Cotton
The Fabric that Made the Modern World

A fascinating account of how cotton industrialised Europe and transformed the early modern global economy.

Giorgio Riello (Author)

9780521166706, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 April 2015

436 pages, 103 b/w illus. 46 colour illus. 10 maps 12 tables
24.6 x 17.5 x 2.1 cm, 0.92 kg

'This is a beautiful book, packed with dozens of rich photographs of cotton fabric and contemporary paintings … Riello preserves a level of nuance and contingency rare in global histories. He has written an insightful economic history of cotton that should find a wide reading among economic historians and historians of the Atlantic world.' Andrew C. Baker, The South Carolina Historical Magazine

Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, 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 colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation 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. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.

1. Introduction: cotton textiles and global history
Part I. The First Cotton Revolution – A Centrifugal System, c.1000–1500: 2. Selling to the world: India and the old cotton system
3. 'Wool growing on wild trees' – the global reach of cotton
4. The world's best – cotton manufacturing and the advantage of India
Part II. Learning and Connecting – Making Cottons Global, c.1500–1750: 5. The Indian apprenticeship – Europeans trading in Indian cottons
6. New consuming habits – how cotton entered European houses and wardrobes
7. From Asia to America – cottons in the Atlantic world
8. Learning and substituting – printing textiles in Europe
Part III. The Second Cotton Revolution – A Centripetal System, c.1750–2000: 9. Cotton, slavery and plantations in the New World
10. Competing with India – cotton and European industrialisation
11. 'The wolf in sheep's clothing' – the potential of cotton
12. Global outcomes – the West and the new cotton system
13. Conclusion – from system to system, from divergence to convergence.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], General & world history [HBG]