Empire of Cotton
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60. John Robinson quoted in Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 1902, 1903 (Berlin, 1903), 18; Zeitfragen: Wochenschrift für deutsches Leben, May 1, 1911, 1.
61. German cotton merchants in particular were active in creating these ginning and pressing operations, helped by the Tuskegee experts, and as early as 1902 the Deutsche Togogesellschaft established itself in Berlin as a private enterprise that was to build gins and cotton buying agencies in Togo. See “Prospekt der Deutschen Togogesellschaft,” Berlin, April 1902, private archive, Freiherr von Herman auf Wain, Schloss Wain, Wain, Germany; Karl Supf, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, Bericht IX (Berlin: Mittler, 1907), 304. See also G. H. Pape to Bezirksamt Atakpame, April 5, 1909, file 1009, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3 Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin. During the 1908–9 season they stipulated the minimum price for ginned cotton, delivered at the coast, to be 30 pfennige per pound. See Verhandlungen des Kolonial-Wirtschaftlichen Komitees und der Baumwoll-Komission, November 11, 1908, file 8223, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 1902, 1903 (Berlin, 1903), 17; Radcliffe, “Tuskegee-Togo,” 103.
62. James N. Calloway to Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, June 13, 1901, file 8221, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundes-archiv, Berlin. In 1903 John Robinson reported that transporting cotton from Tove to Lomé would take ten to twelve days; Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale, 21; Karl Supf, Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, to Auswärtiges Amt, Kolonial-Abteilung, May 10, 1902, file 8221, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft.
63. German cotton interests appealed to the Kolonial-Abteilung of the Auswärtiges Amt that Steuerträger, in effect forced laborers, should carry the cotton from Tove to the coast without pay. See Karl Supf, Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, to Auswärtiges Amt, Kolonial-Abteilung, Nov. 15, 1901, 8221, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundesarchiv, Berlin. See also note “Station Mangu No. 170/11, May 8, 1911, file 4047, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Supf, “Zur Baumwollfrage,” 12.
64. Radcliffe, “Tuskegee-Togo,” 107; Verhandlungen des Kolonial-Wirtschaftlichen Komitees und der Baumwoll-Komission, November 11, 1908, file 8223, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Metzger, Unsere Alte Kolonie, 245, 252. For further statistics on the export of cotton from Togo after World War I see “Togo: La production du Coton,” in Agence Extérieure et Coloniale, October 29, 1925. The expansion of cotton production continued throughout the twentieth century, and in 2002–3, Togo produced 80 million kilograms of cotton, about nineteen times as much as in 1938 and 160 times as much as in 1913. See Reinhart, “Cotton Market Report 44” (January 23, 2004), accessed January 30, 2004, http://www.reinhart.ch/pdf_files/marketreportch.pdf.
65. Maier, “Persistence,” 77. Moreover, large areas of Togo were also sparsely settled, lacking surplus labor for cotton production. See G. H. Pape, “Eine Berichtigung zu dem von Prof. Dr. A. Oppel verfassten Aufsatz ‘Der Baumwollanbau in den deutschen Kolonien und seine Aussichten,’ ” file 3092, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin. On intercropping see also Bassett, Peasant Cotton, 57; “Bericht über den Baumwollbau in Togo,” Enclosure in Kaiserliches Gouvernement Togo, Gouverneur Zech to Reichskolonialamt Berlin, November 23, 1909, 2, file 8223, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Beckert, “Emancipation”; Etienne, Die Baumwollzucht, 39.
66. The Dutch merchant is quoted in Adedze, “Cotton in Eweland,” 132; “Der Baumwollbau in Togo, Seine Bisherige Entwicklung, und sein jetziger Stand,” undated draft of an article, 8224, record group R 1001, Papers of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, Bundesarchiv, Berlin.
67. Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Baumwoll-Expedition, 44; signed Agreement between Graf Zech and Freese (for the Vietor company), March 1, 1904, file 332, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 1, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Vail and White, “Tawani, Machambero,” 241; Roberts, “Coercion,” 223, 231, 236; Bassett, Peasant Cotton, 66; Isaacman and Roberts, “Cotton, Colonialism,” 16.
