by Sven Beckert
2. Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 45, no. 5 (November 1861), 480; Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1961), 40. The value of all exports of “U.S. merchandise” in 1860 was $316 million, while raw cotton exports amounted to $192 million. See U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975), 885, 899; The Economist, January 19, 1861, 58; M. K. Rozhkova, Ekonomicheskiie sviazi Rossii so Srednei Aziei: 40–60-e gody XIX veka (Moscow: Izd. Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1963), 61; “Vliyanie Amerikanskoi Voiny na Khlopchatobumazhnoe delo v Rossii” (The Effect of the American War on the Cotton Business in Russia), Moskva 25 (1867), January 25, 1867; Kaiserliches Statistisches Amt, Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, Erster Jahrgang, 1880 (Berlin: Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1880), 87; U.S. Bureau of Statistics, Treasury Department, Cotton in Commerce, Statistics of United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Egypt and British India (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1895), 29; the French numbers are for 1859, see Claude Fohlen, L’industrie textile au temps du Second Empire (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956), 284, 514; M. Gately, The Development of the Russian Cotton Textile Industry in the Pre-revolutionary Years, 1861–1913 (Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1968), 45; on the importance of the United States to world cotton markets see Gavin Wright, “Cotton Competition and the Post-Bellum Recovery of the American South,” Journal of Economic History 34, no. 3 (1974): 610–35; Gavin Wright, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy Since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
3. The Economist, February 2, 1861, 117.
4. John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Haschish,” John Greenleaf Whittier: Selected Poems, Brenda Wineapple, ed. (New York: Library of America, 2004), 43–44. Thanks to George Blaustein for bringing this poem to my attention.
5. Herman Merivale, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies, Delivered Before the University of Oxford in 1839, 1840 & 1841 (London: Humphrey Milford, 1928), 301–2, 304–5; for a fascinating discussion of Merivale see Daniel Rood, “Herman Merivale’s Black Legend: Rethinking the Intellectual History of Free Trade Imperialism,” New West Indian Guide 80, no. 3–4 (2006): 163–89; see also Edward Atkinson, Cheap Cotton by Free Labor (Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1861), 4.
6. This point is also made by Sugata Bose, “Introduction: Beyond the General and the Particular,” in Sugata Bose, ed., South Asia and World Capitalism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 1–13; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Aufstand in Indien (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1978), 270, originally published in 1853; Reclus, “Le coton,” 176, 187; Frank Lawrence Owsley and Harriet Chappell Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 19; De Bow’s Review 30, no. 1 (January 1861): 75–76; James Henry Hammond, “Speech on the Admission of Kansas, under the Lecompton Constitution, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, March 4, 1858,” in James Henry Hammond, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond of South Carolina (New York: n.p., 1866), 317.
7. Leone Levi, “On the Cotton Trade and Manufacture, as Affected by the Civil War in America,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 26, no. 8 (March 1863): 37ff.; J. E. Horn, La crise cotonnière et les textiles indigènes (Paris: Dentu, 1863), 10.
8. For “treacherous foundations” see Fifth Annual Report of the Cotton Supply Association (Manchester: John J. Sale, 1862), 5; for “not to be safely trusted,” see Cotton Supply Reporter (May 15, 1861): 497; see also Cotton Supply Reporter (January 2, 1860): 7; John Gunn Collins, Scinde & The Punjab: The Gems of India in Respect to Their Vast and Unparalleled Capabilities of Supplanting the Slave States of America in the Cotton Markets of the World, or, An Appeal to the English Nation on Behalf of Its Great Cotton Interest, Threatened with Inadequate Supplies of the Raw Material (Manchester: A. Ireland, 1858), 5; Louis Reybaud, Le coton: Son régime, ses problèmes, son influence en Europe (Paris: Michel Levy Frères, 1863), 383; for similar concerns see “Cotton Cultivation in India,” Calcutta Review 37, no. 73 (September 1861): 87; Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837–1873 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 75; Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review: October, 1849–January, 1850 52 (London: George Luxford, 1852), 214.
9. For this argument see chapters 3 and 4 in Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
10. Quoted in Times of India, Overland Summary, March 12, 1863.
11. Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 44, no. 6 (June 1861): 675; for Lieber see Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 45, no. 5 (November 1861): 514; Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts, “Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa: Introduction,” in Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts, eds., Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), 7.
