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Empire of Cotton

Page 61

by Sven Beckert


  47. See, for example, Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, 1847–48, vol. IX; The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1836 (Manchester: Henry Smith, 1837), 13; The Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1856 (Manchester: James Collins, 1857), 34; The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1836 (Manchester: Henry Smith, 1838), 17; Resolution Passed at the Meeting of the Board of Directors, Manchester Commercial Association, November 13, 1845, M8, 7/1, Manchester Commercial Association Papers, Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester. For further pressure see Copy of Letter of John Peel, Manchester Commercial Association, to the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company, Manchester, March 1, 1848, in Home Department, Revenue Branch, October 28, 1849, Nos. 3/4, in National Archives of India, New Delhi; Thomas Bazley to Thomas Baring, Manchester, September 9, 1857, in House Correspondence, NP 6.3.1., Thomas Bazley, ING Baring Archive, London.

  48. Arthur W. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, 1847–1872 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966), 58; “Memorial of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, dated December 1838,” and “Memorial of the Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures Established by Royal Charter in the City of Glasgow, 15 December 1838,” in Official Papers Connected with the Improved Cultivation of Cotton, 6, 8, 10; Mann, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 62; Karl Marx, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1968), 100–101.

  49. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, 61.

  50. The Thirty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Directors, 13, 31–45; The Thirty-Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1858 (Manchester: James Collins, 1859), 14–43; The Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1857 (Manchester: James Collins, 1858), 11–12. For the Manchester Cotton Supply Association see Cotton Supply Association, Report of an Important Meeting Held at Manchester May 21, 1857 (Manchester: Galt, Kerruish, & Kirby, 1857), 2.

  51. See for example Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, House of Commons, iii; Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 30 (September–December 1839): 304; Mann, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 65; Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society, On the Cultivation of Cotton in India, 17; Guha, “Raw Cotton of Western India,” 2.

  52. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, 31, 34; Guha, “Raw Cotton of Western India,” 5, 33; Frederic Wakeman Jr., “The Canton Trade and the Opium War,” in John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 171. In the mid-1840s exports from Bombay to China amounted to about 40 million pounds; De Bow’s Review 1 (April 1846), pp. 295–96. See also Sucheta Mazumdar, Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology and the World Market (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 105–6.

  53. See the assessment of the Calcutta Review: “Bombay Cottons and Indian Railways,” Calcutta Review 26 (June 1850): 331; M. L. Dantwala, A Hundred Years of Indian Cotton (Bombay: East India Cotton Association, 1947), 45–46; see also K. L. Tuteja, “Agricultural Technology in Gujarat: A Study of Exotic Seed and Saw Gins, 1800–50,” Indian Historical Review 17, nos. 1–3 (1990–91): 136–51; J. G. Medicott, Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal (Calcutta: Savielle & Cranenburgh, 1862), 296; “Cotton in Southern Mahratta Country, Agency for the Purchase of Cotton Established,” Compilations Vol. 27/355, 1831, Compilation No. 395, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Minute by the Vice President, Metcalfe, March 3, 1831, in Revenue Department, Revenue Branch, “A,” July 1831, No. 69/74, Part B, in National Archives of India, New Delhi; Home Department, Revenue Branch, G.G., August 1839, No. 1/4, in National Archives of India; Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, 74; on various other measures taken by the company to improve and increase Indian cotton exports see 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), 86–90.

