Empire of Cotton

by Sven Beckert

  3. Gisela Müller, “Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der Wiesentäler Textilindustrie bis zum Jahre 1945” (PhD dissertation, University of Basel, 1965), 35, 36; Richard Dietsche, “Die industrielle Entwicklung des Wiesentales bis zum Jahre 1870” (PhD dissertation, University of Basel, 1937), 16, 18, 30, 34, 37; Walter Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft im Rahmen der übrigen Industrien und Wirtschaftszweige (Zürich: Verlag Berichthaus, 1960), 226.

  4. Dietsche, “Die industrielle Entwicklung,” 18, 20, 21, 34, 47, 48, 61, 76; Friedrich Deher, Staufen und der obere Breisgau: Chronik einer Landschaft (Karlsruhe: Verlag G. Braun, 1967), 191–92; Eberhard Gothein, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Schwarzwaldes und der angrenzenden Landschaften (Strassburg: Karl J. Truebner, 1892), 754; Müller, “Die Entstehung und Entwicklung,” 33, 47; Hugo Ott, “Der Schwarzwald: Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung seit dem ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert,” in Franz Quarthal, ed., Zwischen Schwarzwald und Schwäbischer Alb: Das Land am oberen Neckar (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1984), 399.

  5. Arthur L. Dunham, “The Development of the Cotton Industry in France and the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860,” Economic History Review 1, no. 2 (January 1928): 282; Gerhard Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands und der westlichen Nachbarländer beim Übergang von der vorindustriellen zur frühindustriellen Zeit, 1750–1815 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), 76; R. M. R. Dehn, The German Cotton Industry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1913), 3; J. K. J. Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization: Cotton in Barcelona, 1728–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 248; J. Dhondt, “The Cotton Industry at Ghent During the French Regime,” in F. Crouzet, W. H. Chaloner, and W. M. Stern, eds., Essays in European Economic History, 1789–1914 (London: Edward Arnold, 1969), 18; Georg Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung der Chemnitzer bezw. sächsischen Baumwollspinnerei von 1789–1879” (PhD dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1914), 19; Rudolf Forberger, Die industrielle Revolution in Sachsen 1800–1861, Bd. 1, zweiter Halbband: Die Revolution der Produktivkräfte in Sachsen 1800–1830. Übersichten zur Fabrikentwicklung (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1982), 14; Albert Tanner, “The Cotton Industry of Eastern Switzerland, 1750–1914: From Proto-industry to Factory and Cottage Industry,” Textile History 23, no. 2 (1992): 139; Wolfgang Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes Puebla (Mexiko) im 19. Jahrhundert” (PhD dissertation, University of Bonn, 1977), 144; E. R. J. Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820–1914: A Study in Trade and Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 23–24.

  6. On concerns among British manufacturers about this spread, see The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures at Manchester for the Year 1836 Made to the Annual General Meeting of the Members, held February 13th 1837 (Manchester: Henry Smith, 1837), 13.

  7. Sydney Pollard emphasizes correctly that industrialization was at this point (before railroads) not a national development, but a regional one; there were industrializing regions in Europe (e.g., Catalonia). Sydney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); see also Joel Mokyr, Industrialization in the Low Countries, 1795–1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976), 26, 28.

  8. Günter Kirchhain, “Das Wachstum der deutschen Baumwollindustrie im 19. Jahr-hundert: Eine historische Modellstudie zur empirischen Wachstumsforschung” (PhD dissertation, University of Münster, 1973), 30, 41; Francisco Mariano Nipho, Estafeta de Londres (Madrid: n.p., 1770), 44, as quoted in Pierre Vilar, La Catalogne dans l’Espagne moderne: Recherches sur le fondements économiques des structures nationales, vol. 2 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1962), 10; Pavel A. Khromov, Ékonomika Rossii Perioda Promyshlennogo Kapitalizma (Moscow: 1963), 80; Howard F. Cline, “Spirit of Enterprise in Yucatan,” in Lewis Hanke, ed., History of Latin American Civilization, vol. 2 (London: Methuen, 1969), 133; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 153; Dunham, “The Development of the Cotton Industry,” 288; B. M. Biucchi, “Switzerland, 1700–1914,” in Carlo M. Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 4, part 2 (Glasgow: Collins, 1977), 634; Robert Lévy, Histoire économique de l’industrie cotonnière en Alsace (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1912), 87, 89; United States Census Bureau, Manufactures of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1865), xvii; Ronald Bailey, “The Slave(ry) Trade and the Development of Capitalism in the United States: The Textile Industry in New England,” in Joseph E. Inikori and Stanley L. Engerman, eds., The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), 221.

