T-Shirt Travels Review – 5: Apparel and the Industrial Revolution

The value of bottlenecks. This is what gave rise to “the factory system and to an entirely new economic order.” (75) That new economic order is one that we’ve become used to and take for granted. But rarely before 1800 was continuous grown and improvement the norm.

A fascinating point is the idea that the production of cotton textiles was THE single act which led the Industrial Revolution – first in Britain and then around the world. (78)

After recounting the story of an American’s industrial espionage to steal Britain’s spinning technology, brief histories of the various dominators of textile production are given. First Britain, then New England, the South, Japan, Hong Kong, and soon China.

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This is part of a chapter by chapter reaction to The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade.

Check out:

Introduction to the T-Shirt Travels Review
Preface
Chapter 1: Cotton and T-Shirts
Chapter 2: Cotton, T-Shirts and Technology
Chapter 3: Tees and Dream Teams
Chapter 4: T-shirts and Eskimos
Chapter 5: Apparel and the Industrial Revolution
Chapter 6: T-Shirt Globalization
Chapter 7: The Snarling Army
Chapter 8: Are T-shirts Actually Too Expensive?
Chapter 9: T-Shirt Quotas
Chapter 10: Lifecycle of a T-shirt
Chapter 11: Final Chapter – Final Thoughts