  54. See for example Territorial Department, Revenue—Cotton to Thomas Williamson, Secretary to Government, June 21, 1830, in 43/324/1830, Compilations, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; “Abstract of the Replies of Local Authorities to the Board’s Circular of 21st February 1848 Calling for Certain Information Relative to the Cultivation of Cotton in India and Required by the Honourable Court of Directors,” in Home Department, Revenue Branch, December 2, 1848, Nos. 10–18, in National Archives of India, New Delhi; see also “Prospects of Cotton Cultivation in the Saugor and Narbadda Territories in the Nizam’s Dominions,” August 12, 1848, No. 3–11, National Archives of India; “Capabilities of the Bombay Presidency for Supplying Cotton in the Event of an Increased Demand from Europe,” March 1, 1850, Revenue Branch, Home Department, National Archives of India; Revenue Department, Compilations Vol. 6/413, 1832, Compilation No. 62, Cotton Experimental Farm, Guzerat, Maharashtra State Archives; Compilations Vol. 10/478, 1833, Compilation No. 5, Cotton Experimental Farm, Guzerat, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives; Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 21 (September–December 1836): 220, 22 (January–April 1837): 234, and 38 (1842): 371; Tuteja, “Agricultural Technology in Gujarat”: 137; Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society, On the Cultivation of Cotton in India, 15.

  55. See for example “Cotton Cultivation Under the Superintendence of the American Cotton Planters in N.W. Provinces, Bombay and Madras,” January 17, 1842, No. 13–17, Revenue Department, Home Department, National Archives of India, New Delhi; John MacFarquhar to East India Company, New Orleans, January 13, 1842, W. W. Wood to East India Company, New Orleans, June 10, 1842, Two Letters dated 13 January and 10 June to the Directors of the East India Company, MSS EUR C157, in Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London; Home Department, Revenue Branch, G.G., August 1839, No. 1/4, in National Archives of India; see also Resolution dated September 21, 1841, by the Revenue Branch of the Government of India, Revenue Department, Revenue Branch, 21st September 1840, No. 1/3, National Archives of India; Letter by [illegible] to T. H. Maddok, Territorial Department Revenue, Bombay, 10 February 1842, in Revenue and Agriculture Department, Revenue Branch, February 28, 1842, Nos. 2–5, National Archives of India; Medicott, Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal, 305; Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 36 (September–December 1841): 343.

  56. Silver, Manchester Men and Indian Cotton, 37–39; Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 35 (May–August 1841): 502; copy of letter from C. W. Martin, Superintendent Cotton Farm in Gujerat, Broach, November 1830 to William Stubbs, Esq., Principal Collector, Surat, in Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Gibbs, Broach, October 5, 1831, to Thomas Williamson, Esq., secretary of Government, in Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives; Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 39 (1842): 106; letter by [illegible] to T. H. Maddok, Territorial Department Revenue, Bombay, 10 February 1842, in Revenue and Agriculture Department, Revenue Branch, February 28, 1842, Nos. 2–5, National Archives of India, New Delhi; Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1846–47 (Bombay: American Mission Press, 1847), 5.

  57. Medicott, Cotton Hand-Book for Bengal, 320, 322, 323, 331, 340, 352, 366.

  58. Annual Report of the Transactions of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Official Year 1840–41 (Bombay: Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce Press, 1841), 112–19; copy of a letter of John Peel, Manchester Commercial Association, to t
he Chairman of the Court of Directors of the Honourable East India Company, London, March 1, 1848, in Manchester Commercial Association, October 18, 1848, No. 3–4, Revenue Branch, Home Department, National Archives of India, New Delhi; Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society, On the Cultivation of Cotton in India, 4.

  59. East-India Company, Reports and Documents Connected with the Proceedings of the East-India Company in Regard to the Culture and Manufacture of Cotton-Wool, Raw Silk, and Indigo in India (London: East-India Company, 1836); reprinted letter of W. W. Bell, Collector’s Office, Dharwar, 10 January 1850 to H. E. Goldsmid, Secretary of Government, Bombay, reprinted in Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1849–50 (Bombay: American Mission Press, 1850), 26; Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Official Year 1840–41, 104.

  60. Ellison, The Cotton Trade, 99; Revenue Department No. 4 of 1839, Reprinted in Official Papers Connected with the Improved Cultivation of Cotton, 1, consulted in Asiatic Society of Bombay Library, Mumbai; Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1859/60 (Bombay: Bombay Gazette Press, 1860), xxviii.

  61. Mann, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, 70; C. W. Grant, Bombay Cotton and Indian Railways (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman, 1850), 9.

