XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006

Session 25

Consuming the Orient in Britain, 1660-1760

David Ormrod, Kent University, UK

Recent contributions to the debate about the rise of a consumer society and industrial
growth in 18th century Britain have made large claims about the positive role of the
import trades from Asia. In a series of interesting articles, Maxine Berg has suggested
that Asian producers, in effect, challenged British and European manufacturers to
respond to their own achievements with product innovation and invention. This was
worked out specifically in the 18th century, she suggests, when imitation and
emulation ‘came to pervade the language of invention’. (Product innovation involves
making something which was previously unobtainable, as distinct from (i) invention,
which involves something entirely new, and (ii) process innovation, which results in a
lowering of price). So: Berg wishes to assign a major place to product innovation
and the role of imported Asian luxuries in the story of British industrialisation. The
core of the argument rests on the role of overseas trade and import substitution in
shaping patterns of manufacturing activity. I’m strongly sympathetic to this, and my
purpose is not so much to undermine an argument as to clarify one, and reduce its
proportions. We have to remember, of course, that contemporary opinion before the
mid-18th century inclined towards the idea that trade with the Far East was, by and
large, damaging to the interests of British manufacturers.

It seems to me that the links between the emergence of new consumption patterns and
manufacturing activity were mediated through two parallel channels in the 17th and
18th centuries: those which involved cultural exchange at several levels, and those
arising simply from formal commercial transactions. The two are often historically
linked, though not inevitably or indissolubly, and may be distorted by conditions of
structural dependency. The striking characteristic of Anglo-Indian contact before
c.1760 was the limited extent of the former, of tangible, balanced cultural exchange..
During the succeeding decades, British interest in India increased exponentially, in its
people, religions, history, literature, architecture and antiquities – especially under the
auspices of the Asiatic Society of Calcutta, formed in 1784. (Omissions)

Commercial exchange (Tables 1 and 2)

Table 1 shows the relative importance of Asian imports within the four main circuits
of eighteenth century English overseas commerce. In the 1700s, imports from each of
the other three zones - the Mediterranean, the North Sea-Baltic area, and the Atlantic -
were at least twice the value of those from Asia. By the 1720s, the value of Asian
imports had doubled, mainly as a consequence of the enormous growth of the China
tea trade. But during the same period, the Atlantic import trades displayed a similarly
impressive rate of growth, which continued for the rest of the century. Asian imports
stagnated in the 1730s, ‘40s and ‘50s as European markets for tea and oriental
products became saturated, before continuing their upward movement. Throughout
all this, traditional sources of imports in Europe maintained their importance, in spite
of vigorous strategies of import substitution which I’ll return to shortly.
In contrast to the European and Atlantic trades, it’s well known that the East India
trade was a disbalanced one, absorbing large quantities of American silver rather than
English manufactured exports or colonial re-exports. But as Huw Bowen has recently

shown, this changed significantly during the 1760s and by 1789, British exports to
Asia exceeded £2m per year. Although direct Anglo-Asian trade made relatively light
demands on shipping (Table 2), contemporaries often failed to realise that England,
alongside the Netherlands, also exported shipping and commercial skills in the inter-
Asian trades, which helped to integrate the trading world of the Indian Ocean and the
China Seas. Nevertheless, the national objection to the East India trade, as strongly
import-led, was not entirely spurious in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

