Empire of Cotton

A Global History

By: Sven Beckert

Narrated by: Jim Frangione

Sven Beckert's rich, fascinating audiobook tells the story of how, in a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful statesmen recast the world's most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to change the world. Here is the story of how, beginning well before the advent of machine production in the 1780s, these men captured ancient trades and skills in Asia, combined them with the expropriation of lands in the Americas and the enslavement of African workers to crucially recast the disparate realms of cotton that had existed for millennia. We see how industrial capitalism then reshaped these worlds of cotton into an empire, and how this empire transformed the world. The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, farmers and merchants, workers and factory owners. In this as in so many other ways, Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.

©2014 Original material by Sven Beckert. Recorded by arrangement with Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. (P)2014 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Should be titled "Empire of Slavery"

This book details the beginnings of cotton production very well. A thorough history is given up through the present age. However, when the author reaches the time period where cotton was produced in America by slave labor, he gets really bogged down and loses focus.

Takeaways

Very comprehensive review. If nothing else you could read the first chapter/prologue and epilogue and get an appreciation for how third one plant has changed the world.

long but not boring

An extremely informative reference book for understanding today's world. I also bought it as a paper book and the notes I kept were as long as a book.

Too many statistics

I expected more of a story. This read like an Economics 2 treatise. Reader was dry.

war capitalism, industrial slavery, global markets

technical innovation, profitable endeavors, war capitalism, industrial slavery, global markets, state and corporate collusion, financial empire