POSTS – Page 9 – Atlantic History

the evolution of cotton production due to the American Civil War

November 15, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126

Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127

Typically, when the American Civil War is studied on a global scale it is to compare itself to other civil revolutions which took place around to globe. For example, how the American Revolution sparked the French Revolution. Yet, the direct impact that the American Civil War have on the global economy is not usually mentioned. One can argue that the impact the American Civil War had on the global economy is just as important as any social revolutions that came from it.

In the late 1850s the United States was the number one cotton supplier for European countries by a large margin. Further, cotton had become the core ingredient in the world’s most important manufacturing industry, the textile industry. Most of the work that took place in order to harvest cotton was performed by slave labor in the American south. Then this cotton would be sent to Europe for manufacturing. Thus, slaves were a vital component to the world economy in cotton production, At least for the moment.

At the time of the American Civil War, the North placed a blockade on southern exports, this included cotton. By 1852 cotton imports from the US fell by 96%. This had tremendous global impacts. European textile factories began cutting working days, and some even shutting down due to lack of material. This left many people unemployed, and a crisis erupted. Europe was learning that depending on just one country for materials was not acceptable, and soon started looking for places to receive cotton from. India and Egypt and also Brazil began to fill the voids in cotton that America has created. All did so without the use of slavery. This called into question the necessity of slaves in the cotton industry. As Steven Andreen said in his blog on industrialization, “The rise of industry and capitalism in the area changed the lives of people of all levels of the economic ladder on both sides of the Atlantic.” The impact of the America 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.

Progress in the Cotton Empire

November 15, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Prior and during the Civil War, cotton was a major source of revenue. European, Asian, and Africa nations depended on the United States as a major source of the crop. Cotton was no longer a regional investment; it had become a part of worldwide commerce. As the United States entered a war, it was certain that the cotton industry was going to be heavily affected (Beckert, 1409). With the threat of slavery being dissolved, Southerners realized that had to come up with a solution in order to keep generating a profit from cotton crops. They began to rely on free labor. Citizens who took over were mostly farmers who worked on land that was rented or owned by them (Beckert, 1424). Countries such as Egypt and India began to modernize by building cotton-producing factories on rural land, thus meeting a growing demand for the plant (Beckert, 1413). Reformation of industrial systems outside the United States shows countries’ determination to meet the same level as their competitors. As nations in the Atlantic invested in the cotton empire, they were involved in operations that connected them by the way of commerce.

Sven Beckert’s article reminded me of “Sugar Islands,” where the Maderia and Canary Islands invested in sugar and led to successful commerce worldwide. Although there was competition from Brazil, the demand for sugar reveals there were successful markets between countries (Vierira, 67). They viewed sugar as not only a seasoning, but also a product to make money off of. I agree with Viktoriya Shalunova that “slaves were a vital component to the world economy in cotton production.” The cotton empire was successful to due backbreaking labor performed by slaves, as Southerners saw it. By using forced labor, the Southern states were able to further generate large profits by distributing this cash crop across the Atlantic world.

Primary Sources

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Images taken from the Digital Public Library of America.

I hope to illustrate just how important North American crops were in forming the modern day diets of the eastern hemisphere. These images clearly show how far these crops have spread and the importance they have.

Industrialism and Global Connections: the Good and the Bad

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

With the turn of the century the Atlantic world experienced a change in traditional forms of trade and economic growth, this was manly due to industrialization in Europe and the U.S. Within chapter 13 of The Atlantic World, industrial growth is achievable through a boom in population. I thought it was interesting that Egerton explains the growth in population as a result of infant mortality rates declining in Great Britain at around 1740. The decline being a possible affect of improved midwifery was fascinating to think about. Whatever the reason, Great Britian’s population growth would lead to an expanding working class which allowed for urban areas to be filled with new workers. I found it eye opening that the term “capitalism” had been used since European medieval terms yet it wasn’t until the time of the English Civil war around the mid 17th century that westerners thought of capital in a broader sense of surplus commodity. By 1793, the meaning a been slightly altered to describe a system more closely related to modern day capitalism, in which a small number of individuals can own and control the means of productions.