So: is it indeed the case, as Maxine Berg argues, that it was ‘…imports from Asia, and
imports especially of manufactured consumer goods, which were to provide the vital
turning point [for the British industrial revolution]’? European luxury imports from
Asia, of course, were already well established long before the transoceanic trade
routes developed. [Bev Lemire] What difference did the East India Companies make
to the commodity composition of trade and to the shaping of consumer preferences?
Around 1700, by far the greatest proportion of Asian imports came from India in
the form of textiles (78%). China’s contribution was at that time minute, consisting
mainly of tea and porcelain (3-4%). As the import values in Table 3 show, the main
structural change in Anglo-Asian trade during the 18th century was the rise of the
China tea trade, alongside the steady expansion of imports of Indian calicoes (cottons)
and other piece goods, some of which were prohibited for home consumption and
destined for re-export. While calico imports stabilised in the early 1750s, tea imports
continued their inexorable rise. Tea drinking, of course, required teapots, teas-sets and
dishes, and because of its bulk and lightness, Chinese porcelain was a useful ballast
cargo. Imports of tea and porcelain thus rose at a comparable rate, though it seems
that it was the cheaper types of porcelain that sold best, rather than collectors’ items.
Chinaware retained its popularity at a time when consumption of all types of ceramics
were increasing, including imported European as well as home-produced earthenware.
By the 1760s therefore, it is likely that China now accounted for at least a quarter, if
not a third of England’s total imports from Asia. Raw, thrown and wrought silks were
also imported from China on a modest scale.

This fundamental shift in 18th century Anglo-Asian trade was shaped by a mixture of
consumer preference, government policy, and the response to both by the EIC. The
familiar surge in popularity of Indian printed cotton, silk and mixed fabrics in Europe
during the 1670s and 80s was in some degree the result of competition between the
English and Dutch East India companies. By the 1660s, the VOC’s concentration on
pepper and fine spices was counterbalanced by an increased emphasis on textiles by
the EIC, which become more marked as time went on. Opposition from the English
silk and woollen industries resulted in the passage of the prohibition acts of 1700 and
1720, which limited the wearing and use of the offending textiles. Plain calicoes were
exempted from the provisions of the first act, which became the staple of the trade,
while the more expensive prohibited varieties, including wrought silks, were
henceforth re-exported to Europe, principally to the unprotected market of Holland.
Much of this trade was on Dutch account, handled either by resident Dutch
commission agents in London or visiting buyers. Both, it seems, organised
themselves into ‘rings’ at the EIC’s quarterly London sales

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It was precisely because the profits of the most important sector of England’s trade
with Asia lay, in large measure, outside the control of the EIC that the company
decided to turn to the China tea trade. Again, Anglo-Dutch competition played an
important role. It was in 1685 that earlier privileges given to the VOC by the Chinese
Emperor K’ang-hsi were revoked, leaving them to rely on the junk traffic to Batavia
instead of the mainland trade. In 1718 however, the Batavian trade collapsed over a
price dispute, and the Emperor prohibited the China-Batavian trade. The English,
pursuing a less aggressive strategy, established themselves permanently at Canton in
1701, in a favoured position. The value of English tea imports almost tripled from
1718 to 1721. Although the trade fluctuated widely from year to year, the English
retained their leading position over the long term. Significantly, tea was one of the
few commodities in the trade with Asia ‘which could be forced into universal
consumption without competing against home manufactures.’ Only a small proportion
of imports, around 10%, was re-exported.

Although its arrival in England predated tea, coffee failed to become the national
beverage and after c.1720, the growing volume of imports was diverted into the re-
export trade. In some years, re-exports exceeded imports, as merchants drew on the
EIC’s extensive stocks. During the 1730s, supplies from the Yemen were
supplemented with those of new production areas in Java and the Caribbean, bringing
about a general fall in prices and decline in profits. Although the volume of trade
(including re-exports) increased, the level of domestic consumption in England
remained fairly constant. If tea was primarily associated with the pleasures of
domesticity, coffee consumption carried an air of only mild exoticism derived from
Islam and the Levant, more familiar to patrons of London’s coffee houses than the
cultures of Far East. If anything, the early promoters of coffee consumption
emphasised its medicinal value as a stimulant and a cure-all, alongside the innocence
and sobriety of the coffee-house experience.

