Calico printing

sanitarian, Robert Angus Smith, and the Manchester manufacturer Edward Schunck (bleaching, fulling and calico printing), whose extensive work on natural dyestuffs included the isolation of alizarin, the active dyeing component of the madder plant.

Thomson now reveals comparable creative entrepreneurship in Barcelona, beginning with a first calico printing factory in 1736.

Thus, detailed study begins with the establishment of calico printing in Barcelona, where Thomson situates early entrepreneurs within the context of markets and imports as well as the Spanish (and comparative) political framework of industrial growth in the early 18th century.

The content of the book is fairly represented by the title, and it tells the reader a great deal about the development of the French cotton industry from its mid-eighteenth century origins in calico printing to nineteenth-century mechanized factory production, and yet more about the men (there are no women in Chassagne's story) responsible for the transformation.

Thomson argues that state policy, especially protectionism, was vital to the development and survival of calico printing. The early eighteenth century system of concessions, or franquicias, determined that the future industry would be dominated by a few large producers.

Her purpose is shown again in the breadth of her view of textile manufacturing (cotton, woolens and worsteds, linen, and silk), and in her discussion of finishing, especially calico printing, destination of 60 percent of the output of cotton cloth in 1792.