold
Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social Bondage in West Africa (Basel,
2000); Sklaverei und Sklavenemanzipation an der Goldküste: Ein Beitrag zum
Verständnis von sozialen Abhängigkeitsbeziehungen in Westafrika (Basel,1997).
Catherine Hall is Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History,
University College London, and Director of ESRC/AHRC projects Legacies ofBritish Slave-ownership and Structure and significance of British Caribbean
slave-ownership 1763–1833. Publications: Macaulay and Son. Architectsof Imperial Britain (New Haven, 2012); Civilising Subjects. Metropole and2264 (Boydell - Slavery Hinterland).indd 9

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xCONTRIBUTORSColony in the English Imagination 1830–1867 (Cambridge, 2002); ‘Britain,
Jamaica, and Empire in the Era of Emancipation’, Art and Emancipationin Jamaica. Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds, Tim Barringer, Gillian
Forrester and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz (New Haven, 2007), pp. 9–26;
Introduction to Special Feature, ‘Remembering 1807: Histories of the Slave
Trade, Slavery and Abolition’, History Workshop Journal 64 (Autumn 2007).
Daniel P. Hopkins is Emeritus Professor of Geography, University ofMissouri, Kansas City. Publications: Peter Thonning and Denmark’s Guinea
Commission: A Study in Nineteenth-Century African Colonial Geography(Leiden, 2013); ‘The Application of GIS to the Reconstruction of the
Slave-Plantation Economy of St. Croix, Danish West Indies’ (with Philip
Morgan and Justin Roberts), Historical Geography 39 (2011), 85–104; ‘PeterThonning, the Guinea Commission, and Denmark’s Postabolition African
Colonial Policy, 1803–50’, The William and Mary Quarterly 66 (2009),
781–808; ‘Books and the geography of Denmark’s colonial undertaking inWest Africa, 1790–1850’, Geographies of the Book, ed. Charles Withers andMiles Ogborn (Farnham, 2010), pp. 221–46.
Craig Koslofsky is Professor of History and Germanic Languages andLiteratures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and is currently
writing a history of skin in the early modern world. Publications: ‘Knowing
Skin in Early Modern Europe, c. 1450–1750’, History Compass 12:10 (2014),
794–806; Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe(Cambridge and New York, 2011); The Reformation of the Dead: Death andRitual in Early Modern Germany, 1450–1700 (London and New York, 2000).
Sarah Lentz is Assistant Lecturer in Early Modern History, University ofBremen. She is completing a dissertation on the spread of anti-slavery
sentiment in the German territories and the involvement of Germans in the
Atlantic abolitionist movement from the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth
century. Publications: ‘“[E]ine viel wichtigere Persönlichkeit […] als derPräsident selbst”. David Parish und die Finanzierung der US-Regierung im
Krieg von 1812’, Die hanseatisch-amerikanischen Beziehungen seit 1790, ed.
Claudia Schnurmann and Heiko Herold (forthcoming 2016); ‘David Parish,
Alexander Baring and the US-American Government Loan of 1813. The Roleof Nationality and Patriotism in Transatlantic Financial Networks in Timesof War’, The London Journal for Canadian Studies (forthcoming 2016).
Rebekka von Mallinckrodt is Professor of Early Modern History, Universityof Bremen, and Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant Project
The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and its Slaves (2015–20).
Publications: Sports and Physical Exercise in Early Modern Culture. New

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CONTRIBUTORSxi

Perspectives on the History of Sports and Motion (forthcoming London,
2016) (with Angela Schattner); Les mondes coloniaux à Paris au XVIIIe
siècle. Circulation et enchevêtrement des savoirs (Paris, 2010) (with Anja
Bandau and Marcel Dorigny); Bewegtes Leben – Körpertechniken in derFrühen Neuzeit, Katalog zur Ausstellung in der Herzog August Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel (Wiesbaden, 2008); Struktur und kollektiver Eigensinn. Kölner
Laienbruderschaften im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung (Göttingen, 2005);
Interkultureller Transfer und nationaler Eigensinn. Europäische und angloamerikanische Positionen der Kulturwissenschaften (Göttingen, 2004) (with
Rebekka Habermas).
Anne Sophie Overkamp is Assistant Lecturer in Early Modern History,
University of Bayreuth. Publications: ‘Stadtbürgerliche Fürsorge, christlicher
Gemeinsinn und nützliches Erwerben: Die Armenfürsorge in Elberfeld undBarmen im ersten Viertel des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Sinngebung für Wirtschaft
und Gemeinschaft. Konfessionelle und nichtreligiöse Gemeinsinnsmodelle im
19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Winfried Müller and Swen Steinberg (Bielefeld,2014); ‘Of Tape and Ties: Abraham Frowein from Elberfeld and Atlantic
Trade’, Europeans Engaging the Atlantic: Know­ledge and Trade, 1500–1800,
ed. Susanne Lachenicht (Frankfurt a.M., 2014); ‘Vermehrung der Kenntnisse,
Verfeinerung der Sitten – die Elberfelder Lesegesellschaft (1775–1818)’,
Geschichte im Wuppertal 19 (2010), 43–53.
Alexandra Robinson is Lecturer in Continuing Education, University ofLiverpool, and a public historian. She has a research consultancy and carries
out education work with the International Slavery Museum Liverpool, theSandwell (West Midlands) Slavery Archive, and the project Behind the Golden
Gates – Warrington and the Slave Trade. She has curated the historical interpretation of Fairview Plantation Great House, St Kitts, West Indies, and in
2013–14 the exhibitions ‘And learn to respect human rights’ Celebrating
Edward Rushton’s Legacy, 1814–2014 at the International Slavery Museum
and the Museum of Liverpool, and Rebellious Poetics at the Victoria Gallery& Museum, Liverpool. Publications: ‘Transatlantic Interchange in the Ageof Revolution: The Caribbean Residence of James Stephen and British
Abolitionism, 1783–1807’ and ‘Transforming Sites of Human Wrongs into
Centres for Human Rights: The Birth of the Campaigning Museum’, bothin Franca Dellarosa (ed.), Slavery: Histories, Fictions, Memory 1760–2007(Naples, 2012).
Eve Rosenhaft is Professor of German Historical Studies, University of Liverpool.
Publications: Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora
Community 1884–1960 (monograph, with R. J. M. Aitken) (Cambridge, 2013);
Africa in Europe. Studies in Transnational Practice in the Long Twentieth2264 (Boydell - Slavery Hinterland).indd 11

