Empire of Cotton

Having long wondered about how our world has been shaped by such commodities as tea, coffee, and sugar, I was fascinated by this carefully researched study of how cotton has shaped our world since the first cotton clothing 5,000 years ago in (what is now called) Pakistan.

The great thing about this book is its global reach, following cotton around the world as folks learned how to use it. While this is serious academic research, the author’s ability to relate local lives and key individuals to the broader forces shaping the globalizing cotton market keeps the story humming along.

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This is another book that makes a plant more interesting than people. For the plant biologist that I am, this is perhaps not so difficult to achieve, but still.

Like bananas, cotton is another plant that started its existence in one corner of the world–actually multiple corners for cotton–and ended up having huge effects on humans everywhere else.

While perhaps not ‘business history’ in the strictest of senses, Empire of Cotton explores themes relevant to any business history – those of power, hierarchy, capitalism, and consumption, to name a few, and does so in a global context. This is a book not just about history, but about how this history has shaped the world we live in today. In places, it is a sobering story of power struggles and exploitation, of conflict between humans as well as between humans and the natural world. While not one for the faint-hearted, this award-winning tome is worth the effort it requires.

I have never read a book that so powerfully explores how capitalism has used racial violence, not only in the United States but around the world. Using cotton as a method to explore global history, Beckert will make you rethink everything you’ve heard about capitalism bringing peace and prosperity around the world.