Belon, who was in Egypt about thirty years before Alpini, makes no mention of cotton growing there; but says that he found it in Arabia, at the north of the Arabian Gulf, near Mount Sinai.
It would appear, therefore, that up to the beginning of the seventeenth century the Egyptians were importers, not cultivators, of cotton.
From a passage in the comedy ‘Pausimachus’ of Cecilius Statius (who died B.C. 169), quoted by Mr. Yates in the work already referred to, the Greeks seem to have been acquainted with muslins and calicoes brought from India 200 years before Christ; and about a century later the Romans adopted the Oriental custom of using cotton-cloth as a protection from the sun’s rays. Ornamental coverings for tents were made from it, and awnings of striped and coloured calico were spread over the theatres, and gave welcome shade to the spectators. It was also used for sail-cloth. Cotton fabrics are frequently mentioned by the poets of the Augustan age, and by writers of a later date; but the finer qualities are almost always referred to in a manner which indicates that by the Greeks and Romans they were regarded rather as an expensive and curious production than as an article of common use. Their dress was almost entirely woollen, which, as they frequently used the bath, was always comfortable; and, for cooler wear, as Mr. Yates truly observes, “there appears no reason why cotton fabrics should have been used in preference to linen. The latter is more cleanly, more durable, and much less liable to take fire; and amongst the ancients it must have been much the cheaper of the two.” In Rome and Athens the finest woven goods were extravagantly dear, for the body of the people were practically excluded from manufacturing work. This was principally carried on by slaves for the benefit of their masters, for all the great men had large establishments of slaves who understood the art of manufacturing most of the articles necessary for ordinary use. The importation of cotton and piece-goods into ancient Greece and Rome was therefore comparatively inconsiderable.
With the fall of the Roman Empire, into which Greece had previously been absorbed, art and science in Europe sank into a death-like trance which lasted for many centuries. We will therefore trace the progress of the Indian cotton trade in other directions during the long period that elapsed before science and art revived.
As India carried on a very important manufacture of cotton for home consumption, as well as for her large exports, it might be supposed that China would have been led to participate in the advantages offered by it. But, as in Egypt flax had been for many ages the raw material principally used for the clothing of the population, so in China fabrics woven from the web of the silkworm were, from the earliest times, used for the dress of all classes of the people. By authorities of high repute in China we are informed that Si-Hing, wife of the Emperor Hoang-Ti, began to breed silkworms about 2,600 years before Christ, and that the mulberry tree was cultivated to supply them with food four hundred years afterwards.
India was the country of cotton; Egypt, of flax; China, of silk; and in the two latter countries (especially in the case of the exclusive Chinese) vested interests for a long time barred the way against the adoption of the new foreign material. Cotton vestments and robes of honour were occasionally presented to the Chinese emperors by foreign ambassadors, and were highly appreciated and admired. The Emperor Ou-Ti, whose reign commenced B.C. 502, had one of these robes; but it was not till fifteen hundred years later that cotton began to be cultivated in China for manufacturing purposes. Towards the end of the seventh century the herbaceous species was grown in the gardens of Pekin, but only for the sake of its flowers. When the country was conquered by the Mongolian Tartars, A.D. 1280, the emperors of that dynasty took all possible pains to extend the culture of cotton, and imposed an annual tribute of it on several provinces. The cultivators, merchants, weavers, and wearers of silk (which included the whole nation) regarded this as a dangerous innovation seriously affecting their rights and habits, and zealously tried to maintain the established usages of the people. Eventually, however, their prejudices were overcome, and at present nine persons out of ten in China are clad in cotton raiment.
