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cdbaker's review against another edition
3.0
I wanted to like this book but I did not. Too detailed, not enough big picture. Definitely had some interesting and well done parts, but I rushed through it because I was bored.
mtzfox's review against another edition
5.0
Originally gave this less stars because of the length and sheer volume of research examples. Which is helpful but also can be tedious.
However, I feel that years after reading this, and reading several other important books that I would characterize as arguments about transition stages throughout history, I really have come to realize how important the arguments in this book are in explaining where we've come from and how things could have gone differently.
This book spends a great deal of time explaining how industrial production was able to develop in England due to it's specific relation to cotton. The British Empire colonized India, but was unable to industrialize and shape the labor force to it's needs, so it separated cotton growing from the industrial spinning, as factories were eventually moved to Manchester and elsewhere in England. But the empire also expanded to the American colonies, and Caribbean, and thus was able to find another climate perfectly suited for this particular natural resource.
What really stands out to me about this argument is that both situations were almost happenstance, providing cheap sources for this commodity that went hand-in-hand with the development of new industrial machinery - looms that were able to make textiles more abundant than ever.
I would argue that Ellen Meiksins Wood has a related argument - that specific forms of production were developing in the English countryside that were moving toward a mechanization of labor in the service of profit motive, rather than mercantilism, elsewhere in Europe, that was dependent on extra-judicial force and taxation to maintain landed aristocracy. Meaning, capitalism emerged at the right moment, but is was by no means inevitable. I really think there is a strong connection between these arguments - as well as Silvia Federici's arguments about the role of primitive accumulation as a mechanism to force populations into relations most suitable to capitalism.
All that said, I'm really glad I've read this book. I was interested in it at first but have found myself revisiting it to understand this period of transition, which could very well shed some light on transitions which society is undergoing today as well. I would love to read more books that help grapple with contradictory forces at play in different stages of society. Because where things we go from here is not inevitable.
However, I feel that years after reading this, and reading several other important books that I would characterize as arguments about transition stages throughout history, I really have come to realize how important the arguments in this book are in explaining where we've come from and how things could have gone differently.
This book spends a great deal of time explaining how industrial production was able to develop in England due to it's specific relation to cotton. The British Empire colonized India, but was unable to industrialize and shape the labor force to it's needs, so it separated cotton growing from the industrial spinning, as factories were eventually moved to Manchester and elsewhere in England. But the empire also expanded to the American colonies, and Caribbean, and thus was able to find another climate perfectly suited for this particular natural resource.
What really stands out to me about this argument is that both situations were almost happenstance, providing cheap sources for this commodity that went hand-in-hand with the development of new industrial machinery - looms that were able to make textiles more abundant than ever.
I would argue that Ellen Meiksins Wood has a related argument - that specific forms of production were developing in the English countryside that were moving toward a mechanization of labor in the service of profit motive, rather than mercantilism, elsewhere in Europe, that was dependent on extra-judicial force and taxation to maintain landed aristocracy. Meaning, capitalism emerged at the right moment, but is was by no means inevitable. I really think there is a strong connection between these arguments - as well as Silvia Federici's arguments about the role of primitive accumulation as a mechanism to force populations into relations most suitable to capitalism.
All that said, I'm really glad I've read this book. I was interested in it at first but have found myself revisiting it to understand this period of transition, which could very well shed some light on transitions which society is undergoing today as well. I would love to read more books that help grapple with contradictory forces at play in different stages of society. Because where things we go from here is not inevitable.
kellyroberson's review against another edition
4.0
A studious and thorough book that illuminates the global reach, power, and destructiveness that cotton has always had. Dry though ... And a difficult read at times.
mkesten's review against another edition
4.0
As I was finishing this book I checked the price of cotton: about 60-cents a pound. 60-cents! Then I looked up an advertisement for a new suit in a discount circular dropped on my front door: $150. I’m guessing at the most one pound of cotton made its way into that suit. After the cotton was picked, wound into thread, loomed into fabric, cut and sewn into that suit, all the profit along the way, so little was left for the cotton picker. Almost all of the work — including the picking — may be automated. Not the design, although with scale of production the cost of design is minimal. Much higher, I understand, are the subsidies which make Texas cotton the most sought-after in the world. I learned this from another work: “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy” by Pietra Rivoli. In this work we are taken back in time to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the conversion of manual labour to industrial production. I found this so instructive. How war capitalism shaped the spread of industrial production, and how the model of slave labour in one corner of the world drove manufacturers to alter the production globally. Not only was cotton produced in the American South profitable, it was fabulously profitable and corrosive to the societies it touched directly and indirectly. But slavery did not end with Appomattox. As we know, capital finds a way to find the weakest in society — and in societies that may not be our own — and harness them for markets: the rich Western markets, or the hungry markets for knock-off merch flowing through Italian ports and guided by organized crime into European and world markets (See Roberto Saviano’s great “Gomorrah: A Personal Journey Into The Violent International Empire of Naples’ Organized Crime System.”) This book tells as much about how oligopolies of trade and trade policies favour capital first and labour last. And how England weaponized global trade.
sophiewoz's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
5.0
definitely one of the better commodity histories i’ve read
jocelynw's review against another edition
2.0
I so wanted to love this. It certainly does lay out how cotton has its tendrils in everything, from the Industrial Revolution to the present day. It was worth struggling with to glean that. It's comprehensive to the degree that I kept reflecting on why authors focus on an area, or a time period. It is thematically organized, so frequently you jump forward and back in time, or from country to country, within a passage or paragraph. That had the effect, for me, of making it difficult to get settled into the narrative. And I generally love books that are Watch in Horror as Capitalism Wrecks Things, but oh, the writing in this. It's dry as cotton mouth.
heybridgetmae's review against another edition
5.0
Read this for a history class in college and it was unbelievably interesting! Changes the way you imagine trade in the world.