Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Empire of Cotton traces the rise and fall of cotton as a central force in the world economy and its role in shaping global capitalism. Though cotton is ubiquitous in daily life, its history is essential to understanding how modern capitalism developed. Sven Beckert examines how European entrepreneurs and statesmen, beginning before the 1780s, transformed the world's most significant manufacturing industry by combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers. They captured ancient trades and skills in Asia while expropriating lands in the Americas and enslaving African workers, reshaping millennia-old cotton production systems. From its inception, the cotton empire was defined by global conflict between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Beckert demonstrates how these competing forces created modern capitalism, along with the substantial wealth and stark inequalities that persist today. The book weaves together cotton's history with the emergence of the contemporary global world.