Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

Abstract

Reviewed by: Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert Frank W. Garmon Jr. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Sven Beckert. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014, 615 pages, $35.00, Cloth. Sven Beckert brings together an impressive variety of sources and employs materials from archives on every continent to tell the story of the emergence and evolution of modern capitalism. Cotton is a commodity well suited to understanding these transformations, as it initiated important revolutions in both agriculture and manufacturing. Beckert demonstrates how quickly interrelated and dynamic the global market for cotton became, and suggests that the interconnectedness of world events long predates our current era of globalization. Compelling statistics litter the book's pages and easily convince the reader of cotton's central role in the development of the modern world. Above all the author seeks to explain the origins of modern inequality between the developed global North and the underdeveloped global South in what economic historians have termed the Great Divergence. Beckert works to answer why it was "that the part of the world that had the least to do with cotton—Europe—created and came to dominate the empire of cotton" (xiii-xiv). The answer, for Beckert, is the importance of institutions and powerful states that could intervene to control trade networks and guarantee access to raw materials and cheap labor. Rather than highlighting the role of the entrepreneur or inventor, Beckert describes how powerful European states crafted empires that could challenge the dominance of Asian textile producers. Beckert terms this interventionist approach, based on imperialism and slavery, war capitalism. The author argues that war capitalism, rather than enlightened or democratic institutions, prevailed in the early-modern period and allowed Europeans to enter and then exploit the market for cotton textiles. Demand for cotton accelerated the growth of plantation agriculture [End Page 520] and was a driving force behind the expanding slave trade. Nearly half of all slaves transported to the western hemisphere arrived in the decades after 1780, coinciding both with the birth of industrial manufacturing in Europe and with a tremendous expansion of cotton cultivation in the Americas (93). Ironically, cotton also emerged as the most important good traded for African slaves. Surviving account records from West African slave traders suggest that cotton textiles likely supplied the majority of the value of all goods exchanged (36). Beckert describes war capitalism as a "precondition" for the Industrial Revolution, and notes the institutions developed under war capitalism originated long before the invention of industrial technologies (54). By portraying early-modern empires, slavery, and state power as the central features of global capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Beckert challenges the traditional narratives surrounding the origins of modern capitalism. Through focusing on cotton, an agricultural staple that held important implications for industrial development, Beckert repositions the conventional focal point of the Industrial Revolution, arguing that "[t]oo often, we ignore the countryside to focus on the city and the miracles of modern industry" (xiii). The author skillfully synthesizes and contextualizes the voluminous literature on cotton production and manufacturing by positioning the narrative as a global story. The result yields fascinating conclusions. The extent to which Asian textile workers out-produced their European contemporaries will astonish many readers familiar with focused case studies of industrial production. Although technological advances revolutionized British manufacturing, and factory methods made European workers the most productive in the world, Asian weavers dominated world output into the nineteenth century. Beckert notes that by 1800 "less than one-tenth of 1 percent of global cotton cloth production came from machines invented on the British Isles" (80). As war capitalism gave way to industrial production, the author argues, manufacturers realized quickly that control of cheap labor was more important than controlling the trade itself. Cheap labor materialized in the fields in the form of African slaves, and in the factories through employing women and children. Beckert argues that the hunt for cheap labor was a defining characteristic in capitalism's development, and observes that the legacy of industrial capitalism is ever present in the market today. [End Page 521] Beckert describes the American Civil War as a critical turning point both for the...