Wool

Wool is the hair fiber of domesticated animals, primarily sheep, but also goats, camels, and llamas. It is an heterogeneous product that has been used in the manufacture of clothing and carpets for many centuries. Its heterogeneity largely derives from different breeds of each animal and climatic variations between geographic regions. The fineness of the fiber, measured by its diameter in microns, is regarded as an important quality indicator, but other factors include its length, yield, lightness, color, softness, breathability, naturalness, elasticity, and nonflammability. Among the many fabrics produced from wool are chenille, felt, flannel, gabardine, melton, serge, tweed, and worsted.

Around 1450 England and Scotland were the main sources of raw wool that supplied the fine-cloth manufacturers of continental Europe, particularly in Spain, Burgundy, Flanders, and Italy. In the following century, English manufacturers challenged the continental dominance. Unfinished undyed broadcloths drove a three-fold expansion in English cloth exports in the first half of the century. Thereafter, expansion came through the production of the "new draperies"—light, colorful, fashionable worsted products, which were exported to many parts of Europe including Germany, Italy, and Poland. By contrast, many of the continental manufacturers fell into decline, suffering the fallout from religious and political conflict, particularly in the Low Countries, and from the high cost and regulation of urban industry and its labor supply by the medieval guilds, for example in Florence and Venice. The expanding British woollen industry drew heavily upon rural production in the household. This bypassed guild and municipal regulations, and had lower production costs and a more flexible workforce, enabling a concentration upon the cheaper and popular new draperies. The West Country, East Anglia, and the West Riding of Yorkshire dominated English production. Key institutions sustained the rapid expansion of English production: large-scale middlemen coordinating the receipt of growers' wool and passing it to exporters; and the Merchants of the Staple, a powerful and influential organization with a monopoly over wool exports.

Contemporaneous changes occurred in the sources of raw wool. By the end of the sixteenth century, Spanish merino wool was considered the best quality available. Careful breeding and selection improved Spanish merino strains in the fifteenth century, while the rapidly expanding merino flock was protected by the powerful Mesta organization. The Mesta was a national organization of sheep farmers, which, under royal sanction, had extensive powers to coordinate wool production and export. It grew out of similar local bodies in medieval Spain but was in decline by the eighteenth century as opposition grew to its extensive powers and ancient rights. The quality of the merino stock was additionally attributed to extensive transhumance migrations as far afield as 400 miles, which were facilitated by extensive pasturage rights. In spite of attempts to forbid the export of merinos, various legal and illegal exports of livestock occurred. German merino flocks grew rapidly after 1765, when the king of Spain presented 300 merinos to his relative Prince Xavier, the elector of Saxony. German wool challenged Spanish output in major European markets by the end of the century, and thereafter, the merino spread to other European nations and to America.

Sources of supply and centers of production changed rapidly in the nineteenth century. Europe supplied most of its own raw wool at the beginning of the century, but pressures of population, agricultural production, and urban and industrial expansion weighed heavily on Western European nations. The solution came with the expansion of the sheep flocks of Southern Hemisphere nations. In particular, Australia, originally viewed as a dumping ground for British convicts, showed immense promise as a raw-wool producer. The merino was introduced into Australia in 1797; by 1821 there were 100,000 sheep, rising rapidly to 13 million by mid-century. Wool production reached 19 million kilograms by 1850, 210 million by 1890, and 446 million by 1939. Improved sheep breeding with merinos, particularly from the late 1820s, enabled exports of high-quality Australian wool to grow rapidly. The first wool exports from Australia to Britain occurred around 1807 to 1808, and by the 1830s were increasing by 32 percent per annum. Australia rapidly became the largest wool producer and exporter, followed by New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, and Uruguay. The major Northern Hemisphere producers all became net importers, including Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia.

Simultaneously, the pattern of manufacturing demand for wool was changing significantly. The English woollen industry was undergoing significant alterations in its size and structure in the second half of the nineteenth century. The rapid expansion of worsted production in mid-century was due to changing fashions and the introduction of new machine technology. Of particular note was the successful mechanization of the combing stage of worsted production from the 1850s, which led to a large rise in demand for long merino wools from Australia. In addition, the severe and extended depression of the industry from the mid-1870s prompted a search for cheaper sources of supply; at this time wool prices were lower in Australia than in London. The second major demand change was the growing importance of non-British buyers. The textile industries of continental Europe, particularly in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, followed a pattern similar to Britain's of growth, concentration, and stagnation. U.S. demand also increased, although tariffs, a large domestic sheep industry, and consumer preferences in favor of cotton constrained its share. The Japanese market grew more rapidly. Military demand from the Sino-Japanese (1894–1895) and Russo-Japanese (1904–1905) wars provided the early stimulus, aided by the removal of a 5 percent import tariff on wool in 1896. By the early 1930s Japanese buyers were the third-largest consumers of Australian wool. By the end of the twentieth century the largest retail consumers of wool were China, the former Soviet nations, Japan, Germany, the United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Although most demand has been for high quality merino, coarser wools have been used in the manufacture of blankets and carpets, particularly sourced from China, India, Syria, Russia, and Iraq. At the other end of the quality scale, cashmere is produced from cashmere goats, a very high-quality wool used in fine clothing. Like the coarser goat's hair and mohair, it is particularly sourced from China.

The demand for wool has faced opportunities and threats through the twentieth century. The expansion of man-made fibers has encroached upon traditional uses, particularly rayon from the 1920s and noncellulosic fibers such as nylon and types of polyester from the 1950s. At the same time, the number of wool or wool-mix products has grown extensively to include insulation materials, filters, sporting balls, piano key hammers, felt pens, hats and linings, flags, table and chair covers, duvets, and tapestries.

Wool has traditionally been sold by public auction and by private treaty. Sale by public auction at Garraway's coffee house in Cornhill, London commenced in 1821, before shifting to the Wool Exchange in 1875. By the end of the nineteenth century the wool market began to relocate to the main supplying countries of Australia and New Zealand, prompted by the actions of powerful broking houses and reflecting the geographic diversification of demand and improved international transport and communications. Wool sales remained solely a physical auction market until the introduction of a London futures exchange in 1953 and a Sydney futures market in 1960, and the subsequent development of internet sales such as Woolnet in New Zealand since 1999.

SEE ALSO Agriculture; Antwerp; Australia and New Zealand; Climate; Disease and Pestilence; Empire, British; Empire, Portuguese; Empire, Spanish; India;Russia;United Kingdom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbott, Malcolm J. "Promoting Wool Internationally: The Formation of the International Wool Secretariat." Australian Economic History Review 38, no. 3 (1998).

Ashton, Dale; Brittle, Shane; and Sheales, Terry. Demand for Wool in a Changing World. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2000.

Barnard, Alan. The Australian Wool Market, 1840–1900. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1958.

Jenkins, David T., and Ponting, Kenneth G. The British Wool Textile Industry, 1770–1914. Aldershot, U.K.: Scholars Press, 1987.

Ponting, Kenneth G. The Wool Trade Past and Present. Manchester, U.K.: Columbine Press, 1961.

Wool Taskforce. Diversity and Innovation for Australian Wool. Report of the Wool Industry Future Directions Task Force. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1999.

Simon Ville