ABSTRACT
Textile workers are examined here in global perspective. Using the criteria of ethnicity and migration to measure the composition of textile labour forces, the discussion analyses the national overviews collected in this volume and focuses on the period from the sixteenth century to the present. 1 The principal finding of this chapter is that a model of coerced-proto-industrialization of textiles (especially in the Americas) coexisted with, but is distinguishable from, contemporaneous European modalities. Even into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the ethnic and migratory profile of textile workers in the Americas continued to display far more diversity than its counterpart in Europe and elsewhere.