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xiiCONTRIBUTORSCentury (co-edited with R. J. M. Aitken) (Liverpool, 2013); Civilians and War in
Europe 1618–1815 (Liverpool, 2012); ‘How to Tame Chance: Evolving Languagesof Risk, Trust and Expertise in 18th-century German Proto-Insurances’, The
Appeal of Insurance, ed. Geoffrey W. Clark, Gregory Anderson, ChristianThomann and J.-Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg (Toronto, 2010), pp. 16–42;‘Women and financial know­ledge in eighteenth-century Germany’, Women and
Their Money. Essays on Women and Finance 1700–1950, ed. Anne Laurence,
Josephine Maltby and Janette Rutterford (London, 2008), pp. 59–72; ‘Herzoder Kopf. Erfahrungsbildung beim Kaufen von Aktien und Witwenrenten im
norddeutschen Bildungsbürgertum des späten 18. Jahrhunderts’, Historische
Anthropologie 14 (2006), 349–69.
Anka Steffen is a Ph.D. candidate and Researcher on the project ‘The
Globalized Periphery: Atlantic Commerce, Socioeconomic and Cultural
Change in Central Europe (1680–1850)’, Europa University Viadrina,Frankfurt an der Oder.
Klaus Weber is Professor of Comparative European Economic and Social
History, Europa University Viadrina, Frankfurt an der Oder. Publications:
Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel 1680–1830: Unternehmen und
Familien in Hamburg, Cádiz und Bordeaux (Munich, 2004); Schwarzes
Amerika. Eine Geschichte der Sklaverei (with Jochen Meissner and Ulrich
Mücke) (Munich, 2008); ‘From Westphalia to the Caribbean: Networksof German Textile Merchants in the Eighteenth Century’ (with Margrit
Schulte Beerbühl), Cosmopolitan Networks in Commerce and Society
1660–1914, ed. Andreas Gestrich and Margrit Schulte Beerbühl (London,
2011), pp. 53–98; Überseehandel und Handelsmetropolen: Europa und Asien,
17.–20. Jahrhundert (co-edited with Frank Hatje) (Hamburg, 2008).
Roberto Zaugg is a Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation
at the University of Lausanne. Publications: Stranieri di antico regime.
Mercanti, giudici e consoli nella Napoli del Settecento (Rome, 2011);
Union in Separation. Diasporic Groups and Identities in the Eastern
Mediterranean (1100–1800) (co-edited with G. Christ, F. J. Morche, W. Kaiser,
S. Burkhardt and A. D. Beihammer) (Rome, 2015); Joseph Furttenbach,
Lebenslauff 1652–1664 (co-edited with K. von Greyerz and K. Siebenhüner)(Cologne, 2013); Maritime Frauds between Norms and Institutions(17th–19th c.) / Frodi marittime tra norme e istituzioni (secc. XVII–XIX)(co-edited with B. Salvemini), special issue of Quaderni Storici 48/143 (2013);‘Zwischen Europäisierung und Afrikanisierung. Zur visuellen Konstruktion
der Kapverden auf kolonialen Postkarten’, Fotogeschichte 30/118 (2010),
17–28.

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4
Spinning and Weaving for the Slave Trade:
Proto-Industry in Eighteenth-Century Silesia1
ANKA STEFFEN AND KLAUS WEBER

Textiles were the most important merchandise in the barter trade for Africans
destined for slavery, serving both as a consumer good and as a currency.
Throughout the four centuries of the trans­atlantic slave trade, fabrics of allsorts made up about 50 per cent of the value shipped to Africa. Leslie Clarkson
states that cotton figures most prominently in the literature relevant to thehistory of textiles, as a commodity which Europeans have always desired
and which has been prominent in early intercontinental trade (including in
the barter trade for enslaved Africans), in the slave-based economy of theAmerican South, and in the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.2 At thesame time, she concludes that linen has been almost entirely overlookedby scholars – although the fabric was ubiquitous in Europe, for clothing,bedding, tablecloths, packaging, canvas, and more. Even a more recent essaycollection on the European linen industry treats mainly the British, Irish andNorth American aspects, and hazards some glances into Sweden, Belgium
and nineteenth-century Germany, when linen was already in irreversible
decline; the omnipresent linen trade of seventeenth and eighteenth century
northern France and Central Europe is completely ignored.3 Its importancehas been taken into account by a number of German scholars, but their

1 We are indebted to Chris Smith (London) and Eve Rosenhaft (Liverpool) for their reading
and for ironing out our English. Any remaining errors are ours.
2 Leslie Clarkson, ‘The Linen Industry in Early Modern Europe’, The Cambridge Historyof Western Textiles, ed. D. Jenkins (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 472–93. See also Giorgio Rielloand Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds, The Spinning World. A Global History of Cotton Textiles,
1200–1850 (Oxford, 2009); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton. A Global History (New York,2014).
3 Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, eds, The European Linen Industry in Historical
Perspective (Oxford, 2003).

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88ANKA STEFFEN AND KLAUS WEBER

studies on some particular textile regions, published in German, have not had
the impact they deserved.4
It is true that homespun linen lacks the glamour of silk, the ornaments andthe brilliant colours of calicoes and the dignity of woollen cloth, but in spiteof all its inconspicuousness it was one of the products that closely linked thepeoples around the Atlantic basin with those in Atlantic hinterlands, and it
did so over centuries. A history of linen can very well illustrate how distantregions established trade relations and thus constituted a wider, previously
non-existent, socio-economic fabric. This chapter will first introduce theoverall importance of export-oriented linen production for certain regions of
the Holy Roman Empire. It will then scrutinise the conditions which helped
to make the landlocked province of Silesia one of the major suppliers of
textiles on Atlantic markets, and the living conditions of the textile workers
in the region. The formerly Austrian, then Prussian province of Silesia is ofparticular interest because there the institution of serfdom survived wellinto the nineteenth century, in contrast with Germany’s more western textile
regions, such as Westphalia, the Rhineland or Swabia. In Silesia and insome other Prussian provinces, serfs not only worked the land but were also
employed in spinning and weaving. The chapter concludes by proposing that
Silesia’s linen trade not only supplied the Atlantic world with certain types oftextiles but also helped to make the ‘New World’ plantation economy more
profitable than it would otherwise have been, because under its regime ofunfree labour, such fabrics were produced at particularly low cost.

The Central European Economy and the Atlantic World
Central European provinces like Lusatia, Silesia and Bohemia had alreadybeen integrated into the European textile economy during the sixteenth
century, when the Fuggers and Nuremburg textile magnates transferred muchof their rural linen production from Swabia and Franconia further east.
These prominent entrepreneurs were capitalising on the lower wages to be
paid there.5 Many of these textile regions were devastated during the ThirtyYears War, but had fully recovered by 1700.

4 Axel Flügel, Kaufleute und Manufakturen in Bielefeld. Sozialer Wandel und wirtschaftliche
Entwicklung im proto-industriellen Leinengewerbe von 1680 bis 1850 (Bielefeld, 1993);
Hans-Werner Niemann, Leinenhandel im Osnabrücker Land. Die Bramscher Kaufmannsfamilie
Sanders 1780–1850 (Bramsche, 2004); Marcel Boldorf, Europäische Leinenregionen im Wandel.
Institutionelle Weichenstellungen in Schlesien und Irland (1750–1850) (Cologne, 2006).
5 Arno Kunze, ‘Die Verlagsbeziehungen des Nürnberger Handelskapitals zum sächsischböhmischen Leinwandproduktionsgebiete im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’ (unpublished dissertation, Halle, 1925); Gustav Aubin and Arno Kunze, Leinenerzeugung und Leinenabsatz im

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PROTO-INDUSTRY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SILESIA89