The consumption of silk, however, was always associated with luxury, whether
French or Italian, or the more exotic painted and embroidered Chinese silks. The
latter were evidently so irresistible that the well-established home industry felt itself
unable to compete. After the prohibition acts, manufactured (wrought) silk from
China and India was imported for the re-export trade only, and comparable quantities
were imported for home consumption from Italy and France (usually designated as
Italian to avoid heavy discriminatory duties). But enormous progress had been made
by the English silk industry during the later 17th century under the stimulus of
immigrant Huguenot weavers and designers, and the home market was largely self-
sufficient by 1700. The protective legislation against Indian and Chinese
manufactured imports appears to have had only a marginal impact on the home
industry. Around 1750, after several improvements in the art of silk throwing,
another steady phase of growth began, which stimulated French producers to redouble
their efforts in targeting the English market. An outright prohibition of French
imports was approved by parliament in 1766, though it was not until the early 1770s
that the industry’s progress was resumed. Throughout the 18th century, the role of
China and Bengal remained that of supplying poor quality raw silk to supplement the
much larger quantities of Italian silk preferred by English producers (Table 3).

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During the first phase of industrialisation in Britain, before 1800, it is clear that tea
and Indian cotton goods were the chief articles of Asian consumption. Ceramics, silk,
coffee and a variety of drugs and spices took second place. To some extent, this
pattern had emerged through a twin process of European competition and
collaboration in Asia, involving a division of trading interests between the English
and Dutch East India Companies. Throughout the 17th century, the Dutch played the
leading European role in the inter-Asian trades, focused on their great entrepot and
general rendezvous at Batavia, seized in 1619. Here, the products of China, Japan,
India, Ceylon and Persia were assembled for redistribution. Chinese vessels reached
as far west as the Coromandel coast of India, centred on Masulipatam, where the
English established an agency in 1611. But by 1690, when Calcutta was taken by the
English as their main trading station, Dutch society was more obviously permeated
with Asian cultural influences than England. Tea and plain Indian cottons, the staple
of Anglo-Asian trade, carried no lasting association with luxury or exoticism, and
their popularity stemmed partly from falling prices. As John Wills suggests, both
were appreciated as ‘genuine new utilities: the stimulant value of coffee and tea, and
their use in preparing warm, nutritious drinks, and the lightness, comfort, and
workability of cotton cloth.’

Of all the new products imported to Britain from distant markets, it was the Americas
rather than Asia which provided the most valuable and addictive items, in the form of
sugar, followed by tobacco. By 1731, the value of West Indian sugar imports
exceeded £1 million, doubling over the next thirty years (Table 3). Most of this was
retained for home consumption – normally between 80 and 90% from 1720-70,
whereas around one-third of tobacco imports were re-exported. Also more valuable
than any single category of Asian goods was the centuries-old European wines trade,
comparable in value to sugar imports at the opening of the 18th century. Nor should it
be assumed that American goods excluded the exotic. Tropical hardwoods, especially
West Indian mahogany and ebony, and tortoiseshell, were of inestimable importance
for English furniture making, which became an important export industry in the
eighteenth century. Large quantities of Jamaican mahogany began to arrive in the
1730s, supplemented by Cuban varieties from the 1750s, by which time it appreciably
affected furniture design. Being available in boards of great width, mahogany
enabled makers to produce excellent table tops, and its strength permitted the use of
fretwork, narrow slats and generally more elegant constructional elements.

Visual culture and information

It can be argued, however, that the significance of the European encounter with the
Far East should be assessed in terms of stylistic influences rather trade values. The
commodities carrying the greatest information load were probably ceramics,
lacquerware, paintings and prints, and painted and printed textiles. Most art
historians, following Binyon, would agree that in all Asian countries, painters never
made use of cast shadow or the illusion of natural effect, unless European influence
was consciously present; common to all is ‘a felicity and vitality of line-drawing such
as the West has scarcely ever, if ever, rivalled’. Certainly, Gombrich characterised
pre-modern Chinese art as being particularly good at expressing undulating
movement, the curvature of human and animal forms, in sculpture, pictures and
decoration. Its iconic quality is evident too, as an art which acts as a window through
which the yang, the light side, is perceived. The spectator or viewer provides the yin,

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the dark side. The West, it seems, admired these qualities without fully accepting or
understanding them. They were, however, revealed clearly in the shape and
decoration of Chinese and Japanese porcelain. Its lightness and translucence were
much appreciated, and in post-Restoration England, it was used for serving the new
hot drinks, coffee, tea and chocolate. Following the accession of William and Mary,
the fashion for collecting oriental porcelain was established and the 1690s saw the
outbreak of ‘Chinamania’. Indeed, it was the Dutch who led the way in opening up
and developing the porcelain trade with the Far East from the early years of the 17th
century, and in producing their own earthenware imitations as early as 1614, at Delft.

