Basic History

Like most fabric crafts, crochet is very old. It's also called haken, haekling, and virkning. Because it's so old, crochet history is very hard to trace. Finding where originated it is both contentious and hard. A lot of people trace it back to Europe in the 1800s. People also often misidentify other forms of fabric making crafts as crochet. There's a Dutch magazine describing shepeards making things with a hook and rough yarn in 1823. A lot of lacework was developed out of Ireland during the famine to help support families, and Irish crochet lacework became very popular in the USA, Canada, and Europe. A lot of stories about the origin of crochet are colonialist or badly researched, and finding an accurate tracing of it to it's very old roots is difficult. Keep researching and engaging with the history in a way that works for you.