It is in the first half of the twelfth century that we get the first evidence of the production of cotton fabrics in the Christian countries of Europe. Edward Baines, who in his excellent and scholarly account[1] of the origins of the cotton industry dated its European beginnings from the reign of Abderahman the Great (A.D. 912-961) in Moorish Spain, and showed that it had become well established in Barcelona by the thirteenth century, could not find any trace of it in Italy before the beginning of the fourteenth century. Recent research[2] has, however, proved that by the middle of the twelfth century there already existed a flourishing export trade from Genoa to the Levant of the fustians of Northern Italy and Tuscany and of the light cottons (pignolato) of Piacenza; so that the fustians which are found on sale at the Champagne fairs[3] at that period were probably from Italy as well as from Spain. The frequent mention of cotton wool and yarn as articles of commerce makes it probable that fabrics containing cotton were produced in Flanders during the fourteenth century. At the same time a fustian manufacture began to grow up around Ulm and Augsburg, deriving its cotton supplies through Venice, which acquired a European reputation in the sixteenth century.[4] [Footnote 1: Baines, _History of Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 38-43.] [Footnote 2: A. Schaube, _Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Völker des Mittelmeergebiets_, pp. 159-160.] [Footnote 3: F. Bourquelot, _Etudes sur les foires de Champagne_, i. 273.] [Footnote 4: E. Nübling, _Ulms Baumwolleveberei im Mittelaltes_ in _Schmollers Forschunsen_, Bd. IX.] Of the great range of new social classes engaged in, or concerned with, the textile industries that were built up during the Middle Ages by the creative energy of free fellowship, it is impossible here to attempt any account. There were gilds of weavers which secured in the twelfth century chartered right of marketing and autonomy before the rise of municipal self-government[5]; gilds of importers and exporters of cloth formed amongst the wealthy class that administered the first forms of civic independence[6]; gilds of tailors or cloth-cutters (Gewand-schneider) that attempted to monopolise the right to retail trade[7]; gilds of small masters in the auxiliary crafts--of fullers, dyers and shearmen seeking to maintain an independent contact with the market[8]; and finally, gilds of wage-earning journeymen who never secured full recognition of their right to a separate organisation. The conflict between these class interests was a main factor in municipal politics during the fourteenth century and culminated not infrequently in revolution. [Footnote 5: Ashley, _Economic History_, vol. i., pt. i., ch. 3. Unwin, _Gilds and Companies of London_, pp. 42-46.] [Footnote 6: Unwin, _Industrial Organisation_, pp. 30-31; A. H. Johnson, _History of Drapers Company_, i. G. des Marez, _Organisation du Travail à Bruxelles_.]