Lusatia is situated on the upper length of the River Spree and thus wellconnected with the River Elbe. The Elbe also provided Bohemia with directcommunication to the sea port of Hamburg. This Habsburg province
produced not only linen, but also metal items and glassware. From the1680s, traders from the remotest Bohemian mountain villages travelled as
far as London, Amsterdam and Cadiz to distribute their merchandise. As
in Westphalia and the Rhineland, a combination of different commodities
created synergies for marketing. In Bohemia, new roads were built during theeighteenth century for the smooth transportation of fragile commodities tothe riverboats on the Elbe.6
The old-established Westphalian linen trade had always been directed
towards the ports of Amsterdam, Bremen and Hamburg, and towards British
markets. They naturally benefited from the closer integration of the North
Sea region into the Atlantic economy, in particular after the Thirty Years War.
The merchants of larger Westphalian cities like Bielefeld, Osnabruck andWarendorf tightened their links with rural linen spinning and weaving, andestablished efficient institutions for quality control and marketing. A steadymigration to Hanseatic and Dutch ports, and to London, secured a significant
urban presence of Westphalian merchants and many of them actually madetheir way into the elite society of these cities. This strategy ensured a tightvertical integration of their family-based business.7 The main transport route
through Westphalia was the River Weser, with the Hanseatic city of Bremenon its estuary into the North Sea. The river’s upper course also links Hessian
linen regions with Bremen.
Among the regions mentioned, Silesia is the one most distant from theNorth Sea shores. Yet, its economic importance and its reliance on longdistance trade is illustrated with a Prussian achievement in civil engineeringand a Prussian military adventure. The Prince-Elector Frederick William
initiated the construction of a canal which linked the River Oder (flowing
from Silesia into the Baltic Sea) with the River Spree (feeding the Havel, which
in turn feeds the River Elbe), thus completing a navigable waterway of some
760 kilometres, from Silesia’s capital Breslau (today Wrocław) into the portof Hamburg. Merchants using this direct route to the North Sea avoided theDanish sound toll, but had to pay newly established Prussian duties. The canal
was opened in 1668, with thirteen watergates on its length of 28 kilometres.
östlichen Mitteldeutschland zur Zeit der Zunftkäufe: Ein Beitrag zur industriellen Kolonisation
des deutschen Ostens (Stuttgart, 1940).
6 Milan Myška, ‘Proto-Industrialisation in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia’, European ProtoIndustrialisation, ed. S. Ogilvie and M. Cerman (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 188–207; Klaus Weber,
Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel 1680–1830: Unternehmen und Familien in Hamburg,
Cádiz und Bordeaux (Munich, 2004), pp. 75–9, 133–43.
7 Weber, Deutsche Kaufleute im Atlantikhandel; Margit Schulte Beerbühl, Deutsche Kaufleutein London. Welthandel und Einbürgerung (1600–1818) (Munich, 2007).

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90ANKA STEFFEN AND KLAUS WEBER

From 1740 until 1763, Frederick William’s great-grandson Frederick II (theGreat) waged three costly wars for the conquest of Silesia, which had thus far
been a province of the Habsburg Empire. After the change of ruler, the linen
magnates in Silesia’s wealthy trading towns readily adapted to Prussian ruleand intensified their exports via Hamburg, while the older links with Upper
Germany and Austria were neglected.
The orientation of Central Europe’s rural industries towards the sea corresponded to the growth in the eighteenth century’s maritime trade. The slow
but steady pacification of the Atlantic basin and of the Caribbean, alongwith the suppression of piracy, contributed to a reduction of transaction
costs, which encouraged more individual traders to enter into the business,
including the slave trade.8 German merchants too benefited from thesechanges. A significant number of them did so by establishing themselves ina seaport of a slave-trading nation and operating under its flag.9 To what
extent did this presence of a German commercial elite in major port cities ofcolonial empires have an impact on the Central European hinterlands? This
question can only be answered by a quantitative assessment of the exportation of Central European products.
The taste of consumers in colonial markets is reflected by an 1806
report of British merchants to Parliament: ‘The Spanish Traders are verystrongly prejudiced in favour of German linens … When a Spanish trader
comes into a store in a British [Caribbean] Island, the first article he asks
for is German linens.’10 Another report, dated 1744, reported that theseventy thousand enslaved people on Barbados were ‘usually clothed with
Foreign “Osnabrughs”’.11 Such labelling demonstrates that the products
from particular northern German regions had made themselves a name,as ‘stout Weser flaxen’, ‘true born Osnabrughs’, ‘true born Tecklenburghs’(Tecklenburg is a county in the province of Westphalia), or ‘Creguelas deWestphalia’ and ‘Rosas de Westphalia’.12
These fabrics were in demand not only in American colonies, but also in
Africa, where the proportion of German manufactures among the barter
8 Pieter C. Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880. Trade, Slavery and
Emancipation (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 12–32.
9 Klaus Weber, ‘Deutschland, der atlantische Sklavenhandel und die Plantagenwirtschaft derNeuen Welt (15. bis 19. Jahrhundert)’, Journal of Modern European History 7/1 (2009), 37–67;
Klaus Weber, ‘Mitteleuropa und der transatlantische Sklavenhandel: eine lange Geschichte’,WerkstattGeschichte 66–67 (2015), 7–30.
10 Otto-Ernst Krawehl, Hamburgs Schiffs- und Warenverkehr mit England und den englischen
Kolonien 1840–1860 (Cologne, 1977), p. 441.
11 British Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons, Sessional Papers of the EighteenthCentury, 19 vols (Wilmington, 1975), vol. 19: Reports & Papers 1742–1760, pp. 18–19.
12 Edith Schmitz, Leinengewerbe und Leinenhandel in Nordwestdeutschland (1650–1850)(Cologne, 1967), pp. 33, 86, 92.

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commodities used for the purchase of slaves was significant.13 Even theassortments on board the early Portuguese slave ships were made up entirelyof merchandise produced outside Portugal, mostly from more Central andEastern European regions.14 Bills of lading preserved from the 1660s showthat hardly any East India ship would set sail from Britain for Africa without
a substantial quantity of Silesian linen in its holds, labelled ‘sletias’.15 The
slave ship Amiral, which left Bordeaux for the Guinea coast in 1744, had thebulk of its cargo made up of textiles, as most slavers would. Out of the totalof 5,095 bales of cotton and linen on board, 1,440 derived from Nantes, there
were far smaller batches from Rouen and Amsterdam, but as much as 2,720
from Hamburg.16 The British ship Mermaid offers a similar picture: in 1732,
before setting off for the Guinea coast, its captain had purchased textiles inRotterdam, with a total value of £23,335. Half of them were ‘sletias’. Muchof the remainder, labelled ‘bretannies’ and ‘cambrics’, may also have beenof German origin.17 Counterfeits of the traditional linen from Cambrai and
French Brittany were made in Germany, and much of it was distributed via
Dutch harbours.
Such individual observations on overseas markets are confirmed bybroader data from German regions of textile production. In his examinationof the Prussian customs registers, Alfred Zimmermann emphasises thesignificantly Atlantic bias of the exports from Silesia. From the 1740s to the1780s, more than three-quarters of its linen produce – the annual value was
oscillating roughly between 3 and 6 million Reichsthaler – was destined forthe markets of Western European sea powers. Some of it was even shipped
directly to the Americas, but only a tiny fraction of the exports was sent east
(to the Russia, Poland, Hungary and Ottoman regions).18 Far smaller German
territories also exported large quantities: in the late 1780s, the annual linen
exports of the Westphalian County of Ravensberg were worth some 750,000
Thaler.19 Similarly structured export markets have been observed in the caseof metalwares from the Rhineland.20

13 Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge, 1999), p. 114.
14 Alan F. C. Ryder, ‘An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River’, Journal of
the Historical Society of Nigeria 1/4 (1959), 294–321.
15 Margaret Makepeace, ‘English Traders on the Guinea Coast, 1657–1668: An Analysis of
the East India Company Archive’, History in Africa 16 (1989), 237–84, here pp. 239, 255–68.
16 Éric Saugera, Bordeaux port négrier. Chronologie, économie, idéologie, XVIIe–XIXesiècles (Paris, 1995), pp. 246, 352.
17 Kazuo Kobayashi, ‘British Atlantic Slave Trade and East India Textiles, 1650s–1808’(University Working Paper, Osaka, 2010).
18 Alfred Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien. Gewerbe- undHandelspolitik dreier Jahrhunderte (Breslau, 1885), pp. 460–7.
19 Schmitz, Leinengewerbe und Leinenhandel, p. 81.
20 Wilfried Reininghaus, Die Stadt Iserlohn und ihre Kaufleute (Münster, 1995), p. 585.

