The second cotton revolution: a centripetal system, circa 1750–2000

The final part of this book enters well-trodden terrain – that starting in the mid eighteenth century and normally classified as the period of European industrialisation. This is the time of cotton par excellence, and a vast literature explains how cotton was integral to the industrialisation of Europe. Most of these industrial histories have little space for the many topics that we have encountered so far and neglect to mention that at the time that Richard Arkwright, the putative inventor of one of the most revolutionary cotton spinning machines, perfected his device in the north of England in the 1770s, the Indian cotton industry was still the undisputed world leader.

The previous chapters have elaborated and explained how Europe caught up with cotton textile manufacturing in Asia. The final part of this book enquires into why Europe did not become just another area among many producing cottons. I argue that under the label of an ‘industrial revolution’ there was a reconfiguration of the global economy. The first step of the restructuring of manufacturing and trade involved raw materials. Chapter 9 shows how Europe developed a new and dynamic industry on the back of supplies of raw materials totally coming from another continent. This was unprecedented. Millions of slaves were transported from Africa to the Americas to cultivate cotton and other produce for western markets. This was a coercive system that foresaw the ‘industrial’ path that cotton textile production came to assume in Europe, creating a global division of labour for the first ‘modern’ industry.