It’s important to stress that in the field of ceramics, as elsewhere, Dutch import
substitution was not simply about making home-produced copies of existing foreign
products. Adaptation of design and form – product innovation – actually started
within the intra-Asian trades themselves. It was in the early years of the 17th century
that the VOC shipped ceramics from China to Japan, where the Dutch also hoped to
create a market for their own earthenwares. The Japanese, in turn, began to
manufacture porcelain at Arita from ca.1610, which received an enormous stimulus
when the Chinese industry collapsed immediately after the fall of the Ming dynasty in
1644. It was from the late 1650s onwards, when Arita’s exports expanded, that Dutch
orders began to shape the form and decoration required for the European market. At
the same time, the difficulties faced by Chinese potters boosted production at Delft,
which imitated both Chinese and Japanese designs.

The first copies of Japanese and Chinese lacquerware were made in Amsterdam from
ca.1610, and soon after the arrival of the first shipment in London in 1614, English
craftsmen also copied the technique. The overall effect of ‘jappan’d ware was
dramatic, stylish, and wholly exotic; and the best pieces, from cabinets, and escritoires
to toilet glasses were very well fitted. The demand for good quality lacquerware in
Europe, especially Japanese, ran ahead of oriental supplies to the extent that European
imitations proliferated at an early date. Nevertheless, the number of references to
lacquered or japanned furniture in the inventories of middle-income London
households before the 1680s is limited. In 1697-8, only six lacquer cabinets were
imported into London from the far East, valued at £2 each, together with eight lacquer
chests, each worth £1.10s. There were also miscellaneous pieces of lacquerware
worth £19 in total, but an astonishing quantity of screens, worth over £4,000, was
imported, probably Chinese imported via Coromandel. A similarly modest level of
imports was registered for 1731, including 26 lacquered screens worth £58 and 48
lacquered chairs at £12. By 1761, shipments had disappeared, while imports of
shellack were valued at £7,400. The bulky shape of cabinets and chests made them
unattractive as cargoes, compared with porcelain, although screens were easier to
pack and more popular. Clearly, English consumers were relying on home produced
‘japanned’ furniture. It was in 1688 that Stalker & Parker published their Treatise of
Japanning and Varnishing, with several designs.

Alongside porcelain and lacquerware furniture from China came flat art in a variety of
forms, the richest source of visual information about the culture which produced them
These included paper prints, wallpaper, and paintings on silk, paper and canvas
(Table 4). Although not always significant in value terms, they probably contained
more new visual information than the more expensive easel paintings which entered
the country from continental Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In

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exceptional years, such as 1703 or 1706 however, their value was substantial: in 1703,
46,260 ‘paper and silk prints’ valued at £740 were imported into London from the
East Indies. In 1706, a smaller number of more valuable ‘paper prints’ were landed:
nearly 27,000 valued at £3,377 (Table 4). These descriptions conceal a variety of
possible uses, as wallpaper, panels for screens, framed pictures, and as collectors’
items. A desire for greater informality doubtless encouraged the emergence of the
rococo style, which used Chinese motifs in abundance. Folding screens were
sometimes separated and hung as decorative wall panels, which gave rise to the
import of single panel screens and unmounted paper panels. Thus, a fashion which
began amongst the French aristocracy ended in the wallpapered rooms of the London
middle class, done up in the revived rococo taste of the 1750s.

