HIST363: Global Perspectives on Industrialization

At the turn of the nineteenth century, half of the circa 2.2 million manufacturers in Germany still worked as artisans. About one million were engaged in cottage industry on the putting-out model, and only a scarce 100,000 worked in large-scale manufacturing operations, that is in manufactories, factories or mines. Artisan workshops were usually small businesses in which families participated in the work; differently from what is suggested by contemporary images, which mostly show male craftsmen, female collaboration in workshops was standard. On average 1.5 people were employed, which means that workshops in which one master worked alone were just about as frequent as collaboration with only one journeyman or apprentice. Rarely was there a larger number of assistants. Production was primarily aimed at local demand; export played no great role, even for specialized French craftsmen.

There was no division of labour in workshops. Master and journeyman both made a complete product. Instead, the early modern period witnessed a specialization of artisan labour, as a result of which individual aspects of a craft were outsourced. In this way new trades came into being all the time. The spatial separation of the workshop from the dwelling was introduced at the end of the sixteenth century. At first, smiths, dyers, tanners and furriers removed certain activities to outside their dwellings, until ultimately the workshop was increasingly placed in its own building. Practice long remained diverse, however.

Even in the 18th century the workshops of weavers and tailors were usually located in the basements or attics of dwellings. The attic and the upper floors of the house allowed for the maximum utilization of daylight. The notion, however, that the use of artificial light was peculiar to factories must be rethought. Artisan workshops were no longer fully dependent on natural daylight or therefore on the seasons. The artificial illumination of candles and oil lamps already freed craftsmen partially, albeit to a limited extent, from the natural rhythm of the day.

Another form of small-scale manufacturing, about as equally widespread in nineteenth-century Europe as independent artisanry, contributed to the rise of modern industry and the capitalist economic system: cottage industry, organized on the putting-out model. Some scholars describe it as proto-industrial. In contrast to independent artisans, those employed in cottage industry had their raw materials delivered by a Verleger, or merchant, who also took care of sales. In this way, cottage workers became de facto wage workers, and thus a capitalist relationship of dependence arose even before industrial factories did. In some cases the dependence was especially severe: the Verleger provided tools, determined quality standards and dictated the time of delivery. In light of the later sweating system and its use of middlemen, certain aspects of cottage industry can be seen as predecessors of a work discipline that would be systematically developed in factories. The putting-out system came into existence as early as the fourteenth century, was widespread in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (especially in textile production), and only disappeared bit by bit in the 20th century. A basic division of labour between countryside and town persisted, as finishing remained the task of guild craftsmen in the towns.

Although only a few factories grew out of this system and some of the key regions of cottage industry experienced a phase of economic decline after its attenuation during the nineteenth century, its long-term influence was enormous. Europe's core industrial areas largely corresponded to early modern manufacturing zones. The skills and contacts commercial infrastructure, and work and consumption practices developed in cottage industry can be considered important prerequisites for industrialization in England and thereafter in other parts of Europe. In this sense, the many nondescript venues for work, such as rural weaver cottages and smithies as well as women's spinning rooms, were as a whole more important for the development of factory capitalism than the few large manufactories that will be discussed below. Nor can the early labour movement be fully explained by the new situation of factory capitalism; rather it has meaningful points of contact with the traditions of cottage industry.

The contemporaneous existence of factories, cottage industry, and artisanry was characteristic not only of the German states in the first half of the nineteenth century Northern Italian weaving was marked – all the way to the end of the nineteenth century – by the coexistence of factories and cottage industry. In France, which industrialized earlier, small-scale operations accounted for two-thirds of industrial production as late as 1870. Small workshops and cottage industry initially fit well into the industrial system. The two essential advantages of the putting-out system were low labour costs and the great flexibility of the Verleger. In Ireland, very low wages were responsible for a belated mechanization of weaving. Even in the English county of Lancashire, the starting point of the industrial revolution, there were just as many workers in small workshops as in factories in the 1830s. Thus here, too, we see a slow transition and a long coexistence of the two forms. Furthermore, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, converted dwellings still existed as elements of cottage industry and were of great significance for the British textile industry. In the decades around 1800, workers typically lived in a three-story house, one of whose floors was reserved for the workshop.

The significance of manufactories was long overestimated. Quantitatively, they were much less important in the early modern period than artisanry and the putting-out system. Economically, they tended to be unsuccessful, as they were only slightly more productive and at the same time entailed greater risks. Without state sponsorship, the existence of manufactories would have been unthinkable. At any rate, there were hardly any manufactories that corresponded to the image of a large factory without machines. On the other hand, the hybrid form of decentralized manufacturing was widespread.

Finishing was carried out in a relatively small central production facility, whereas the basic work was performed in affiliated cottage industry in the putting-out system. The first large-scale early modern operations that can be considered proto-factories on account of their relatively high degree of mechanization sprang up in the context of weapons production in the fifteenth century and the textile and metal sectors in the sixteenth. Nevertheless, down to the end of the sixteenth century and even in Western Europe, large-scale operations usually employed only ten to 20 workers, and the central phase of production was still done manually. Finally, machines were not systematically used in this production process but rather in isolated cases in a few exceptional operations.

Nevertheless, the manufactory played an important role with respect to quality. This had little to do with workers growing accustomed to fragmented production steps. The percentage of workers who later entered factories with such experience was insignificant. Only in a few sectors, such as silk milling and paper production, can a large degree of continuity or a direct transition from manufactory to factory be observed. Manufactories were, however, an important locus for technological transfer within Europe. Small workshops were already characterized by a high degree of artisan mobility, especially on account of the wandering of German and French journeymen. Although such travels contributed almost nothing to spreading and evening out technological knowledge around Europe, they increased the work and life experience of those involved.

In manufactories, however, the connection between migration and innovation was considerable. For example, Italian glassmakers, silk weavers, cloth workers, and builders fled from the Spanish Inquisition to Germany in the sixteenth century. The better part of the Huguenots who fled France in the seventeenth century went to the Netherlands or England, but they had their greatest influence with the founding of tapestry manufactories and hosiery mills in Central Europe, which was still relatively underdeveloped. The entangled history of European manufacturing can be seen especially well in Prussian manufactories, which were operated by Huguenots and employed workers from central France.

Manufactories partially paved the way for the resumption of a previously interrupted transfer process. For example, the first time the silk mill, which had been used in Italy since the thirteenth century, was brought to Germany, it was forbidden in Cologne in 1431. In the late seventeenth century, however, it took root in German manufactories. Although the total number of large manufactories remained relatively small, by the end of the eighteenth century there were some large-scale operations with several hundred employees; in a few cases the number exceeded 1,000. The largest concentration of manufactories at this time was to be found in Barcelona, with nearly 100 large-scale facilities.