India's Place in the World Web of Cotton

  • — May 13, 2019
  • // Technology and Society

What is global history? Analysis of commodity chains

  • Not about covering entire globe, but aware of importance of global correlation.

  • Showing connection

  • Aware of global comparisons and influences

  • Explain why other things might not be connected

  • When history became academic discipline > by end of 19th century, every uni would have history department

  • When that happened, nationalism emerged > belgium became nation, germany, switzerland > many nations were born and were in search of a biography > defining own history and looking at others as alien

  • Institutionalism of history is tied to nationalism

  • Result: Europe became default (center of world), industrialisation as western

  • In 1990 globalisation affected all societes > need of global history > history that looks for connections and not only looks for certain countries

  • Wallerstein, Historical capitalism > theory that linked the world together

  • Core > Periphery (cheap labour) > Semi-Periphery (Wallerstein World System Theory Model) > Macro-model, looks at whole continents, does not look at how people on the ground actually felt

  • Commodity Chain > Coffee consumption looks different in Palestine and Vienna > taking commodity as red thread of global history > follow your product and try to make sense of global correlations

  • Cotton most prominent commodity > important of technological innovation, ubiquitous

South Asia, Atlantic World and Emergence of Cotton as Global Commodity

  • Global center of production becomes clear > First in south then also in north India > Production, weaving, dying

  • Why? Geographical position, productive agricultural system, quality of cloth, biggest market well into 19th century

  • Trade: Sean and land, space of exchange and socio-cultural communication, no core-periphery or regions, Europe enters system from 16th century with trading companies > well balanced situations without trade wars and political aggression > ‘soft globalisation’

  • Indian textile > no de-industrialisation of local textile manufacturing but stimulation for development technique

  • Indian product became benchmark for quality and design > assimilation of Indian aesthetic, influencing clothing taste

  • Implications for Europe > Founding’s of trading companies (East India Company etc) > What motivated the Portuguese (spices) is now cotton, because there is more money to get than with spices

  • Europe catching up > Northern Italy and Southern Germany, Belgium, Northern France, England > not on same level as India

  • Slave trade was funded with cotton > 80% was slaves for cotton > cotton was the heart of slave trading

  • Only sugar was more lucrative than cotton > sugar was cultivated in the Carribbean and based on slave labour > only slaves from Africa proved resilient to Carribean and South American climate

  • Europe > growing it’s own cotton

  • 1000 - 1500: Local linkages, no global web of cotton

  • 1500 - 1780: No stark hierarchies

  • 1780: European entering the system changed it massively, dominating entire trade

    • Naval power, colonialism, seizure of land, slave labour, invention of spinning machines

  • Ecological consequence of cotton and sugar monoculture > Indians did not plant monocultures, cotton was planted alongside vegetables and other plants

  • America takes prominent position

Fibre of Fortune and Political Symbol: Cottin in 19th and 20th Century

  • 1840: Explosion in cotton trade and production from America, cotton web has been rearranged, India has lost its importance > from producer to consumer
  • Garments from UK can be sold cheaper than Indian garments
  • Cottonquality from America was better and more suited more industrial production (for hand-weaving the quality did not play such an important role)
  • Deindustrialisation

  • North felt the supremacy of the South, humanitarian reasons came up in the North

  • Liberation of 4 million slaves from South

  • New centers, Mulhouse

  • Cotton famine

  • Intensification of imperial control over potential cotton-growing in Africa and Asia

  • 1863: Cotton import from southern states fall by 96%

    • Severe losses
    • Worker riots
    • Scramble for new supplies

  • War about cotton

    • Who would grow cotton when not slaves?
    • Role of states in securing cotton

    • Role the US plays in the new cotton world

      • Need of national solutions, ‘America First’

  • North and South in war > going back to India

  • India enters global system again and becomes a global player of cotton by 1862

  • Center of Mumbai: Money to burn