12. Neil Ashcroft, “British Trade with the Confederacy and the Effectiveness of Union Maritime Strategy During the Civil War,” International Journal of Maritime History 10, no. 2 (December 1998), 155–76; Sam Negus, “ ‘The Once Proud Boast of the Englishman’: British Neutrality and the Civil War Blockade” (unpublished paper, Massachusetts School of Law, 2007, in author’s possession); on the “cotton famine” see also, among others, William Otto Henderson, The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–65 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934); Jahresbericht der Handelsund Gewerbekammer Chemnitz (1865), 6, as quoted in Michael Löffler, Preussens und Sachsens Beziehungen zu den USA während des Sezessionskrieges 1860–1865 (Münster: LIT, 1999), 302; Matthew B. Hammond, The Cotton Industry: An Essay in American Economic History (New York: Macmillan, 1897), Appendix. Even the Bradford worsted industry discontinued the use of now much more expensive cotton warp. See Mary H. Blewett, “The Dynamics of Labor Migration and Raw Material Acquisition in the Transatlantic Worsted Trade, 1830–1930,” in Donna R. Gabaccia and Dirk Hoerder, eds., Connecting Seas and Connected Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s (Boston: Brill, 2011), 138–70.
13. Liverpool Mercury, January 14, 1861, 2; Liverpool Mercury, July 1862; Löffler, Preussens, 194–255.
14. Even though much of the literature emphasizes that in 1861 there was a glut of cotton in the markets, David G. Surdham has shown that stocks of raw cotton in Europe were not extraordinarily large. The stock held on December 31, 1861, equaled the mill consumption of 13.4 weeks. See David G. Surdham, “King Cotton: Monarch or Pretender? The State of the Market for Raw Cotton on the Eve of the American Civil War,” Economic History Review 51 (1998): 113–32, esp. 119; on the glutted markets as a sign of crisis see for example Liverpool Mercury, October 6, 1863, 6; Farnie, English Cotton, 141–43; Moskva, February 1, 1867, the “organ of Moscow capitalists,” in V. Ya. Laverychev, Krupnaya Burzhuaziia V Poreformennoi Rossii: 1861–1900 (Moscow: Izd. Mysl’, 1974).
15. Charles Francis Adams Jr. to Henry Adams, Quincy, Massachusetts, August 25, 1861, in Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed., A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 33; Nigel Hall, “The Liverpool Cotton Market and the American Civil War,” Northern History 34, no. 1 (1998): 154; Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 49, no. 6 (December 1863): 411; for the statistics see Thomas Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain, Including a History of the Liverpool Cotton Market and of the Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association (London: Effingham Wilson, 1886), Appendix, Table 1; for the numbers see Liverpool Mercury, November 11, 1861, 3; Liverpool Mercury, February 22, 1864, 6; on the relief efforts in Lancashire see John Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1866); Liverpool Mercury, February 22, 1864, 6; Manchester Chamber of Commerce, The Forty-First Annual Report of the Board of
Directors for the Year 1861 (Manchester: Cave & Server, 1862), 20; John O’Neil, diary entry, April 10, 1864, as cited in Rosalind Hall, “A Poor Cotton Weyver: Poverty and the Cotton Famine in Clitheroe,” Social History 28, no. 2 (May 2003): 243; “Memorial of the Unemployed Operatives of Stalybridge,” received February 23, 1863, in Various documents relating to the distress in the cotton manufacturing districts during the American Civil War, HO 45: 7523, Home Office, National Archives of the UK, Kew; “Facilities Required for Public Workers for the Employment of able-bodied Cotton Workmen at Ordinary Wages,” Minutes of the Central Executive Committee, May 25, 1863, in ibid.
