Empire of Cotton post

Empire of Cotton offers a detailed account of capitalism in the 19^th century by using a single commodity as a lens for examining this. There were many similar aspects of this particular history to Cronin’s Changes in the Land lying in their discussions of European expansion, land (environment, exhaustion of natural resources), exploitation of the indigenous peoples, and more. In our class discussions regarding Cronin’s book, it was decided that he was actually talking about a capitalist market in New England and utilizing the environment surrounding in which it was situated in as a lens in which to examine this. Beckert’s book is much more direct and expansive providing a global look at how this commodity had so much power. He shows the process of this to be violent not only in the American South Pre/Post Civil War, but also in how it had a role in the destruction of local economies in Asia and the Middle East.

The book seems to be broken up into two separate sections as he used the production of cotton as a lens for the development of the modern world. The first “war capitalism” is used to illustrate how the colonial conquest and slavery prepared the ground for the cotton industry. He also uses “industrial capitalism” to discuss how states intervened to protect and help the industry along. I think that this history offers excellent insight into how influential a commodity can be not just locally, but globally, but I found that I had difficulty believing his argument that it was this specific commodity that kick-started the industrial revolution because there’s never just one spark that lights the fire for change to take place on such a large level.