Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern WorldToday'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. |
What people are saying - Write a review
Reviews aren't verified, but Google checks for and removes fake content when it's identified
LibraryThing Review
User Review - suniru - LibraryThingOverall, an interesting read. The author has used cotton and cotton fabric to illustrate a period of global modernization. I was a little disappointed that, as the title might suggest, that the book ... Read full review
Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World
User Review - Book VerdictRiello (history, Univ. of Warwick, UK; A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century) examines in impressive detail how cotton became the first truly global ... Read full review
Contents
global cotton and global history I | 5 |
circa 15001750 | 11 |
cotton and European industrialisation | 211 |
the potential of cotton | 238 |
the West and the new cotton system | 264 |
from system to system from divergence to convergence | 288 |
Europeans trading in Indian cottons 87 | 316 |
hoW cottons entered European houses | 322 |
cottons in the Atlantic world 135 | 328 |
printing cotton textiles in Europe | 334 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Americas Anatolia areas Asian Atlantic Atlantic Slave Trade Britain British cotton calico printing Cambridge University Press capital cent Chaudhuri China Chinese chintzes colonial colour plate Commerce commodities consumers consumption Coromandel Coromandel coast cotton cloth cotton cultivation cotton industry cotton manufacturing cotton production cotton textile production Cotton Trade defined difficult Dutch dyeing early modern East India Company Economic History EEIC eighteenth century England English Europe European cotton expanding export fabrics fibre Figure figures find finishing first France French fustians globalisation Gujarat imported Indian cloth Indian cottons Indian Ocean Indian Textiles Industrial Revolution industrialisation innovation Kenneth Pomeranz labour Lancashire Lemire linen London Manchester markets mechanised merchants million Museum nineteenth century Ottoman Empire plantations profits raw cotton raw materials Riello Riello and Parthasarathi seventeenth century silk slaves specialised specific Spinning World Suraiya Faroqhi technologies Textile Industry Tirthankar varieties weavers West Indies wool woollens yarn Zurndorfer
Bibliographic information
| Title | Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World |
| Author | Giorgio Riello |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2015 |
| ISBN | 1107328225, 9781107328228 |
| Subjects | › › › Business & Economics / Economic History History / Modern / 20th Century / General History / Modern / General History / World |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |