cotton

cotton manufacture, initially an ancillary activity to linen, became firmly established in the last decades of the 18th century. Cotton was fashionable and its rapidly declining price widened its market base. The Irish parliament was also eager to promote it, putting heavy duties on British imports from the early 1780s and making grants to Irish producers. From the 1780s cotton mills with the latest spinning technology were built in Dublin, Cork, Belfast, and a few rural locations; Dublin was the most important centre until after the turn of the century, when it was displaced by Belfast, where there was greater investment in mechanized spinning mills, and a greater supply of skilled weavers who could work on fine cloths. Most of the investment in the Dublin and Cork industry went into large finishing and printing establishments. The coarser cloth types made in the south succumbed more quickly to British competition (notably from Manchester), particularly following the depression of the mid‐1820s. The Belfast industry lasted only a little longer, as the linen industry (which did not face the same competition from British manufacturers) was competing for resources. The large, vertically integrated establishment set up in 1825 by the Malcomsons at Portlaw, Co. Waterford, was unique in surviving these upheavals; it remained a major producer of cotton cloth until its collapse in 1876.

Andrew Bielenberg