  9. Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 281.

  10. Dhondt, “The Cotton Industry at Ghent,” 15; Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes,” 33; Max Hamburger, “Standortgeschichte der deutschen Baumwoll-Industrie” (PhD dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1911), 19; Wallace Daniel, “Entrepreneurship and the Russian Textile Industry: From Peter the Great to Catherine the Great,” Russian Review 54, no. 1 (January 1995): 1–25; Lévy, Histoire économique, 1ff.; Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 181–203.

  11. Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 16, 54; Maurice Lévy Leboyer, Les banques européennes et l’industrialisation internationale dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: [Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de Paris], 1964); Dhondt, “The Cotton Industry at Ghent,” 16; William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 44; M. V. Konotopov et al. Istoriia otechestvennoǐ tekstil’ noi promyshlennosti (Moscow, 1992), 94, 96. This process is also detailed for Alsace in Raymond Oberlé, “La siècle des lumières et les débuts de l’industrialisation,” in George Livet and Raymond Oberlé, eds., Histoire de Mulhouse des origines à nos jours (Strasbourg: Istra, 1977), 127; Paul Leuilliot, “L’essor économique du XIXe siècle et les transformations de la cité,” in Livet and Oberlé, eds., Histoire de Mulhouse, 182.

  12. For the concept of proto-industrialization see P. Kriedte, H. Medick, and J. Schlumbohm, Industrialization Before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung der Chemnitzer,” 17–18; Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization, 13.

  13. Albert Tanner, Spulen, Weben, Sticken: Die Industrialisierung in Appenzell Ausserrhoden (Zürich: Juris Druck, 1982), 8, 19; Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizer-ischen Textilwirtschaft, 231; John Bowring, Bericht an das Englische Parlament über den Handel, die Fabriken und Gewerbe der Schweiz (Zürich: Orell, Fuessli und Compa-gnie, 1837), 37.

  14. Shepard B. Clough, The Economic History of Modern Italy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), 62; Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization, 12; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 49. On the obrajes see the important work by Richard J. Salvucci, Textiles and Capitalism in Mexico: An Economic History of the Obrajes, 1539–1840 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987); Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes Puebla,” 34.

  15. Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung der Chemnitzer,” 18.

  16. Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 279, 339; Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization, 208; Lévy, Histoire économique, 1ff., 14–52; Roger Portal, “Muscovite Industrialists: The Cotton Sector, 1861–1914,” in Blackwell, ed., Russian Economic Development, 174.

  17. Barbara M. Tucker, Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790–1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 52, 97.

  18. William Holmes to James Holmes, Kingston, March 10, 1813, in Folder 49, John Holmes Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York.

  19. Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung der Chemnitzer,” 32; Enciclopedia Yucatanense, vol. 7, 62. On t
he annual wages of skilled workers see Michael P. Costeloe, The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846: Hombres de Bien in the Age of Santa Anna (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 108. Hau, L’industrialisation de l’Alsace, 328, 330, 340.

  20. Robert F. Dalzell, Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 27. The exchange rate is taken from Patrick Kelly, The Universal Cambist and Commercial Instructor: Being a General Treatise on Exchange, Including Monies, Coins, Weights and Measures of All Trading Nations and Their Colonies, vol. 1 (London: Lackington, Allen, and Co. [et al.], 1811), 12; Thomas Dublin, “Rural Putting-Out Work in Early Nineteenth-Century New England: Women and the Transition to Capitalism in the Countryside,” New England Quarterly 64, no. 4 (December 1, 1991): 536–37. See the analysis of ex-slaves’ narratives at “Ex-Slave Narratives: Lowell Cloth,” accessed August 12, 2013, http://library.uml.edu/clh/All/Lowcl.htm; Pierre Gervais, “The Cotton ‘Factory’ in a Pre-industrial Economy: An Exploration of the Boston Manufacturing Company, 1815–1820” (unpublished paper, in author’s possession, 2003), 3; Peter Temin, “Product Quality and Vertical Integration in the Early Cotton Textile Industry,” Journal of Economic History 48, no. 4 (December 1988): 897; Ronald Bailey, “The Other Side of Slavery: Black Labor, Cotton, and Textile Industrialization in Great Britain and the United States,” Agricultural History 68, no. 2 (Spring 1994): 45, 49.