68. This was also a point made by Morel, Affairs, 192; see also A. McPhee, The Economic Revolution in West Africa (London: Cass, 1926), 49; Marion Johnson, “Cotton Imperialism in West Africa,” African Affairs 73, no. 291 (April 1974): 182, 183.
69. Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, Bericht XI (Frühjahr 1909), file 3092, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin; James Stephen as quoted in David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 218.
70. Supf, “Zur Baumwollfrage,” 9, 12; Gouverneur of Togo to Herrn Bezirksamts-leiter von Atakpame, December 9 (no year), file 1008, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo; “Massnahmen zur Hebung der Baumwollkultur im Bezirk Atakpakme unter Mitwirkung des Kolonialwirtschaftlichen Komitees,” Verwaltung des deutschen Schutz-gebietes Togo, file 1008, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo; for the Governor of Togo see Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 57–59; “Baumwollinspektion für Togo,” file 1008, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 3, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo. John Robinson had already remarked in 1904 that the “habits [of the people of Togo] cannot be changed in a day”; see “Baumwollanbau im Schutzgebiet Togo, Darlegungen des Pflanzers John W. Robinson vom 26. 4. 1904 betr. die Vorausetzungen, Boden- und Klimaverhältnisse, Methoden und Arbeitsverbesserung, Bewässerung,” Fragment, file 89, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 1, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo.
71. Paul Friebel to Togo Baumwollgesellschaft, Atakpame, April 7, 1911, File 7,2016, 1, Papers of the Togo Baumwollgesellschaft mbH, Staatsarchiv Bremen, Bremen, Germany; the experience of the British Cotton Growing Association in Africa in many ways paralleled the German experience; for its history see Robins, “The Black Man’s Crop.”
72. See “Baumwollanbau im Schutzgebiet Togo, Darlegungen des Pflanzers John W. Robinson vom 26. 4. 1904 betr. die Voraussetzungen, Boden- und Klimaverhältnisse, Methoden und Arbeitsverbesserung, Bewässerung,” Fragment, 13 and 49, file 89, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 1, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Anson Phelps Stokes, A Brief Biography of Booker Washington (Hampton, VA: Hampton Institute Press, 1936), 13; John Robinson to Graf Zech, January 12, 1904, file 332, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 1, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo.
73. Bassett, Peasant Cotton, 55, 59; Julia Seibert, “Arbeit und Gewalt: Die langsame Durchsetzung der Lohnarbeit im kolonialen Kongo, 1885–1960” (PhD dissertation, University of Trier, 2012), 186–206; Isaacman and Roberts, “Cotton, Colonialism,” 27; Vail and White, “Tawani, Machambero,” 252, 253.
74. For an excellent survey see Isaacman and Roberts, eds., Cotton
, Colonialism. German cotton experts were still envious of British successes in Africa; see O. Warburg, “Zum Neuen Jahr 1914,” Der Tropenpflanzer: Zeitschrift für tropische Landwirtschaft 18 (January 1914): 9; Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963); League of Nations, Economic and Financial Section, International Statistical Yearbook 1926 (Geneva: Publications of League of Nations, 1927), 72; League of Nations, Economic Intelligence Service, Statistical Year-book of the League of Nations 1939/40 (Geneva: Series of League of Nations Publications, 1940), 122; National Cotton Council of America, accessed April 10, 2013, http://www.cotton.org/econ/cropinfo/cropdata/country-statistics.cfm; Etonam Digo, “Togo Expects to Meet Cotton Production Targets as Harvest Avoids Flooding,” Bloomberg, October 29, 2010, accessed April 10, 2013, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–10–29/togo-expects-to-meet-cotton-production-targets-as-harvest-avoids-flooding.html.
