Review: Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (2015)

25 April, 2017 • reviews • sven beckert, history, capitalism, imperialism, slavery

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Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (Vintage, 2014). 640pp.

I got the impression, when reading this, that Beckert may have simply wanted to write a history of capitalism; on the other hand, perhaps cotton really was the original subject, and the sheer scale of its impact on capitalism came later. Either way, this really is about more than just cotton, and gives an insight into the ways in which capitalism developed from simple trade networks into an all-encompassing system of production and control; it also gives an insight into the ways in which capitalism and imperialism grew up together, intertwined, and how commercial interests influenced national policy. Globalization, and corporate lobbying, are far from new phenomena.

I read this as part of my research for a dissertation on the nineteenth-century British cotton industry, so I tended to skim over the sections on manufacturing in other countries, as well as the final chapters past 1900. Nevertheless, the British cotton industry and its relation to cotton farming in India, America, and Egypt are a major theme of this book, as well as the ways in which industrial capitalism really depended on violence and slavery (what Beckert calls “war capitalism” and Marx called primitive accumulation).

It’s extremely well-referenced, covering a wide range of academic literature and primary sources on the nineteenth century (at least), one of the things which made it so useful. I may have picked this up in a normal bookshop but it’s really an academic work; despite that, it’s pretty readable by the standards of mainstream non-fiction. As for the reviews on Goodreads that accuse it of Marxist bias — I see no sign of it. If you think that a history of capitalism is going to be entirely positive about capitalism, then, of course, the truth seems like bias. (Indeed, if anything, the author might have benefitted from more Marxism, not less; it would have simplified the analysis a little, and avoided reinventing categories like “war capitalism”.)