Textiles had helped launch industry and through its continued growth came a huge demand for cotton. Britain would buy from the Bahamas, and from the Southern United States including Georgia and South Carolina. Unfortunately this would help sustain a non-capitalist slave based society in the U.S. for years to come. For early nineteenth century U.S. citizens who owned slaves, they would develope into a wealthy elite group. This reminded me of Alberto Vicira’s article, “Sugar Islands,” as slave labor helped increase the economy and wealth of the Portuguese colonist. At the same slaves experienced brutal working conditions as they were commodified to further benefit the economic growth. Similar developments would happen in U.S. plantations as the development of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the increase in demand would lead to the further commodifying of slaves and harsher treatment. As industry continued to grow it would increase the economy and further modernize society, while at the same time benefit those individuals who controlled the corporations behind the industrial growth. I agree with my colleague Viktoriya Shalunova, in that the increase of slave labor brought along a backlash on the morality of slavery, leaving slave owners on the defensive…slave owners would used the bible to justify slavery, while at the same time abolitionists would use the bible to condemn it. The ideas of the civil war were developing along with the growth of the Industrialization Revolution.

Chapter 13: Industrialization

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Chapter Thirteen of The Atlantic World focuses on industrialization. During this time, many aspects of the world flourished. Nothing happened over night, but “the transformation of the mercantile capital into industrial capital” and “the transportation of hundreds of thousands of impoverished men and women from the British Isles to the United States” changed the world in such a great way that industrialization “[shrank] the Atlantic.. in the mid-nineteenth century” (427).
Industrialization began with textiles. Weaving was a domestic role done by farmers’ wives. They were paid by the piece and marketed by merchants. The demand of cotton affected the Atlantic world. Cotton was not grown in English latitudes; therefore, there was a shift from cottage work to water-powered mills. The British ships brought millions of pounds of cotton from various parts of the world such as the United States and the Caribbean. Britain’s massive demand for cotton enabled the United States to “sustain a non capitalist, slave based society” (429). In 1793, the cotton gin was created and allowed for the United States to keep up with the demand of cotton like in India with new modern technology. Now the idea of a commodity changing the landscape of the world is not new. Sugar demand changed the world. In Tyler Mendoza’s post, it discusses this idea. Mitz’s work discusses the rise of sugar and its meaning to different classes. Aristocrats thought it enhanced their status whereas those who had less money saw it as survival, giving them calories. Also, sugar fed into the slave trade like cotton did.
Technology also affected migration. New technologies allowed those mostly in Britain to travel quicker and faster among the Atlantic. Due to various groups of people travelling, it meant that those places created laws in order to approve or deny entry or citizenship.

Industrialization

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Industrialization in the Atlantic changed the entire course of the region. The rise of industry and capitalism in the area changed the lives of people of all levels of the economic ladder on both sides of the Atlantic. Two concepts that I found to be the most interesting where: industry helped to shrink the Atlantic and that the Industrial Revolution had a large effect on gender roles.

The Atlantic up until this point had felt like several distant areas with minimal contact. It seemed as though the path from Europe to the Americas was a one way street in a lot of ways. The rise of machine in Europe made Europe demand new levels of raw resources that had yet to be seen. Over the course of 40 years the demand for raw cotton went from 2.5 million pounds to 22 million pounds (Egerton et al, 429). The new demand for cotton in Europe made the flow of traffic reverse course and saw a huge influx of American goods enter the European market. The created an interconnected Atlantic not yet seen on a scale like this. Danny shares a perspective that the Europeans created their captialist society and exported it to the Americas, and I think that shows just how these actions shrunk the Atlantic. The Atlantic had become such an interconnected space that these ideas were able to be shared across the ocean with relative ease.

We have spent a majority of the last 2 weeks discussing the way gender roles were changed in the early modern Atlantic world. The Industrial Revolution was not particularly kind to the women of the time period. The authors explain how women would help the household by spinning cotton. This was work that could be done from within the home to bring in some extra money in a time period where people in Europe were struggling. Once the industrialization took place, it took this work out of the home. It did not remove the woman from the economy, because they could work in the factories, but it did make women unable to contribute to the household financially while still being home with in their domestic roles.

The Atlantic World: Chapter 13

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

Once Great Britain began to plant its roots of capitalism within its own native land and overseas, they sought to acquire exchanges in resources owned by capitalist marketing entities stationed at Britain. Being able to build and manufacture material structures, and to benefit labor morale no less, also meant to be able to fluctuate a trend in human life expectancy. This was as early as the late 1700s when charter companies in Britain were viewing the prowess of manual labor, aside from the Atlantic slavery bias, as congesting to curious efforts put into technological innovations. This in turn made Britain begin to uproot its initial marketing profits in New England with the flow and exchange of textile mills.

Transatlantic technology is described to us by Egerton, et al., as prospecting U.S. citizens ready to witness European socioeconomics impact their culture and their ways of making a living once more. However, many of these people of the Atlantic were farmers who held on to neoclassical notions of farming, labor, and trade. In this case, just as it is described on page 432, they were not driven by quantities of the product but by the quality of how to farm it. In turn, the conclusion drawn to justify the bond between [white] master and [black] slave is used to stir up early anti-capitalist sentiment, when slavery itself was believed to have been the actual backbone of capitalism for millennia. To me, like my colleague Tyler Mendoza explained, this helps to emphasize why slavery did not fall just yet in the wake of industrialization.