75. Isaacman and Roberts, eds., Cotton, Colonialism; Bassett, Peasant Cotton; Ehrlich, “Marketing,” 28–33; on the Association Cotonnière Coloniale see Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 66–68, 69–71; as to the Sudan, see Booker T. Washington to Gladwin Bouton, May 6, 1915, and Leigh Hart to Booker T. Washington, February 3, 1904, Booker T. Washington Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Radcliffe, “Tuskegee-Togo,” 3, 133, 135; Karl Supf, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 295, 297; German colonial cotton activists often referred to the experiences of the French, British, and Russians, see for example, Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, Deutsch-Koloniale Baumwoll-Unternehmungen, 66–71; “Anlage zum Bericht des Kaiserlichen Generalkonsulats in Saint Petersburg,” December 26, 1913, sent to Reichs-Kolonialamt and the Governor of Togo, 360, record group R 150F, Fonds Allemand 1, Papers of the Administration of the German Protectorate Togo (L’Administration du Protectorat Allemand du Togo), Archives Nationales du Togo, Lomé, microfilm copy in Bundes-archiv, Berlin; copy of a report by R. B. D. Morier to the Secretary of State, The Marquis of Salisbury, October 12, 1889, Compilations Vol. 51, 1890, Compilation No. 476, “Establishment by the Russian Government of a Model Cotton Plantation in the Merva Oasis,” Revenue Department, Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; Robins, “The Black Man’s Crop,” 16; Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Direction des Affaires politiques et commerciales, No. 88, Copie M, Verchere de Reffye, Consul de France à Alexandrie à M. Pincarem Alexandrie, August 30, 1912, and Dépêche de Consulat de France, Saint Petersburg, June 15, 1912, in 9 AFFECO, Affairs économquie, Fonds Ministeriels, Archives d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence; The Fourth International Congress of Delegated Representatives of Master Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations, Held in Musikvereinsgebäude, Vienna, May 27th to 29th, 1907 (Manchester: Taylor, Garnett, Evans, & Co., 1907), 306; International Cotton Congress, Official Report of the International Cotton Congress, Held in Egypt, 1927 (Manchester: Taylor Garnett Evans & Co. Ltd., 1927), 179–89.
76. On the Soviet Union’s efforts at increasing cotton production, see Obertreis, Imperial Desert Dreams; Maya Peterson, “Technologies of Rule: Empire, Water, and the Modernization of Central Asia, 1867–1941” (PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2011); Christof Dejung, “The Boundaries of Western Power: The Colonial Cotton Economy in India and the Problem of Quality,” in Christof Dejung and Niels P. Petersson, eds., The Foundations of Worldwide Economic Integration: Power, Institutions, and Global Markets, 1850–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 156; Rudolf Asmis and Dr. Zeller, Taschkent, April 10, 1923, mailing of colonial cotton brochures, Berlin, May 7, 1923; memo, Der heutige Stand der Baumwollkultur in Turkestan und das Problem einer deutschen Mitarbeit an ihrem Wiederaufbau; minutes of the meeting of the Baumwoll-Kommission des Kolonial-Wirtschaftlichen Komitees, June 28, 1923; minutes of the meeting of the Baumwollbau-Kommission, Diskonto Gesellschaft, Berlin, July 12, 1923, all in Kolonial-Wirtschaftliches Komitee, R 8024/25, Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Ekonomitsceskaja Shisnj, July 12, 1923, translated by the German embassy in Moscow, in Kolonialwirtschaftliches Komitee, R 8024/25, Bundesarchiv, Berlin; there are also documents in the file testifying to the execution of cotton experts in Central Asia who did not do enough to fight a locus plague.
77. In a very different context, Kären Wigen has told a similar story about the incorporation of particular regions of Japan into the national and global economy; see Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
78. Buehler, “Die Unabhängigkeitsbestrebungen,” 91; Bleifuss and Hergenröder, Die “Otto-Plantage Kilossa,” 39; Pierre de Smet, Les origins et l’organisation de la filature de coton en Belgique. Notice publiée à l’occasion du 25ème anniversaire de l’Association Cotonnière de Belgique (Brüssels, 1926), 1; Obertreis, Imperial Desert Dreams, chapter 1, 67; E. R. B. Denniss, “Government of the Soudan Loan Guarantee,” Parliamentary Debates, Fifth Series, vol. 52, col. 428, April 23, 1913.
79. See chapter 10, note 5.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE RETURN OF THE GLOBAL SOUTH
1. Kenneth L. Gillion, Ahmedabad: A Study in Indian Urban History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 69; Makrand Mehta, The Ahmedabad Cotton Textile Industry: Genesis and Growth (Ahmedabad: New Order Book Co., 1982), viii, 33–34, 43, 50, 53; Dwijendra Tripathi, Historical Roots of Industrial Entrepreneurship in India and Japan: A Comparative Interpretation (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 108; Sujata Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations: The Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 21–22.