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This pattern has been confirmed by a case study on British foreign trade:
In the first half of the eighteenth century about 15 per cent of all imports
to Britain consisted of linen. As Karin Newman has pointed out, 70–80 per
cent of all these linens came from Germany, and 90 per cent of this volume
was re-exported across the Atlantic. This implies that around 1700, about
two-thirds of all British linen exports were of German origin. Irish linen
followed in second place, and English-woven produce only ranked third.21 If
the annual average of the bales of German-made linen channelled throughBritain during these years had been unrolled and pieced together, it would
have produced a length of 11,000 kilometres – large enough to span the
Atlantic from Britain to New England and on to Jamaica.
The French and Spanish contexts provide similar examples. The accountsof the important French trading house of Fornier frères, established in
Cadiz, reveal that out of the total of its textile purchases between 1768 and
1786, amounting to a value of 12 million Reales, almost two-thirds weremade in Germany. The major place of purchase was Hamburg, followed bySilesia.22 This pattern illustrates the decline of French linen industry. In 1793
alone, Catalan industries imported nearly 1.1 million metres of linen from
Hamburg.23 All these examples illustrate the extent to which the book The
European Linen Industry, cited above, is missing the wider picture.
The huge volume of rural textile production for export markets also had an
impact on population growth and social structure in Central Europe. German
labour-intensive proto-industries typically emerged in regions where poor
soil and climate obliged the rural population (including women and children)
to earn additional income for the purchase of food they could not produce
themselves. The poor wages which cottagers would accept attracted textile
producers to transfer manufacturing to such provinces. The general tendency
was a move from more western and urban to more eastern and rural areas. With
ever-increasing volumes of German manufactures being exported, such hitherto
poor regions became permanent importers of food, allowing for an escape from
the Malthusian trap. How narrow this escape was can now be tested through acloser consideration of the case of Silesia, focusing on the mountainous region
surrounding Hirschberg (today Jelenia Góra). This small but commerciallyvery powerful town, situated in the foothills of the Giant Mountains, was theprovince’s most prominent centre for the processing and sale of linen.

21 Karin Newman, ‘Anglo-Hamburg Trade in the Late Seventeenth and Early EighteenthCenturies’ (unpublished dissertation, London, 1979), p. 202.
22 Robert Chamboredon, ‘Une société de commerce languedocienne à Cadix: Simon etArnail Fornier et Cie (Nov. 1768–Mars 1786)’, La burguesía de negocios en la Andalucía de lailustración, 2, ed. A. González García-Baquero (Cadiz, 1991), pp. 35–52, here pp. 35, 49.
23 Pierre Vilar, La Catalogne dans l’Espagne moderne. Recherches sur les fondementséconomiques des structures nationales, 3 vols (Paris, 1962), vol. 3, pp. 118, 126.

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Proto-Industry in Silesia
Merchants from Nuremberg and Augsburg had been ordering linens from
Silesia since the early sixteenth century; Dutch buyers would soon join in.
Notably following the Thirty Year’s War, the number of people involved
with textile production was on the rise, particularly in the mountain regions.
A common explanation for this phenomenon has been refugees seeking
protection in Silesia’s more secluded areas, having to make their living without
access to agricultural land.24 An additional cause could be the increase in
prices for staple foods, which was already in progress at that time.
From the mid seventeenth century the merchants in Silesia’s linen trading
towns Hirschberg, Greiffenberg (today Gryfów Śląski) and Landeshut (today
Kamienna Góra) had established their own guilds (Kaufmanns-Societäten).
Hirschberg was the most prominent place and the neighbouring villages wereparticularly crowded with weavers and spinners. In organising bleaching andother finishing processes, and in coordinating the transport to buyers, the guilds
successfully pushed foreign merchants out of the Silesian linen sector. With
their detailed know­ledge of markets, the merchants instructed the workers to
produce counterfeits of Western European makes: Bretannies, Cambrics andSangallas (from the Swiss region of St Gallen). This did not go unnoticed, as
substantiated by a protest of Cambrai merchants dating around 1750, whocomplained about ‘fines toiles de Silesie’, made in the style and measures ofthe original ‘cambrics’.25 With a diversified range of goods, Silesian merchants
answered the demand from their own customers. These in turn were wholesale
merchants at distant places of trade, who would order certain amounts oflinen, of a specified quality and a defined degree of whiteness.26
Silesian industry also benefited from the institution of serfdom. By theeighteenth century, serfdom had virtually disappeared in the more westerly
linen regions of Britanny, Normandy, Westphalia and Swabia. In Bohemia it
was abolished in 1781;27 in Silesia, by contrast, it remained in place into theearly nineteenth century.28 Estate ownership prevailed. Tenant farmers were
obliged to work the land of their overlord for some days each week and owed
24 Lujo Brentano, ‘Ueber den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen Leinengewerbes
in Schlesien’, Zeitschrift für Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (1893), 318–40, p. 327; Siegfried
Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel von 1648–1806 (Breslau, 1938), p. 14–16.
25 Archiwum Państwowe w Jeleniej Górze (State Archives, Jelenia Góra), Sign. 23 Zoll- und
Schiffsachen, report without date, presumably from 1749 or 1750.
26 Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, pp. 40–3.
27 Arnost Klíma, ‘Industrial Growth and Entrepreneurship in the Early Stages ofIndustrialisation in the Czech Lands’, Economic Development in the Habsburg Monarchy in the
Nineteenth Century. Essays, ed. J. Komlos (Boulder and New York, 1983), pp. 81–99, here p. 82.
28 Ernst E. Klotz, Die schlesische Gutsherrschaft des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts. Auf
Grund der Friderizianischen Urbare und mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der alten Kreise

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him carriage services, or had to let him use draught animals at certain periodsof the year. Serfs without arable land at their disposal had to make theirliving as lodgers working for their keep (Einlieger), farm-girls, farm-hands orhousehold servants (Mägde, Knechte, Gesinde), having to toil as the overlord
saw fit. Among these services spinning yarn and weaving were commonplace.
Typically, Einlieger would also spin and weave on their own account in any
free time they had. In earlier times estate owners had even acted as puttersout, dictating low prices for the purchase of the yarn or finished fabrics
which they would in turn sell at a higher price.29 Since the merchants’ guilds
had succeeded in establishing their own oligopoly on prices in the courseof the seventeenth century, the estate owners had been squeezed out of thisbusiness.30 Still, the landlords benefited from the industry; their tenants andlodgers owed them a fee for the permission to practise a craft. This was inplace until the slow process of abolishing serfdom in Prussia was initiatedwith the October Edict of 1807.31 Hence, the landless textile workers were
never really able to negotiate the prices for their labour or for their producton equal terms. Further, with mobility harshly restricted, options to migrate
for better-paid jobs were virtually non-existent. The Silesian merchants thus
benefited from low production costs, enabling them to penetrate Atlantic
markets with comparatively cheap textiles. At the beginning of the processof Silesia’s proto-industrialisation, workers to some extent freely adopted
industriousness, but in the course of the eighteenth century the stagnationand even decline of real wages imposed a further intensification of labouron the households of the rural population.32 The low cost of labour musthave been one of the reasons why most spinners did not even use spinning
wheels but rather archaic yarn-winders.33 Likewise, hand weaving persisted
Breslau und Bolkenhain-Landeshut (Aalen, 1978); Markus Cerman, Villagers and Lords inEastern Europe, 1300–1800 (New York, 2012).
29 Brentano, ‘Ueber den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen Leinengewerbes inSchlesien’, p. 328.
30 Marcel Boldorf, ‘Märkte und Verlage im institutionellen Gefüge der Leinenregion
Niederschlesien des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Die Wirtschaftsgeschichte vor der Herausforderung
durch die New Institutional Economics, ed. K.-P. Ellerbrock and C. Wischermann (Dortmund,2004), pp. 179–91, here p. 183.
31 Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien, p. 18; Brentano, ‘Ueber
den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen Leinengewerbes in Schlesien’, pp. 327–8;
Johannes Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte. Vom Hubertusburger
Frieden bis zum Abschluss der Bauernbefreiung (Darstellungen und Quellen zur schlesischen
Geschichte), reprint of the 2nd edn (Aalen, 1978), pp. 42, 112; Kühn, Der Hirschberger
Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, p. 19.
32 Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household
Economy, 1650 to the Present (New York, 2008).
33 Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien, p. 60; Brentano, ‘Ueber
den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen Leinengewerbes in Schlesien’, p. 326.