  21. Hau, L’industrialisation de l’Alsace, 335–38; Heinrich Herkner, Die oberelsäss-ische Baumwollindustrie und ihre Arbeiter (Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1887), 92; Pierre-Alain Wavre, “Swiss Investments in Italy from the XVIIIth to the XXth Century,” Journal of European Economic History 17, no. 1 (Spring 1988), 86–87; Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization, 7, 117; Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes Puebla,” 225, 244.

  22. M. L. Gavlin, Iz istorii rossiǐskogo predprinimatel’stva: dinastiia Knopov: nauchno-analiticheskiǐ obzor (Moscow: INION AN SSSR, 1995), 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 29ff., 36; Blackwell, The Beginnings, 241.

  23. Hau, L’industrialisation de l’Alsace, 388; Paulette Teissonniere-Jestin, “Itinéraire social d’une grande famille mulhousienne: Les Schlumberger de 1830 à 1930” (PhD dissertation, University of Limoges, 1982), 129, 149; Bulletin de la Société Industrielle de Mulhouse 1 (1828); Bulletin de la Société Industrielle de Mulhouse 2 (1829); Bulletin de la Société Industrielle de Mulhouse 22 (1832): 113–36; David Allen Harvey, Constructing Class and Nationality in Alsace, 1830–1945 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 49.

  24. Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 67.

  25. Wright Armitage to Enoch Armitage, Dukinfield, April 16, 1817, in Armitage Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, New York; see also the letters in the Papers of McConnel & Kennedy, record group MCK, box 2/1/1; Letterbook, 1805–1810, box 2/2/3; Letterbook, May 1814 to September 1816, box 2/2/5; Consignments Book, 1809–1829, box 3/3/11; Buchanan, Mann & Co. to McConnel & Kennedy, Calcutta, November 3, 1824, box 2/1/30, all in Papers of McConnel & Kennedy, John Rylands Library, Manchester; William Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture Commonly Called “Power-loom Weaving” and the Purposes for which this System was Invented and Brought into Use (Stockport: J. Lomax, 1828), 131. Analysis of all correspondence of McConnel & Kennedy for the year 1825 in McConnel & Kennedy Papers, Record Group MCK/2, John Rylands Library, Manchester; D. A. Farnie, John Rylands of Manchester (Manchester: John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1993), 5, 10, 13. See also Memorial Book for John Rylands, 1888, Manchester, Record Group JRL/2/2, Archive of Rylands & Sons Ltd, John Rylands Library, Manchester.

  26. Yarn Delivery Book, 1836–38, record group MCK, box 3/3/12, Papers of McConnel & Kennedy, John Rylands Library, Manchester; Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 62, 69ff., 92, 109, 113, 133, 136, 139, 164, 168, 173, 176; Bill Williams, The Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740–1875 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 81. Farnie, John Rylands, 4; British Packet and Argentine News, February 9, 1850, August 3, 1850; Vera Blinn Reber, British Mercantile Houses in Buenos Aires, 1810–1880 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 58, 59; Carlos Newland, “Exports and Terms of Trade in Argentina, 1811–1870,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 17, no. 3 (1998): 409–16; D. C. M. Platt, Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1972), 15, 39; H. S. Ferns, “Investment and Trade Between Britain and Argentina in the Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review, New Series, 3, no. 2 (1950): 207, 210; Blankenhagen & Gethen to Hugh Dallas, London, November 18, 1818, file 003/1–1/24, Dallas Papers, in Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Archivo y Museo Históricos, Buenos Aires. See also R. F. Alexander to Hugh Dallas, Glasgow, March 19, 1819, in ibid. Some merchants also wrote to Dallas and asked him if he would accept consignments from them; see for example Baggott y Par to Hugh Dallas, Liverpool, April 2, 1821, in ibid., file 003/1–1/13; King & Morrison to Hugh Dallas, Glasgow, April 25, 1819, in Blankenhagen & Gethen to Hugh Dallas, London, November 18, 1818, in ibid.

  27. D. C. M. Platt, Latin America and British Trade, 39, 42, 51; Eugene W. Ridings, “Business Associationalism, the Legitimation of Enterprise, and the Emergence of a Business Elite in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Business History Review 63, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 758; Stanley J. Stein, The Brazilian Cotton Manufacture: Textile Enterprise in an Underdeveloped Area, 1850–1950 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 8–9, 14.

  28. Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 231, 276, 281; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 58; Dehn, The German Cotton Industry, 3.

