PhD candidate Different pathways towards industrialized societies: textile production in the US and Japan, 1750-1990 (1.0 FTE)

The Department of History and Art History seeks to appoint a PhD candidate for the project "Race to the bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of global cotton manufacturing, ca. 1750-1990", funded by means of an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded to Prof. dr. Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk. 

The PhD candidate will be working on the following subproject:

PhD project 2: Different pathways towards industrialized societies: textile production in the US and Japan, 1750-1990

The US and Japan form an interesting comparison between countries that experienced more capital-intensive and more labour-intensive industrialization of textiles, respectively. Both developed an internationally competitive textile industry during the 19th century, but the routes taken were strikingly different. Whereas in both countries (young) women undoubtedly had less influence on their own fate than most men, the position of women in American households was most probably favourable compared to that of women in Japanese households. Apart from differences in the allocation of household labour, it appears that (federal) state industrial policies have been important in developments and relocations of the textile industries in both the US and Japan. Moreover, several developments in the world market induced institutional and political changes, such as the US Civil War - and its resultant "cotton famine" - in the 1860s, and the disintegration of the British Commonwealth market. This project aims to systematically compare the role of each of these factors on the resilience and decline of US and Japanese textile production, and their respective weight in both contexts.