16. See Liverpool Mercury, March 25, 1863, 7; undated report, in various documents relating to the distress in the cotton manufacturing districts during the American Civil War, HO 45: 7523, Home Office, National Archives of the UK, Kew; William Rathbone to William Rathbone Jr., Green Bank, March 5, 1862, in letters of William Rathbone, RP.IX.4.1–22, Rathbone Papers, University of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives, Liverpool; Times of India, Overland Summary, June 12, 1862, 2; see also Times of India, Overland Summary, September 27, 1862, 3, October 17, 1862, 3, October 27, 1862, 2. Indeed, by far the largest international contributions to the relief of the suffering of Lancashire workers came from Calcutta and Bombay respectively. See Watts, Facts, 164; Charles Wood to James Bruce, Earl of Elgin, May 2, 1863, in MSS EUR F 78, LB 13, Wood Papers, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London; M. J. Mathieu, De la culture du coton dans la Guyane française (Epinal: Alexis Cabasse, 1861), 47.
17. 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): 292–94; Lynn M. Case, ed., French Opinion on the United States and Mexico, 1860–1867: Extracts from the Reports of the Procureurs Généraux (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1936), 123–25; Thomas A. Sancton, “The Myth of French Worker Support for the North in the American Civil War,” French Historical Studies 11, no. 1 (1979): 59, 66; Claude Fohlen, “La guerre de sécession et le commerce franco-américain,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 8, no. 4 (October–December 1961), 259–70; Alphonse Cordier, La crise cotonnière dans la Seine-Inférieur, ses causes et ses effets (Rouen, 1864), 8; Claude Fohlen, L’industrie textile au temps du Second Empire (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956), 257–62; Stephen McQueen Huntley, Les rapports de la France et la Confédération pendant la guerre de sécession (Toulouse: Imprimerie Regionale, 1932), 222; Mathieu, De la culture, 1; Harold Hyman, ed., Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969), 132; on the social impact of the crisis in France see A. S. Ménier, Au profit des ouvriers cotoniers: Pétition au Sénat sur la détresse cotonnière (Paris: E. Dentu, 1863).
18. Löffler, Preussens, 126, 147; Emerson David Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During the Civil War (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 84, 86; Gately, Development, 47. The amount of cotton imported across the European border, most of it from the United States, had fallen from nearly 2.5 million pounds to a little less than half a million pounds. Mariya Konstantinovna Rozhkova, Ekonomicheskiie sviazzi Rossii so Srednei Aziei, 40–60-e gody XIX veka (Moscow: Izd-vo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1963), 61–62; to my knowledge there are no statistics that would allow us to determine the precise percentage of U.S. cotton among these exports. Contemporary observers, however, all agreed that most of it originated from the United States—a reasonable estimate would be somewhere between 80 and 90 percent. Charles J. Sundell to William H. Seward, Stettin, May 15, 1863, Despatches from United States Consuls in Stettin, as quoted in Löffler, Preussens, 110.
19. John Rankin, A History of Our Firm: Being Some Account of the Firm of Pollock, Gilmour and Co. and Its Offshoots and Connections, 1804–1920 (Liverpool: Henry Young & Sons, Limited, 1921), 157; Baring Brothers Liverpool to Baring Brothers London, August 24, 1863, in HC 3:35, Part 23, House Correspondence, Baring Brothers, ING Baring Archive, London. Baring Brothers & Co. was also the banker of the United States in London; see letter of Frederick William Seward to Thomas Haines Dudley, Washington, March 26, 1864, in Seward Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC; Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 49, no. 5 (November 1863): 350; Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, Report of the Council, 1863 (Liverpool: Benson and Holmes, 1863), 18; John D. Pelzer, “Liverpool and the American Civil War,” History Today 40, no. 3 (1990): 49; Hall, “Liverpool Cotton,” 161; Samuel Smith, My Life-Work (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902), 34; Liverpool Mercury, January 6, 1862, 6; Lowell Daily Citizen and News, January 9, 1862.
20. Quote from Times of India, October 6, 1863, 1; see also Times of India, Overland Summary, September 8, 1864, 2–3; Times of India Overland Summary reported negatively on the practice on September 29, 1863, 5–6; Pelzer, “Liverpool,” 52.
