USA: shifting landscapes of class, culture, gender, race and protest in the American Northeast and South

During the period of American colonization (1620-1760), domestic production of linen and woollen textiles, dependent on the development of flax-growing and sheep-herding in the colonies clustered along the Atlantic coast, complemented the importation of fabrics of all kinds from Britain. ¹ Maritime traders could exchange New England lumber and fish for raw cotton grown by African slaves in the West Indies. Mercantilist policies by the British Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries discouraged the development of competitive industries in the colonies. Male-dominated artisan trades in textiles faded away in the New World, while spinning wheels, handlooms and carding tools operated by women and girls crowded colonial households. British efforts in the 1760s to impose taxes on its North American colonies provoked boycotts of English fabrics. The making and wearing of handmade cloth became an act of patriotic resistance both before and after the War of the American Revolution (1776-1783) and the War of 1812 between the New United States and Great Britain. ²