Narrator: In late January 1860, sixty-eight of Britain's most powerful cotton merchants gathered for the Manchester Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting. They were titans of industry, men who had transformed the English countryside into the hub of a global network. They celebrated an "amazing increase" in their trade, a prosperity "unequalled in any previous time." From their vantage point in the world's most industrialized city, they saw themselves at the center of a world-spanning empire built on a simple white fiber. Yet, just over a century later, in 1963, the grand Liverpool Cotton Exchange, once the nerve center of this empire, was forced to auction off its mahogany furniture. The industry had vanished, returning to the very places from which it had been taken.

How did this global empire of cotton rise and fall, and what does its story reveal about the true nature of modern capitalism? Sven Beckert’s book, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism, provides the answer. It argues that the familiar story of industrialization—one of invention and free markets—is incomplete. The real story is one of violent, state-sponsored coercion that connected continents, enslaved millions, and ultimately created the world we live in today.

Narrator: Before Europeans dominated the cotton trade, it was a decentralized, multicontinental affair. For millennia, skilled artisans in India, the Aztec Empire, and Africa cultivated and wove cotton. Indian fabrics, in particular, were world-renowned for their quality, described as "webs of woven wind." Europeans, clothed mostly in wool and linen, were marginal players, unable to compete in quality or price.

Beckert argues that Europe’s rise was not due to technological superiority, but to a new system he calls "war capitalism." This was capitalism based on the violent expropriation of land and labor, operating far from the legal protections of Europe. European states and armed merchants used military power to insert themselves into ancient trade networks. They didn't just trade; they conquered. A stark example of this system in action is the Atlantic slave trade. British merchant Richard Miles, trading on the Gold Coast in the 1770s, bartered for enslaved Africans. The primary currency he used was not gold or silver, but brightly colored cotton textiles from India. He sent meticulous instructions back to his suppliers, noting that "it is them that are to be pleased," referring to the specific tastes of the African traders. This created a globe-spanning triangle: Indian textiles were used to buy African slaves, who were then shipped to the Americas to labor on plantations, producing commodities like sugar and, eventually, cotton for European consumers. This violent fusion of imperial power, slavery, and armed trade was the foundation upon which the industrial empire of cotton was built.

Narrator: The conventional narrative of the Industrial Revolution centers on brilliant inventors and enterprising capitalists in Britain. Beckert challenges this by showing that industrial capitalism was a direct outgrowth of war capitalism. The wealth, raw materials, and markets generated by slavery and colonialism were not incidental; they were essential.

The story of Samuel Greg’s Quarry Bank Mill, one of the first modern factories, illustrates this connection perfectly. Established in 1784, Greg's water-powered mill was a marvel of the new industrial age. But its success was inextricably linked to the brutal system of war capitalism. The raw cotton that fed his machines was grown by enslaved people in the Caribbean. Greg himself was part of a family deeply involved in the slave trade. His initial workforce included orphaned children, known as parish apprentices, who worked in conditions of near-slavery. The profits from his factory, which returned an astonishing 18% annually, were built on this foundation of coercion. Without the violent control of land and labor in the Americas, there would not have been a cheap and abundant supply of cotton to fuel the "dark, satanic mills" of England.

Narrator: By the early 19th century, the insatiable demand from European factories created a bottleneck: the need for more raw cotton. The solution was found in the southern United States. Beckert explains that the U.S. possessed a unique and powerful combination of nearly unlimited land, a seemingly endless supply of enslaved labor, and a government committed to expansion.

The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney was a pivotal moment, making it profitable to cultivate short-staple cotton across the vast interior of the South. But technology alone wasn't enough. The U.S. government actively facilitated this expansion by violently expropriating millions of acres of land from Native American nations. This created new frontiers for cotton cultivation, most notably in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta. This region, with its incredibly fertile soil, was transformed into what Beckert calls the "Saudi Arabia of cotton." Planters, backed by European capital and using enslaved people as collateral for loans, rushed into the Delta. By 1859, 60,000 slaves in the Delta were producing 66 million pounds of cotton, and the region had more than ten slaves for every white inhabitant. This system of slave-driven agriculture was so brutally efficient that it made the U.S. the dominant and essential supplier for the entire global cotton industry.

