Cotton has been an essential raw material for millennia, cotton cloth being among the oldest known textiles deriving from a vegetable fibre and still a crucial resource today. The various species of the cotton plant (genus Gossypium) need a warm climate for growth and the earliest evidence of cotton cultivation originates with the ancient civilisations of the Middle and Far East and South America. Additionally, damp, humid conditions are ideal for the processing of the raw cotton and its manufacture into yarn; hence by 4,500 BC cotton fabric was being produced in coastal Mexico and by c.3000 BC in the Indus River Valley, Pakistan, while simultaneously the inhabitants of Egypt’s Nile valley also wore cotton clothing. Although much still remains unknown about the complex domestication of raw cotton and its early conversion into fabric, it seems that diverse communities invented the same kinds of tools for the purpose, including combs, bows, hand spindles and primitive weaving looms.

Fine cotton garments were highly prized, luxury items that conferred status on the wearer, also being valuable trade goods throughout the pre-Christian Mediterranean and eastern world: for instance, by the fifth century BC the social elite of Ancient Greece were wearing imported Indian cotton garments deemed both beautiful and comfortable. However not until the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily (AD 711–718) were early methods of cotton production introduced into Europe. Initially rudimentary hand-held devices called gins were used to separate the cotton fibres from the seed-pods or ‘bolls’ of the cotton plant, improved dual-roller gins advancing this process in the Middle Ages. Knowledge of cotton weaving spread to Italy and other areas of Europe from the 12th century, when Sicily was conquered by the Normans. The spinning wheel first arrived in Europe c.1350 and this accelerated the spinning of cotton yarn.

A century or so later, the growth of European imperial ambitions and Spanish, Portuguese and English voyages of discovery began to open up global sea trade and brought maritime adventurers into close contact with peoples who habitually wore cotton clothes. In all probability by c.1500 cotton was known throughout the world and in metropolitan Europe cotton cloth was becoming highly coveted. However, in the West wool, linen and silk were all well-established textiles, manufactured and traded along traditional lines, whereas initially the commercialisation of cotton proved difficult. But a new age was dawning and, aided by the activities of East India trading companies, the role and importance of cotton would become transformed in Early Modern Europe.