What a lot of rubbish that quote is
Can you tell me which page in George Linton's "Modern Textile and Apparal Dictionary" gives that info. I have a copy of that large tome sitting on the shelf behind me.
First of all Napoleon, in France, could not stop Britain from importing anything from anywhere, except from France. He could ban exportation from France.
Silk production arrived in Europe from China during the mediaeval period, and although France was the leading European silk producer in the 17th and 18th centuries, silk was being produced in England from the early 1700s - a century before the Napoleonic wars - and many Huguenot refugees who fled France after 1685 were skilled silk weavers although the raw silk yarn would have been imported from China.
Secondly saying that until that time
all thread was made from silk is just wrong! Thread was made from home grown linen or wool, cotton imported from India and America (the American cotton was slave produced) as well as the luxury silk imported from China.
Britain led the industrial revolution, and the
dark satanic mills of northern England which spun threads/yarns from these fibres were mostly established in the late 18th century.
https://www.smith.edu/hsc/silk/papers/baird.htmlThe silk industry of the United Kingdom. Its origin and development.http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/arkwright_richard.shtmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution