Empire of Cotton

Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton, is  what I believe to be a continuation of the modern historical trend of focusing on one topic and somehow making it sound like that topic was the most important event in the history of the world.  Other books in this idea are COD: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World Book by Mark Kurlansky or How the Irish Saved Civilization book by Thomas Cahill.  While Beckert's book is extremely detailed and well written, I do though find large claims like these a bit hard to grasp.  Beckert's war capitalism for the rise of cotton notion is, while a driving force, was not the only piece to this puzzle of the rise of Colonialism and Worldwide political and economic dominance.  There was a need for land for rapidly growing populations, new markets that opened up once the Ottoman Empires grasp on the seas was weaken when their drive into Europe was stopped at the doors of Vienna.

Sven's work though does direct ones attention to a topic that most people would just glance over and not give a second thought. I found myself rapidly reading his work and doing side research to expand my personal understanding of this topic.  Maybe this is the point of single focus historical books now, to seek out and find those silences, need it be a group of people or a plant by-product that was easy to spin and dye. I know that I couldnt put this work down until it was all done.