Empire of Cotton

by Sven Beckert

  CHAPTER ONE: THE RISE OF A GLOBAL COMMODITY

  1. The cotton grown in these towns was most probably G. hirsutum Palmeri, a kind of cotton known to have grown in what is today the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. The description of the plant is from C. Wayne Smith and J. Tom Cothren, eds., Cotton: Origin, History, Technology, and Production (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), 11; Angus Maddison, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris: Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001), 263; Frances F. Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico: Production, Distribution and Uses,” Mexican Studies 3 (1987): 241ff.; Joseph B. Mountjoy, “Prehispanic Cultural Development Along the Southern Coast of West Mexico,” in Shirley Goren-stein, ed., Greater Mesoamerica: The Archeology of West and Northwest Mexico (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000), 106; Donald D. Brandt, “The Primitive and Modern Economy of the Middle Rio Balsas, Guerrero and Michoacan,” Eighth American Scientific Congress, Section 8, History and Geography (Washington, DC, 1940), Abstract; for the weight of a bale of cotton in sixteenth-century Mexico see José Rodríguez Vallejo, Ixcatl, el algodón mexicano (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1976), 64.

  2. K. D. Hake and T. A. Kerby, “Cotton and the Environment,” Cotton Production Manual (UCANR Publications, 1996), 324–27; Frederick Wilkinson, The Story of the Cotton Plant (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1899), 39.

  3. There is some (slight) disagreement between Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1978), 14–15, and Jason Clay, World Agriculture and the Environment: A Commodity-by-Commodity Guide to Impacts and Practices (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004), 284–87.

  4. Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kaysar, and Mark Stoneking, “Molecular Evolution of Pediculus humanus and the Origin of Clothing,” Current Biology 13 (August 19, 2003): 1414–15; for a much earlier dating of spinning and weaving see Eliso Kvabadze et al., “30,000 Year-Old Wild Flax Fibres,” Science 11 (September 2009): 1359.

  5. Almut Bohnsack, Spinnen und Weben: Entwicklung von Technik und Arbeit im Textilgewerbe (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981), 31–32; “Kleidung,” in Johannes Hoops, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, vol. 16 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 603–25; Mary Schoeser, World Textiles: A Concise History (New York: Thames & Hudson World of Art, 2003), 20; “Kleidung,” in Max Ebert, ed., Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, vol. 6 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1926), 380–94; Harry Bates Brown, Cotton: History, Species, Varieties, Morphology, Breeding, Culture, Diseases, Marketing, and Uses (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938), 1.

  6. See for example T. W. Rhys Davids, trans., Vinaya Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 168; Georg Buehler, trans., The Sacred Laws of the ryas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), 165, 169, 170; Vijaya Ramaswamy, Textiles and Weavers in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1, 57; Doran Ross, ed., Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1998), 77; Frank Goldtooth, as recorded by Stanley A. Fishler, In the Beginning: A Navajo Creation Myth (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1953), 16; Aileen O’Bryan, The Dîné: Origin Myths of the Navajo Indians, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 163 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1956), 38; Francesca Bray, “Textile Production and Gender Roles in China, 1000–1700,” Chinese Science 12 (1995): 116; Anthony Winterbourne, When the Norns Have Spoken: Fate in Germanic Paganism (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004), 96.

  7. C. L. Brubaker et al., “The Origin and Domestication of Cotton,” in C. Wayne Smith and J. Tom Cothren, eds., Cotton: Origin, History, Technology, and Production (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999), 4, 5–6, 12, 17, 22; Wafaa M. Amer and Osama A. Momtaz, “Historic Background of Egyptian Cotton (2600 BC–AD 1910),” Archives of Natural History 26 (1999): 219.

