SILK MANUFACTURES (FE., Soierie, Industrie setifgre; GEL, Seidengewerbe).
According to the most reliable historic records, the Chinese were the first people to utilize the fine, lustrous, and beautiful fibre produced by the various kinds of silkworm (see Silk). The art of silk manufacturing appears to have arrived at considerable perfection 2750 years before the Christian era, as the empresses of China, at that early period, are stated to have busied themselves with their. maids in the industry. To one of these empresses, Si-ling-chi, the consort of the Emperor Hoang-ti, is attributed the discovery and invention of a method of reeling the cocoons. The industry continued under the protection and often under the personal superintendence of her suc cessors for many centuries subsequently. The beauty of the fabrics manufactured led iu process of time to the growth of an export trade, first with neighbouring nations, and afterwards with those more distant. In this way, silk and silken fabrics penetrated into India, Persia, and the intervening territories, to the borders of Europe. Thence, by the aid of the maritime nations at that time flourish ing in the Levant, they were distributed amongst all the ancient peoples who had risen to eminence in civilization at that early day. In the former case, the means by which this was effected were the caravans of merchants who travelled overland from one country to another.
Though the material at an early period thus became known in a manufactured and semi-manu factured form, its origin for centuries longer remained a secret. For a long time, it was conjectured to be a direct production of the vegetable kingdom, and is stated to be such by several ancient authors.
The substantial fabrics of silk that found their way to W. Asia from China were prizednot only as valuable products of the loom, but also as affording an excellent source of the raw material, being in many cases unravelled, in order that the threads thus obtained might be rewoven to form the light and semi-transparent articles that excited the censure and ridicule of the moralists and satirists of ancient Greece and Rome.
The story of the introduction into Europe of the silkworm, and the methods of manufacturing silk as practised by the Chinese, by two Nestorian monks daring the reign of the Emperor Justinian in 552 A.D., is too well known to need repetition. The emperor, with a keen eye to profit, kept the manufacture a monopoly in his own hands for a considerable time ; but it was impossible to maintain such a state of things. Sericieulture and the manufacture rapidly spread over the most suitable territories of the Roman empire, and flourished especially iu the Peloponessus. The new industry, though slow in its development, and for 600 years confined mostly to Greece, gradually gained upon that of China, and ultimately sufficed for the supply of tho European demand. The Arabs and Saracen princes, who had also become acquainted with the art in both its branches from the Persians, had introduced it into the kingdons of Northern Africa, Sicily, Spain, and Portugal, over all of which they held sway. The Crusades about this period led to considerable political changes, amongst which was the establishment of the Norman power in Sicily. It is to the ambition of Roger, the first Norman king of that country, that the world owes the dispersion of the silk manufacture of Greece, and its introduction into Sicily and Italy. After this king returned from his second crusade in 1146, he invaded Greece, and carried off the treasures of Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, taking captive a large number of weavers and other operatives connected with the silk industry, whom he compelled to settle in Palermo and Calabria, and to teach his people their methods of manufacture. The Crusades also greatly assisted to make silk known in all the countries from which the motley arrnies of adventurers had been gathered. Those who returned would not fail to convey to willing feminine ears full details of the art of producing the glossy and much prized robes, of which many would only bave heard vague reports. The manufacture bad not been long establishedin Italy before it was carried into France.