Virginia Postrel

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, a global history of textiles and the world they made The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

How Textiles Made the World

Fabric of Civilization

From Paleolithic flax to 3D knitting, explore the global history of textiles and the world they weave together in this enthralling and educational guide. The story of humanity is the story of textiles -- as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world. Textiles funded the Renaissance and the Mughal Empire; they gave us banks and bookkeeping, Michelangelo's David and the Taj Mahal. The cloth business spread the alphabet and arithmetic, propelled chemical research, and taught people to think in binary code. Assiduously researched and deftly narrated, The Fabric of Civilization tells the story of the world's most influential commodity.

The Fabric of Civilization

https://youtu.be/e4dYGdjgsz8?si=fn8EmI4vCA7F2rP7

Igor

As a fiber artist and history buff, I couldn't help but be sucked in by this book. I may have an appreciation for the time and effort that goes into handmade textiles, but I was still oblivious to the significance of textiles as a whole; they're ubiquitous to the point of invisibility, especially in our post-industrial world where textiles are widely and cheaply available. This millenia spanning history reminds us of just how recent mass-produced textiles truly are and how much of an overriding force they were in the past. 

The image of the spinner is the one that sticks with me the most: in order to produce enough yarn to make enough cloth to satisfy demands, women had to spin every spare moment. It wasn't a matter of keeping women in their place or encouraging domesticity, it was simple practicality. Any conception of women's role in society that doesn't acknowledge this is fundamentally flawed. As with so many other subjects, examining the past through a narrow lens such as textiles illuminates the ways that our modern preconceptions can influence what we're seeing in the past. If spinning is no longer a ubiquitous activity and instead the realm of hobbyists and industrial machines, it's easy to see the spinner as just a domestic figure tied to the home. But when you consider the practicalities of textile manufacturing and the economic opportunities it provided, the spinner takes on a very different role. She's no longer an idle domestic, but rather an active breadwinner. 

I greatly appreciated the organization of this book into the stages of textile production: first is the fiber, then the yarn, then weaving/knitting, then dying, and then buying and selling of the finished product. It emphasized that while the ways each step comes together is important, the individual steps are striking in their own as well. Tracking what innovations were happening at the same time but in different stages was a little difficult because we were going back and forth in time from chapter to chapter, but there was so much to gain from organizing thematically that I didn't mind too much. I sometimes felt there was more focus on Europe than anywhere else and I couldn't help but notice there was nothing from Australia at all (were there really no textile innovations at any point in history Down Under?) but at this point I almost expect a predominance of Europe in world histories so I almost wasn't surprised. Overall, though, this was a well-researched, engaging, and thought-provoking history that I would highly recommend.

Fabric of Civilization How Textiles Made the World

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