  62. Tuteja, “Agricultural Technology in Gujarat”; “Replies to the Queries Proposed by the Government of India, given by [illegible] Viccajee, Regarding the Cotton Trade in the Nizam’s Country,” Home Department, Revenue Branch, August 12, 1848, No. 3–11, p. 167, in National Archives of India, New Delhi; Report from Kaira Collector to Revenue Department, Neriad, March 22, 1823, Compilations Vol. 8/60, 1823, in Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai.

  63. Tuteja, “Agricultural Technology in Gujarat,” 147, 151; Letter of Chartles Lurh (?), in charge of experimental cotton farm in Dharwar, February 21, 1831, to Thomas Williamson, Esq., Secretary to Government, Bombay, Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, in Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, House of Commons, 5; Tuteja, “Agricultural Technology in Gujarat”; Letter by J. P. Simson, Secretary to Government, The Warehousekeeper and Commercial Account, Bombay Castle, 18 May 1820, Compilations Vol. 4, 1821, Commercial Department, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai.

  64. For a detailed account of how indigenous merchants moved cotton from the growers to the market see Cotton Trade in Bombay, 1811, in Despatches to Bombay, E4/1027, pp. 135–47, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London. See also Marika Vicziany, “Bombay Merchants and Structural Changes in the Export Community, 1850 to 1880,” in Economy and Society: Essays in Indian Economic and Social History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), 63–196; Marika Vicziany, The Cotton Trade and the Commercial Development of Bombay, 1855–75 (London: University of London Press, 1975), especially 170–71; Dantwala, A Hundred Years of Indian Cotton, 37; Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Official Year 1840–41, 111; Letter from [illegible], Commercial Resident Office, Broach, January 6, 1825, to Gilbert More, Acting Secretary of Government, Bombay, in Compilations Vol. 26, 1825, “Consultation Cotton Investment,” Commercial Department, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Report from Kaira Collector to Revenue Department, Neriad, March 22, 1823, in Compilations Vol. 8/60, 1823, Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives.

  65. Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1846–47 (Bombay: American Mission Press, 1847), 7; Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society, On the Cultivation of Cotton in India, 4; Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1849–50 (Bombay: American Mission Press, 1850), 7; Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Official Year 1840–41, 110–11; Captain M. Taylor to Colonel Low, Reports on District of Sharapoor, Sharapoor, June 23, 1848, in “Prospects of Cotton Cultivation in the Saugor and Narbadda Territories in the Nizam’s Dominions,” August 12, 1848, No. 3–11, Revenue Branch, Home Department, National Archives of India, New Delhi; Report from the Select Committee on the Growth of Cotton in India, House of Commons, v.

  66. Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Official Year 1840–41, 104, 107; Copy of letter from C. W. Martin, Superintendent Cotton Farm in Gujerat, Broach, November 1830 to William Stubbs, Esq., Principal Collector, Surat, Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, Revenue Department, in Maharahstra State Archives, Mumbai. See also Martin to Stubbs, 1st October 1831, Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, Revenue Department, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai.

  67. Peely, Acting Commercial Resident, Northern Factories, July 21, 1831, to Charles Norris, Esq., Civil Secretary to Government, Bombay, Compilations Vol. 22/350, 1831, Revenue Department, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Committee of Commerce and Agriculture of the Royal Asiatic Society, On the Cultivation of Cotton in India, 13; Letter by H. A. Harrison, 1st Assistant Collector, Ootacmund, October 14, 1832, to L. R. Reid, Esq., Secretary to Government, Bombay, Compilations Vol. 7/412, 1832, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; “Cotton Farms, Proceedings respecting the formation of ________ in the Vicinity of Jails,” Compilation No. 118, in Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; copy of letter of T. H. Balier (?), Collector, Dharwar, 19th August 1825 to William Chaplin, Esq., Commissioner, Poona, in Compilations Vol. 26, 1835, “Consultation Cotton Investment,” in Commercial Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; long discussions on slavery in India can be found in Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, New Series, 15 (September–December 1834): 81–90. See also Factory Records, Dacca, G 15, 21 (1779), Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London.