Narrator: When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, it severed the main artery of the global cotton empire. The Union blockade of Southern ports created a "cotton famine" that reverberated across the world, nowhere more so than in Lancashire, England. Mills shut down, and by 1863, a quarter of the population was unemployed. Riots broke out as desperate workers demanded relief. The crisis starkly revealed the world's dependence on slave-grown American cotton.

This shock forced a global reconstruction of the cotton industry. Capitalists and imperial states scrambled to find new sources of supply and, more importantly, new ways to mobilize labor without chattel slavery. This led to a dramatic expansion of cotton cultivation in places like India, Egypt, and Brazil. In the American South, a new labor system emerged: sharecropping. While it offered freedpeople a degree of autonomy compared to slavery, it often trapped them in cycles of debt and poverty, ensuring they continued to produce cotton for the global market. This post-slavery reconstruction, marked by new forms of coercion and state intervention, became a model for imperial powers seeking to control labor in their own colonies.

Narrator: In the late 19th century, the empire of cotton entered a new phase. European and Japanese states, driven by the needs of their powerful domestic textile industries, embarked on a "New Cotton Imperialism." Their goal was twofold: to secure their own colonial sources of raw cotton and to create captive markets for their finished goods. This process often involved the deliberate destruction of local industries.

The story of the Swiss firm Volkart Brothers in India is a case in point. Initially relying on Indian merchants, Volkart began to vertically integrate its operations in the late 19th century. They built their own cotton gins and presses deep in the Indian countryside, buying directly from growers and bypassing local middlemen. By 1920, they were the largest shipper of Indian cotton. This strategy, replicated by other European firms, squeezed out local merchants. Simultaneously, the influx of cheap, machine-made cloth from Britain decimated India's ancient hand-weaving industry. Colonial policies, such as discriminatory tariffs and the construction of railways designed for export, accelerated this deindustrialization, forcing millions of former artisans into agricultural labor and deepening their dependence on the global market.

Narrator: The 20th century witnessed a great reversal. The very forces that had propelled the cotton empire—the mobilization of workers—began to undermine its dominance in the West. Labor unions and political movements in Europe and the U.S. won higher wages and better conditions, making production more expensive. Capital, ever in search of lower costs, began to move.

The empire of cotton returned home. Countries in the Global South, especially in Asia, began to build their own textile industries, leveraging low-wage labor and state support. Japan, India, and later China became the new centers of manufacturing. The decline of the old empire was symbolized by the 1963 auction in Liverpool. Today, the industry is dominated not by manufacturers, but by massive retailers like Walmart and H&M, who pit a global network of low-wage factories against one another. The legacy of coercion persists in new forms, from the forced labor in Uzbekistan's cotton fields to the crushing debt that drives Indian farmers to suicide. The state remains a key player, providing subsidies to American farmers and enforcing labor discipline in China.

Narrator: The central argument of Empire of Cotton is that the history of capitalism is inseparable from the history of violence, slavery, and colonial exploitation. The world was not connected by the gentle hand of commerce, but by the forceful integration of a global countryside to serve the needs of industrial centers. The immense wealth and productivity of the modern world were built upon a system that expropriated land, coerced labor, and destroyed traditional ways of life.

Sven Beckert's work challenges us to see the past woven into our present. The next time you pick up a cotton t-shirt, consider the long and complex history embedded in its threads. It is a history of innovation and enterprise, but also one of profound inequality and suffering. Understanding this history is the first step toward imagining a future where the industry's incredible productivity can finally serve the needs of everyone involved, from the farmer who plants the seed to the worker who stitches the final seam.