Book Review: The Fibers That Shaped the Modern World
Financial Times, James. Crabtree
looking around, a stately neo-Gothic building outlines the skyline of south Mumbai. These buildings, with ornate towers and oddly shaped water jets, are perhaps more in tune with Manchester or London and are somewhat out of step with the financial capital of modern India. At first glance, these buildings, which are out of step with their surroundings, are probably nothing more than the product of the colonists' ambition (some might say the product of extravagance). But in fact, these buildings arose from a rather surprising commercial motive: the global cotton trade.
The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 cut off one of the most important cotton supply lines in the British Empire, which in turn led to a surge in cotton exports from its second largest supplier, India. India's economy began to prosper, and the income from it funded the construction of large railway stations and civil buildings in Mumbai (the English name of Mumbai was Bombay at that time).
Nearly two hundred years later, the Mumbai skyline provides only a small example of the profound impact of cotton. George? Riello (Giorgio Riello)'s book Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cotton) reveals more such examples for us.
The author of the book admits that, unlike some other popular history books that try to interpret the road to globalization through individual commodities such as tea, coffee, cod and salt, "Cotton" is not particularly oriented towards leisure books. As an economic historian at the University of Warwick (Warwick University), he looks at a more comprehensive goal: to describe in detail the impact of cotton, including its role in the rise of India and China at the beginning of the last millennium, and its early role in the rise of the global textile industry. Today, the industry's annual business size has reached $425 billion.
But the author also makes an important argument in the introduction, refuting what he calls a "primary school" textbook view on cotton. From the beginning of the 17th century, the northwest region of England, with Richard? Arkwright (Richard Arkwright) of the worsted machine and other inventions, for the first time overtook India to become the world's number one cotton fabric producer. Referring to that period, Leiro writes: "It has become an unspoken truth that cotton was the driving force of the industrial revolution.... Large factories appeared, employing (and exploiting) millions of workers. This is the beginning of what we call the modern industrial society."
the author does not dispute the importance of cotton in the formation of industrial society, nor does he want to question the importance of cotton to other fields, such as its role in the emergence and development of slavery in the United States.
Instead, he aims to add context and depth to the rough description, explaining why these events often hinge on hundreds of years of technological and business innovation, almost all of which takes place in Asia.
This book therefore devotes a great deal of space to explaining how cotton spinning technology first spread from India to China and only then to Europe. This narrative explains the importance of the two ancient powers of China and India to the eventual industrialization of Europe. The author points out, with slight complacence, that when Arkwright improved his cotton spinning machine "in the north of England in the 1870 s", "India was still the world leader in the cotton spinning industry".
This method of discussion makes him not mention contemporary society too much, but in his careful and rigorous research, he still makes some enlightening comparisons between that time and our current era of globalization.
First, a sudden change in the trading landscape for raw materials such as cotton could have far-reaching social and political implications. This insight applies both to the factories in Lancashire and to the plantations in the pre-war South of the United States, as well as to the recent end of the commodity "super cycle" or China's search for natural resources in Africa.
Second, the interaction between Western and Eastern economies is enduring, and this relationship will have a decisive impact on the next century. According to Lillo, the rise of cotton relies on technology that has long been developed in Asia. Now, given that China and India are likely to return to the top two seats of the world economy, it can be said that this process is going in the opposite direction.
Cotton itself confirms the fact that, with the help of technology imported from industrialized countries, today's India is destined to become the world's number one cotton producer again in the next decade or so. In this sense, the story of cotton offers a relatively simple perspective. Globalization is often seen as a contemporary phenomenon, but that is not the case at all.
The writer is the FT's Mumbai correspondent
cotton: The Fiber That Shaped the Modern World
george. Translator of Liello/Liu Xin
Cambridge University Press (Cambridge University Press), RRP: £ 25/$35