"The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality in the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism, [in which the author explores] 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"--
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"The epic story of the rise and fall of the empire of cotton, its centrality in the world economy, and its making and remaking of global capitalism, [in which the author explores] 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"--
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"Economic historian" who flunked out of econ class
A Pulitzer Prize nomination --who are they kidding?!? Just because the author is skilled at writing a flowing prose narrative doesn't mean that any of the snake oil he is selling will cure you.
This just goes to show how peer review in academic history settings is really code for "group think." This is nothing more than warmed-over Marxism in a thin cotton veil. The author knows a ton about cotton itself, but shows a total lack of familiarity with major areas of social-science scholarship (development economics, state formation, political economy, etc.) that make his entire argument about "war capitalism" obviously spurious. This book's popularity among academic historians is itself a scathing indictment of the lack of socially-scientific hypothesis testing in the present delusional "cultural-turn" era in the humanities.
Ann
Feb 10, 2019
Good, but a slog
As the prior reviewer said, it's a very good book. The writing style doesn't make it a quick or smooth read though.
newyorkreader
May 14, 2018
masterful survey
Modern industrialization is popularly obfuscated as a collection of atomized personages and events. In Empire of Cotton, Beckert presents the complex web of social relations that animated the 19th century industrial revolution. The opening chapter is a bit wordy, but that small problem quickly fades as the story unwinds (pun intended). His explication of late 19th and early 20th century imperialism is refreshingly insightful.
