In 1808, the British Ministry of Agriculture declared “if the naturalisation of Kashmir goats succeeds, it would be more advantageous for our producers than the conquest of the Golden Fleece”. Why so advantageous?

Because the weavers of Norwich, Edinburgh and Paisley were for years committed to imitate the shawls brought home by the military and civil employees of the “Indian Oriental Company” to give to their loved ones.

Shawls with the design of palm shoots produced in northern India were much sought after by the continental fashion.

The British imitations were perfect, but the softness of the Indian shawls remained impossible to reproduce. “Such superiority, which must be acknowledged by an objective examiner”, as William Moorcroft, a young veterinary surgeon, was to write, “derives from the extreme softness of goat’s hair…”. The British textile industry needed the fine wool of Kashmir. In 1812, Moorcroft obtained permission from the “Indian Oriental Company” to lead an expedition to Tibet. On the return trip their load was 50 goats. The herd was split up however and the ship on which the females travelled was shipwrecked. Only a few animals, the worse for wear, arrived in Britain. Only four of them survived for a few months, at Blaire in Scotland, in the possession of the Duke of Atholl.

Although the naturalisation of Kashmir goats proved to be a failure, the experiment was repeated four years later.

This time it was the turn of the French, who in the meantime had begun to dominate the European shawl market.
Guillame Ternaux, tired of the difficulty of finding primary materials across Russia, financed an expedition to the Orient.
However, of the 1289 animals bought from the Kirghisi only 400 survived, and in a temperate climate such as that of the French, they did not produce enough fleece. In the end they were crossbred with other breeds of goat!

The fashion for cashmere shawls, which had given life to a roaring industry in Britain and France, was abandoned towards the end of the century. However the fascination with the cashmere fibre did not disappear.
On the contrary, it returned with full force at the beginning of the twenties, and this time the true cashmere (the fibre) was no longer linked quite so strongly with the cashmere design. The separation had occurred.

In 1980, demand was growing and supply diminishing. The British had wisely thought of developing production in other parts of the world. An important European producer, at the time a giant in the sector, bought 1,250 hectares of land in New Wales, Australia, and installed a pilot stock farm. The example was soon copied in New Zealand and Scotland. The outlook for the breeders was rosy. They planned for 14 million Australian cashmere goats, a yearly production of 3000 tons and a market that was no longer dependent on supplies from Asia. Ten years later, there had been a significant turn for the worse. Everything was scaled down and production had stabilised at around 150 tons of greasy cashmere, the raw material of the fleece.

This compared with an estimated 3000 tons and what was worse was that the fibre’s quality was nothing compared with that of the precious Asiatic cashmere.

The Australian climate and rich pastures did not allow the goats to supply the desired quality of “duvet”. Expansion was made even harder for the Australian breeders due to the fact that the cashmere was not collected using the classic Chinese system of combing. Quite the opposite, it was and still is collected by means of shearing.

The resulting mixture of fibrous mass consists of 80 to 85% coarse fibres, whereas the Chinese cashmere varies between 30 and 50%, which translates as an inferior return and is therefore more costly for the farmers.
Research into the adaptability of cashmere goats is now conducted everywhere, even in Italy. At the beginning of the nineties, an experiment of this type was undertaken in Valtellina, with the collaboration of the Italian Centre of Research (CNR).

There are also cashmere goat farms in Texas and Wyoming, but the fibre obtained by the breeders is, by their own admission, of a quality notably inferior to that obtained by the Asiatic countries. In the specific case of the American breeders, they are able to obtain a cashmere fibre with a length that varies between 22 and 28 mm, and with a fineness that at best is not less than 19 micron.

It is important to clarify that while all breeds of goat possess the “duvet” fleece, and theoretically all could produce the desired fibre, unfortunately results differ greatly. The return obtained and consequently the cost of transformation – in addition to the poor quality of the fibre gained - do not allow herds to be exploited effectively outside of the Asiatic countries. Many experiments have been and are still being carried out, but the cashmere fibre can not be obtained in Europe or even the United States, as the pastures are too rich and abundant and the climate too mild - hence a poor quality fibre. In the native countries, however, vegetation is scarce, pastures are poor, the temperature harsh and, in these conditions, we still find the best fibre in the world.

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