Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to analyse the impact of globalization on the fashion industry; the Ministry's examples include local craftspeople displaced by mass-produced fabric. The museum holds one historical case: the Ottoman weavers facing Indian and then European cotton. It is not modern globalization, so your class adds the agreements, offshore factories and present-day markets. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- C3.3 analyse the impact of globalization on the fashion industry […]
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
Who was affected when the market changed?
Follow what came of cloth arriving from far away: who kept working, who stopped, and what disappeared with the guild. Compare it with a present-day case your class chooses.
Go deeper
Follow a weavers' town before the cheap cloth arrived and after it. The weavers of a town agreed the quantity and size of cloth among themselves, and the qadi certified it through the ahi baba. 2 A selected inspector checked output: cloth that exceeded the size or was faulty was torn and the weaver fined, and the torn cloth was shown in public and often given to the poor. 2 The weavers often worked to orders from the cloth merchants and became dependent on them, and could not sell their own cloth in the market, which the entry says caused frequent disputes. 2 From the seventeenth century cheap Indian cotton yarn and cloth flooded the Ottoman markets, and the weavers used the yarn and imitated Indian cloth. 2
Often misunderstood
It is easy to picture the craft ending on the day the cheaper cloth arrived. The record gives a longer course. In the second half of the eighteenth century European cottons imitating muslin entered. 2 The entry calls the European mechanisation of the 1830s a turning point, and says cheap imports in local markets hastened the collapse of the guilds by the 1850s. 2 The First World War disrupted weaving, and it revived briefly in the early Republic before machines ended it. 2
How do we know?
Everything here comes from one entry, the TDV entry on the cullah by Feridun Emecen. 2 The judgements are the entry's own: it calls the 1830s a turning point and says that cheap imports hastened the collapse of the guilds. 2 The record on the weaver notes that the entry gives no wages and names no individual weaver, 2 so it cannot say what a weaver earned before or after the change, or how any one family fared. It also says that the entry's bibliography was not read. 2
Think about it
The entry says that a selected inspector checked output and that faulty cloth was torn and the weaver fined, 2 and also that the weavers depended on the merchants and could not sell their own cloth in the market. 2 Give a reason from the entry: which counts for more in judging what the guild gave a weaver, the checking of cloth or the dependence on merchants, and what would the other side answer?
Into the museum
Try this
Read the record on the weaver, especially the parts on the guild and the decline. Write three sentences on what was in place before the cheap cloth arrived and what changed after.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Weaver (ha'ik / nassaj) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
The weavers' guild and its inspection. The weavers of a town agreed the quantity and size of cloth among themselves, and the qadi certified it through the ahi baba. A selected inspector checked output, and cloth that exceeded the size or was faulty was torn and the weaver fined. The weavers often worked to orders from the cloth merchants, and they could not sell their own cloth in the market. What did these arrangements protect?
In your own words: what does Weaver (ha'ik / nassaj) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Indian cotton, then European. From the seventeenth century cheap Indian cotton yarn and cloth flooded the Ottoman markets, and the weavers used the yarn and imitated Indian cloth. In the second half of the eighteenth century European cottons imitating muslin entered. The entry calls the European mechanisation of the 1830s a turning point, and says cheap imports hastened the collapse of the guilds by the 1850s. What happens to a craft when cheaper cloth reaches its market?
I can now