In contrast with France and the Netherlands, widespread interest in ‘Chinoiserie’ was
a late development in England, becoming generally fashionable in the later 1740s.
The earlier, more informed interest which surfaced during the Restoration period was
part of the ‘passion for the exotic’ amongst the London elite, especially women; and
it connected more closely with the demand for ‘oriental luxury’ than the mass
consumption of Asian imports which formed the staple of the EIC’s 18th century
trade. Elite women, it seems, experienced a new independence during the post-
Restoration decades which was partly expressed in the furnishing of their dressing
rooms or cabinets, as informal, private spaces. Silver plate with Chinese decoration,
porcelain and Japanese lacquer screens ware were often displayed, and chocolate and
tea were served as exotic novelties. The wives of East India merchants especially
were amongst the earliest consumers of these items. During the first half of the 18th
century - the golden age of the grand tour – classical influences came back into
fashion. But around mid-century, a vulgarised revival of Chinese taste surfaced
amongst a wider public, at once more gaudy and insistent. As John Shebbeare noted
in 1756, every piece of furniture ‘must be Chinese, the walls covered with Chinese
papers fill’d with figures which represent nothing in God’s creation’.

As far as changes in consumer behaviour are concerned, we need to remember that the
early use of chintzes in England was for furnishing, and the use of painted or stained
hangings in Europe was in no sense a novelty. Throughout the medieval and early
modern period, stained cloths were a common substitute for tapestry, and were
usually made from linen, or a wool-linen mixture, lined with canvas. They were
sometimes block printed, but might also be hand-painted. The novel aspect of the
chintz-mania of the 1670s and 80 in fact, lay in the cheapness and lightness of the
material, cotton, and its adaptation to clothing uses. And for this to occur, a virtual
redesign of the product was needed, directed from London. As John Styles has
shown, the critical change came in 1643 when the EIC’s directors called for a new
design formula to replace the existing densely coloured grounds and patterns, usually
deep reds and browns, or greyish blues. Indian weavers were in future encouraged to
copy English patterns done ‘in the Chinese mode’, with a white or neutral
background. It was this new elegant but hybrid style which lay behind the great
expansion of Indian printed and painted textile imports in the 1670s and 80s.

Luxury and import substitution

There is little doubt that Asian imports helped to stimulate the development of new
consumer cultures in England, but it is less clear that they did so uniquely, or that their

6
appeal in general derived from the twin allurements of luxury and fine craftsmanship.
The better examples of imported Chinese porcelain were exceptional in this, but the
staples of 18th century Anglo-Asian trade, tea and white calicoes, derived their appeal
from cheapness. Plain calicoes, which comprised around half the Asian textiles
imported in the early 1700s were cheap goods, valued at 12s per piece, and ‘India
prints’ and Chinese printed papers could be had for a few pence. Even lacquerware
chests were valued on import at only £1.10s or thereabouts. During the decades
immediately following the Restoration, discriminating elite consumers and merchant
families pioneered a taste for oriental exotica, but this tended to be displayed in small
private rooms (cabinets) in keeping with their status as curiosities. When sufficient
detail is present, inventories often show a mixture of old and new domestic items, and
some have argued that the notion of a ‘consumer revolution’ is anachronistic as a
description of changes in 18th century consumption patterns. Certainly, there is a
strong case for arguing in favour of the persistence of classical ideals and aesthetics
amongst the elite. For the majority, continental Europe rather than Asia, particularly
France and Italy, remained the principal source of high design goods, stylistic
information, and creative expression in the fine and decorative arts.

However, Maxine Berg suggests that Asian goods offered a special challenge to
English industry, prompting imitation and product innovation. These processes, she
argues were ‘central to policies of import substitution’; the result was the production
of new British consumer goods which were ‘substitute Asian luxuries’. But Berg is
justifiably ambivalent about import substitution as an appropriate concept for the 18th
century situation in which Asian goods were copied by Europeans who did not import
the technologies on which they were based. Other writers, less interested in the Asian
focus, are less ambivalent. Inikori, for example, describes the English cotton industry
of the late 18th century as a classic ‘import substitution industry, with all the expected
characteristics’, whose rise originated in the extreme protectionist measures taken
against Asian imports. The disagreement is partly resolved by suggesting that the
import substitution model works best with the trade in manufactured and luxury goods
from Europe, such as linens, canvas and sailcloth, paper, silk, ceramics, glass and
even paintings. For all these products, import duties were raised substantially during
the 1690s and 1700s, and nascent home industries were developed through the
presence or encouragement of skilled immigrant craftsmen from the continent,
including a high proportion of Huguenot and Netherlandish refugees. In the case of
substitutes for Asian goods, there was no corresponding diffusion of craft skills and
technologies, as Berg emphasises.