Returning to the dark ages of Europe, and the rise of the Mahometan power there, we find that by the end of the seventh century the cultivation and manufacture of cotton in Arabia and Syria had become an important industry, and had also crept along the northern coast of Africa. When, therefore, the Saracens and Moors invaded Spain and wrested it from the Goths (A.D. 712) they brought with them a knowledge of the plant and its uses. Being well skilled in agriculture, they immediately introduced in the conquered territory the cultivation of cotton, sugar, rice, and the mulberry—the latter being in favour for the use of its leaves as food for the silkworm. Looms were put to work in almost every town, and the growth and weaving of cotton were carried on with great and increasing success until the fifteenth century. Barcelona was celebrated for its cotton sail-cloth, of which it supplied a great quantity to ship-owners, and stout cotton stuffs like fustian were also qualities for which the Spanish looms were famous. Cotton paper, too, seems to have been first made by the Spanish Arabs, although about the same time it was substituted for papyrus in Egypt. A paper was likewise manufactured in Spain from linen rags which was much admired by the literary men of the time. But the religious antipathy which existed between the Moors and Christians prevented the spread of these and other Oriental arts; so that when the Moorish domination in Spain was crushed by the conquest of Grenada, in 1492, the manufactures which the Moors had introduced and fostered relapsed into barbarous neglect. The cotton plant is still found growing wild in some parts of the Peninsula. Under the influence of the Moors cotton was cultivated in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Malta, but upon their expulsion from Europe its growth was transferred to the African shores of the Mediterranean.
During the sway of the Mahometans the passage of Indian commodities to North-Western and Central Europe was so effectually barred by them that the trade dwindled, and the demand for the products of the East almost ceased. When the route through Egypt was closed, the Persians, who by that time had learned the advantages of commercial intercourse with other nations, seized the opportunity of diverting the traffic of the Persian Gulf by the Euphrates and Tigris to Bagdad, and thence across the Desert of Palmyra to the Mediterranean ports. But as Constantinople was also in the hands of the Caliphs, the roads to Europe were long and difficult. The greater part of the goods from India had, as I have mentioned ([p. 58]), to be carried by land on the backs of camels with the great caravans which, from time immemorial, have been the chief means of commercial intercourse between the nations of Eastern, Central, and Northern Asia, and the countries to the south and west of them.
Besides the two great caravans of pilgrims and merchants which, annually starting from Cairo and Damascus, met at Mecca, exchanged their merchandize there, and disseminated it on their return in every country they passed through, there were others consisting entirely of merchants whose sole object was commerce. These at stated seasons set out from different parts of Persia by ancient routes, on journeys of enormous length—those for the East visited India, and even the furthest extremities of China. Their average rate of travel was eighteen miles per day; and as the time of their departure and their route were both known, they were met by the people of all the countries through which they passed, for the purpose of sale, purchase, or barter. Hence the establishment, as commercial gathering-places, of the great fairs, of which that still held annually at Nijni Novgorod is a well-known example. The value of the trade thus carried on was far beyond the conception of any one who has not given especial attention to the subject. That between Russia and China, which has only been discontinued within the last few years, has been very important. In the time of Peter the Great, though the capitals of the two empires were six thousand three hundred and seventy-eight miles apart, and the route lay for more than four hundred miles through an uninhabited desert, caravans travelled regularly from one to the other. Tedious as this mode of conveyance appears, it sufficed for the traffic in Eastern produce at a period when the whole of Europe had but little time or taste for the refinements of life, and but little means of purchasing them. Nations were at that time frequently at war, the feudal barons kept their vassals under arms, a soldier’s career was the only means of acquiring distinction, and luxuries obtained by commerce were looked upon as effeminate and degrading.
The arts and sciences first revived in Italy. The republics of Venice and Genoa turned their attention to commerce, and, in the year 1204, the Venetians, under Dandolo, and assisted by the soldiers of the fourth crusade, took the city of Constantinople from the Greeks, and, for a time, had the advantage of carrying on the Indian trade. They only held it, however, for fifty-seven years; for, in 1261, the Greeks, under Michael Palæologus, and aided by the Genoese, recovered possession of the city, and Genoa acquired the privileges which Venice, for a short time, had enjoyed. The Venetians then, setting aside their religious scruples, made a treaty with the Mahometans, and obtained the produce of India through Egypt.