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Cotton had always been an important cash crop but after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, the cotton industry transformed. Blessed with the desire climax to grow this crop, the cotton gin, and the use of slave labor force, American South quickly dominated the cotton industry. When the outbreak of the Civil War occur in 1861, it was much more than just the internal struggle between the Northe and the Southern states. The war affected the worldwide cotton production and global capitalism. After the Northern blockade successfully kept cotton from leaving the South, the number of 3.8 million bales of cotton exported to Europe in 1860 fell to virtually nothing just two year later (Beckert,1408).
Like Viktoriya Shalunova said to her blog, “The impact of the American Civil War changed the lives of slaves by emancipation. It also caused the flourishing economies of Egypt, Brazil, and India to become a word player in the cotton industry.” The cotton famine created a crisis across the globe also subsequently created a new kind of imperialism (Beckert, 1411). Countries were now in the race to become the new world’s market for cotton production and exportation. During the Civil War years, Indian cotton alone prevented the collapse of the European cotton industries. In Egypt, vast amount of its fertile land converted to cotton cultivation, thus permanently changed the country’s economy. In Brazil, farmers abandoned their crops to focus on cotton, thus doubling Brazilian cotton export (Beckert, 1414).