Contenu du sommaire : Les textiles en Méditerranée (XVe-XIXe siècle)

From the 15th to the 19th century, Bursa was one of the great international centres of the Ottoman silk trade and industry. Silk Weaving and transhipment, originally from the Gilan province on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran, gave rise to an active trade in the region. The textiles were manufactured in different dimensions, from small suede panels to larger pieces used as decorative panels. But above all it was the magnificent garments, more particularly the ceremonial kaftans intended for the imperial palace which ensured the reputation of the city. The Ottoman government controlled pro­duction and encouraged exports, which brought in important sources of income. But the market was fluctuating. In addition to the numerous conflicts which hindered the regular supply of raw silk, were the common difficulties experienced by great traders and weaver corporations. They saw their margins greatly reduced by the cost increase in raw materials, labour and selling prices imposed by the law. Despite the acclimatisation of the mulberry tree and the introduction of silk culture in the second half of the 16th century, silk weaving progressively declined in Bursa.

This work examines textile production in Rosette during the 18th Century thanks to the research done on the documentation left behind by Rosette's and Alexandria's reli­gious tribunals. This fine series of archives enables us to look with interest at issues as diverse as the manufacturing stages, crafts, production types, problems of commercia­lisation and workshop owners. Above all, it sheds the light on the importance of linen handicraft in the city and shows that the extreme division of labour and the regulation enacted by the public authorities were not stopping factors in the development of the textile activity.

The birth of calico printing in Marseilles in the second half of the 17th century is a story filled with teachings which help understand, through the diversification and development of textile manufacturing, the roots of European industrialisation. This story underlines the importance of the Mediterranean and Near East in the spreading of Asian tastes and techniques. It enables us to analyse the methods used to transfer technologies from the East to the West and the great international changes in the production and exchange of manufactured products.

The spectacular growth of the Christian community in Aleppo, during the Ottoman period, is linked with the part it played in the fabrication and trade of cloth, the main economic activity of that city. The spatial expansion of the Christian quarter is parallel with the development of that craft, in the workshops (qaysâriyya) of the northern suburb of Aleppo. The Christians took, in the professional guilds, an important place corresponding with their activity in that field, which caused a remarkable (and sometimes difficult) coexistence with the Moslems. In the cloth trade, the Christian networks, played an important part. They were mainly Armenian in the XVIIth century, Alepine in the XVIIIth. When the schism in the Greek orthodox church (1724) brought about the birth of a new Greek Catholic community, its diaspora to Egypt was the origin of the development of a very prosperous community which was actively involved in the international trade of Levant cloth.

During the modern times, Catalonia and Spain were great markets for cotton linen, for Levantine linen first of all, and European linen in the more advanced stages of the 18th century. For political and religious reasons, cotton printing techniques did not arrive in Catalonia until the first decades of the 18th century. An industrialisation process, based on the progressive command of printing on Levantine cotton, was then put in place by switching to imports. This improvement was brought in by the Marseilles trade. In 1728, in order to thwart the growing arrival of Levantine and European cotton linen, the doors of the Spanish market opened to Maltese cotton yarn, which favours a few decades later the introduction of weaving alongside Catalan cotton printing. Finally at the very end of the 18th century, the mass arrival of American raw cotton adds the spinning phase to the process.

This article presents the career of a textile merchant from Toulouse, Pierre Gloton who runs a firm which specialises in textile in the 1600s-1620s. He initially works for a shop which sells fabrics, particularly Italian ones, to very rich customers. The inven­tory of the goods sold in this shop enables us to reflect over little-known questions: the supply and consumption of textile products in the beginning of the 17th century. Around 1610-1615, Pierre Gloton becomes the head of a firm with a more complex organisation and diversified activities and which trades with the trading ports of the Eastern Mediterranean. Is there a commercial strategy which makes him trade in the Mediterranean region and take an interest in textile production? To what purpose?

The essential place of textile merchants in Damascus's society around 1700 justifies a research on the relevant men concerned with this type of activity. The source, a col­lection of 450 post-mortem inventories describing inheritances, enables us to do this. These documents allow us to find out about the contents of the shops as well as inside the homes. This article presents the textiles sold in Damascus (anonymous fabrics from poor people, “indiennes” of local or foreign origin, rich cotton and blended silk fabrics, silk), as well as the fabrics, sometimes missing in shops, which men and women, poor and rich, use for their clothes and furniture.

Woolen clothes from Languedoc manage to take the lead on distant Levantine markets alongside English competitors until becoming the greatest contribution to the trade between Marseilles and the trading ports of the Eastern Mediterranean. The implemen­tation of control mechanisms, under the aegis of the mercantile state with the partici­pation of the exporting trader-bankers, has for objective to ensure the reliability and identification of the products. The introduction of matrix samples and the spreading of “montres” used to make bundle assortments, indicate a willingness to guarantee the standard quality of the reference product, one that rests upon the know-how of the ma­nufacturers and upon the raw materials used in compliance with the regulations (fine wool and colouring solids). The increase in demand and the changes in tastes of Otto­man customers had as an outcome the diversification of textile economics and a lesser respect for the “standardisation”. The breach of this confidence agreement, shown by the inaccuracy of the production exposed by the traders attached to this quality-label, is part of the general crisis through which the Languedoc linen trade with the Levant is going through in the second part of the 18th century.

The consumption of printed cotton in Marseilles dates back to the 16th century with the first imports from India and the Levant. When this industry start developing in France in the second half of the 18th century, people from Marseilles who are still obsessed with this type of linen turn to other sources of supply and particularly the famous Jouy factory founded by Oberkampf in 1760. Research on garment pieces preserved in the regional collections and compared to the factory's archives (letters from Oberkampf to his pen friends in Marseilles, order letters enclosed with sam­ples) enables us to better understand the consumption in Marseilles in the 1790s-1810s of this linen, whose patterns reveal a regional originality. In order to satisfy the Provencal tastes, Oberkampf not only prints drawings influenced by genuine indiennes, but he also develops new products.