The cotton industry, of course, lies at the core of the argument about protectionism
and import substitution, and more generally about the Asian contribution to the British
industrial revolution. The EIC’s adaptation of imported Indian chintzes before 1700
no doubt served to ‘test’ the home market for cottons. But the impact of
protectionism is much less clear-cut. The case is complicated by the fact that both
European and Asian textiles were subject to discriminatory tariffs and prohibitions, in
an effort to balance the political interests of three kingdoms (England, Scotland and
Ireland) and four industries (woollens, linens, silks and cottons. The English calico
printing industry was boosted by the prohibition act of 1700 and was the main
beneficiary of protectionism. In 1711, printers claimed to have printed 1mill. yards of
calico. The silk and linen industries were the next industries to benefit, encouraged
also by the raising of duties against European imports, especially from Holland,

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Germany and France. Encouragement of the latter was part of a strategically-planned
initiative to limit the expansion of the Scottish and Irish woollen industries, while
subsidising flax growing and linen production through the granting of bounties. It
was in 1697 that the first Chairman of the permanent Commission for Trade and
Plantations, Lord Bridgewater, outlined the commission’s plans to encourage the silk,
linen and paper industries ‘that we may improve to make as good as what comes from
abroad’. The production of Scottish and Irish linens increased enormously during the
first half of the 18th century (more than 6-fold), at a time when English manufacture of
pure cotton goods was negligible. It was not until the late 1760s, and the beginnings
of mechanisation, that retained imports of raw cotton began to rise significantly.

On balance, the evidence favours Chaudhuri’s view that English protectionist policy
failed to check the growth of Indian imports and ‘probably discouraged the
establishment of an indigenous manufacture of cotton fabrics which could have
replaced the Indian products.’ There were several proposals to launch companies to
produce English cottons from the 1690s to the 1720s, but none succeeded. India’s
advantages in terms of locally available raw materials, low labour costs and highly
specialised technical skills ensured its success until the period of mechanisation in
England. On the other hand, import substitution stood a good chance of success
within and between the countries of northern Europe, where accessibility, labour
costs, and cultural continuity permitted the interchange of skills. In the case of Asian
textiles, the East India Company and the various textile lobbies at home appear to
have reached a mutual understanding to preserve their separate interests, which
combined partial import substitution with a new international division of labour.
Instead of importing the added value of printed Asian cottons, England would
substitute cheap but skilled Indian labour for English workmanship, while nurturing
its own domestic textile printing industry. By the 1720s, printing workshops
employed several hundred workers, including skilled designers, cutters and printers.
In a parallel process, the cheaper labour of Celtic Britain was exploited by the import
substitution strategy underlying the promotion of the Scottish and Irish linen
industries, to replace more expensive Dutch and German imports.

An important aspect of this new international division of labour was the EIC’s drive
to intensify control of production in India, partly in response to the needs of textile
printers at home. After the first prohibition act of 1700, the company shifted its
concern from design to the bleaching process, especially in Bengal, noted for its fine
white cotton cloth. Similar initiatives were taken in the silk trade. By the 1770s, the
requirements of English silk weavers prompted the company to take steps to improve
the quality of Bengal raw silk. Significant investment was made in filatures, or mills
for reeling the cultivated silk filaments . Wills suggests that it was the uncertainties of
intra-Asian trade and increased international competition which persuaded the British
and other Europeans to exert greater control of production and trade regimes in Asia,
which could undermine the interests of producers in the regions in question.

