Summary Of Empire Of Cotton

Penguin Random House LLC of New York City published Empire of Cotton, written by Harvard University Professor Sven Beckert, in 2014. And is vivid and penetrating nonfiction in which the author creates a definitive history of how cotton came to shape the contemporary world, global capitalism and political economies. The history of cotton dates back 5,000 years and was crucial to economies of many ancient civilizations. However, Beckert focuses the majority of his attention to our last 250 years. Crossing six continents he depicts how the greed of emerging material consumerism led to the displacement and slavery of indigenous populations and the passage of discriminating laws for the sole purpose of feeding industrial appetites of expansionism.
Cotton played a significant role in their adaptive strategy that developed around the world. “Global Reconstruction” following the American Civil War created a spread of cotton agriculture worldwide as the industry’s economic control remained in the hands of bankers and planters. Seeing the development of “new cotton imperialism,” the British were able to dominate the industry in Egypt and India, the Russians in Central Asia and the Germans in Togo. Following the Second World War, the cotton industry experienced a period of growth; as many previously colonized nations fought for and gained their independence. And as deterritorialized international organizations became proficient at surpassing nation-states, ushering in a new period of globalization, retailers gained control over
Careless about the safety of their workers, like Spanish weaving mills of an earlier century, mills today require 14 and sometimes 16-hour workdays in places such as Bangladesh. Where in 2013 the Rana Plaza building collapsed killing more than 1,100 mostly female workers. Illustrating this, the author compares two arresting photographs in his last chapter. One is of a woman carried from a collapsed factory building in Bangladesh, and the other is a clearance sale rack in Wal-Mart. To emphasize his comparison, Beckert includes the following quote by author Kincaid, “Every good thing that stands before us comes at a great cost to someone