Scottish, Irish and imperial connexions: parliament and the three kingdoms and the mechanization of the cotton pinning in eighteenth century Britain

This paper offers a new perspective on the emergence of machinery in the cotton spinning trade during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. It does so by examining the interplay between economic, political, and national interests within the early Hanoverian state. Changes in trading relationships between textile producers across the three kingdoms of England/Wales, Ireland, and Scotland created escalating supply-side problems, which, by the 1760s, would precipitate a quest for solutions based on new technologies.