Empire of Cotton: A Global History [Paperback]

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST

Winner of the Alfred and Fay Chandler Book Award

The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.
        In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.

“Masterly. . . . Deeply researched and eminently readable,Empire of Cottongives new insight into the relentless expansion of global capitalism.  With graceful prose and a clear and compelling argument, Beckert not only charts the expansion of cotton capitalism . . . he addresses the conditions of enslaved workers in the fields and wage workers in the factories.  An astonishing achievement.”—Thomas Bender, New York Times
 
“Important  . . .a major work of scholarship that will not be soon surpassed as the definitive account of the product that was, as Beckert puts it, the Industrial Revolution’s ‘launching pad.’” —Adam Hochschild,New York Times Book Review     
        
“Breathtakingly comprehensive, informative and provocative.” —Glenn C. Altschuler,Tulsa World
 
“Persuasive . . . brilliant . . . Beckelƒ#