24 March 2008

'Jute and Dundee: The management of industrial decline'

The long decline of Dundee’s jute industry and the reasons for it will be examined in a major new research project at the University of Dundee.

The Leverhulme Trust has granted £128,000 in research funding to Professor Jim Tomlinson and Dr Carlo Morelli for their project `Jute and Dundee: The management of industrial decline’.

The jute industry was one of the cornerstones - alongside jam and journalism - of Dundee’s economic landscape through the Victorian age and into the 20th century, with the city at the centre of a worldwide trade.

The size of the jute industry ensured it had a unique impact on the history of Dundee and its population. Unfortunately the 20th century saw a long decline in the industry and the last mill in the city closed in 1998.

This project seeks to capture this uniqueness and at the same time relate jute's decline to the wider industrial changes taking place across the UK. Professor Tomlinson and Dr Morelli will examine the reasons for that decline, how it was managed and the impact it had on the local area.

"The term we will look at is really the whole of the 20th century - jute in Dundee peaked around 1908 and the last jute mill closed in 1998, so the decline of the industry really does cover the entire century," said Professor Tomlinson, Bonar Professor of Modern History and Head of Research in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the University.

"Jute is a pioneer of the decline of old local industry - others like shipbuilding and coal in other parts of Britain came later. Dundee was one of the most globalised cities in the world in the early 1900s, certainly more so than it is now. The city was at the hub of global trading in jute, importing from India and exporting around the world. That faded with the decline of the local jute industry as it faced a number of pressures."

"What we want to examine in some detail is the bigger economic picture of why the jute industry declined, particularly in relation to international competition and the changing market for jute products,"

"We will look at the response of the industry to these issues and what actions were taken both politically and technologically to try and stave off the decline of the industry."

Dr Morelli said the project would also look at the impact the disappearance of jute mills from Dundee had on a huge section of the city’s population - its women.

"Another focus of our study will be the impact on women’s lives. It is a highly unusual feature of the industry that the jute workforce was largely made up of women," said Dr Morelli, of the Department of Economic Studies at the University.

The research team is also looking to build an oral history looking both at previously gathered testimony and through speaking to people who were involved in the jute industry in Dundee.

Archive material around the country, including the substantial documentation relating to the local industry which is held within the University’s own archive, will also be drawn upon.

Notes to Editors

The Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust is one of the largest all subjects providers of research funding in the UK, distributing funds of some £40 million every year. For further information about all of the schemes that the Leverhulme Trust fund please visit their website at www.leverhulme.ac.uk.

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