The trades in tea and Chinese porcelain were not susceptible to import substitution or
production control strategies such as these. Blank Chinese ceramics, it is true, were
sent to Canton to be decorated with European designs under European supervision,
including armorial devices and scenes taken from contemporary English engravings.
But efforts to imitate porcelain manufacture in England met with little success until
the mid-1740s when modest quantities of fine soft-paste wares began to be produced

8
at Chelsea and Bow. English makers never succeeded in producing anything
comparable to oriental hard-paste ceramics. Most contented themselves with
developing bone china as an acceptable alternative, pioneered by Spode around 1800.
The earliest efforts to imitate oriental designs and shapes in Europe used tin-glazed
earthenware (majolica or faience), which of course was a southern European rather
than an Asian innovation. For most of the 17th century, the Dutch potteries
maintained a clear lead over their London rivals, and half-hearted attempts at import
substitution inspired protective legislation in 1689 and 1694. By 1700, nine delftware
factories were functioning in London, the majority of which had been established by
Dutch or Flemish immigrants. Undoubtedly, some of these London wares from
Lambeth, Vauxhall, and Southwark would have echoed oriental designs, particularly
glazed earthenware tiles, but most would have carried the distinctive Anglo-Dutch
decorative styles of their period.

It was closer cultural ties with continental Europe, in fact, which permitted
comprehensive rather than partial import substitution, involving both the direct
replacement of imports by home-produced alternatives together with the satisfaction
of rising levels of demand for the products in question. This was most evident in the
case of luxury or semi-luxury goods previously imported from France and Holland,
especially linens, silk goods and mixtures, paper, and ceramics. Throughout the long
18th century, all these commodities enjoyed a buoyant home market. The objective, in
these cases, was bound up with import-saving during periods of financial stringency,
particularly when England was at war with France, from 1689-1713, rather than
employment creation. Import substitution might also be pursued for strategic reasons,
for example through gaining preferential access to colonial American sources of naval
stores and timber to replace Baltic supplies, or by encouraging the production of
cordage at naval dockyard sites. But it was in transplanting the consumer goods
industries of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean that mercantilist aspirations
found their most lasting success.

For England, the most critical phase in the development of new manufactures and
‘high design’ goods was the period of the Huguenot diaspora, from the 1670s to the
1720s and 30s. The range of luxury and semi-luxury trades introduced or developed
by immigrant Huguenot craftsmen is well-known, including woven silks, high-fashion
clothing, calico printing, hat making, the fashioning of jewellery, gold and silver
wares, watch and clockmaking, furniture and cabinet making, carving and gilding,
engraving, and interior decoration. The last of these was in some respects the most
important in providing a new environment in which the disposition of objects and
object sets might take on new meanings. In this sense, the architectural interior was a
major innovation for London’s middle classes, and once again, it was Huguenot
influence which developed it, in the shape of Daniel Marot. This extraordinary
embarrassment of riches made the Northern European littoral the primary locus for
the development of the luxury trades, rather than Asia. It was French and Italian
models which substantially shaped English visual culture during the golden age of the
grand tour, which produced, in turn, English Palladianism and neo-classicism.
Chinoiserie played an eccentric part at the beginning and the tail-end of all this, but it
was very much a minor role.

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 Consuming the Orient/
Tables 1 -4

Table 1: Sources of English Imports, 1701-1800

£ million, official values (viz. constant prices, 1696)

ASIA MEDIT NORTH SEA - BALTIC ATLANTIC

(E. Indies) SEA Total Northern Scand/ Total W. Ind America Ireland
Europe Baltic

1701-10 0.48 0.93 1.75 1.22 0.53 1.21 0.64 0.28 0.29
1711-20 0.74 1.35 1.65 1.12 0.53 1.71 0.93 0.41 0.36
1721-30 0.96 1.56 2.05 1.39 0.66 2.16 1.27 0.56 0.33
1731-40 0.97 1.55 2.24 1.46 0.79 2.45 1.40 0.67 0.38
1741-50 0.98 1.29 2.14 1.28 0.87 2.68 1.32 0.76 0.61
1751-60 1.05 1.51 2.23 1.15 1.09 3.41 1.82 0.86 0.73
1761-70 1.48 1.41 2.63 1.29 1.35 4.95 2.79 1.13 1.03
1771-80 1.53 1.61 3.06 1.40 1.65 5.30 3.01 0.87 1.42
1781-90 2.67 1.77 3.60 1.55 2.05 5.85 3.27 0.83 1.74
1791-1800 4.43 2.05 5.00 2.11 2.89 8.94 5.06 1.57 2.32

