point the most important domestic manufacturers produced
woolen textiles, but the producers of cotton cloths were
becoming both more important economically and more
powerful politically.
The wool industry mounted attempts to protect itself as
early as the 1660s. It promoted the “Sumptuary Laws,”
which, among other things, prohibited the wearing of lighter
cloth. It also lobbied Parliament to pass legislation in 1666
and 1678 that would make it illegal for someone to be
buried in anything other than a woolen shroud. Both
measures protected the market for woolen goods and
reduced the competition that English manufacturers faced
from Asia. Nevertheless, in this period the East India
Company was too strong to restrict imports of Asian
textiles. The tide changed after 1688. Between 1696 and
1698, woolen manufacturers from East Anglia and the
West Country allied with silk weavers from London,
Canterbury, and the Levant Company to restrict imports.
The silk importers from the Levant, even if they had recently
lost their monopoly, wished to exclude Asian silks to create
a niche for silks from the Ottoman Empire. This coalition
started to present bills to Parliament to place restrictions on
the wearing of Asian cottons and silks, and also restrictions
on the dyeing and printing of Asian textiles in England. In
response, in 1701, Parliament finally passed “an Act for the
more effectual imploying the poor, by incouraging the
manufactures of this kingdom.” From September 1701, it
decreed: “All wrought silks, bengals and stuffs, mixed with
silk of herba, of the manufacture of Persia, China, or East-
India, all Calicoes painted, dyed, printed, or stained there,
which are or shall be imported into this kingdom, shall not
be worn.”
It was now illegal to wear Asian silks and calicoes in
England. But it was still possible to import them for reexport
to Europe or elsewhere, in particular to the American
colonies. Moreover, plain calicoes could be imported and
finished in England, and muslins were exempt from the ban.
After a long struggle, these loopholes, as the domestic
woolen textile manufacturers viewed them, were closed by
the Calicoe Act of 1721: “After December 25, 1722, it shall
not be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever to use
or wear in Great Britain, in any garment or apparel