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PROTO-INDUSTRY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SILESIA95

well into the twentieth century.34 The established elite of textile merchants
did not initiate anything resembling the Industrial Revolution. It was a small
group of newcomers, entering into the sector during the difficult Napoleonicyears, who introduced mechanisation from the mid nineteenth century.

Demography and Living Costs in Prussian Silesia
When Prussian rule was imposed over the region in 1742, the sovereign Duchyof Silesia and the County of Glatz comprised some 37,500 square kilometres.35
Population density in Prussia had been at ten people per square kilometre by
the end of the seventeenth century; in Silesia it was already at twenty-one
people per square kilometre. By 1805, the number of inhabitants per square
kilometre in the southern region had reached fifty-two, whereas even in 1816
the density in Prussia as a whole did not exceed thirty-seven individuals
per square kilometre.36 Density was even more pressing in the mountainous
regions of Lower Silesia, with sixty inhabitants per square kilometre by theearly nineteenth century.37
The landless and the land-poor portion of the population grew even fasterthan the average, at least until 1806. Their numbers in Silesia exceeded 200,000
people by 1778, making up some 14 per cent of the province’s population. In
the face of this excess supply of labour, it is not really surprising that their
daily wages stagnated. In contrast, the number of tenants working a larger orsmaller tract of land on their own was hardly growing at all.38 Information on
daily, monthly or annual wages is very scarce, but it is worthwhile attempting
an approximate assessment.
For a courier in late-fourteenth-century Silesia, the fee per mile had been
2 Silbergroschen and 6 Silberpfennig (30 Silberpfennig).39 Pay had not improved
34 Joseph Partsch, Schlesien. Eine Landeskunde für das deutsche Volk, 2 vols (Breslau,
1911), vol. 2, pp. 504, 518; Heinz Pohlendt, Die Landeshuter Paßlandschaften: Beiträge zur
Landeskunde der westlichen Mittelsudeten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der dörflichen
Siedlungs- und Hauslandschaft, Veröffentlichungen der Schlesischen Gesellschaft für Erdkunde
und des Geographischen Instituts der Universität Breslau 25 (Breslau, 1938), p. 81.
35 Silesia and the far smaller territory of Glatz were jointly ceded to Prussia, and they
are usually treated jointly in the literature: Friedrich G. Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung derPreußischen Monarchie, 6 vols (Halle, 1792), vol. 2, p. 7; Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer
Agrargeschichte, p. 61.
36 Calculation based on Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der Preußischen Monarchie, pp. 7, 16;
Otto Behre, Geschichte der Statistik in Brandenburg-Preussen bis zur Gründung des Königlichen
Statistischen Bureaus (Berlin, 1905), p. 408.
37 Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, p. 134.
38 Ibid., pp. 73–6.
39 One Reichsthaler was equal to 30 Silbergroschen or 360 Silberpfennig. One Prussian mile
was equal to 7.532 kilometres.

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96ANKA STEFFEN AND KLAUS WEBER

Figure 4.1. Population in Silesia, 1663–1805

Sources: Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der Preußischen Monarchie, pp. 7, 16–17, 22, 24–5;
Schlesische Provinzialblätter 5 (1787), 59; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 17 (1793), 411–13,
here p. 411; Behre, Geschichte der Statistik in Brandenburg-Preussen, p. 462.

by the 1780s, when such a messenger still received only 3–4 Silbergroschen(approximately 36–48 Silberpfennig) per mile.40 The figures seem reliable, as
other sources mention similar wage levels for unskilled workers at the endof the eighteenth century. For example, one thresher (Dreschgärtner) could
make 1–3 Silbergroschen (12–36 Silberpfennig) per day. A male farm-servant
owing bonded labour received 12 Reichsthaler annually; a farm-girl obtained
only 5 Reichsthaler per year.41 Assuming 365 working days, this equates to 12
Silberpfennig for one day of male labour and only 5 Silberpfennig for one dayof female labour – even though the Prussian Servants’ Law (Gesindeordnung,1676) had already mandated a minimal daily wage of 18 Silberpfennig formale farm-servants.42 In contrast, day labourers not bound to serfdom could
make up to 5 Silbergroschen (60 Silberpfennig) per day – but they could notcount on any support from an overlord.43
40 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 15 (1792), 429–40, here pp. 434–9.
41 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 8 (1788), 233–50, here pp. 235–6.
42 ‘Der Herren Fürsten und Stände verneuerte Gesinde-Ordnung Anno 1676 d. 9. Novembr.’,in Käyser- und Königl. Das Erb-Hertzogthum Schlesien concernirende Privilegia, Statuta und
Sanctiones Pragmaticæ (Breslau, 1713), pp. 178–202, here p. 188.
43 Klotz, Die schlesische Gutsherrschaft des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts, p. 100.

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PROTO-INDUSTRY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SILESIA97

Costs of (Barely) Living
Highly valuable data from the periodical Schlesische Provinzialblätter44 indicatethat the income of landless and land-poor people was lagging behind the slow
but steady rise of prices for grain, meat or items like shoes, and this applies
from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century (Fig. 4.2). With the1796 price for one pound of beef or pork a little over 2 Silbergroschen (25–28
Silberpfennig), it is evident why the lower classes were not consuming meaton a regular basis. Fish was even more expensive. Herring, the cheapest on themarket, cost 2 Silbergroschen (24 Silberpfennig). Eel, at the top of the pricerange, was at 1 Reichsthaler (360 Silberpfennig). The prices for the cheapest
bread oscillated around 1 Silbergroschen (12 Silberpfennig) per pound (justunder 500 grams).45 Bread was the main source of nutritional energy and it isreasonable to believe that the information that adult consumption was approximately two pounds per day is correct.46 Hence, to cover the minimal nutritional supply with bread only absorbed up to 40 per cent of the daily earningof an unbonded male day labourer – provided he obtained the highest possible
pay. Bonded farm-hands were usually provided with basic provisions by theiremployers, though very often of poor quality. The director of the Royal Credit
Institute, Ernst Heinrich, observed that such budgeted provision might include
only three dishes of meat per year.47 It seems that the working poor wereparticularly impoverished in Silesia, to the point that their physical strength
was perceptibly affected. According to the Prussian statesman Theodor von
Schönau, for a comparable task 33 per cent more labourers were required on
Silesian estates than on estates in the area surrounding Magdeburg.48 It may
even be claimed that from the 1770s many of those enslaved on plantationsin the French Caribbean and in British North America were enjoying better
material living conditions than Silesian cottagers.49
With population density higher but harvests poorer than in the lowlands
44 Michael R. Gerber, Die Schlesischen Provinzialblätter 1785–1849 (Sigmaringen, 1995).
45 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 23 (1796), 488–91.
46 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 29 (1799), 525–51, here p. 539. Klotz even considers three poundsof bread necessary for one male farm-servant per day: Klotz, Die schlesische Gutsherrschaft desausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts, p. 64.
47 The Royal Credit Institute was established to provide loans to keep struggling estatesin operation; Heinrich’s statement dates from the very end of the eighteenth century. Cited
according to Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, p. 116.
48 Ibid., p. 116.
49 Dale Tomich, ‘The Other Face of Slave Labour: Provision Grounds and Internal Marketingin Martinique’, Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World. A Student Reader, ed. H. Beckles
and V. A. Shepherd (Kingston, Jamaica, 2000), pp. 743–57; David Eltis, ‘Free and Coerced
Transatlantic Migrations: Some Comparisons’, The American Historical Review 88/2 (1983),
251–80, here pp. 279f; Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross. The
Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, MA, 1974), p. 122.

