Triggered by the cotton textile competition that existed globally, the innovation of water as well as the steam driven machines in Britain was what activated the industrialized upheaval which changed the conformation of the cotton domain 1 . Slavery in the plantation was strengthened as a labor method where the native Americans in the inland were slowly evicted from their farms to be made into cotton plantation fields. The cotton was used in developing factory organization in Europe, specifically in Britain, where a big number of those evicted from their land were made to work in the cotton industrial unit for wage and most of the time made to work by force 2 . Years later, the United States Civil war jointly with the uprise of worker aggressiveness for improved pay and redaction of the working period caused a new shift of cotton production.
In history, people in what is today known as Pakistan, cultivated cotton seed for garment production and were the first to spin and weave the plant. This was what led to the establishment of the Indian textile industry, which is over hundred years. The adventurers who traveled to India were amazed by the silk and muslins and years latter Atlantic Mills matched the Indian crafts. Cotton cloth was East India’s most significant export and later English merchants in linking Bengal to England and West Africa. It was through industrial capitalism and war capitalism that the British were able to convert the world into cotton progress 3 .
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By enlightening for several reasons, a world history of cotton is explained in the Empire of Cotton by Beckert. To start with, the shift in the organization through the previous three hundred years, caused by problems in planting cotton in the cold, confined the production to local industries like India and China. However, by eighteenth and nineteenth century a fundamental change was ongoing as finished products of cotton merchandises shifted to the new industrial heartlands. The industries were found in the economy of North Atlantic, the fabric refines of northern Britain and array of mill cities in Continental Europe as well as Northern America 4 .
Cotton as the world most lucrative commodity began gradually with the emergence of European empires. The Columbus initial encounter with the Americas through trade in the Far East started a scramble that resulted in the Europe's enormous seizure of Native American lands, and by the eighteenth century they had forced massive migration and enslaved Africans. There arose a merchant class that facilitated the trade of commodities and slaves, which was aided by the emergence of European states. The first industrial home for revolution was Manchester in England, where the first factories were built due to Cotton development. The revolution made British innovators to invent a method to spin cotton into yarn more swiftly. Samuel Greg was the person who invented the mechanized cotton mill that was at the center of new factories. Women and children who were the majority were forced into working in these factories for fourteen hours per day and bunched into quarters at night 5 .
Through the discovery of test sites for cotton growing in the West Indian Islands, England and French started capturing and shipping people from West Africans to work in the agricultural estate. Indian clothes were traded to West Africa traders to fund the movement of slaves through the Atlantic 6 . It was the first time in the cotton history the fabrics were exchanged with slaves. Beckert writes that "the capability of the wealthy and influential European to split the globe into an inside as well as external 7 .” The inside involved the comparative protection of the native state, where the required country regulation governed. The outside by way of disparity was categorized by grand expertise, the seizer of large terrains, and demolition of native people, stealing of what they possessions, captured to slavery, and the control of massive areas of land by individual investors with little operational oversight by distant European countries 8 ."
By the nineteenth century, Europe had a strong cotton producing industry, but relied on imported cotton from the United States. In the period of the civil war the United States exported to the Great Britain its law cotton, but at the same time, manufacturing industries emerged in the North of US cities, driving the United States to its industrial revolution. Beckert argues, the United States was exceptional amongst all other industrializing countries in that it produced and manufactured its cotton. The common thing with all the cotton manufacturing states was that they depended on slaves in the plantation of cotton.
The critical input for the leading sector of the industrial revolution as argued by Beckert was raw cotton and the increase in production of fiber which depended on the expanding world supply of forced labor. The Europeans became interested in the world of cotton because of the innovations and superior technology as well as their ability to reshape and dominate the global cotton networks. Slavery was an important aspect of the foundation of industrial capitalism, which was dictated by the British manufacturers and their financials. The inhuman labor policies were vital for cotton manufacturing and the development of industries.
While recognizing the bigger role South America made in the worldwide empire of cotton it is noted that cotton factory was interconnected with other areas of the globe through finances and innovations. Assumed the global interconnection of the United States cotton frontline, the civil war radically redesigned the world's imperial cotton sceneries 9 . In the middle centuries, England entrepreneurs were concerned with the over dependency on America cotton export and feared if the slave interests would control American political institutions. The capitalists thought on how to get cheaper and more reliable source of cotton from emerging growers like Brazil, India, and Egypt and through the profits there would occur industrialization from the cotton business. The entrepreneurs supposed to build and invest in a healthy industry that included railroads and iron work to create new opportunities for wealth. By the end of civil war cotton essence to the European economy diminished significantly. But cotton played a significant role in industrialization and the emerging of non-European states 10 . In India cotton became a symbol of colonial exploitation and expectation for its postcolonial upcoming. Beckert points out that even in the twentieth century, nationalizing the cotton production could reveal the conflict that capitalism produced between the rich, poor, workers and capitalist.
Slavery remains the primary keen topic due to the impact of the American society and the global industrialization. However, it is to be recognized that the slave system was pure evil and does not mean slavery was essential in the growth of United States economic growth and the industrial revolution in the world development. If slavery were abolished earlier, the cotton in the south would still have led America to Industrial Revolution, and the British Industrial Revolution was underway and would have persisted. The system of slavery did increase the scale of farm size in the South, made slave owners rich and burdened blacks. The richness from slave owners did not aid in national development, thus slavery was a national tragedy that inhibited economic growth through its period.
Bibliography
Beckert, Sven. Empire of cotton: a global history . New York: Vintage, 2015. Print.
