China

Textiles have a very long history in China, as garments, currency, tax goods and commodities. ¹ Chinese domesticated silkworms no later than 3000 BEC, and archaeologists have discovered cocoons at Neolithic sites. The ancient Chinese also wove ramie and hemp, which were worn by the common people. However, within just a few centuries of its transmission to China around 200 BEC, cotton became the staple cloth of ordinary Chinese. In ancient China, weaving came to define women's social, economic and moral role. Beginning as early as the Song Dynasty, however, the gender identity of textile work slowly changed, as the Chinese economy grew more commercialized. ² While imperial silk weaving workshops mainly employed men, rural women working at home produced most of China's cotton cloth. Production of cotton and silk developed rapidly under state control during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), which maintained a caste of hereditary weavers producing for the needs of the state and the market. By the eighteenth century, the hereditary weavers had all but vanished, and most Chinese households wove cotton cloth for their own consumption or for market distribution. With the arrival of European warships, however, changes began which would radically and fundamentally transform Chinese textile production.