Cotton

Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalization, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colorful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe.

Cotton explores this earlier globalized economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialization of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. Tracing the converging forces at play, from technological developments to emerging markets to consumer preferences, Riello reveals this commodity’s critical role in the development of the East and the West.