3 - England and Virginia

Summary

Between the late sixteenth and late seventeenth centuries, England’s dramatic enlargement in commerce, manufacturing, and territory encouraged this peripheral north-western European power to view it as not only desirable but practicable to secure to itself a silk industry and to supply itself with homegrown silk. This chapter considers firstly the increasing familiarity with silk within the British Isles, and the motivations and incentives that followed for producing silk domestically – paying close attention to the experimentation and measures introduced under James I, who offered particular patronage to sericulture. While novel initiatives and flagship projects brought some attention and investment, low temperatures and issues with expertise compromised production in England. The trials did constitute a breakthrough in understanding however, and stimulated extensive projection in new colonies under the auspices of the Virginia Company in North America. The goal of silk production prompted Virginians to introduce international experts, new buildings and literature, and new policy initiatives – albeit in the face of the dramatic and all-consuming rise of tobacco culture. The final part of the chapter highlights how a second wave of Virginian experimentation in the 1650s and 1660s brought more focus to women’s roles and embedded sericulture within economic and scientific ideas about English colonialism.