page_title: Industrial Revolution in Scotland
section_title: Linen
hierarchical_section_title: Industrial Revolution in Scotland / Background / Linen
caption_attribution_description: English: New Lanark World Heritage village in Scotland. View of New Lanark Mill Hotel and Waterhouses by River Clyde.
context_page_description: The Industrial Revolution in Scotland was the transition to new manufacturing processes and economic expansion between the mid-eighteenth century and the late nineteenth century. By the start of the eighteenth century, a political union between Scotland and England became politically and economically attractive, promising to open up the much larger markets of England, as well as those of the growing British Empire, resulting in the Treaty of Union of 1707. There was a conscious attempt among the gentry and nobility to improve agriculture in Scotland. New crops were introduced and enclosures began to displace the run rig system and free pasture. The economic benefits of union were very slow to appear, some progress was visible, such as the sales of linen and cattle to England, the cash flows from military service, and the tobacco trade that was dominated by Glasgow after 1740. Merchants who profited from the American trade began investing in leather, textiles, iron, coal, sugar, rope, sailcloth, glass-works, breweries, and soap-works, setting the foundations for the city's emergence as a leading industrial center after 1815.
context_section_description: Linen manufacture was Scotland's premier industry in the eighteenth century and formed the basis for the later cotton, jute, and woollen industries. Scottish industrial policy was made by the Board of Trustees for Fisheries and Manufactures in Scotland, which sought to build an economy complementary, not competitive, with England. Since England had woolens, this meant linen. The Scottish members of parliament managed to see off an attempt to impose an export duty on linen and from 1727 it received subsidies of £2,750 a year for six years, resulting in a considerable expansion of the trade. Paisley adopted Dutch methods and became a major centre of production. Glasgow manufactured for the export trade, which doubled between 1725 and 1738.
  Encouraged and subsidised by the Board of Trustees, so that they could compete with German products, merchant entrepreneurs became dominant in all stages of linen manufacturing and built up the market share of Scottish linens, especially in the American colonial market. The British Linen Company, established in 1746, was the largest firm in the Scottish linen industry in the eighteenth century, exporting linen to England and America. In 1728, 2.2 million yards of linen cloth had been produced and by 1730 it had already supplanted woollen cloth as the major manufacturing industry. By 1750 it reached 7.6 million and it peaked at 12.1 million yards in 1775. However, there were sharp slumps, particularly in the periods  1734–43 and 1763–72. It was a mainly rural industry, with most of the manufacture carried out in homes, rather than factories. It employed perhaps 100,000 people, four out of five of which were women who spun the flax, while men operated the looms.
  The government promoted the use of linen from the late 17th century: a 1686 Act of Parliament stated that all Scots were to be buried in Scottish-made linen winding sheets, using Scottish flax. In 1748, an embargo on the import or use of French cambric provided a further boost to the linen industry. By 1770, Glasgow was the largest linen manufacturer in Britain, and in 1787, Calton, Glasgow was the site of Scotland's first industrial dispute when 7,000 weavers went on strike in protest against a 25% cut in their wages. The 39th Foot were sent in, and three people were killed.
  Sheer linen, which had then come into vogue, was almost unobtainable in Scotland in the 1780s. In a bid to stay competitive, Glasgow manufacturers turned to fine cotton muslin, at which they succeeded so well that it became cheaper than imported Indian muslins. With the popularity of Indian muslins, from the 1760s onwards, had come a fashion for tambour lace, or sewed muslin, which briefly became a flourishing business in Ayrshire, thanks to the enterprising spirit of Mrs Jamieson.
caption: New Lanark, cotton mills and housing on the River Clyde, founded in 1786
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