Trade and Shipping

‘Juteopolis’ in the Making: Linen and the Industrial Transformation of Dundee, c.1820–1850

“…23 In Dundee, the intervening decades saw a dynamic mercantile sector shift the market focus from the Baltic and northern Europe to the Atlantic, with direct links established between Dundee and North America. 24 Of critical significance in securing the linen industry in and around Dundee during a period when, as has been seen, linen producers on mainland Europe were struggling, was the favourable impact of the Napoleonic Wars. War conditions, it has been argued, 'greatly helped the British to engross overseas markets [including North America, the West Indies and Latin America]' and 'made it impossible for Continental industries to adapt fast enough to resist English competition'.…”

“…They had only modest success in selling such products on the Continent which had its own competitive linen industry and where Dundee linen was held in low esteem. 37 Instead it was the transatlantic markets where Dundee manufacturers found their niche. There the demand for coarse linen for cotton bagging and plantation workers' clothing opened up vast markets in the American South and the West Indies.…”

The Thread of Migration: A Scottish-French Linen and Jute Works and its Workers in France, c. 1845–c. 1870

“…By 1826 Dundee had overtaken the English port town of Hull as Britain's main importer of raw flax and by the mid-1830s was rivalling Leeds as the principal British linen manufacturing town, although the signs that Dundee's best firms were able to compete with Leeds in terms of efficiency, cost and quality were to be seen over a decade earlier. 23 Exports of linen cloth from Scotland rose spectacularly, from an annual average of 26.6 million yards in 1813-17 to 79 million in 1845. 24 By this time Dundee was leading Europe in its capture of the world's markets for machine-flax and the coarse linen cloth woven from it.…”