Sources: PRO, Cust.3; E. B. Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, 1697-1808, Table 6

Table 2: Distribution of English Shipping between the Major Circuits of

World Trade, 1663-1771-3 (‘000 tons; percentages shown in italics)

ASIA MEDIT NORTH SEA - BALTIC ATLANTIC

(E. Indies) SEA Total Northern Scand/ (Total)
Europe Baltic

1663 8 30 52 39 13 36
% 6 24 41 31 10 29
1686 12 39 69 41 28 70
% 6 21 37 22 15 37
1771-73 29 27 166 92 74 153
% 8 7 45 25 20 41

Sources: R. Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, p. 17; D. Ormrod, Rise of
Commercial Empires, p. 61

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 Table 3: English overseas trade, 1697-1761:
Selected groceries, consumer goods and decorative art products &
materials
£, official values (viz. constant prices, 1696)

1697-8 1700 1731 1761

Wine imports from Europe 646,983 582,843 345,501
Sugar imports from W. Indies 667,674 1,029,25 2,126,329
2
Tobacco Imports from Americas 315,392 272,118 490,755
Tea (legal imports) imports from ASIA 14,398 181,740 291,123
Coffee Imports from ASIA 35,553 37,377 313,240
Pepper imports from ASIA 16,480 25,653 37,598
‘Drugs’ imports from ASIA c.5,500 c.19,000 c.50,000
Ceramics (porcelain) imports from ASIA 1,311 11,520 22,079
Ceramics (earthenware) imports from Europe 2,297 6,498 110
Textiles, total* imports from ASIA, 374,608 471,497 (305,414)
including: - calicoes, plain 324,533 184,527
- do. patterned ( re-export 74,953 72,363
only) 105,896
- do. plain & patterned
Fustians & cottons exports to all markets 27,955 12,088 151, 218
Silk, raw imports from FAR EAST 46,883 49,409 49,249
Silk, raw imports via Mediterranean 230,225 215,520 387,720
Pictures & prints exports to Europe 319 48 6,765
imports from Europe 323 1,425 1,241
imports from ASIA 7 71 111
Painters' colours exports to Europe 395 4,892 4,218
imports from Europe 114 44 225
Hard and softwood imports from Americas 26,555 24,892 36,867
Tortoiseshell imports from Americas 1,966 1,497 2,168
Marble imports from Europe 666 2,072 328
statues imports from Europe 0 519 644
upholstery ware exports to Europe 3,484 4,637 1,515
furniture exports to Europe 4,961 2,182 5,186
imports from Europe 687 179 207
ceramics & glass exports to Europe 11,842 9,993 23,325
glass imports from Europe 494 413 880
household goods/ exports to Europe 1,561 50,679 514,349
goods, several sorts§ imports from Europe 0 104 4,476

Sources: PRO Cust.3; E. B. Schumpeter, English Overseas Trade Statistics, Tables X, XV; K.
Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, Table C.24
* East India Company’s estimates of cost prices. The third figure relates to 1760 rather than 1761
which is unavailable.
§
The category 'Goods: several sorts' was first applied by the Inspector General's office in 1705,
replacing the category 'Household goods'.

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Table 4: Imports of Paper and silk prints from Asia, 1704-1721
£, official values (viz. constant prices, 1696)

Paper Prints Other

number £ value number £ value

1704 44,344 2,148 silk & paper prints
1705 missing volume
1706 26,778 3,377 30 15 silk prints
1707 6,921 58
1708 5,816 24 1300 60 silk prints
6,305 14 printed paper
1709 6,564 82
1710 913 20
1711 - -
1712 missing volume
1713 16,531 413
1714 2,016 50
1715 -
1716 -
1717 -
1718 ? 343
1719 11,981 300
1720 ? 79
1721 1,091 709

Source: PRO Cust 3.

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