Michael: That cotton t-shirt you're wearing? There's a good chance it was produced with forced labor. And that's not a modern problem. The book we're talking about today argues that modern capitalism itself was built on the back of cotton, powered by centuries of violence and slavery. Kevin: Whoa, okay. That's a heavy way to start. We hear about supply chain issues and labor problems in fashion now, but you're saying this is a feature, not a bug? That it's been baked in from the very beginning? Michael: Exactly. This isn't a new story; it's the original story. And it's all laid out in the book Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism by Harvard historian Sven Beckert. Kevin: A Harvard historian, got it. So this isn't just a casual take. Michael: Not at all. This book didn't just get good reviews; it won the Bancroft Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. Beckert spent ten years on it, digging through archives across the globe to piece together this massive, interconnected story. Kevin: A Pulitzer finalist for a book about... fabric? That tells you there's a much bigger story here. So where does this story even begin? I'm picturing something peaceful, like farmers in a field somewhere in ancient times. Michael: And you'd be right, at first. For thousands of years, cotton was a local, decentralized, and often beautiful craft. In India, they produced fabrics so fine that observers called them "webs of woven wind." In the Aztec Empire, cotton cloth was a form of tribute, as valuable as any precious metal. It was a world of countless small producers, intricate local networks, and incredible artistry. Kevin: Okay, that sounds idyllic. Almost like an Etsy-version of the ancient world. So where does the "empire" part come in? How did we get from "webs of woven wind" to the global behemoth you're describing? Michael: That's the first major turn in the story. It begins when Europe, a continent of itchy wool and coarse linen, gets a taste for comfortable, beautiful Indian cottons. The problem was, they couldn't make anything nearly as good. They were technologically and agriculturally irrelevant in the cotton world. Kevin: So they couldn't compete on quality. What did they do? Start a massive R&D program? Michael: They started a massive R&D program in violence. This is the first core idea of the book: the birth of what Beckert calls "war capitalism."

Kevin: 'War capitalism.' That sounds intense. What does that mean? Isn't that just another word for colonialism? Michael: It's more specific. Beckert argues it's a unique phase. It’s the fusion of private capitalist hunger for profit with the full military and administrative power of the state. It wasn't just about conquering territory; it was about violently restructuring the entire global economy to serve European interests. They didn't just want to trade for cotton; they wanted to control its production from the ground up. Kevin: How did they pull that off? Michael: It was a slow, brutal process. Take the British East India Company in India. At first, they set up "factories," which were really just warehouses, and they had to rely on local Indian merchants to get them cloth. The Indian weavers were independent artisans; they owned their tools and could sell to the highest bidder. European demand was actually good for them at first. Kevin: Right, more customers, higher prices. Makes sense. Michael: But that wasn't profitable enough for the Europeans. So, as their political power grew, they started to change the rules. They used force to eliminate competitors. They began to coerce weavers into contracts, forcing them to take advances and then deliver cloth at fixed, low prices. The book tells this horrifying story of a company agent who found a weaver working for a private merchant. Kevin: Oh no. Michael: The agent had the weaver and his son seized, flogged them severely, painted their faces black and white, and marched them through town as a warning to others. That's war capitalism in action: using violence to destroy a free market and create a captive labor force. Kevin: That's chilling. It's not just business; it's state-sanctioned terror to control a supply chain. So they're suppressing the industry in India while trying to build their own back home? Michael: Precisely. And they used the products of that suppressed industry to fuel their next venture. They took the Indian textiles, which were still in high demand, and sailed them to Africa. And what did they trade them for in Africa? Kevin: Slaves. Michael: Exactly. They used Indian cotton to buy African slaves, who were then shipped across the Atlantic to work on land expropriated from Native Americans. This created a globe-spanning, three-continent system of exploitation. Indian weavers' products paid for African slaves to work on American plantations, all to produce commodities for European consumers. Kevin: That is a horrifyingly efficient global supply chain. It’s like a demonic triangle trade, with cotton at every point. And this all happened before the Industrial Revolution really kicked off? Michael: This is what enabled the Industrial Revolution. Beckert's argument is that war capitalism created the necessary preconditions: vast capital accumulation, global trade networks controlled by Europeans, access to limitless land, and a model for mobilizing coerced labor. Without that violent foundation, the machines in Manchester would have had nothing to spin. Kevin: So the idyllic image of the lone genius inventor in his workshop is a myth. The real invention was this brutal global system. Michael: It was the necessary, dark counterpart. The technological revolution in the factory and the brutal labor revolution on the plantation were two sides of the same capitalist coin. Which brings us to the heart of the empire: the American South.