2. Mehta, The Ahmedabad Cotton Textile Industry, 54, 57; Times of India, June 12, 1861.
3. Mehta, The Ahmedabad Cotton Textile Industry, 6, 8–9, 14, 20.
4. Ibid., 66, 67, 77ff., 80, 85–87, 96–102; Salim Lakha, Capitalism and Class in Colonial India: The Case of Ahmedabad (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1988), 64–66; Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24; Tripathi, Historical Roots of Industrial Entrepreneurship in India and Japan, 107; Irina Spector-Marks, “Mr. Ghandi Visits Lancashire: A Study in Imperial Miscommunication” (Honors Thesis, Macalester College, 2008), 23.
5. Stephan H. Lindner, “Technology and Textiles Globalization,” History and Technology 18 (2002), 3; Douglas A. Farnie and David J. Jeremy, The Fibre that Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600–1990s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23; Lindner, “Technology and Textiles Globalization,” 4; John Singleton, Lancashire on the Scrapheap: The Cotton Industry, 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 11; Douglas A. Farnie and Takeshi Abe, “Japan, Lancashire and the Asian Market for Cotton Manufactures, 1890–1990,” in Douglas Farnie et al., eds., Region and Strategy in Britain and Japan, Business in Lancashire and Kansai, 1890–1990 (London: Routledge, 2000), 140, 147.
6. Farnie and Jeremy, The Fibre That Changed the World, 23; David L. Carlton and Peter A. Coclanis, “Southern Textiles in Global Context,” in Susanna Delfino and Michele Gillespie, eds., Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005) 153, 155; Gary R. Saxonhouse and Gavin Wright, “New Evidence on the Stubborn English Mule and the Cotton Industry, 1878–1920,” Economic History Review, New Series, 37, no. 4 (November 1984): 519. It is important to note that Japanese spindles produced significantly more thread than Indian spindles.
7. Arno S. Pearse, The Cotton Industry of India, Being the Report of the Journey to India (Manchester: Taylor, Garnett, Evans, 1930), 3.
8. Pearse, The Cotton Industry of India, 101; Philip T. Silvia, “The Spindle City: Labor, Politics, and Religion in Fall River, Massachusetts, 1870–1905” (PhD dissertation, Fordham University, 1973), 7; Thomas Russell Smith, “The Cotton Textile Industry of Fall River, Massachusetts: A Study of Industrial Localization” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1943), 21; William F. Hartford, Where Is Our Responsibility?: Unions and Economic Chan
ge in the New England Textile Industry, 1870–1960 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 7–8, 54; John T. Cumbler, Working-Class Community in Industrial America: Work, Leisure, and Struggle in Two Industrial Cities, 1880–1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979), 54.
9. Hartford, Where Is Our Responsibility? 12, 28; Mary H. Blewett, Constant Turmoil: The Politics of Industrial Life in Nineteenth-Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 183; Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Thirteenth Annual Report (Boston: Rand, Avery & Co., 1882), 195.
10. Cumbler, Working-Class Community in Industrial America, 105, 118; Dietrich Ebeling et al., “The German Wool and Cotton Industry from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century,” 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), 227. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor estimated that a family needed a minimum of $400 a year for rent, fuel, food, and clothing. See Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Sixth Annual Report (Boston: Wright and Potter, 1875), 118, 221–354, esp. 291, 372, 373, 441.
11. Hartford, Where Is Our Responsibility? 7–17, 29; Isaac Cohen, “American Management and British Labor: Lancashire Immigrant Spinners in Industrial New England,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 27, no. 4 (October 1, 1985): 611, 623–24; Blewett, Constant Turmoil, 112; David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865–1925 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 163.
12. R. B. Forrester, The Cotton Industry in France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1921), 100; Claude Fohlen, L’industrie textile au temps du Second Empire (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1956), 412; David Allen Harvey, Constructing Class and Nationality in Alsace, 1830–1945 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001), 3, 64, 65.