  8. Thomas Robson Hay and Hal R. Taylor, “Cotton,” in William Darrach Halsey and Emanuel Friedman, eds., Collier’s Encyclopedia, with Bibliography and Index (New York: Macmillan Educational Co., 1981), 387; A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 4th ed., revised by J. R. Harris (London: Edward Arnold, 1962), 147; Richard H. Meadow, “The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Northwestern South Asia,” in David R. Harris, ed., The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia (London: UCL Press, 1996), 396; for a traditional Indian account of these classics, see S. V. Puntambekar and N. S. Varadachari, Hand-Spinning and Hand-Weaving: An Essay (Ahmedabad: All India Spinners’ Association, 1926), 1–9; James Mann, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1860), 1, 2–3; Brown, Cotton, 2; see Herodotus, The Histories, ed. A. R. Burn, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt, rev. ed., Penguin Classics (Harmonds worth, UK: Penguin, 1972), 245; Arno S. Pearse, The Cotton Industry of India, Being the Report of the Journey to India (Manchester: Taylor, Garnett, Evans, 1930), 15; J. Forbes Royle, On the Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India and Elsewhere: With an Account of the Experiments Made by the Hon. East India Company up to the Present Time (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1851), 116ff.

  9. Brown, Cotton, 5; Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London: H. Fisher, R. Fisher, and P. Jackson, 1835), 65–70; Prasannan Parthasarathi, “Cotton Textiles in the Indian Subcontinent, 1200–1800,” in Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23–25.

  10. H. Wescher, “Die Baumwolle im Altertum,” in Ciba-Rundschau 45 (June 1940): 1635; Alwin Oppel, Die Baumwolle (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1902), 206–7; Clinton G. Gilroy, The History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, Wool, and Other Fibrous Substances (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845), 334; Marco Polo, Travels of Marco Polo (Westminster, MD: Modern Library, 2001), 174; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 56, 58.

  11. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 48; M. D. C. Crawford, The Heritage of Cotton: The Fibre of Two Worlds and Many Ages (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924), 46; Amer and Momtaz, “Historic Background,” 212; Oppel, Die Baumwolle, 209; William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru (Westminster, MD: Modern Library, 2000), 51, 108, 300.

  12. Gilroy, History of Silk, 331–32; Smith and Hirth, “Development of Prehispanic Cotton-Spinning,” 353; Barbara L. Stark, Lynette Heller, and Michael A. Ohnersorgen, “People with Cloth: Mesoamerican Economic Change from the Perspective of Cotton in South-Central Veracruz,” Latin American Antiquity 9 (March 1978): 9, 25, 27; Crawford, Heritage, 32, 35; Smith and Hirth, “Development of Prehispanic Cotton-Spinning,” 355; Barbara Ann Hall, “Spindle Whorls and Cotton Production at Middle Classic Matacapan and in the Gulf Lowlands,” in Barbara L. Stark and Philip J. Arnold III, eds., Olmec to Aztec: Settlement Patterns in the Ancient Gulf Lowlands (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997), 117, 133, 134.

  13. Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, History of the Conquest of the Province of the Itza, 1st English edition, translated from the 2nd Spanish edition by Robert D. Wood (Culver City, CA: Labyrinthos, 1983), 197; Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico,” 235–38, 239; Smith and Hirth, “Development of Prehispanic Cotton-Spinning,” 356; R. B. Handy, “History and General Statistics of Cotton,” in The Cotton Plant: Its History, Botany, Chemistry, Culture, Enemies, and Uses, prepared under the supervision of A. C. True, United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, Bulletin 33 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), 63; United States, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1975), Series K-550–563, “Hay, Cotton, Cottonseed, Shorn Wool, and Tobacco—Acreage, Production, and Price: 1790 to 1970,” 518; Hall, “Spindle Whorls,” 118; Stark, Heller, and Ohnersorgen, “People with Cloth,” 14, 29.

  14. Brown, Cotton, 14; Kate Peck Kent, Prehistoric Textiles of the Sout
hwest (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1983), 9, 27, 28, 29; the quote about blankets is from Ward Alan Minge, “Effectos del Pais: A History of Weaving Along the Rio Grande,” in Nora Fisher, ed., Rio Grande Textiles (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1994), 6; Kate Peck Kent, Pueblo Indian Textiles: A Living Tradition (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 1983), 26; Crawford, Heritage, 37; David Watts, The West Indies: Patterns of Development, Culture and Environmental Change Since 1492 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 65, 89, 174; Mann, Cotton Trade, 4; Christopher Columbus, The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to America: 1492–1493, abstracted by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, transcribed and translated into English, with notes and a concordance of the Spanish, by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley Jr. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 131–35; see entries of October 16, November 3, and November 5, 1492, 85–91, 131, 135.

