Empire of cotton
by Sven Beckert · first published 2004
55% recommend45% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Global history of cotton tracing how the industry grew through slavery, colonial trade, and state power; it explains the origins of modern capitalism and industrialization for general readers and economic historians.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality in the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism. Sven Beckert's rich, fascinating book tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world's most significant manufacturing industry combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in 1780, these men created a potent innovation (Beckert calls it war capi
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For people interested in the subject, I recommend "Empire of cotton" by Sven Beckert. One thing that I learnt was how actively the British undermine the local industries on their colonies. They wanted the colonies to be only raw material exporters. The effects of that…
on “Scandinavian 'Nabob' of the British Empire: Discovery of a New Colonial Archive” ↗…techniques” were actually invented at slavery plantations [1] I can recommend the following books on the history of capitalism (which is closely linked to the exploitation of labor aka management): - Empire of Cotton (Sven Beckert) - Nature’s Metropolis (Cronon) [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slav...
on “The Evolution of Management (2019)” ↗…how we got here by David Reich: ancient DNA and human history The Book of Why by Judea Pearl; liked it but I need to reread this one a few more times to comprehend completely or go to his textbooks Empire of Cotton: Sven Birckets; a history of the first global technology including how it made the UK & USA rich The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstar by Sebastian Abbot
on “Ask HN: Favorite nonfiction books of 2018?” ↗…patched and mended for as long as possible. When cotton production industrialized in the 19th century it was one of the great shifts in world history, for all sorts of reasons: see Sven Beckett’s great book Empire of Cotton. It takes a real effort of imagination (and research) to put ourselves back in that pre-industrial world: you must constantly remind yourself of things like e.g. transportation of goods over any distance…
on “The expenses of Queen Eleanor of Castile” ↗…(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Clipper). If you're interested in reading more economic history I highly recommend both The Weather Experiment (https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Experiment-Pioneers-Sought-Fu...) and Empire of Cotton (https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Cotton-History-Sven-Beckert/dp...)
on “Before Silicon Valley, New Jersey Reigned As Nation's Center Of Innovation” ↗Sorry, there's no way I'm spoon-feeding you the whole history of labor. Maybe read Loomis's "A History of America in Ten Strikes" as a starting point. And then maybe Beckert's "Empire of Cotton" for the broader, systemic view.
on “The Strange, Unfinished Saga of Cyberpunk 2077” ↗Yes and no. As with the current example in Russia, dangerous governments are closely allied with the economic/industrial elite. Beckert's Empire of Cotton is a good look at the history of what he calls "war capitalism", where there's a close alliance and a lot of common effort between the nominally separate spheres of government and industry.
on “AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’–it’s the corporations that control them” ↗…reading list are historians and none of them are economic historians because it’s impossible to make the case he wants to make if you use data gathered by economic historians. Hickel references Beckert’s Empire of Cotton, which, whatever its many virtues does not accord with economic history at all. The other books he referenced are similarly useless for answering what is a question of economic history. He criticises…
on “A letter to Steven Pinker about global poverty” ↗…insightful to think of this as "pure, unrestrained capitalism". Imperialistic nation states of the 1700s and 1800s followed this playbook, in a time where the biggest enterprises were state-owned (in Empire of Cotton, Beckert refers to it as "War Capitalism"). But those systems fell apart because they were too volatile. Eventually, an inability to control that volatility compelled the same imperialistic nation states…
on “Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked” ↗…supplier of cotton and other plantation crops, if one assumes a very high elasticity of supply of these crops in other parts of the world, and declining costs of maritime transport. In his recent book Empire of cotton, Sven Beckert has essentially argued against making such an assumption. In his view, the coercion involved in the expansion of the American plantation complex was the key ‘that opened fresh lands and…
on “An East African Kingdom Changed T Roosevelt and the Course of American Democracy” ↗The author links to pseudoerasmus's blog post about Empire of Cotton as if it were a refutation of Empire of Cotton's thesis. But that blog post is a summary, not a critique--the author says this explicitly in its comments. The closest the author comes to a critique is…
on “The End of the Past” ↗Empire of Cotton. It's a story about the development of the international cotton trade, which was the specific environment within which many of the state and capitalist institutions we now live with were originally developed.…
on “Ask HN: What books are you currently reading?” ↗