https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/06/wales-slavery-complicit-charlotte-hammond-cardiff/Wales must acknowledge its complicity in “colonial exploitation” because the nation’s wool was used in garments worn by slaves, a historian has said.
Dr Charlotte Hammond, a Cardiff University academic, recounts in a new book how the wool, known as “Welsh plains”, was both used as a commodity to trade for slaves and as the material for enslaved peoples’ clothing.
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The “Welsh plains” wool was uncomfortably coarse, and was distributed to slaves to fashion as they wanted, rather than being given ready to wear clothes.
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the term ‘Negro Cloth’ appears frequently in colonial archives to refer to the woollens used to clothe enslaved people.”
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“We have followed the cloth’s colonial connections to the Caribbean and southern states of the US, where Welsh plains was used to clothe enslaved field workers who toiled on the plantations.”
I never liked wearing wool. Besides being fundamentally a Turanian material, it is highly insulating and thus unsuitable for warmer habitats. It is not a coincidence that wool production economically facilitated the Renaissance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wool#HistoryIn medieval times, as trade connections expanded, the Champagne fairs revolved around the production of wool cloth in small centers such as Provins. The network developed by the annual fairs meant the woolens of Provins might find their way to Naples, Sicily, Cyprus, Majorca, Spain, and even Constantinople.[21] The wool trade developed into serious business, a generator of capital.[22] In the 13th century, the wool trade became the economic engine of the Low Countries and central Italy. By the end of the 14th century, Italy predominated.[21]
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The value of exports of English raw wool were rivaled only by the 15th-century sheepwalks of Castile and were a significant source of income to the English crown, which in 1275 had imposed an export tax on wool called the "Great Custom". The importance of wool to the English economy can be seen in the fact that since the 14th century, the presiding officer of the House of Lords has sat on the "Woolsack", a chair stuffed with wool.
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Before the flowering of the Renaissance, the Medici and other great banking houses of Florence had built their wealth and banking system on their textile industry based on wool, overseen by the Arte della Lana, the wool guild: wool textile interests guided Florentine policies. Francesco Datini, the "merchant of Prato", established in 1383 an Arte della Lana for that small Tuscan city. The sheepwalks of Castile were controlled by the Mesta union of sheep owners. They shaped the landscape and the fortunes of the meseta that lies in the heart of the Iberian peninsula; in the 16th century, a unified Spain allowed export of Merino lambs only with royal permission. The German wool market – based on sheep of Spanish origin – did not overtake British wool until comparatively late. Later, the Industrial Revolution introduced mass production technology into wool and wool cloth manufacturing. Australia's colonial economy was based on sheep raising, and the Australian wool trade eventually overtook that of the Germans by 1845, furnishing wool for Bradford, which developed as the heart of industrialized woolens production.
(see also:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/issues/academic-decolonization/msg13234/#msg13234 )
and with it, the colonial era itself:
https://www.raisingsheep.net/history-of-woolSheep herding was a booming success in medieval England and a highly sought after career. Demand for wool was monstrous. Because of this, many governments placed a heavy tax on wool imports and exports to support their own agendas. This funded military ventures and expansion efforts.
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Bringing Wool to Other Parts of the World
In the 1700s, European tradesmen began to take their sheep and wool products to other parts of the world. It was around this time that sheep’s wool made it to both South Africa and Australia.
In fact, the wool industry was so lucrative during this period wool import and export taxes funded Christopher Columbus’ journey to the Americas. Columbus even brought sheep with him on his multiple journeys, and introduced them to this new land.
The worst victims of the wool industry are of course the sheep themselves. Wild sheep did not grow such copious quantities of wool; woolly sheep are the product of selective breeding for wool growth. Woolly sheep should never have existed; those left unshorn are prone to overheating inside their own wool:
while those who are sheared are subject to the whims of the shearers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_shearing#Animal_welfareAnimal welfare organizations have raised concerns about the abuse of sheep during shearing, and have advocated against the selling and buying of wool products.[16] Sheep shearers are paid by the number of sheep shorn, not by the hour, and there are no requirements for formal training or accreditation.[17] Because of this it is alleged that speed is prioritised over precision and care of the animal.
In 2013, an anonymous shearer reported instances of animal abuse by workers, an allegation to which an Australian Worker's Union representative added that he had witnessed "shearers gouge eyes and break sheep jaws."[18]
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video footage that PETA said was taken in more than a dozen shearing sheds in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The Guardian reported that the video showed, "sheep being roughly handled, punched in the face and stamped upon. One sheep was beaten with a hammer while another was shown having a deep cut crudely sewn up."[19]
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More recent footage and images of Australian workers abusing sheep have been released by anonymous sources
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Sheep shearing and wool handling competitions are held regularly in parts of the world, particularly Ireland, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.[25] As sheep shearing is an arduous task, speed shearers, for all types of equipment and sheep, are usually very fit and well trained. In Wales a sheep shearing contest is one of the events of the Royal Welsh Show, the country's premier agricultural show held near Builth Wells.
The world's largest sheep shearing and wool handling contest, the Golden Shears, is held in the Wairarapa district, New Zealand.[26]
The shearing World Championships are hosted by different countries every 2–3 years and eight countries have hosted the event. The first World Championships were held at the Bath & West showground, England, in 1977, and the first Machine-Shearing winner was Roger Cox from New Zealand. Other countries that have hosted the sheep shearing World Championships have been New Zealand (3 times), England (3 times), Australia (2 times), Wales, Ireland, Scotland, South Africa & Norway. Out of 13 World Championships, New Zealand have won the team Machine contest 10 times, and famous New Zealand sheep-shearer David Fagan has been World Champion a record 5 times.[27]
In October, 2008 the event was hosted in Norway. It was the first time ever that the event was hosted by a non-English speaking country. The newly crowned World Machine Shearing champion is Paul Avery from New Zealand. New Zealand also won the team event, and the traditional blade-shears World Champion is Ziewilelle Hans from South Africa.
Superior people wear Aryan cloths:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton#HistoryThe earliest evidence of the use of cotton in the Old World, dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh, at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India, today in Balochistan Pakistan.[9][10][11] Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, and cotton may have been an important export from it.[12]
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Cotton bolls discovered in a cave near Tehuacán, Mexico, have been dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged.[13] More securely dated is the domestication of Gossypium hirsutum in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC.[14] During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. What they did not use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on the scale of ~116 million pounds annually.[15]
In Peru, cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense has been dated, from a find in Ancon, to c. 4200 BC,[16] and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico, Moche, and Nazca.
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According to the Columbia Encyclopedia:[17]
Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. It clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries.
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In Iran (Persia), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC)
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Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced.[19]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#HistoryHemp use archaeologically dates back to the Neolithic Age in China, with hemp fiber imprints found on Yangshao culture pottery dating from the 5th millennium BC.[128][132] The Chinese later used hemp to make clothes, shoes, ropes, and an early form of paper.[128]
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In Japan, hemp was historically used as paper and a fiber crop. There is archaeological evidence cannabis was used for clothing and the seeds were eaten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen#Historyin ancient Mesopotamia, flax was domesticated and linen was produced.[14] It was used mainly by the wealthier class of the society, including priests.[15] The Sumerian poem of the courtship of Inanna mentions flax and linen.[16]
In ancient Egypt, linen was used for mummification and for burial shrouds. It was also worn as clothing on a daily basis; white linen was worn because of the extreme heat.[citation needed] For example, the Tarkhan dress, considered to be among the oldest woven garments in the world and dated to between 3482 and 3102 BC, is made of linen.[17] Plutarch wrote that the priests of Isis also wore linen because of its purity.[18][19]