Figure 1.--Here we see children sitting in a cotton wagon in Keiser, Mississippi County, Arkansas. The photo was taken about 1940. Their father or fathers was probably a share croper.
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Figure 1.--Here we see children sitting in a cotton wagon in Keiser, Mississippi County, Arkansas. The photo was taken about 1940. Their father or fathers was probably a share croper. |
Given the economic and social importance of cotton as a raw material, it is not surprising that cotton has played an important role in history in both the ancient and modern worlds. Cotton fabric has been used since ancient times and the development of cotton agriculture was an important step in the advance of civilization among ancient civilizations. It did not play a major role in European history until the technical developments which led to the industrial revolution, a critical development in the making of the modern world and the rise of the West. Cotton also played a central role in the economic development of the United States, leading to both the expansion of slavery and financing the industrialization of the United States.
Cotton fabric has been used since ancient times and the development of cotton agriculture was an important step in the advance of civilization among ancient civilizations. The original habitat of cotton is unknown. It is a plant that occurred naturally in both the Old World and rhe New World. One source reports that cotton was grown in India as early as 3,000 BC, but was almost ceratinly grown much earlier. Another source suggests that cotton was domesticated about 1500 BC in three different locations: the Indus Valley, Ethiopia, and Peru. [Yafa] It seems likely that the Indus River and Ethiopian developments may have been related. The domestication of cotton in Peru would have had to have been an independent development.
Cotton was also cultivated in ancient China and Egypt.
Cotton was virtually unknown in Medieval Euroope until the Crusades of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The exposure of the Crusaders to luxuruy goods like silk and cotton, fueled European demand. Trade route to India, howevrer, were controlled by the Arabs and this cotton was enormously expensive in Europe. The Poruguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the 15th century were primarily organized to establish direct trade contacts with the East.
Cotton did not prove to be an immediate success, especially in norther Europe. Here climate was a factor. Another problem with cotton was that it was difficult to dye. Cotton gabric would very quily fade with washing. The Indians had figured out how to do this. It involved anamilzing the fabric, soaking it in solutions such as urine. [Yafa] As trade expanded with India, brightly colored Indian cotton fabric became enormously popular in Europe. European fashions except for the very rich had been rather drab until about 1700. This began to change as Indian cottons began to enter the European markets in quantities. The English acquired the technology for dyeing. The next step to compete with the fabric from India was how to produce it more cheaply. There was no way of under-cutting the Indians with cheaper labor. Thus the only option was to develop new more efficent mechanical process. This lead directly to the most significant development of modern times--the Industrial Revolution. And cotton was at the center of it.
Cotton was grown in pre-colonial America, although I am unsure to waht extent it was actually cultured. Cotton was one of the plants brought to America by the orgiginal English settlers that founded the Jamestown colony in 1607.
Cotton also played a major role in the Industrial Revolution that has so changed modern life. No development in modern history has affected individuals more than the Industrial Revolution and the manufacture of textiles played a key role. Historians debate just where and when the Industrail Revolution began. We would set it at about the mid-18th century in the English Midlands. The first industry affected was the textile or clothing industry--one reason that the study of the clothing industry is so important. It was at this time that workers instead of weaving piece work at home, began to work in factories. Here cotton manufacture became especially important and it was the first industry to be fully mechanized. [Ashworth, pp. 7-8.] Several inventions at this time were
responsible, including the spinning jenny, flying shuttle, and a water-powered loom. This was soon followed by the key invention of our time which served as a catalyst for industrial expansion--the steam engine. John Newcomen and James Watt developed the steam engine. The spread of the Industrail Revolution to the Continent generally followed the ame pattern as in Britain with the mechanization and inroduction of the factory system first in cotton mills. [Ashworth, p. 12.]
Cotton is today the most widely used natural fiber in the manufacture of clothing. It has a number of qualities making it ideal for making textiles and clothing. It is a natural vegetable fiber--the most important textile raw material. This was not the case in the 18th century. The reason the shift to cotton occurred was technical advances in first manufactuing textiles and second in the production of raw cotton. Cotton played a major role in the Industrial Revolution that has so changed modern life. The first industrial machines designed for mass production were developed to manufacture cotton textiles. This created a demand for raw cotton. American slavery was declining in importance in the late 18th century. Many even in the South thought that it would eventually disappear as was happening in the North. The Industrial Revolution, however, led to Ely Whitney's cotton gin. Suddenly there was way of supplying the European demand for cotton. The resulting efficiences changed the economies of cotton cultivation. New plantations were founded on King Cotton as Southern planters moved west into Alabama and Mississpi and eventually Texas. Huge profits could be made in cotton. But it was a labor-intensive crop. This meant that large plantations and slave labor were the most effecient production system. A very subsrantial proprtion of American slaves were employed in the production of this single crop. Cotton became the orimary American export commodity, in effect financing America's early industrial development. The revitalization of the South's slave-based economy began a process that was to lead inexorably to Civil War. Cotton today continues to be the most important natural textile, still widely used in the production of clothing.
After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney, cotton production rapidly increased and became a leading factor in the drive west. New states were founded in the southeastern United States, all with economies based on the cultivation of cotton on large plantations using slave labor. This domination of the southern economy became known as "King Cotton". The United States rapidly became the principal source of cotton in the 19th century. The export of cotton rapidly became the principal Americam export commodity. These export earnings provided the financing for the American industrial revolution, which primarily occurred in the Northern states. It can be argued that it was the toil of unpaid slaves in the American South that financed the beginning steps toward the industrialization of the United States. The manufacture of cottons goods was one of the principal early American industries. [Ashworth, p. 25.] High tariffs incouraged the purchase of American-produced goods. Southerns objected to these tariffs, preferring to produce cheaper and often hifger-quality foreign goods.
The production of cotton textiles had been transformed by the Industrial Revolution--especially in England. Until the outbreak of the American Civil War (1861), cotton mills in Lancashire were obtaining 85 percent of their raw cotton from the United States. The Federal naval strategy in the War was to blockade the South and deprive its agricultural economy of needed manufactured imports and proceedes from exports sales of cotton. This blockade by October 1861 had begun to affect Lancashire mills. The mills exhaused their stocks of cotton and workers had to be discahrged or put on part time. The Federal blockadecby 1862 was extremely effective and little American cotton reached England. There was extreme distress and hunger among the English mill workers. Nearly 0.5 million people in Lancashire received relief to prevent starvation. Cotton prices skyrocketed from 7 pence per pound in 1861 to 31 pence in 1864. As the Federal firces began to seize cotton growing areas of the Condereracy in 1863, some American cotton began to reach England, but it was not until the end of the War in 1865 that shipments began to reach normal levels. The Federal blockade generated support for the Confederacy, primarily among mill workers and artistocratic elements that still resented the American Revolution and Republican Government. Among the mill workers themselves forced to endure great suffering, hatred for slavery was so wide spread that there was no great public outcry for Britain to support the Confederacy, a step that would have had enormously political consequences for America, Britain, and the entire world. Britain with the Royal Navy certainly could have broken the Federal blockade.
Ashworth, William. A Short Histiory of the International Economy Since 1850 (Longman Paperback: London, 1977), 318p.
Yafa, Stephen. Big Cotton.
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