Marilyn Cohen, ed., The Warp of Ulster's Past: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Irish Linen Industry, 1700–1920. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. 282 pp. $45.00 cloth.

Abstract

This is a useful and interesting collection of essays with an ambitious goal. By focusing on a single, but centrally important industry, the aim is to explore interdisciplinary approaches to Irish history more generally. Linen was indeed central to the economy and society of Ulster for two centuries. Developments in the industry—the spread of rural and urban domestic production, the growth of international trade, the mechanization of spinning and the rise of the factory—were conditioned by and had major impact upon farming, the decline of subsistence, the rise of market culture, household structure and family life, demography, and gender relations. Study of the industry thus creates the opportunity to break down the boundaries between historical, anthropological, economic, and sociological approaches, and Cohen's introduction emphasizes that contributors have all “contextualised their individual analyses within broader theoretical and comparative frameworks.”