ABSTRACT
The ultimate goal of a collaborative project like this is of course to sketch some broad lines and draw more wide-ranging conclusions. What, in the end, do the national overviews and thematic essays collected in this volume tell us about the global history of textile workers from 1650 to the present? 1 We do not pretend to be able to construct an all-embracing, exhaustive history of textile production in all its diversity and covering all the textile workers concerned. Comparing just the spinning and weaving of wool and cotton between some twenty important textile-producing countries means eliminating many aspects of textile history beforehand, as we have explained in our introduction. A large-scale international comparison is difficult enough within the limits to which we have confined ourselves. The historical experiences of textile workers taken into account here already show a great deal of variation and diversity across time and space. 2 All too general conclusions would run the danger of becoming a-historical. However, to state that generalization in textile history is utterly impossible, or even 'dangerous', 3 would be to discredit any attempt to analyse historical development.