  29. See Warren C. Scoville, “Spread of Techniques: Minority Migrations and the Diffusion of Technology,” Journal of Economic History 11, no. 4 (1951): 347–60; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 72; Dunham, “The Development of the Cotton Industry,” 283; Jack A. Goldstone, “Gender, Work, and Culture: Why the Industrial Revolution Came Early to England but Late to China,” Sociological Perspectives 39, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 2.

  30. W. O. Henderson, Britain and Industrial Europe, 1750–1870: Studies in British Influence on the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1954), 4, 7, 102, 267; Kristine Bruland, British Technology and European Industrialization: The Norwegian Textile Industry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 3, 14; David J. Jeremy, Damming the Flood: British Government Efforts to Check the Outflow of Technicians and Machinery, 1780–1843 (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1977), 32–33; Jan Dhont and Marinette Bruwier, “The Low Countries, 1700–1914,” in Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. 4, part 1, 348; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 77, 127; David J. Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technology Between Britain and America, 1790–1830 (North Andover and Cambridge, MA: Merrimack Valley Textile Museum/MIT Press, 1981), 17; David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 148; Rondo Cameron, “The Diffusion of Technology as a Problem in Economic History,” Economic Geography 51, no. 3 (July 1975): 221; John Macgregor, The Commercial and Financial Legislation of Europe and North America (London: Henry Hooper, 1841), 290.

  31. Dominique Barjot, “Les entrepreneurs de Normandie, du Maine et de l’Anjou à l’époque du Second Empire,” Annales de Normandie 38, no. 2–3 (May–July 1988): 99–103; Henderson, Britain and Industrial Europe, 12, 28; Paul Leuilliot, “L’essor économique du XIXe siècle et les transformations de la cité,” in Livet and Oberlé, eds., Histoire de Mulhouse, 184. See Camille Koechlin, Cahier des notes faites en Angleterre 1831, 667 Ko 22 I, Collection Koechlin, Bibliothèque, Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes, Mulhouse, France.

  32. Bodmer,
Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 276–77; Thomson, A Distinctive Industrialization, 249; Henderson, Britain and Industrial Europe, 142, 194–95; Andrea Komlosy, “Austria and Czechoslovakia: The Habsburg Monarchy and Its Successor States,” in Lex Heerma van Voss, Els Hiemstra-Kuperus, and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, eds., The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 53.

  33. Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes Puebla,” 108, 109, 237; Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution, 5, 6, 77, 78; Dalzell, Enterprising Elite; Jeremy, Transatlantic Industrial Revolution, 41; Bruland, British Technology, 18.

  34. Bodmer, Die Entwicklung der schweizerischen Textilwirtschaft, 278; Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung,” 25; Cameron, “The Diffusion of Technology,” 220; Hau, L’industrialisation de l’Alsace, 366–70, 403ff.; Bernard Volger and Michel Hau, Historie économique de l’Alsace: Croissance, crises, innovations: Vingt siècles de dévelopement régional (Strasbourg: Éditions la nuée bleue, 1997), 146ff.; Dave Pretty, “The Cotton Textile Industry in Russia and the Soviet Union,” in Van Voss et al., eds., The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 424; J. K. J. Thomson, “Explaining the ‘Take-off’ of the Catalan Cotton Industry,” Economic History Review 58, no. 4 (November 2005): 727; Letter of Delegates of the Junta de Comercio, legajo 23, no. 21, fos. 6–11, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona; Herkner, Die oberelsässische Baumwollindustrie, 72ff.; Melvin T. Copeland, The Cotton Manufacturing Industry of the United States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917), 9, 69, 70.

  35. Mokyr, Industrialization in the Low Countries, 39; Adelmann, Die Baumwollgewerbe Nordwestdeutschlands, 89–90; Meerwein, “Die Entwicklung,” 21; Konotopov et al., Istoriia, 79, 92; Lars K. Christensen, “Denmark: The Textile Industry and the Forming of Modern Industry,” in Van Voss et al., eds., The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 144; Alexander Hamilton, “Report on the Subject of Manufactures, December 5, 1971,” in Alexander Hamilton, Writings (New York: Library of America, 2001), 647–734; Samuel Rezneck, “The Rise and Early Development of Industrial Consciousness in the United States, 1760–1830,” Journal of Economic and Business History 4 (1932): 784–811; Müller, “Die Textilindustrie des Raumes Puebla,” 41.