Calico Acts of 1701 and 1721

The Calico Acts of 1701 and 1721 were parliamentary restrictions on Asian textiles, especially printed or dyed cottons and silks. They were won by manufacturers seeking protection from imports, but their uneven scope and later revision also reveal the limits of any one industry’s influence in a political system where competing interests could petition Parliament.

Background and competing interests

In 1688, calicoes and muslins from India made up about a quarter of England’s textile imports; Chinese silks were also important. The East India Company imported these goods and, before 1688, held a government-sanctioned monopoly on Asian trade. Its position was sustained by bribes to James II. After 1688 the company came under pressure: traders seeking access to Far Eastern and Indian commerce petitioned for competition, while the company submitted counterpetitions and offered Parliament loans. The company lost, and a rival East India Company was founded.

The 1701 restriction

Textile producers’ campaign against imports was not simply a demand for open markets. Wool manufacturers, facing competition from inexpensive Asian cloth, had pressed since the 1660s for measures that would shelter their trade. They supported restrictions on wearing lighter fabrics and legislation in 1666 and 1678 requiring woollen burial shrouds. Those earlier efforts did not overcome the East India Company’s strength, but the political balance shifted after 1688.

Between 1696 and 1698, wool manufacturers from East Anglia and the West Country joined forces with silk weavers from London and Canterbury and the Levant Company. The Levant traders wanted to exclude Asian silks in order to make room for silks from the Ottoman Empire. Their coalition pressed Parliament to restrict the wearing, dyeing, and printing of Asian cottons and silks. In 1701 Parliament prohibited the wearing of specified imported silks and calicoes from Persia, China, and India. The measure thus joined different commercial interests behind a common demand to limit Asian competition.

The 1721 Act and its limits

The first ban did not exclude Asian textiles from England altogether. They could still be imported for re-export, particularly to the American colonies; plain calicoes could be imported and finished in England; and muslins were exempt. Woollen manufacturers regarded these exceptions as loopholes. After a prolonged campaign, the 1721 Act barred people in Great Britain from wearing printed, painted, stained, or dyed calico in garments or apparel from December 25, 1722.

The expanded restriction removed Asian competition for woollens, but it did not eliminate competition within Britain. A domestic cotton and linen industry produced fustian, a popular fabric made by combining cotton and linen. Wool manufacturers then sought to restrict linen, much of which was made in Scotland and Ireland. Their effort met opposition from fustian producers in Manchester, Lancaster, and Liverpool, who petitioned Parliament against the proposed restrictions. The resulting Manchester Act of 1736 protected the wearing and use of cloth made from linen yarn and cotton wool that was manufactured and printed or painted in Great Britain.

Political significance

The Acts illustrate how parliamentary policy could serve powerful producers without giving any one group unlimited control. Woollen manufacturers secured restrictions on Asian textiles, yet the exceptions in the 1701 measure remained a target of political contest, and later efforts to extend protection against linen encountered organized opposition from industrial centers. Parliament represented and heard a broad range of interests through voting and, especially, petitioning; the outcome of the later dispute favored the newer fustian producers over the wool industry.

The episode therefore distinguishes pluralistic political competition from an absence of entry barriers. Domestic producers could use legislation to protect their markets, but other groups could also contest those rules and prevent one industry from closing off opportunity to its rivals. The Acts were both instruments of protection and part of an ongoing struggle over who could shape the rules of trade.