Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Riello (history, Univ. of Warwick, UK; A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century) examines in impressive detail how cotton became the first truly global commodity and industry, owing primarily to European capital, coordination, and successful exploitation of human and natural resources. Focusing on the 16th through 18th centuries, he maps the slow, nonlinear transition from the family-oriented "old cotton system" of India and China to the globalized, industrialized "new cotton system" dominated by England and other Western European nations that relied on knowledge and skills learned in Asia. This shift in the means of production, manufacturing, and trade is examined in a broader context of fashion, culture, technology, politics, and economics, with cotton used as an indicator of the changing landscape of international commerce. Riello mixes original research based on primary source documents such as letters and business contracts with a thorough review of literature on both cotton specifically and globalization in general, while pointing out repeatedly how and why his interpretations of causes and effects differ from those of other scholars. VERDICT This multifaceted exploration of cotton as both material and industry in the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution is a worthwhile read for students of global history and international business.-Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This is a brilliant study of two periods of globalization, centered and driven first by 12th-17th-century Indian production of cotton textiles, and second by the gradual triumph of Europe, particularly Britain, beginning in the 18th century. Riello (global history, Univ. of Warwick, UK) has coedited several studies on the topic (e.g., The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850, 2009; How India Clothed the World, 2009), making him a preeminent expert on cotton in the global system of capitalism, communication, trade, and industrialization. He explains that because of Indian textiles' superior quality in design and colors, Indians "accounted for a quarter of the world's industrial output" before about 1750. India lost its dominance to Britain because of British technological innovations, opportunism, control of cotton production, quasi-slave labor in textile mills, and political change in India, including British control, which contributed to the deindustrialization of India. Because of cotton textiles, Britain took the lead in the process of industrialization in modern times and became the core of the new global system by the 19th century. The data, Riello's analysis, gorgeous color plates, high-quality paper, and a rich bibliography make this book a must read for economic historians and specialists in international relations. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. Weinstein emeritus, Howard University