21. Chamber de Commerce de Rouen, Délibération de la chambre sur la formation de la Compagnie française des cotons Algériens (Rouen: Ch.-F. Lapierre et Cie, 1862), 5, in F/80/737, Fonds Ministériels, Archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France; Pétition à Sa Majesté l’Empereur Napoléon III, au sujet de la culture du coton en Algérie, Senones, February 13, 1862, in ibid.; Bulletin de la Société industrielle de Mulhouse 32 (1862), 347, as quoted in Fohlen, L’industrie textile, 347–48; the Mulhouse Chamber of Commerce even created a commission to look into the possibility of growing cotton in Algeria; see Bulletin de la Société Industrielle de Mulhouse, vol. 32 (1862), 346; Antoine Herzog, L’Algérie et la crise cotonnière (Colmar: Ch. M. Hoffmann, 1864); letter to the editor in L’Industriel Alsacien, December 25, 1862; Antoine Herzog to La Majesté, l’Empereur des Française, January 6, 1863, in F/80/737, Fonds Ministériels, Archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France; petitions from many other cotton regions also were sent to the emperor; Pétition à Sa Majesté l’Empereur Napoléon III, au sujet de la culture du coton en Algérie, Senones, February 13, 1862, in F/80/737, Fonds Ministériels, Archives d’outre mer, Aix-en-Provence, France, contained in 15 cahiers, signed by manufacturers from all regions of France. For evidence on this pressure, see also at the same location letter of F. Engel-Dollfus, président de la commission d’encouragement à la culture du coton en Algérie, to Monsieur le Marechal Comte Randon Senateur, Ministre Secrétaire d’État au Departement de la Guerre, Mulhouse, April 8, 1862.
22. Liverpool Mercury, August 12, 1862, 7. There was a general obsession with this question; Gladstone, for example, received a letter in 1862 from Mrs. E. Tennyson in which she related an elaborate scheme in which a specially created fund would reimburse manufacturers for the rising costs of raw cotton, so that they would be enabled to continue employing their workers; see “Memorandum by Mrs. E. Tennyson to Gladstone related to the cotton famine,” in Add. 44399 f. 188, vol. 314, Gladstone Papers, British Library, London; Liverpool Mercury, January 22, 1861, 2; William Thayer to William H. Seward, London, July 11, 1862, private letter, U.S. Consulate, Alexandria, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Alexandria, National Archives, Washington, DC; Löffler, Preussens, 111; see Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. 171 (London: Cornelius Buck, 1863), 1771–840; Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. 165 (London: Cornelius Buck, 1862), 1155–230.
23. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 78; Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston to John Russell, Broadlands, October 6, 1861, Box 21, 30/22, Lord John Russell Papers, National Archives of the UK, Kew; see the notes and reports, including report by unknown author, “Le coton à la côte occidentale d’Afrique,” n.d.; Note on Siam, n.d.; draft article, n.a., n.d., on “La culture du coton à la Guyana”; all in GEN 56/Folder 547, in Fonds Ministériels, Archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France.
24. Manchester, Forty-First Annual Report, 21; for evidence of this pressure see also Manchester Chamber of Commerce, The Forty-Third Annual Report of the Board of Directors for the Ye
ar 1863 (Manchester: Cave & Server, 1866), 6; Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 1858–1867, M8/2/6, Archives of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Manchester Archives and Local Studies, Manchester; Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Report of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce for the Year 1859–60 (Bombay: Chesson & Woodhall, 1860), xxxiii; for earlier efforts to increase cotton production in India see Anti-Cant, India v. America: A Letter to the Chairman of the Hon. East India Company, On Cotton (London: Aylott & Jones, 1850); John Briggs, The Cotton Trade of India with a Map of India, Coloured to Indicate the Different Spots Whereon all the Varieties of Cotton which are Brought into the British Market have been Successfully Cultivated (London: John W. Parker, 1840); Chapman, The Cotton and Commerce of India; The Cotton Trade of India (London, 1839); Thomas Williamson, Two Letters on the Advantages of Railway Communication in Western India, Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Wharncliffe, Chairman of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company (London: Richard & John E. Taylor, 1846); John Briggs, The Cotton Trade of India: Part I. Its Past and Present Condition; Part II. Its Future Prospects: with a Map of India (London: John W. Parkter, 1840); Walter R. Cassels, Cotton: An Account of Its Culture in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay: Bombay Education Society’s Press, 1862), 16–237; The Economist, February 2, 1861, 117.
