The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers 1650‐2000

This thick 850‐page book is a collection of 31 specially commissioned chapters by an international team of 37 scholars which gives a systematic and comparative history of textile workers from pre‐industrial times to the twentieth century. To my query: “Why should anyone be interested?”, the editors point out that “textile products cater for a basic human needs they are among the most important goods fabricated and traded by mankind and have thus played a central role in human activities throughout history”. They then go on to elaborate on the considerable attention paid by historians to the basic processes in producing...