Kevin: Okay, so Europe has hijacked the global trade, but they still need a massive, reliable, and cheap source of raw cotton to feed their new factories. Michael: And they found it. In the late 18th century, British factories were becoming incredibly productive. Arkwright's water frame, Crompton's mule—these machines could spin yarn faster than anyone had ever dreamed. But this created a huge bottleneck. They were running out of raw cotton. Prices were spiking. The whole industrial project was at risk. Kevin: They couldn't get enough from India or the Ottoman Empire? Michael: Not nearly enough, and not cheap enough. Production there was in the hands of peasants who also had to grow food to survive. They couldn't just drop everything to grow cotton for Manchester. The system wasn't elastic. European capitalists needed a place where they could command both land and labor with absolute authority. Kevin: And that place was the American South. Michael: Yes. A place with a nearly endless supply of land, recently and violently taken from Native American tribes, and a system of labor—slavery—that allowed for total control. The book uses the story of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta to make this brutally clear. It was called the "Saudi Arabia of cotton." Kevin: The Saudi Arabia of cotton. Wow. Michael: It was some of the most fertile land on earth. And in the decades after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, it was transformed. Planters, speculators, and a river of capital flooded in. They brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved people, often through a forced internal migration from the Upper South, to clear the forests and swamps and turn the Delta into a massive agricultural factory. Kevin: So the cotton gin wasn't just a clever invention; it was the key that unlocked the full horror of this system. Michael: It was the final piece of the puzzle. It made processing short-staple cotton profitable on a massive scale. And on these plantations, owners refined techniques of exploitation to an industrial degree. They used the "gang labor" system, forcing people to work from sunup to sundown at a relentless pace, enforced by the whip. They measured productivity daily, punishing anyone who fell short of their quota. It was a factory in the field. Kevin: The narrative of heroic inventors in England is really missing the main point, then. The real 'innovation' that powered the Industrial Revolution was the systematic torture on plantations. Michael: Beckert would say absolutely. The productivity gains on slave plantations were staggering. Between 1800 and 1860, U.S. cotton production grew from 36 million pounds to over 2 billion pounds. This flood of cheap, slave-produced cotton was the fuel that made the Industrial Revolution possible. The two are inseparable. Kevin: Now, this is where the book gets controversial, right? I've seen some reviews that call it a "political screed," arguing that Beckert oversimplifies things by blaming everything on slavery and painting capitalism as inherently evil. Michael: It's a valid point of debate, and the book is definitely polarizing. Beckert's critics argue he downplays the role of free markets, legal institutions, and technological innovation in Europe. But his response, woven throughout the book, is that those things were built on, and depended upon, the wealth and raw materials extracted through war capitalism. He doesn't ignore the spinning jenny, but he argues that without the slave-picked cotton, the jenny is just a museum piece. The system was integrated. Kevin: So it’s not an either/or. It’s a both/and. The genius of the factory and the brutality of the field were locked in a symbiotic, and deeply destructive, relationship. Michael: Exactly. And that system became so powerful, so dominant, that Southern planters started calling cotton "King." They believed their empire was invincible. Kevin: If this system was so dominant, what broke it? The Civil War? Michael: The Civil War was the earthquake that shattered the foundation. But the long-term cracks were already appearing, driven by the very logic that created the empire in the first place.

