The uses of textile hemp go back first to China, where from the stem of hemp the fibre was used to make yarn and the woody part for paper. It is a very old material, used before silk and cotton. Hemp fabric is light but at the same time also very strong, so hemp was used for making ropes, but also for fishing nets, as it is resistant to salt water, and for sails.

From China, hemp first spread to Russia (ca. 600 B.C.) where it was mainly used for ropes, and from there it quickly reached all of Germany and expanded throughout central and northern Europe, including Greece, the Balkans, Italy, France and England.

Italian and European highpoint

The European peak in the commercial production of hemp was reached around 1400, mainly due to the development and expansion of merchant fleets. The naval sector required large quantities of hemp for the various parts of large sailing boats such as various types of ropes and cordage, sails, pendants, tow, fishing bags and nets, sailboat equipment and other indispensable tools. In fact, it is estimated that at least 30% of the total cost of a boat was hemp [2].

Italy, with its then Venetian Republics, quickly managed to distinguish itself from other European producers thanks to the better quality of the textile fibre that grew particularly well in Romagna. In fact, the peninsula's mild climate and particularly fertile soil between Bologna and Ferrara and the knowledge/skill of the farmers in preparing the land, both in terms of yield per hectare, which was much better than in other countries, and in terms of the quantity of water present (which was then needed in the phase following harvesting, i.e. for steeping the stalks) saw Italy become one of the most important countries in the production of textile hemp and the first supplier to the British Navy [3].

But also in the Piedmont area, particularly in the agricultural area of Carmagnola (which later specialised more in seed production) as well as in the Centre and South (especially in the area of Naples and Caserta) there are important cultivations and processing of hemp, including textiles, for both industrial and domestic use.

Canapa: un'economia importante e promettente

On the other hand, from an economic point of view, yarn production also saw a considerable increase in female employment, mostly young women and girls, as fibre processing was predominantly manual and required a great deal of patience and precision. Female labour also had lower costs than male labour [4].

Industrialisation 1900

Until the beginning of the 20th century, the manufacture of hemp was mainly manual, i.e. once the stems had been harvested, they were dried in the sun for a couple of days. These stems were then sorted according to length and soaked in water (the duration depended on the temperature of the air and water). As soon as the fibrous part began to detach from the stem, they were recovered and dried again, albeit for a considerably shorter period than the first step. Further steps, known as 'weaning and scutching' (p. 518), would then leave only the part of the fibre that was now ready for industrial processing, i.e. spinning, warping and weaving [5].

Although production was still not very mechanised, Italian production was very well organised and the yarns were of a much higher quality than other European producers. In fact, at the beginning of the 1900s, Italy was the second largest hemp-producing nation in the world, second only to Russia, but followed by Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Korea [6, p.15].

The importance of the sector for Italy was confirmed in 1873 with the creation of the Linificio e Canapificio nazionale, which recognised the importance of a manufacturing sector employing around 20,000 people, producing unbleached and bleached yarns and supplying the navy, army, railways, post office, tobacco and hospitals with around twenty factories mainly in northern Italy [7].

The climax was reached with industrialisation and the creation of the dehuller, patented in 1917 by George Schlichten, which made it possible to separate the fibre directly from the stems, thus considerably speeding up the production process [8].

Decorticator patented by Schlichten

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The other sectors in which hemp was used, such as paper production, also saw some fruitfulness/improvement in those years, but the two world wars and the Marihuana Tax, passed in 1937 in the United States, slowly banned the production of the entire hemp plant, causing us to lose this plant for several decades, and de facto also lose knowledge, mostly untranscribed, of hemp processing.

It was not until 1997 that the European Union began to approach hemp again, introducing various facilities to promote its sowing and processing.

Want to know more about Prohibition and the Marihuana Tax? You can learn more here.

Insights and references:

[2, 5] Storia dell'agricoltura italiana: Il medioevo e l'età moderna, secoli VI-XVIII, Accademia dei Georgofili a cura di Giuliano Pinto, Carlo Poni, Ugo Tucci, 2001-2002

[3, 6] Una fibra versatile. La canapa in Italia dal Medioevo al Novecento, Clueb, Bologna 2005

[4, 7] https://www.emilcanapa.it/la-canapa/la-canapa-industriale-in-italia/

[8] Canapicoltura: passato, presente e futuro, Sosio Capasso, 2001

Photo:

[F1] Mark Stebnicki, Pexels

[F2] Sailing on the Seas, Link

[F3] Decorticator patented by Schlichten

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