The early mechanisation was not of cotton, but of silk and wool. Cotton only looks so important in retrospect. You see huge silk-twisting factories in Piedmont in the 17thC already, with the methods then stolen and brought to the Netherlands in the 1680s, and to England by the 1710s.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that textile mechanisation takes many forms. It’s not just about spinning, but about carding, weaving, and more—e.g. stocking knitting was mechanised in the 1590s.
Now, looking at cotton specifically, textile historian John Styles points out that early spinning machines required cotton varieties with a longer staple, as characterised by the New World varieties (initially that from the Caribbean and Brazil, before the US South became a major source after 1800). Old World varieties from the Levant were of a shorter staple. What this means, however, is that cotton spinning mechanisation happened first with the more expensive cotton variety, not the cheaper one. Indeed, the 1760s-70s in general were when raw cotton prices were especially high.
References, and for further reading:
John Styles, ‘Re-Fashioning Industrial Revolution. Fibres, Fashion and Technical Innovation in British Cotton Textiles, 1600-1780’, in La Moda Come Motore Economico: Innovazione Di Processo e Prodotto, Nuove Strategie Commerciali, Comportamento Dei Consumatori / Fashion as an Economic Engine: Process and Product Innovation, Commercial Strategies, Consumer Behavior, ed. Giampiero Nigro, 1st ed. (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2022), 45–71.
John Styles, ‘Fashion, Textiles and the Origins of Industrial Revolution’, East Asian Journal of British History 5 (31 March 2016): 161–90.
John Styles, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning’, Textile History 0, no. 0 (15 January 2021): 1–42.
John Styles, ‘Fibres, Fashion and Marketing: Textile Innovation in Early Modern Europe’, in Cotton in Context: Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World (1500-1900), ed. Kim Siebenhüner, John Jordan, and Gabi Schopf (Wien, Köln und Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 35–60.
Overall, the answer is no.
The early mechanisation was not of cotton, but of silk and wool. Cotton only looks so important in retrospect. You see huge silk-twisting factories in Piedmont in the 17thC already, with the methods then stolen and brought to the Netherlands in the 1680s, and to England by the 1710s.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that textile mechanisation takes many forms. It’s not just about spinning, but about carding, weaving, and more—e.g. stocking knitting was mechanised in the 1590s.
Now, looking at cotton specifically, textile historian John Styles points out that early spinning machines required cotton varieties with a longer staple, as characterised by the New World varieties (initially that from the Caribbean and Brazil, before the US South became a major source after 1800). Old World varieties from the Levant were of a shorter staple. What this means, however, is that cotton spinning mechanisation happened first with the more expensive cotton variety, not the cheaper one. Indeed, the 1760s-70s in general were when raw cotton prices were especially high.
References, and for further reading:
John Styles, ‘Re-Fashioning Industrial Revolution. Fibres, Fashion and Technical Innovation in British Cotton Textiles, 1600-1780’, in La Moda Come Motore Economico: Innovazione Di Processo e Prodotto, Nuove Strategie Commerciali, Comportamento Dei Consumatori / Fashion as an Economic Engine: Process and Product Innovation, Commercial Strategies, Consumer Behavior, ed. Giampiero Nigro, 1st ed. (Florence: Firenze University Press, 2022), 45–71.
John Styles, ‘Fashion, Textiles and the Origins of Industrial Revolution’, East Asian Journal of British History 5 (31 March 2016): 161–90.
John Styles, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning’, Textile History 0, no. 0 (15 January 2021): 1–42.
John Styles, ‘Fibres, Fashion and Marketing: Textile Innovation in Early Modern Europe’, in Cotton in Context: Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World (1500-1900), ed. Kim Siebenhüner, John Jordan, and Gabi Schopf (Wien, Köln und Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2019), 35–60.