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98ANKA STEFFEN AND KLAUS WEBER

Figure 4.2. Prices in Silesia for grain, other foodstuffs, leather boots andmessenger’s fee per mile, 1377–1796

Sources: Schlesische Provinzialblätter 12 (1790), 406–12, here pp. 407–10; Schlesische
Provinzialblätter 15 (1792), 429–40, here pp. 434–9; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 23 (1796),
488–91; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 83 (1826), 235–60, here pp. 237–8, 242; Schlesische
Provinzialblätter 102 (1835), 207–16, here pp. 211–13.

Figure 4.3. Grain prices in Silesia, 1781–1810
Prices for grain per
bushel, in Reichsmark
Wheat
Rye
Barley1781–1790

1791–1800

1801–1810

Hirschberg

5.31

5.33

10.06

Breslau

4.25

4.25

8.04

Hirschberg

4.07

4.13

7.52

Breslau

3.24

3.39

6.09

Hirschberg

3.16

3.04

6.08

Breslau

2.53

2.97

4.82

Source: Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien, p. 474.

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PROTO-INDUSTRY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SILESIA99of the province, the town and valley of Hirschberg relied on grain supplies
from outside – which meant that prices for bread were usually above average(Fig. 4.3).50
Contemporaries saw yet another reason for the long-term rise in prices: theincrease of the volume of coined money in circulation. According to the Neue
Bunzlauische Monatschrift zum Nutzen und Vergnügen (published in Bunzlau,
today Bolesławiec), the monetary expenses of a family of five had increased
thirtyfold during a 250-year period: they had risen from 5 Reichsthaler and
15 gute Groschen51 per annum in 1500 to 150 Reichsthaler per annum in 1750.
The authors saw a direct nexus of this inflation with the increase of the volume
of cash in German lands, assuming a sixtyfold multiplication from approximately 7 million Reichsthaler in 1500 to roughly 429 million Reichsthaler in
1750.52 Those provincial eighteenth-century economists accurately described
Earl Hamilton’s ‘Price Revolution’ – avant la lettre.

Making Ends Meet
A very detailed picture of the expenses of a peasant in the last quarter ofthe eighteenth century has been provided by the Schlesische Provinzialblätter
from 1788. It draws on the example of a farm in the mountains of Lower
Silesia, rented by a seignorial peasant, with its modest revenues from crop
cultivation corresponding with most of the farms in the region. The farmhoused six persons: the farmer, his wife and their two children (who counted
as one adult), one male farm servant, one maidservant and a boy groom.
Besides two horses, the farm had two cows, two goats, two draught oxen
and four chickens. The farm’s annual revenue of about 186 Reichsthaler
was essentially generated by farming, supplemented by the yarn spun by themaidservant and the farmer’s wife during the off-peak farming months. Inturn, the total expenses for maintaining the farm, paying the farm-hands, theprovisioning and the clothing of the wider family, plus taxes and the rent to
the landlord added up to 353 Reichsthaler per annum. The deficit amounted
to 167 Reichsthaler. The farm itself required at least 136 days of labour.
Apart from that, at least forty-two days of labour (including horses and oxen)
were owed to the overlord. The shortfall of 167 Reichsthaler had to be earned
50 Max Müller, Die Getreidepolitik, der Getreideverkehr und die Getreidepreise in Schlesienwährend des 18. Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1897), p. 154; Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall desLeinengewerbes in Schlesien, p. 78.
51 One Reichsthaler was equal to 24 gute Groschen or 288 gute Pfennig.
52 Neue Bunzlauische Monatschrift zum Nutzen und Vergnügen 4 (1787), 301f. The
Schlesische Provinzialblätter provides different figures, the general assertion remains the same:
Schlesische Provinzialblätter 41 (1805), 31–7.

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with additional work by all farm members during the remaining 187 days ofthe year.53 Farmers would typically offer carriage services or let their oxenor horses in exchange for money, but rarely took to weaving. It was rather
the landless people who practised both spinning and weaving, not for an
additional income but as the mainstay for survival.54
According to the sources, by the end of the eighteenth century up to
one-third of the Silesian population was involved in one way or anotherwith the linen trade.55 If the overall population of the province was close
to 1,800,000 at that time,56 this would equate to about 600,000 people.
Production was complex: cultivating flax, breaking and heckling it, spinningyarn and bleaching it, collecting the yarn and selling it to the weavers whothen manufactured panels of ordinary fabrics or wove delicate, elaborately
patterned batistes. Then the finished pieces had to be brought to the merchantsin the urban trade centres, often by middle-women (Mäklerinnen, UmtragWeiber). They collected the bales from the scattered dwellings of the weavers
and carried it to sale in town. Having thus been spared a time-consuming walk,
the weavers paid them a small fee.57 In each of the linen-trading towns, thehistoric market square is surrounded by a walkway, protected by the columns
and arches of the patrician houses. There, the merchants could exercise quality
control of the fabrics, in any weather and all year round. And there wereother groups making an income from this trade: the finished merchandise was
loaded on horse carts and hauled to reloading points on the waterways of theregion or to more distant destinations. Tenant farmers would provide someof these services, but the boatmen on the rivers and canals, and the men at
the watergates, had to be paid. Finally, we need to bear in mind the smugglingthat was flourishing along the borders and which supported quite a numberof families. Trading restrictions like the ban on yarn exports encouraged illicit
trade: while the Prussian ruler wanted the yarn to be woven in his own lands inorder to keep weavers employed and to increase the state revenues, weavers in
Saxony and Bohemia were always hungry for cheap yarns.58

53 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 8 (1788), 223–50.
54 See also Brentano, ‘Ueber den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen
Leinengewerbes in Schlesien’, p. 325; Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte,
p. 94; Heinz Pohlendt, Die Landeshuter Paßlandschaften, pp. 60f.
55 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 29 (1799), p. 538.
56 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 17 (1793), 411–13, here p. 411; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 47(1808), 440–2, here p. 442; Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, p. 61.
57 Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien, p. 24; Kühn, Der
Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, pp. 22–6.
58 Burkhard Nolte, Merkantilismus und Staatsräson in Preußen. Absicht, Praxis und Wirkung
der Zollpolitik Friedrichs II. in Schlesien und in westfälischen Provinzen (1740–1786) (Marburg,
2004), pp. 101–22, 143–7.

