doing business-- 4/8/25

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Today's selection -- from The Two Princes of Mpfumo by Lindsay O'Neill. Angry English weavers cause trouble for The East India Company.

“He initially approached the East India Company. It was the obvious first stop for support. It had given a license to Thomas White, who had betrayed the princes, so who better to facilitate their return home? In fact, Toogood probably picked the Spread Eagle because it was only a three-minute walk from East India House on Leadenhall Street. The princes never visited East India House, but Toogood did, and he brought a petition with him. The paper he used was large, his handwriting ornate, and his lines perfectly straight. It laid before the Court of Directors of the East India Company ‘the suffering and deplorable case of these Injurd princes. The actions of Captain White, Toogood implied, had tainted the honor of the company, which had to be redeemed. Furthermore, it certainly did not hurt, he suggested, that saving the company's honor would secure ‘the trade in their Brothers Dominions and in that part of the world.’  Luckily for Toogood, ‘that part of the world’ interested the company in the late summer of 1720.

“Toogood had angry English weavers, who did not appreciate the expansion into this global economy, to thank for the East India Company's interest.English weavers were looking to stop the East India Company's importation of calicoes. Ever since the East India Company had begun to import this printed cotton cloth from India, cloth manufacturers in England had worried about the competition they posed. Its importation became a scapegoat for the pinch of the general economic downswing at the turn of the century. By 1700 Parliament had passed an act banning the importation of printed calicoes to England, although plain white cotton cloth was still allowed, since it helped stimulate English cotton printing. This was not enough for the weavers. Ships smuggled in calico, and there was no penalty for wearing it. By 1719 weavers began to take matters into their own hands, and it became dangerous to wear calico, especially near Spitalfields, where the weavers congregated."

Calico printing

“Elizabeth Price, perhaps blissfully unaware of the simmering tensions, stepped out of her house on a June day wearing her fashionable calico gown covered by her cloak. For her, such a grown was probably a fashion coup. It allowed her to mimic the embroidered silk of the elite and it spoke of foreign climes far beyond the streets of London. She and her acquaintance, Mary Williamson, were looking for housing, and perhaps she thought the gown would impress the landlord. She was wrong. As she made her way down the street someone lifted her cloak and saw the gown beneath. A call of ‘Callicoe, Callicoe; Weavers, Weavers’ echoed down the street, and one woman yelled ‘Callicoe Bitch!’ Soon Price was surrounded by a swarm of boys and girls who ‘tore her Gown off all but the Sleeve, her Pocket, the Head of her Riding Hood, and abus'd her very much.’ Rosamond Becket's calico gown led her into danger as well.  According to one witness, a man approached Becket and her friends, rubbed against one of them, and then exclaimed, ‘D–m you, you have a Callicoe Gown. I'll have the Tail of it.' He then pulled a knife, wet it on his shoe, and struck at her. As she ran into a house, he yelled that he ‘would cut her soul from her body.’ Other witnesses denied this account, but taken together with the other incident it becomes clear that fashion had become dangerous.

“The violence peaked on 11 and 12 June 1719. A mob of thousands roamed through Spitalfields looking for calico wearers. They clad themselves in scraps of the hated cloth, waved pieces over their heads, and cried: ‘Down with the Callicoes!’ No one was safe, not even ‘those of the best fashion. The protestors tore clothes and doused bystanders with ink or aqua fortis, which today we call nitric acid. The streets filled with smoke as they burned cloth taken from shops. On 12 June they threatened to pull down a house to get at the calico wearers inside. The disorder almost flowed out of the city as the rioters called for the destruction of the printing presses located just beyond the city limits that were used to add images to the imported cloth. In the end, the government called out the troops, who killed one man, wounded another, and dispersed the rest. Calico was no longer just a piece of cloth, it was trouble; and the East India Company was its main purveyor.

“Thus, by the summer of 1719 the company knew calicoes were again going to be a problem. By July the Board of Trade was discussing halting the importation of unprinted calicoes, and by October it was asking the company for its thoughts on the matter. In November, the disgruntled merchants tersely replied and attempted to protect their profits. In May 1720 the House of Lords would actually reject a ban on the importation of unprinted calicoes as a way to help protect the profits of the company. But the issue would continue to plague the company into 1721 and would force it to keep a keen eye out for new trading opportunities."

author:	Lindsay O'Neill
title:	The Two Princes of Mpfumo: An Early Eighteenth-Century Journey into and out of Slavery (The Early Modern Americas)
publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press
pages:	46-47