Writing Homework Help

The topic is about the development of the textile industry in England from 14th to 15th centuries.

This is a shorter paper: 6,000 words, and you take an extra taught course. The content can be a critical literature survey:

This can mean any one (or more) of these:

• Original perspective applied to a topic or issue where it has not been used
• New comparisons across time or space
• Challenge to existing interpretations Keep in mind: Ø We still expect a clear research question.
  Ø You cannot just write a summary of what other people have said, you have to interpret and assess what they have said. Ø Demonstrating originality can be more difficult as you are starting with published research works that have been peer-reviewed.

A. After the introduction, we should make a part of literature reviews to assess their ideas, and then give and briefly describe the methodology which we think is chronological method. When we use chronological method, we should categorize the time periods not to just saying which year happening what things.

B. The contents relating to textile industry should be assessed. The Hundreds Year War between England and France is a starting point of textile industry, because before war the England mainly exports wool. The expense to sustain the war relied on the exported tariff of wool, so this creates the conditions of producing wool textile in England. Except that, you should interpret the capital sources to sustain the textile industry and related financing.

C. The technology of water powered spinning machine is very important factor to spur the development of textile industry. The reasons and effects of using water powered spinning machine should be described. For example, the weak influence of guilds relative to Flanders and the abundant water resources in rural areas are preconditions for applications of the machine. And the effects include rural industrialization, urbanization, and cumulative industrial capital from expenditure in luxury goods in feudal society. Therefore, this causes the decentralized development of textile industry.

D. The Black Death really is fundamental to economic change in this period. Certainly, it may have provided a spur to technological innovations but you should also think more widely than this. Significantly the Black Death was a huge demand shock – the population perhaps halved leading to a contraction in aggregate demand which is seen to have negatively affected the cloth industry in some areas. However, at the same time, the survivors of the Black Death had significantly higher real incomes and this may have led them to spend a greater proportion of their household incomes on cloth products – I recommend you look at the below article by Oldland who discusses this in detail:

OLDLAND, JOHN. “Wool and Cloth Production in Late Medieval and Early Tudor England.” The Economic History Review, vol. 67, no. 1, 2014, pp. 25–47., www.jstor.org/stable/42921695.

I also suggest these readings to help you explore the wool and cloth industry in Italy and the Low Countries:

S. R. Epstein, CITIES, REGIONS AND THE LATE MEDIEVAL CRISIS: SICILY AND TUSCANY COMPARED, Past & Present, Volume 130, Issue 1, February 1991, Pages 3–50, https://doi.org/10.1093/past/130.1.3

EPSTEIN, S.R. (1993), Town and country: economy and institutions in late medieval Italy. The Economic History Review, 46: 453-477. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.1993.tb01344.x

Bavel, B. J. P. Van. Manors and Markets : Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500-1600. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.

E. We should add some contents to compare and contrast the textile industry with other regions in Europe such as France, Flanders, and Italy. Then briefly interpret the positive relationship between textile industry and Industrial Revolution in England.

F. This is mainly a literature review dissertation, so we do expect to see that you’ve engaged with a broad set of secondary sources. There’s no official number but I would say around 40 at a minimum.

G. Please find below some initial ideas for readings on the wool industry in other parts of Europe. Don’t worry if you can’t get access to all of these – they’re just suggestions for a starting point. I also recommend you use some bibliographic search engines – eg jstor – to see if you can find some more potential readings on your own.

Shennan Hutton, ‘Organizing specialized production: gender in the medieval Flemish wool cloth industry (c. 1250-1384)’, Urban History, 45.3 (2018) 382-403. Doi: 10.1017/S0963926817000566

John H.A. Munro, ‘The dual crises of the late-medieval Florentine cloth industry, c. 1320 – c. 1420’, in Textiles and the Medieval Economy: Production, Trade, and Consumption of Textiles, 8th-16th Centuries, ed. by Angela Ling Huang and Carsten Jahnke, Ancient Textiles Series, 16 (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2015), pp. 113-148.

Beverly Lemire, ‘Wool: products and markets from the thirteenth to the twentieth century’, Costume, 40. (2006) 72-74. Doi: 10.1179/174963006X99475

Robert B. Ekelund, Donald R. Street and Robert D. Tollison, ‘Rent seeking and property rights’ assignments as a process: the Mesta cartel of medieval-mercantile Spain’, Journal of European Economic History, 26.1 (1997) 9-35.

Stephan R. Epstein, ‘The textile industry and the foreign cloth trade in late medieval Sicily (1300-1500): a “colonial relationship”?’, Journal of Medieval History, 15.2 (1989) 141-183. Doi: 10.1016/0304-4181(89)90014-6

John H. Munro, 2000. “The West European Woollen Industries and their Struggles for International Markets, c.1000 – 1500,” Working Papers munro-00-04, University of Toronto, Department of Economics