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In Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War, Sven Beckert analyzes the rise and fall of American cotton as a global commodity along with its relations to the American Civil War. Becker discusses the shift in importance of cotton before, during and after the Civil War, and how this affects the American economy, American foreign relations, and American slavery.
Cotton was an incredibly important commodity prior to and during the American Civil War. Cotton brought in large amounts of revenue to America, and what stemmed was relationships with Europe, Asia, and Africa. As nations in these continents depended on American cotton, foreign ties strengthened as a result. What also strengthened from the boom in cotton before and during the Civil War was American slavery. Slavery and the success of cotton are directly linked, as free labor provided quick, cheap, and convenient access to the backbreaking process of harvesting cotton.
The Civil War put the state of slavery in jeopardy, and as a result, the state of cotton production was also put into question. Beckert writes that the Civil War was “not only a struggle over American territorial integrity and the future of its ‘peculiar institution’ but also about slave labor and nation-building in the world at large” (Beckert, 1409). Not only did the Civil War question the ethics and morals that continued to justify slavery, it also challenged the economic status of the United States and its commodities. This reminded me of Erin Wroe’s post where she states the reformation of industrial cotton production outside the United States represents the growth in demand and international ability to match American competition. While American cotton production was heavily relied on free labor, nations outside of the US began to invest in industrial methods of production.
Beckert’s writings also reminded me Vieira’s Sugar Islands in that like sugar, cotton became a global commodity that allowed America’s economy to blossom into an international powerhouse. Cotton represents a later form of economic power and dominance in the Atlantic, as both products’ success were heavily dependent on the exploitation and labor of Africans.