Manufacturing Crisis: Making Silk Strategic (1900-1937)
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Abstract:
By the early twentieth century, silk production in China largely persisted as a low-tech, often sideline activity undertaken by rural peasants. Nevertheless, silk retained significant cultural status as a reified symbol of luxury. Within the broader contexts of global capitalism, imperialist expansion, and the conceptualization of “commercial warfare,” cotton and wool textile production assumed heightened strategic importance, functioning as vehicles for resistance to imperialism, the enhancement of fiscal capacity, and national modernization. Moreover, these fabrics became increasingly important symbols of patriotic modernity, putting silk’s position as the default elite fabric at risk. To counter this, silk promoters, often through patriotic products associations, attempted to imbue their goods with simultaneous notions of tradition and modernity. Firms and promoters also portrayed silk as a patriotic weapon against imperialism. Ironically, silk itself was primarily an export good, with its domestic consumption facing little competition from imports. In other words, silk was one of the few Chinese goods that benefited from integration into global markets. Silk’s relative success and promotion illustrate the variegated ways in which patriotic consumption operated within the larger context of economic imperialism and demonstrate how national crisis itself became an object of consumption.
By the early twentieth century, silk production in China largely persisted as a low-tech, often sideline activity undertaken by rural peasants. Nevertheless, silk retained significant cultural status as a reified symbol of luxury. Within the broader contexts of global capitalism, imperialist expansion, and the conceptualization of “commercial warfare,” cotton and wool textile production assumed heightened strategic importance, functioning as vehicles for resistance to imperialism, the enhancement of fiscal capacity, and national modernization. Moreover, these fabrics became increasingly important symbols of patriotic modernity, putting silk’s position as the default elite fabric at risk. To counter this, silk promoters, often through patriotic products associations, attempted to imbue their goods with simultaneous notions of tradition and modernity. Firms and promoters also portrayed silk as a patriotic weapon against imperialism. Ironically, silk itself was primarily an export good, with its domestic consumption facing little competition from imports. In other words, silk was one of the few Chinese goods that benefited from integration into global markets. Silk’s relative success and promotion illustrate the variegated ways in which patriotic consumption operated within the larger context of economic imperialism and demonstrate how national crisis itself became an object of consumption.