Empire of cotton: a global history

Author:  Sven Beckert

Sven Beckert boldly proclaims "It was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world”. And this is no idle speculation from an ignorant cotton farmer. Sven Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard University and is a world-renowned expert on global history. Reading this book, I couldn’t help being impressed that one human being could possess and process the knowledge that is expounded in the 600+ pages in this book. Consequently, this is not an easy read and there are many places in the book where I felt like yelling “Sven, I get it. There’s no need to quote from several different history books. Can we just get on with the story?"

The story starts well before the US entered the cotton industry and it is countries like India and China that were the most advanced in growing, spinning and weaving cotton. In the early 18th century, Europe primarily had wool and flax clothing and these did not take to colorful dyes, so their clothes were drab. British colonization and some timely innovations in spinning and weaving, gave birth to the first wave of industrialization in Great Britain. The spinning jenny and the steam and water weaving machines transformed Britain into a textile powerhouse in the early nineteenth century.  The plentiful land in the US south along with the free slave labor, skyrocketed the US into the top echelon of cotton growers. By 1860 almost 60% of US exports were cotton. Needless to say, cotton was a huge fraction of the US economy; and it was slaves that really enabled all of this. According to Sven, this is one of the key reasons why it was so difficult for the US to abolish slavery.

Through all of this, Britain played the role of manufacturing by building mega factories that were staffed by mostly women and children. In some cases as much as half the workers were children who were co-erced by their parents to work to bring home some additional income. Sven points out how the history books have forgotten these workers and you hardly hear any of their stories.

The US Civil war in the 1860s dried up the cotton supply and Britain and the rest of Europe desperately tried to grow cotton in some of their colonies. None of these were too successful. We seem to have come a full circle now with almost 50% of the world’s cotton production coming from India and China again. Read this book for all the gory details.