Global Shifts and Local Actors : Revising Macro-Level Theories on the Relocation of Textile Production From the Lens of the Household in the Netherlands and Java, c. 1820-1940

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk; Corinne Boter; Sarah Carmichael; Katharine Frederick

doi:10.51769/bmgn-lchr.10961

Author(s)

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk Utrecht University
Corinne Boter Utrecht University
Sarah Carmichael Utrecht University
Katharine Frederick Utrecht University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.10961

Abstract

The location of major textile manufacturing centres has shifted several times over the past 250 years, from Asia to Europe and the us, then back to Asia. Mainstream explanations for these shifts take a macro-approach and hence oversimplify the mechanisms behind them. We investigate these mechanisms at the micro-level of the household to gain a deeper understanding of the relocations of textile production worldwide. We do so by studying Dutch and Javanese households’ productive and consumptive behaviour in the period 1820-1940, when colonial relations between these two regions played an important role. We show that households’ labour allocation, livelihood strategies, and consumption preferences are crucial to understand the interaction between global shifts and local actors.

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Author Biographies

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Utrecht University

Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk is Full Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University. She specialises in the history of labour relations, particularly women’s and child labour and the role of households in production and consumption patterns worldwide. Her publications include articles in Feminist Economics, the Economic History Review, the Journal of Global History, and the International Review of Social History. She organised various interdisciplinary comparative projects, on the history of textile work, child labour, domestic workers, and sex work, which all resulted in edited volumes (Brill, Ashgate, Peter Lang). In 2019, she published Women, Work and Colonialism in the Netherlands and Java. Comparisons, Contrasts and Connections, 1830-1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10528-0), on the connections between developments in women’s work in the Netherlands and its most exploited colony, the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). See also: www.elisenederveen.com. E-mail: e.j.v.vannederveenmeerkerk@uu.nl.
Corinne Boter, Utrecht University

Corinne Boter is Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University. Her research agenda seeks to understand the historical spatial, temporal, and sectoral variation in economic gender inequality. She is particularly interested in how the interaction between economic change and gender ideology affected women’s labour market position in industrialising economies during the long nineteenth century. Her publications include articles in the Economic History Review, Feminist Economics, the European Review of Economic History, and History of the Family. In 2020, she published ‘The impact of sectoral shifts on Dutch unmarried women’s labour force participation, 1812-1929’, a co-authored article with Pieter Woltjer, which shows that shifting sectoral employment shares drove the falling labour force participation of Dutch unmarried women. This article was published in the European Review of Economic History. (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/hez020). E-mail: c.a.boter@uu.nl.
Sarah Carmichael, Utrecht University

Sarah Carmichael is Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University. She looks at questions surrounding the determinants of contemporary development outcomes and is particularly interested in finding novel ways to measure cultural and institutional phenomena. The bulk of her research focuses on gender inequality and family organisation. She has published in the OECD report “How was Life?”, in Feminist Economics, the Journal of Family History and the Journal of Economic History. Together with Jan Luiten van Zanden and Tine De Moor she wrote the book Capital Women: The European Marriage Pattern, Female Empowerment and Economic Development in Western Europe 1300-1800 (Oxford University Press 2019, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190847883.001.0001).
E-mail: s.g.carmichael@uu.nl.
Katharine Frederick, Utrecht University

Katharine Frederick is Assistant Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University. Her research focuses on social and economic transformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on how the intersection of globalisation, colonisation, and industrialisation affected the livelihoods and survival strategies of labourers, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2020, she published Twilight of an Industry in East Africa: Textile Manufacturing, 1830-1940 (Palgrave MacMillan, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43920-0) which explores the interplay of global and local forces in the decline of textile production across much of East Africa by the turn of the twentieth century. Alongside her specialisation in Africa, she also pursues globally comparative research. For example, ‘Local advantage in a global context. Competition, adaptation and resilience in textile manufacturing in the “periphery”, 1860-1960’ published in the Journal of Global History (18:1, 2023, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022821000425), written in collaboration with Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk. E-mail: k.r.frederick@uu.nl.