The Role of Rural Domestic Industry in Bohemia in the Eighteenth Century.

This article discusses the role of rural domestic industry in Bohemia, Czech Republic in the eighteenth century. Historical research in many countries has generally emphasized the importance of domestic industry and of the putting-out system--a system whose beginnings can be discerned as early as the fourteenth century. For instance in Bohemia that in 1600 there were in the town of Frydlant 59 looms, but in the rural area of its domain in 1601 the number was 199. In Liberec in 1601 the town numbered 27 looms, the rural domain 78, rising to 184 by 1618. Such towns were not exceptional. In addition it should be emphasized that linen production in Bohemia always relied on a division of labor between village spinners and urban weavers. As early as the second half of the sixteenth century, Bohemian linen was sold to the great German merchant houses at Nuremberg and other cities. And fairly soon Dutchmen and Englishmen joined in. This development lasted throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact domestic industry and the putting-out system played the most important part in the production of industrial goods in eighteenth-century Bohemia, especially in the production of linen, less so in wool, cotton, and glass. This is certainly due to the very high quality of Bohemian flax, which for centuries had been processed within the country.