2 - The characteristics of the industry

Summary

The situation in the 1910s

On the eve of World War I the silk production was diffused all over Europe and Asia – in Spain (around Murcia), in southern France (the Cevennes and Provence), in nearly all the Italian peninsula (with some offshoots in the Austrian provinces near the border), in the Balkans (notably around Salonicco in Greece and Adrianople in Bulgaria), in Anatolia (around the city of Brussa), in the Lebanese mountains, in the Russian Caucasus, in Persia, in Turkestan, in India (Bengal and Kashmir) in Indochina, and – of course – in China and Japan. This list may seem impressive, but three countries, Italy, China and Japan accounted for as much as 85 per cent of world silk output. Moreover, within each of them, sericulture was concentrated in smaller areas – the regions around Shangai (Chekiang, Kiangsu) and Canton (Kwangtung and Kwangsu) in China, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto in Italy and the central prefectures of the island of Honshu (Gifu, Gumma, Nagano, Fukushima etc.) in Japan. In those areas, almost the whole rural population raised silkworms – but only in some districts of southern China did the proceedings provide most of the peasants’ income (up to 80 per cent in the Shuntak district). Elsewhere, the sale of cocoons (or of silk) accounted for a minor part of total earnings – between 20 and 45 per cent in central China according to which area, 25 per cent in Lebanon, 10 per cent in Lombardy (with peaks around 30 per cent for some households).