Kevin: So the American Civil War starts, the Union blockades the South, and suddenly the world's biggest cotton spigot is turned off. What happened in the factories in England? Michael: Catastrophe. It was called the "Cotton Famine." Mills across Lancashire shut down. Hundreds of thousands of workers were thrown into unemployment and starvation. It was a global crisis that exposed just how dependent the world had become on the labor of enslaved people in one specific region. It was a wake-up call for European capitalists and statesmen. They realized their dependence on American slavery was a massive vulnerability. Kevin: So they started looking for other sources. Back to India? Egypt? Michael: Everywhere. And this is where the story takes its next big turn. The Civil War and the end of slavery forced a global reconstruction of the cotton empire. But the deeper, slower-moving force was labor itself. In Europe and the northern United States, factory workers were beginning to organize. They formed unions, they went on strike, they demanded better wages, shorter hours, and safer conditions. Kevin: As they should. Michael: Of course. But from a purely capitalist perspective, this made them more expensive. The cost of labor in the West was rising. Meanwhile, capitalists in places like Japan, China, and India saw an opportunity. They had access to a huge pool of cheap rural labor, often people pushed off their land by the very same colonial policies that had served European interests. Kevin: So the same logic—find the cheapest labor, no matter the human cost—that built the empire in the West eventually started to move it back to the East? Michael: It's a perfect boomerang effect. Take Ahmedabad in India. In the 1860s, a local entrepreneur named Ranchhodlal Chhotalal started the city's first steam-powered cotton mill. It was a huge success. By the early 20th century, Ahmedabad was a bustling industrial center, the "Manchester of India." The same thing happened in Japan, which went from a minor player to the world's largest exporter of cotton cloth by the 1930s, all driven by state support and low-wage labor. Kevin: So the empire of cotton was de-industrializing in the West and re-industrializing in the East. Michael: Exactly. The global center of gravity shifted. And Beckert argues that today, the power has shifted again. It's no longer the manufacturers who hold the most power, but massive retailers. Companies like Walmart, H&M, or Amazon. They don't own the factories, but they control the orders. They pit manufacturers in Bangladesh against those in Vietnam against those in China, constantly driving down prices. Kevin: Which puts pressure on those factory owners to keep wages low and conditions poor. It's the same dynamic, just with a different master. Michael: It's the same dynamic. The relentless search for cheaper inputs, especially labor, continues to define the industry. That's why the book's epilogue is so powerful. It connects the dots from a 17th-century slave plantation to a 21st-century sweatshop.

Kevin: So the thread connecting a 17th-century slave ship, a 19th-century British factory, and a 21st-century fast-fashion warehouse is the same: a relentless, often violent, search for cheap labor, all hidden inside this seemingly innocent commodity. Michael: That's the core of it. Beckert's point is that this isn't just history. The 'empire of cotton' created the template for modern global capitalism. The way it integrated labor, capital, and state power across continents, the way it created vast wealth for some and misery for others—that's the blueprint. Kevin: It's a pretty bleak picture of capitalism. Not the story of progress and freedom we usually hear. Michael: It is. But Beckert ends on a surprisingly hopeful note. He points out that this system, for all its brutality, has also created an incredible capacity for production and organization. We've built a global system capable of clothing the entire world. The challenge, he suggests, is to harness that capacity for a more just and equitable end. Kevin: So the history isn't a condemnation, it's a call to action. To understand the machine so we can finally make it work for everyone, not just the people at the top. Michael: Exactly. It forces you to ask: what other 'empires' are we living in without realizing it? What are the hidden costs of the other everyday products we consume? The story of cotton is a powerful lens for seeing the world we've inherited. Kevin: It definitely makes you look at the tag on your shirt differently. The history is literally woven into the fabric. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Does this change how you think about the clothes you wear or the economic system we live in? Find us on our socials and let us know. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.