  15. Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 4, trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856), 134–35; Mann, Cotton Trade, 3; Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002), 67–68; Ross, Wrapped in Pride, 75; Lars Sundström, The Trade of Guinea (Lund: Hakan Ohlssons Boktryckeri, 1965), 148; F. L. Griffith and G. M. Crowfoot, “On the Early Use of Cotton in the Nile Valley,” Journal of Egyptian Archeology 20 (1934): 7; Amer and Momtaz, “Historic Background,” 212, 214, 215, 217.

  16. M. Kouame Aka, “Production et circulation des cotonnades en Afrique de l’Ouest du XIème siècle a la fin de la conquette coloniale (1921)” (PhD dissertation, Université de Cocody-Abidjan, 2013), 18, 41; Marion Johnson, “Technology, Competition, and African Crafts,” in Clive Dewey and A. G. Hopkins, eds., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London: Athlone Press, 1978), 176, 195, 201; Venice Lamb and Judy Holmes, Nigerian Weaving (Roxford: H. A. & V. M. Lamb, 1980), 15, 16; Marion Johnson, “Cloth Strips and History,” West African Journal of Archaeology 7 (1977): 169; Philip D. Curtin, Economic Change in Precolonial Africa: Senegambia in the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975), 48; Marion Johnson, “Cloth as Money: The Cloth Strip Currencies of Africa,” in Dale Idiens and K. G. Pointing, Textiles of Africa (Bath: Pasold Research Fund, 1980), 201. Patricia Davison and Patrick Harries, “Cotton Weaving in South-east Africa: Its History and Technology,” in Idiens and Pointing, Textiles of Africa, 177, 179, 180; Marie Philiponeau, Le coton et l’Islam: Fil d’une histoire africaine (Algiers: Casbah Editions, 2009), 15, 17; Ross, Wrapped in Pride, 75; Rita Bolland, Tellem Textiles: Archaeological Finds from Burial Caves in Mali’s Bandiagara Cliff (Leiden: Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, 1991); Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa and of the Notable Things Therein Contained, Done in the English in the Year 1600 by John Pory, vol. 3 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1896), 823, 824.

  17. For the notion of the multiple origins of cotton and its domestication see Meadow, “Origins,” 397.

  18. Brown, Cotton, 8; Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 11, 15, 17–18; Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials, 148; Hartmut Schmoekel, Ur, Assur und Babylon: Drei Jahrtausende im Zweistromland (Stuttgart: Gustav Klipper Verlag, 1958), 131; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 27; Richard W. Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in World History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 1, 8, 46; Marco Polo, Travels, 22, 26, 36, 54, 58, 59, 60, 174, 247, 253, 255.

  19. Chao Kuo-Chun, Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921–1959 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 5, 8ff.

  20. Craig Dietrich, “Cotton Culture and Manufacture in Early Ch’ing China,” in W. E. Willmott, ed., Economic Organization in Chinese Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 111ff.; Mi Chü Wiens, “Cotton Textile Production and Rural Social Transformation in Early Modern China,” Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong 7 (December 1974): 516–19; Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, eds., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 7, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, part 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 256, 507; Kenneth Pomeranz, “Beyond the East-West Binary: Resituating Development Paths in the Eighteenth-Century World,” Journal of Asian Studies 61 (May 2002): 569; United States, Historical Statistics, 518.

  21. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680, vol. 1, The Lands Below the Winds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 90; Crawford, Heritage, 7; William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 117–20; Mikio Sumiya and Koji Taira, eds., An Outline of Japanese Economic History, 1603–1940: Major Works and Research Findings (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1979), 99–100.

