Introduction

Textile trades were foundational in early modern Europe, with imperial states working to protect and advance established cloth industries at the core of their economies and cultures. Global commerce unsettled these material landscapes and its established interregional competition, with cultural and political tensions erupting and nations jostling for ascendency. Policing the dress of residents became a pressing imperative. Apparel and its components could bolster state authority, or generate anxieties and rejoinders, while, in Britain, imperial priorities ignited new material discourse. As global trade grew, the impact of foreign subaltern goods sparked discomfort for some. Cloth and clothing, in particular, were intended to strengthen national and imperial purpose, but: “Wearing foreign clothes disrupted the way of knowing one’s country of origin and, perhaps more upsetting, where one’s loyalty lay.” Textile politics involved more than nationalist sentiment, however, with racialism figuring in response to global commodities. In the long eighteenth century, commodities acquired from global and colonial settings carried complex meanings: potential profit for the metropole, offset by perceived risks of pollution and disruption. These seeming threats differed fundamentally from the antagonism towards competing European wares, as evolving precepts around race strengthened beyond established xenophobic paradigms.

New imports were often aligned with populations of colour and figured as part of imperial agendas. For instance, over the 1600s, English authorities grappled with the perceived threat of “Indianization” through the growing use of tobacco from the Americas. The disquiet surrounding this substance stubbornly persisted through the century, even as this leaf became culturally infused with acceptable (racialised) connotations of empire.