Historical documents and unearthed cotton fabrics prove that people of all ethnic groups in China's border areas planted and used cotton much earlier than in the Central Plains. In ancient times, due to the inconvenient transportation, the dominant natural economy and underdeveloped commodity production, the cotton planting and cotton textile technology developed in frontier areas went through a long process of spreading to the Central Plains. Until the Han Dynasty, cotton textiles in the Central Plains were relatively rare and precious. In the Song Dynasty, there were frequent exchanges between the frontier and the mainland, a large number of cotton textiles were imported into the Central Plains, cotton and cotton cloth were widely popular in the mainland, and cotton planting and cotton textile technology were gradually introduced. 1979, a piece of blue-gray cotton cloth dating back more than 3,200 years was found in the coffin of Wuyishan Rock Tomb in Chong 'an, Fujian (Figure 1). 1966, a complete brushed cotton blanket was unearthed from the Song Tomb in Lanxi, Zhejiang Province (Figure 2). These two unearthed cultural relics provide important clues for the study of cotton planting and the development of cotton textile industry in southeastern China.
According to the analysis of flora and historical data, it is generally believed that cotton spread from north to south to the Central Plains. South Road cotton first appeared in Hainan and Lancang River basin, and then spread to Fujian, Guangdong, Sichuan and other regions. North Road starts from the northwest, which is called "Western Regions" in ancient books. During the Song and Yuan Dynasties, cotton spread from the north and south to the vast areas of the Yangtze and Yellow River basins. By the13rd century, the cotton on the North Road had spread to the Weishui Valley in Shaanxi. At the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, the Kapok Lifting Department was set up to collect cotton products from the people on a large scale, with an annual output of 65,438+10,000. Although this system was abolished soon, cotton cloth was later regarded as the top of summer tax (cloth, silk, silk and cotton), which shows that cotton cloth has become one of the main textile materials. Cotton is a rising star in China's textile raw materials. Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, people have increasingly seen the superiority of cotton as a batting lining and textile raw material. "Agricultural Book" made a more comprehensive evaluation of this, saying that cotton "is more effortless than silkworm, and has certain effects. It can be said that bamboo can be used as a blanket to make up the cost of brown clothes. After the Yuan Dynasty, all the rulers tried their best to collect cotton cloth, publish books on cotton planting techniques and persuade people to grow cotton. By the Ming Dynasty, cotton had surpassed silk, hemp and wool to become the main textile raw material. Song said in "Heavenly Creations" that "cotton cloth is everywhere" and "there must be ten looms", which shows that cotton planting and cotton textile industry were all over the country at that time.
Before the Opium War, China's cotton and cotton cloth were not only self-sufficient, but also exported to Europe, America, Japan and Southeast Asia. American businessmen come to China to traffic goods, mainly homemade fabrics, which are not only sold to the United States, but also resold to Central and South America and even Western Europe. China homespun was widely sold in Britain. 1During the first 30 years of the 9th century, the average number of homespuns shipped from Guangzhou was over1000000, and the most one year (18 19) reached over 3.3 million, and it didn't come down until the early 1930s, when it reached183/kloc. After the Opium War, the imperialist countries began to dump a large number of machine-made cotton fabrics to China, which destroyed the handmade cotton textile industry in China, but at the same time prepared objective conditions for the emergence of modern cotton textile industry produced by large machines in China. After the preparation of 12 years, the "Shanghai Woven Layout" put into operation in 1889 was the first cotton textile factory in China, thus creating the development history of cotton textile industry in China.