  68. Copy of letter from J. Dunbar, Commissioner of Dacca, to Sudder, Board of Revenue, September 27, 1848, in Home Department, Revenue Branch, December 2, 1848, Nos. 10–18, in National Archives of India, New Delhi.

  69. E. R. J. Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820–1914: A Study in Trade and Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 12; George R. Gliddon, A Memoir on the Cotton of Egypt (London: James Madden & Co., 1841), 11.

  70. Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 28–29, 32, 47; Gliddon, A Memoir on the Cotton of Egypt; “Commerce of Egypt,” in Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 8 (January 1843): 17; John Bowring, “Report on Egypt and Candia,” in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1840, vol. XXI, 19; Christos Hadziiossifm, “La Colonie Grecque en Egypte, 1833–1836” (PhD dissertation, Sorbonne, 1980), 111; John Bowring, “Report on Egypt and Candia (1840),” cited in Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 318.

  71. Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 36–37, 40.

  72. The graph on page 133 is based on information from “Commerce of Egypt,” 22; Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 34; Table 1, “Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1821–1837,” 45; Table 5, “Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1838–1859,” 73.

  73. From about 1823 to 1840. Robert Lévy, Histoire économique de l’industrie cotonnière en Alsace: Étude de sociologie descriptive (Paris: F. Alcan, 1912), 58; copy of a Memorial Respecting the Levant Trade to the Right Honourable The Board of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations, as copied in Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, meeting of February 9, 1825, in M8/2/1, Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 1821–27, Archives of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester.

  74. Bremer Handelsblatt (1853), as quoted in Ludwig Beutin, Von 3 Ballen zum Weltmarkt: Kleine Bremer Baumwollchronik, 1788–1872 (Bremen: Verlag Franz Leuwer, 1934), 25; Philip McMichael, “Slavery in Capitalism,” 327.

  75. Ellison, The Cotton Trade, 96.

  76. Albert Feuerwerker, “Handicraft and Manufactured Cotton Textiles in China, 1871–1910,” Journal of Economic History 30 (June 1970): 340; Kang Chao, The Development of Cotton
Textile Production in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 4–13; Robert Fortune, Three Years’ Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China, Including a Visit to the Tea, Silk, and Cotton Countries, With an Account of the Agriculture and Horticulture of the Chinese, New Plants, etc. (London: John Murray, 1847), 272–73; Koh Sung Jae, Stages of Industrial Development in Asia: A Comparative History of the Cotton Industry in Japan, India, China and Korea (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), 28, 38, 45; William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Osaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 59, 117–20; Hameeda Hossain, The Company of Weavers of Bengal: The East India Company and the Organization of Textile Production in Bengal, 1750–1813 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), 28.

  77. Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Tench Coxe, An Addition, of December 1818, to the Memoir, of February and August 1817, on the Subject of the Cotton Culture, the Cotton Commerce, and the Cotton Manufacture of the United States, etc. (Philadelphia: n.p., 1818), 3; “Extracts and Abstract of a letter from W. Dunbar, Officiating Commissioner of Revenue in the Dacca Division, to Lord B. of [illegible], dated Dacca, May 2, 1844,” in MSS EUR F 78, 44, Wood Papers, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London.

  CHAPTER SIX: INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM TAKES WING

  1. For biographical information on Burke see National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 20 (New York: James T. White, 1929), 79. For Baranda see “Pedro Sainz de Baranda,” in Enciclopedia Yucatanense, vol. 7 (Ciudad de Mexico, D.F.: Edición oficial del Gobierno de Yucatan, 1977), 51–67; John L. Stevens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, vol. 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1843), 329.

  2. Stevens, Incidents, 330; Howard F. Cline, “The ‘Aurora Yucateca’ and the Spirit of Enterprise in Yucatan, 1821–1847,” Hispanic American Historical Review 27, no. 1 (February 1947): 39–44; Enciclopedia Yucatanense, vol. 7, 61–62. See also Othón Baños Ramírez, Sociedad, estructura agraria, estado en Yucatán (Mérida: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 1990), 24.

 

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