Empire of Cotton
Empire of Cotton

Author: Sven Beckert

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2015-11-10

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 0375713964

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WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's 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 … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times 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 History of the Cotton Famine
The History of the Cotton Famine

Author: R. Arthur Arnold

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2022-04-01

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 3752590211

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1865. From the fall of sumter to the passing of the public works act. With a postscript. New edition.

The Facts of the Cotton Famine
The Facts of the Cotton Famine

Author: John Watts

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1136238913

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... price for spinning on coupled mules and compensation of extra turns. That Lancaster be admitted a district of the association. That our fellow members of Chorley, having been wholly and entirely thrown out of employment by the dispute now pending between the cardroom operatives of that locality and their employers, this meeting begs most respectfully to recommend the case of those connected with this society to the kind and humane consideration of their fellow members throughout the district, and to request that they will spare no exertions on their behalf, but obtain for them all the assistance in their power. The following state of employment was submitted to the meeting:--Of course, even if the above return be correct, it is only an approximate guide to the state of employment, because of the great diminution of operatives in the district. Agents came from the United States during the crisis and sought out hands for weaving and spinning; and, having made engagements with them, paid their passage fees to America. But as these would all go by ordinary passenger vessels they would probably not be reckoned as emigrants. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a larger number than any government measure would have been likely to provide for as emigrants to the colonies, did manage by some means at home or abroad to provide for themselves and their families, and thus relieved both the poor-law guardians and the various committees from a very heavy extra charge upon their funds-and their care. DECREASE OF INDIGENCE. 217 The maximum pressure upon the relief committees was reached early in December, 1862, but, as the tide had turned before the end of the month, the highest number chargeable at any one time is nowhere shown.

Losing the Thread
Losing the Thread

Author: Jim Powell

Publisher:

Published: 2021-02-28

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1789622492

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This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain's raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain's cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain's largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain's raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain's cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

Late Victorian Holocausts
Late Victorian Holocausts

Author: Mike Davis

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1781683603

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Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives.

Mao's Great Famine
Mao's Great Famine

Author: Frank Dikötter

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 080277928X

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Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.