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Combining Micro and Macro Levels
During the period between 1747 and 1805 the total of Silesia’s officiallyregistered exports averaged almost 10 million Reichsthaler per annum, withlinen goods contributing 45–54 per cent of this annual amount. Threequarters of all those linens were destined for port cities in Western Europe(and some of it even straight for the Americas).59 By the end of the eighteenth
century, exports of Silesian linens accounted on average for 23 per cent of thetotal Prussian exports, which averaged 27.3 million Reichsthaler annually, andfor 65 per cent of the total Silesian export value.60
Despite these impressive figures, the average Silesian remained poorin comparison with the regular townsfolk in places like Halberstadt andMagdeburg (the more recent acquisitions of Prussia), with the common people
living in Prussia’s western exclaves of Minden, Ravensberg, Tecklenburgand Lingen, or with those in its core lands of Kurmark. In 1775–76, the percapita income in the most populous region of Prussia, Silesia, added up to
2.6 Thaler, whereas the average income in Halberstadt was 4.7 Thaler. Within
Prussia, only the subjects living in the Neumark and in Pomerania, with only
1.96 and 2.28 Thaler per capita, were poorer than the Silesians.61
The total value of linen exports from Silesia averaged around 4.4 million
Reichsthaler per annum. With one full-time weaver producing a three-score(some 58–60 ells) of ordinary linen cloth weekly,62 and each three-scorevalued at 7 Reichsthaler,63 a workforce of some 12,000 Silesians would have
had to have been employed in full-time weaving during the years 1747–1805
to generate that annual sum. Yet, taking into consideration that the exports
also comprised a portion of the more delicate and much more expensive linen
batistes (40 Reichsthaler per piece at the top of the range),64 the number of
weavers must have been smaller than that figure. Other sources do mention
59 Calculation based on statistical data found in Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung derPreußischen Monarchie, pp. 58, 68; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 15 (1792), 265; Schlesische
Provinzialblätter 20 (1794), 385–6, here p. 385; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 32 (1800), 575–6;
Schlesische Provinzialblätter 34 (1801), 376; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 36 (1802), 144–7,
here p. 145; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 39 (1804), 36–8; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 40(1804), 444–6; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 42 (1805), 561–3; Zimmermann, Blüthe und Verfall
des Leinengewerbes in Schlesien, pp. 460–7; Behre, Geschichte der Statistik in BrandenburgPreussen, pp. 346–8.
60 Calculation based on data regarding three years (1781, 1785/6, and 1793): Behre, Geschichte
der Statistik in Brandenburg-Preussen, pp. 346, 351.
61 Ibid., p. 102.
62 Ernst Michael, Die Hausweberei im Hirschberger Tal (Jena, 1925), p. 29, Marcel Boldorf,‘Märkte und Verlage im institutionellen Gefüge der Leinenregion Niederschlesien des 18.
Jahrhunderts’, p. 181.
63 Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der Preußischen Monarchie, p. 52.
64 Ibid., pp. 52f.

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a range of 8,841–10,888 weavers for the period 1778–95.65 An estimate ofaround 10,000 weavers may be assumed to be realistic, at least for the lateeighteenth century. The discrepancy between the three figures may be
explained with the fact that part-time spinning and part-time weaving werewidespread.66 Even when taking the unlikely number of 13,000 weavers as abasis, and estimating Silesia’s population at around 1.5 million during theperiod 1747–1805 (Fig. 4.1), it becomes clear that during those decades, thelabour of less than 1 per cent of the total population accounted for more thanhalf of the province’s export value.
It is thus relevant to have an even closer look at this small but importantgroup of weavers and at their living conditions. The modest number of weavers
seems surprising at first glance, but is actually not so remarkable after all. The
persistence of estate ownership and hereditary serfdom explains why not justanybody could take up weaving, even if this occupation seemed profitable atcertain periods. Redemption from hereditary subservience had been possible
even before 1807, the year of reform, but it was not extensively practised
because of prohibitive costs: a so-called Lytrum personale had to be paid forthe release of persons; a Lytrum reale paid for all belongings. Around 1748, theransom was in the range of 10–18 Reichsthaler per capita. Given the low income
noted above – one, a maximum of 3 Silbergroschen per day for a male servant– and the considerable cost of food, the accumulation of such sums was morethan burdensome, let alone the ransom for a whole family. Three per cent of thepeople bound to a landlord were able to redeem themselves in 1785.67 Assuming
the same rate of redemption for a time span of thirty years, hardly any serfs
would have been left. Yet, if a freed person took residence as peasant or cottager
on a piece of land owned by another proprietor, he fell back into subservience. The same occurred if a freedman or freedwoman married a subservient
partner.68 In the long run, redemptions did not increase the portion of freedmen
and freedwomen, but rather were just another lucrative source of income for the
feudal overlords. Less costly was the permit for a tenant’s temporary departurefrom the estate. Upon payment of a fee (Schutzgeld) he was allowed to seek abetter-paid job. In case he relied on lodging provided by his temporary employer,
he owed him another fee.69 The mover also had to pay the spinning or weaving
licence (Weberzins) if he joined any of these crafts. As small as this group of
weavers was, they were ill-placed to maintain a high standard of living.

65 Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, p. 43.
66 Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, p. 19.
67 Calculation based on the details provided by Ziekursch. He states that the ransom
payments became a main source of income for the landlords: Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, pp. 104f.
68 Ibid., p. 107.
69 Ibid., p. 113; Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, p. 20.

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The Industrious Poor
To be sure, a weaver could still earn much more money than a common
farm-hand – but only as long as the economic situation in Western Europe
and in the wider Atlantic world favoured the linen trade. Peter Hasenclever,a prominent linen merchant from the Rhenish Duchy of Berg, who had madea career in the Atlantic world before settling in Landeshut, was also an expert
in political economy. In 1787, he estimated that out of the 5–7 Reichsthaler aweaver was paid for one three-score piece of linen (which it took him a week toweave), only 2 Reichsthaler (60 Silbergroschen) were left once the worker had
paid all the inevitable expenses: the weaving licence, costs for the finished yarn,
rewards for the yarn carriers (Garnsammler), and the pay for the middle-woman
who brought the produce to town. The weavers of batistes certainly obtained
more money per piece, but had to rely on better and more expensive yarns.70 On
the one hand, as the wage figures cited above indicate, 2 Reichsthaler amounted
to almost the twice the pay of a common day labourer and just over eighttimes the pay of a bonded male farm-hand. On the other hand, Silesia’s close
economic entanglements with the wider world entailed risks which were morethreatening to the weavers than to the merchants: maritime and continental
wars, increases in customs duties for one or other of the places of destination,
import bans on certain textiles and the like had immediate repercussions in theprovince and could easily lead to underemployment or even unemployment.
On top of this came the high volatility of prices for staple foods.71
Hirschberg may serve as an indicator of such dependencies. During therelatively stable and prosperous period from 1752 to 1790, the value of linen
exported from Hirschberg and the surrounding villages averaged up to 1.5
million Reichsthaler per annum. The value of linen exported per week thus
added up to approx. 31,250 Reichsthaler. This implies that in the town andthe wider valley of Hirschberg, approximately 5,300 full-time and part-time
weavers were needed to manufacture the corresponding volume of fabrics.
Yet, during the difficult years from 1802 to 1822, export figures nosedived
to an average of 505,000 Reichsthaler per annum. This meant that no morethan 1,800 weavers were needed to meet the demand. Even in times of peace
and thriving commerce, the poorer strata of Silesian population had justabout managed to scrape through.72 In these lean years, the evidence is that
two-thirds of the weavers became redundant, and those still in business had to70 Schlesische Provinzialblätter 5 (1787), 214–36, here p. 224; see also Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung
der Preußischen Monarchie, p. 52. On Hasenclever: Adolf Hasenclever, Peter Hasenclever aus
Remscheid-Ehringhausen, ein deutscher Kaufmann des 18. Jahrhunderts (Gotha, 1922).
71 Müller, Die Getreidepolitik, pp. 153–79.
72 Brentano, ‘Ueber den grundherrlichen Charakter des hausindustriellen Leinengewerbes inSchlesien’, p. 335.

