Fabric as a finished product is somewhat different from the other products (grain and iron) we’ve discussed in this series so far. Bulk grain is a commodity – which means that one kilogram of grain is pretty much like the next. When grain gets traded in bulk it is because of differences in supply, not generally because grain in one region or other is particularly tasty. Consequently, you only get bulk grain trading when one area is producing a surplus and another not producing enough. The same is more loosely true of iron; Iron wasn’t a perfect commodity in the pre-modern world since some ores produced better quality metal than others and some trade in high quality ores or metal (like wootz) happened. But for every-day use, local iron was generally good enough and typically available. Iron could be – and often was – treated as a commodity too.

Fabric is not like that. While the lower classes will often have had to make do with whatever sorts of cloth is produced cheaply and locally, for people who could afford to have some choices the very nature of textile production produces lots of regional differences which incentivized trade. Almost everything about textile production is subject to regional variations:

• What fibers are being used. Major wool and linen producing regions tended to be separate, with wool (and sheep) in colder climates and uplands while (as noted) flax tended to be grown in warmer river-valleys with rich alluvial soil. Meanwhile, the cotton-and-silk producing regions generally (with some notable exceptions, mind) did not overlap with the wool and linen producing regions.
• The nature of the local fibers. We’ll get to some specific examples in a moment but ancient and medieval writers were well aware that different growing conditions, breeds of sheep or flax, climate and so on produced fibers of subtly different qualities. Consequently, even with the exact same processes, cloth produced in one region might be different from cloth produced in another region. But the processes were almost never the same because …
• Local variation in production processes. Again, we’ll have some examples in a moment, but the variance here could be considerable. As we’ve seen, the various tasks in cloth production are all pretty involved and give a lot of room for skill and thus for location variations in methods and patterns. One might see different weaving patterns, different spinning techniques, different chemical treatments, different growing or shearing methods and so on producing fabrics of different qualities which might thus be ideal for different purposes.
• Dye methods and availability. And as we discussed last time, available dyestuffs (and the craft knowledge about how to use them) was also often very local, leading to certain colors or patterns of color being associated with different regions and creating a demand for those. While it was often possible to ship dyestuffs (although not all dyestuffs responded well to long-distance shipping), it was often more economical to shift dyed fabric.

Added on top of this, fabric is a great trade-good. It is relatively low bulk when wrapped around in a roll (a bolt of fabric might hold fabric anywhere from 35-91m long and 100-150cm wide. Standard English broadcloth was 24 yards x 1.75 yards; that’s a lot of fabric in both cases!) and could be very high value, especially for high quality or foreign fabrics (or fabrics dyed in rare or difficult colors). Moreover, fabric isn’t perishable, temperature sensitive (short of an actual fire) or particularly fragile, meaning that as long as it is kept reasonably dry it will keep over long distances and adverse conditions. And everyone needs it; fabrics are almost perfect stock trade goods.

Consequently, we have ample evidence to the trade of both raw fibers (that is, wool or flax rovings) and finished fabrics from some of the earliest periods of written records (spotting textile trade earlier than that is hard, since fabric is so rarely preserved in the archaeological record). Records from Presargonic Mesopotamia (c. 2400-2300) record wool trading both between Mesopotamian cities but wool being used as a trade good for merchants heading through the Persian Gulf, to Elam and appears to have been one of, if not the primary export good for Sumerian cities (W. Sallaberger in Breniquet and Michel, op. cit.). More evidence comes later, for instance, palace letters and records from the Old Babylonian Empire (1894-1595) reporting the commercialization of wool produced under the auspices of the palace or the temple (Mesopotamian economies being centralized in this way in what is sometimes termed a “redistribution economy” though this term and the model it implies is increasingly contested as it becomes clearer from our evidence that economic activity outside of the “palace economy” also existed) and being traded with other cities like Sippar (on this, note K. De Graef and C. Michel’s chapters in Breniquet and Michel, op. cit.).

Pliny the Elder, in detailing wool and linen producing regions provides some clues for the outline of the cloth trade in the Roman world. Pliny notes that the region between the Po and Ticino river (in Northern Italy) produced linen that was never bleached while linen from Faventia (modern Faenza) was always bleached and renowned for its whiteness (Pliny, NH 19.9). Linen from Spain around Tarragona was thought by Pliny to be exceptionally fine while linens from Zeola (modern Oiartzun, Spain) was particularly durable and good for making nets (Pliny, NH 19.10). Meanwhile Egyptian flax he notes is the least strong but the most fine and thus the most expensive (Pliny NH 19.14). Meanwhile on wool, Pliny notes that natural wool color varied by region; the best white wool he thought came from the Po River valley, the best black wool from the Alps, the best red wool from Asia Minor, the best brown wool from Canusium (in Apulia) and so on (Pliny, Natural History 8.188-191). He also notes different local manufacture processes producing different results, noting Gallic embroidery and felting (NH 8.192). And of course, being Pliny, he must rank them all, with wool from Tarentum and Canusium (Taranto and Canosa di Puglia) being the best, followed more generally by Italian wools and in third place wools from Miletus in Asia Minor (Pliny NH 8.190). Agreement was not quite universal, Columella gives the best wools as those from Miletus, Calabria, and Apulia, with Tarantine wool being the best, but demoting the rest of the Italian wools out of the list entirely (Col. De Re Rust. 7.2).

In medieval Europe, wool merchants were a common feature of economic activity in towns, with the Low Countries and Northern Italy in particular being hubs of trade in wool and other fabrics (Italian ports also being one of the major routes by which cottons and silks from India and China might find their way, via the Mediterranean, to European aristocrats). Wool produced in Britain (which was a major production center) would be shipped either as rovings or as undyed “broadcloths” (called “whites”) to the Low Countries for dyeing and sale abroad (though there was also quite a lot of cloth dyeing happening in Britain as well).

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part IVb: Cloth Money”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-04-09.