A passage on economic history reads: "Historians have long debated whether the collapse of the region's textile guilds in the 1600s was caused primarily by foreign competition or by internal rigidity—guild rules so restrictive that innovation became nearly impossible from within. The archival record favors the latter explanation. Guild ledgers from the period show that foreign cloth imports actually declined in the two decades before the collapse, even as guild membership stagnated and apprenticeship rules grew more, not less, restrictive. Whatever pressure foreign competition applied, it was easing precisely when the guilds' troubles were deepening."