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fear for their sheer survival.73 The outmigration beginning with the process of
the liberation of the peasants in 1807 reveals that the linen production in thisprovince had at least to some extent been built on a coercion which resulted
from the restriction of choices and opportunities. In the ten years following
the October Decree, 7 per cent of the inhabitants left the mountainous regionof Lower Silesia; as much as 12 per cent left the villages in the immediate
vicinity of Hirschberg (Hirschberger Kreis).74
The intensification of labour in this part of Central Europe does not fit
with Jan de Vries’ concept of an ‘Industrious Revolution’, nor with Roman
Sandgruber’s model of the origins of consumer society in the eighteenth
century.75 Both authors emphasised the desire of individuals for new choices
and their capacity to increase their own spending power, and this is certainly
appropriate for eighteenth-century Britain and the Netherlands. But theSilesians described here did not increase their working hours in order toexploit new opportunities for consumption. They did so because an exploitative labour regime and the high price of staple foods forced them to do so –otherwise they would have starved.
The consumption of colonial foodstuffs may serve as an indicator ofaccess to such new opportunities. Taking into consideration Silesia’s imports
and exports of sugar, and the demographic growth, it may be assumed thatduring the 1740s the average Silesian had 2.25 pounds (approximately 1kilogram) of sugar in his diet. By 1805 consumption had risen to no morethan 2.75 pounds (approximately 1.25 kilograms).76 This lagged far behindthe per capita consumption of 9 kilograms in Britain and the 4–5 kilograms
consumed in the Netherlands during the decades around 1800.77
The wealth which was generated by proto-industrial textile production
and the far-flung export trade was mostly skimmed off by the merchant elite.
The more successful traders accumulated fortunes which allowed for the

73 Calculation based on figures extracted from Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der Preußischen
Monarchie, p. 434; Schlesische Provinzialblätter 15 (1792), p. 265; Daniel Hensel, HistorischTopographische Beschreibung der Stadt Hirschberg in Schlesien seit ihrem Ursprunge bis auf
das Jahr 1797 (Hirschberg, 1797), pp. 621–718; Michael, Die Hausweberei im Hirschberger
Tal, pp. 18f, 36; Rolf Straubel, ‘Breslau als Handelsplatz und wirtschaftlicher Vorort Schlesiens(1740–1815)’, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands. Zeitschrift fürvergleichende und preußische Landesgeschichte 49 (2003), 195–299, here p. 287.
74 Ziekursch, Hundert Jahre schlesischer Agrargeschichte, pp. 303–4.
75 De Vries, The Industrious Revolution, pp. 122–77; Roman Sandgruber, Die Anfänge derKonsumgesellschaft. Konsumgüterverbrauch, Lebensstandard und Alltagskultur in Österreichim 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Vienna, 1982).
76 Leonhardi, Erdbeschreibung der Preußischen Monarchie, pp. 75–6.
77 Jonathan Hersh and Hans-Joachim Voth, Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Rise ofEuropean Living Standards after 1492 (C.E.P.R. Discussion Paper, 2009), p. 14; see also de Vries,
The Industrious Revolution, p. 160.

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purchase of noble titles, and of landed estates with their adherent villages(and inhabitants), from declining families of the older nobility. Daniel vonBuchs (1707–79) was granted a title in recognition of his commercial success;Christian Mentzel (1667–1748) acquired a substantial residential estate, but
out of civic pride he declined the imperial offer to raise him to the nobility.78
Most of the small but opulent baroque palaces around Hirschberg ended up
in the hands of this new commercial elite.79
Only during the first decades of the nineteenth century did their strategy
become obsolete. Napoleon’s Continental System had dealt a blow to Silesia’scommercial networks in the western hemisphere. In the following years,
increasing volumes of linen yarns and linen fabrics came from new textile
mills in England, Ireland and Westphalia. The Silesian linen merchants never
became ‘modern’ entrepreneurs or factory owners. The mode of production
and the labour regime they had established turned out to be a dead end, withdisastrous effects on the textile workers.80

Conclusion
According to Karl Polanyi and Eric Hobsbawm, the Old English Poor Law
offered outdoor relief for agricultural workers during the poorer wintermonths, in order to prevent them from moving temporarily into urban regions(from where they would probably not return in spring, when labour demand
peaked). It was designed ‘to stop the development of a capitalist labour
market’.81 When slavery was abolished in the Caribbean and in the American
South, this was achieved by Apprenticeship Laws and Black Codes.82 In Silesia,
78 Gerhard Schiller, ‘Christian Mentzel (1667–1748). Das Leben eines Hirschberger
Schleierherrn als Kaufmann, Bankier und Mäzen seiner Heimatstadt’, Leben in Leichenpredigten
12, ed. Forschungsstelle für Personalschriften (Marburg, 2011), http://www.personalschriften.
de/leichenpredigten/artikelserien/artikelansicht/details/christian-mentzel-1667-1748.html(accessed 28 February 2016).
79 Arno Franke, Das schlesische Elysium. Burgen, Schlösser, Herrenhäuser und Parks im
Hirschberger Tal, Deutsches Kulturforum östliches Europa, 3rd edn (Potsdam, 2008), pp. 39f,
48–51, 68f, 123–9, 135f, 150–4, 169f; Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel,
pp. 120–4.
80 Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, p. 126; Marcel Boldorf, ‘Weltwirt­
schaftliche Verflechtung und lokale Existenzsicherung. Die schlesischen Kaufmannsgilden iminternationalen Leinenhandel des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Praktiken des Handels. Geschäfte undsoziale Beziehungen europäischer Kaufleute in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. M. Häberlein
and C. Jeggle (Konstanz, 2010), pp. 127–44, here pp. 143f.
81 George Boyer, An Economic History of the English Poor Law 1750–1850 (Cambridge,1990), p. 75.
82 Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name. The Reenslavement of Black Americans
from the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2008).

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the workforce was immobilised by serfdom and upward social mobility was
minimised by the trade monopolies of the guilds. This feudal order secured aconsiderable elasticity in labour supply. With labour so readily available, entrepreneurs were able to freeze the wages of textile workers at the level of mere
subsistence. Low wages, in turn, were no incentive for investment in mechanisation. The volatility of export markets was yet another factor which worked
against technological innovation. The proto-industrial mode of production
allowed for swift responses to the ups and downs of commerce. Workers were
employed according to demand, and with minimal investment of capital into
industrial equipment there was no surplus capacity lying dormant on whichto draw during periods of crisis. For the merchant elite it was an economicallysound strategy to instead invest their profits in real estate, in noble titles andin the manors that went with their new status.83
The cheapness of labour must also be seen in a wider Atlantic context.
Wages in Central Europe generally lagged behind those in North-Western
Europe.84 Ulrich Pfister has recently claimed that real wages in German lands
were even in decline during eighteenth century.85 This case study on Silesia
would confirm his results. The effects of low wages on the price of manufactures were significant, in particular with regards to labour-intensive products
such as textiles. As early as the 1620s, the British economist Thomas Mun, amajor shareholder of the East India Company, complained that ‘Cambricks’
and other linen from Continental Europe were competing in price with thecalicoes the Company brought in from India.86 Both calicoes and linen werein demand in West Africa, which implies that Central European and Indian
textile producers were in direct competition on these markets – which were
essentially slave markets. This competition helped to check price levels for
textiles within the wider Atlantic basin, and thus to attenuate the rise of prices
demanded for slaves from Africa. In short, low costs for labour in Silesia
lowered the costs for slave labour on the plantations in the ‘New World’. This
Prussian province, with its extremely low wages, is the most striking example,
but Silesian conditions put pressure on pay rates in Germany’s more westerly
linen regions as well. Silesian linen was also bleached or dyed in Rhenish territories before being exported – thus mixing free and unfree labour within one

83 Kühn, Der Hirschberger Leinwand- und Schleierhandel, p. 120.
84 Jan Luiten van Zanden, The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European
Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000–1800 (Leiden, 2009), p. 98.
85 Ulrich Pfister, Great Divergence, Consumer Revolution and the Reorganization of Textile
Markets: Evidence from Hamburg’s Import Trade, Eighteenth Century (Discussion Paper, 1stdraft, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, June 2012).
86 Thomas Mun, ‘A Discourse of Trade, from England unto the East-Indies (1621)’,
Mercantilism, vol. 1: The Rise of Mercantilist Discourse, ed. L. Magnussen (London/New York,
1994), pp. 49–80, here p. 52.

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product. These effects and practices, and the general decline of wages from
Western to Eastern Europe provided all German linen regions with relatively
low labour costs. Their overall competitiveness is exemplified by with thenumbers of ‘sletias’ on African slave markets, and by the omnipresence of‘Osnabrughs’ in the Caribbean.

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