  22. Stark, Heller, and Ohnersorgen, “People with Cloth,” 10, 29; Howard F. Cline, “The Spirit of Enterprise in Yucatan,” in Lewis Hanke, ed., History of Latin American Civilization, vol. 2 (London: Methuen, 1969), 137; Johnson, “Technology,” 259; Thomas J. Bassett, The Peasant Cotton Revolution in West Africa: Côte d’Ivoire, 1880–1995 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 33; James Forbes, Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years Residence in India, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1834), 34; Moritz Schanz, “Die Baumwolle in Russisch-Asien,” Beihefte zum Tropenpflanzer 15 (1914): 2; on Korea see Tozaburo Tsukida, Kankoku ni okeru mensaku chosa (Tokyo: No-shomu sho noji shikenjyo, 1905), 1–3, 76–83.

  23. Oppel, Die Baumwolle, 201; Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico,” 241; Hall, “Spindle Whorls,” 120; Sundström, Trade of Guinea, 147; Curtin, Economic Change, 50, 212; Brown, Cotton, 8; Reid, Southeast Asia, 93; Gilroy, History of Silk, 339; Carla M. Sinopoli, The Political Economy of Craft Production: Crafting Empire in South India, c. 1350–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 185; A. Campbell, “Notes on the State of the Arts of Cotton Spinning, Weaving, Printing and Dyeing in Nepal,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta) 5 (January to December 1836): 222.

  24. Hall, “Spindle Whorls,” 115, 116, 120, 122, 124; Davison and Harries, “Cotton Weaving,” 182; Oppel, Die Baumwolle, 209; Prescott, Conquest of Peru, 51; Gilroy, History of Silk, 339, 343; Curtin, Economic Change, 213; Kent, Prehistoric Textiles, 35; Kent, Pueblo Indian, 28; Reid, Southeast Asia, 93; Sundström, Trade of Guinea, 148–49; Lamb and Holmes, Nigerian Weaving, 10–11; Johnson, “Technology,” 261.

  25. Reid, Southeast Asia, 94.

  26. Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico,” 242, 259; Mote and Twitchett, Ming Dynasty, 507, 690ff.; K. N. Chaudhuri, “The Organisation and Structure of Textile Production in India,” in Tirthankar Roy, ed., Cloth and Commerce: Textiles in Colonial India (Waltnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996), 71; Wiens, “Cotton Textile,” 520; Sinopoli, Political Economy, 177.

  27. Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico,” 242; Bray, “Textile Production,” 119; Sundström, Trade of Guinea, 162; Curtin, Economic Change, 212; Davison and Harries, “Cotton Weaving,” 187; Johnson, “Cloth as Money,” 193–202; Reid, Southeast Asia, 90; Sundström, Trade of Guinea, 164; Stark, Heller, and Ohnersorgen, “People with Cloth,” 9.

  28. Smith and Hirth, “Development of Prehispanic Cotton-Spinning,” 356; Bulliet, Cotton, Climate, and Camels, 46, 59; Philiponeau, Coton et l’Islam, 25; Pedro Machado, “Awash in a Sea of Cloth: Gujarat, Africa and the Western Indian Ocean Trade, 1300–1800,” in Riello and Parthasarathi, eds., The Spinning World, 161–79; the importance of traders’ distance from the polities they originated from is also emphasized by Gil J. Stein, Rethinking World-Systems: Diasporas, Colonies, and Interaction in Uruk Mesopotamia (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1999), 173.

  29. See Hall, “Spindle Whorls,” 115; Stark, Heller, and Ohnersorgen, “People with Cloth,” 9; Berdan, “Cotton in Aztec Mexico,” 247ff., 258; Kent, Prehistoric Textiles, 28; Volney H. Jones, “A Summary of D
ata on Aboriginal Cotton of the Southwest,” University of New Mexico Bulletin, Symposium on Prehistoric Agriculture, vol. 296 (October 15, 1936), 60; Reid, Southeast Asia, 91; Sundström, Trade of Guinea, 147; Bassett, Peasant Cotton, 34; Curtin, Economic Change, 212–13; Halil Inalcik, “The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300–1600,” in Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert, eds., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 296; Hauser, Economic Institutional Change, 59.