The Atlantic View of the The Industrial Revolution

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

When we first hear about the Industrial Revolution in our freshman history classes, we are told that Great Britain achieved extraordinary technological feats like the invention of the first railroad train and the invention of the steam engine. We are also exposed to the miserable conditions the working poor have to deal with by working in the steel and textile mills. So we led to believe that the effects of the Industrial Revolution were only localized to Great Britain or Europe but it is not revealed that the Industrial Revolution had far reaching effects on the rest of the world, especially the Atlantic realm. Even though the textile mills were started in Great Britain, textile production also thrived on the east coast of the United States with the help of Samuel Slater (Egerton et al. 433). Now both of these industries need raw cotton to produce consumer items for a growing middle class and they both procured cotton from the American South. During this time cotton production was a slave based economy. My colleague Tyler Mendoza points out that industrialization did not end slavery but changed what it was. I am in full agreement, but I also think slavery indirectly made the Industrial Revolution possible. Even the archaic establishment of slavery was eventually abolished in the late 1800s, the connection between cotton and textile production was slavery. Hence institution of slavery acted as a bridge or a conduit between not only raw cotton and mass produced textiles, also between mercantilism and capitalism.

What I also found interesting about the chapter was the Atlantic migration. When we study about the Industrial Revolution we are led to believe that the rural populace facing either starvation or being pushed of farm land by the enclosure movement, were forced to move to the cities to find work usually in factory. According to Egerton et al., numerous factors such as the British Corn Laws, the Irish Potato Famine, and technological advancements in transatlantic travel led to the mass exodus of Europeans emigrating to the whole American continent (Egerton et al. 441 – 443). Although Europeans were emigrating to the Americas to find a better life for their families, there was also a sinister aspect behind it. Wanting to “whiten” the mostly African population, the Spanish – American republics were trying to direct the nationality in a more elitist framework (Egerton et al. 445). Republics that shared a border with the Atlantic Ocean, like Brazil who received large numbers of German colonists, where successful while others like Peru were unsuccessful.

Juntas

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

The Age of Revolutions

The United States Revolution from the British Empire inspired a series of revolutions throughout both the new and old world. Inspired by their enlightened ideas the French followed suit and established their own republic issuing the declaration of rights of man. This made way for the republic of San Dominque to rebel and establish the republic of Haiti. When Napoleon marched into the Iberian peninsula it weakened both Portugal and Spains ability to hold onto their colonies. This allowed Venezuela, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico to become independent of their old world leaders.

Chapter 12 of the Atlantic World chooses to focus on Simon Bolivar, class struggles between the Creoles and the poor, and racial struggles, but what captured my attention was a central theme to the class. This theme was introduced during our reading of treacherous rivers in North America and the increase trials of treason, the theme of interpreting what a monarch would want while furthering their own political gain. We see this theme throughout the chapter with the formation of Juntas in Spanish America, these juntas claim to be enacting the will of Ferdinand VII yet leave some things open for interpretation. The most prominent decisions of the Juntas is the establishment of free trade which was extremely beneficial for the merchants in the New world. The Juntas provided several rights to its citizens and were set up as a form of autonomous governments, for as long as Joseph Bonapart sat on the Spanish throne. These autonomous governments would play a pivotal role during the age of revolution.

Industrialization and a New Imperialism

November 14, 2016December 16, 2020Dr. Shrout

The 18^th century came with many technological advances that called for a larger work force. Britain had an increasing need for textile production. With new inventions the United States was able to compete in the cotton market with India. Technological inventions such as the cotton “gin” by Eli Whitney combined with rot-resistant cotton caused for an all-time high or exploitation of slave labor in the southern United States, mainly in the Carolinas. This increase of slave labor also brought along a backlash on the morality of slavery, leaving slave owners on the defensive. I found it interesting that slave owners used the bible to justify slavery, while abolitionists just the bible to condemn it. We can further make a connection that the ideas of the civil war were creeping up at the beginning of industrialization. This began a greater division between the North and the South.

My classmate, Vince Tursini discussed the importance that women played in the Mexican economy in his post on Chapter 5 of Caterina Pizzigoni’s, “The Life Within,” he says, “ Individual accounts of women capable of capitalizing on the labor and productivity are shown in the readings”. This type of capitalizing on labor and productivity is also show in Chapter 13 of the Atlantic world. As the south capitalized on slave labor, the north began to force on a “family system”, in which entire villages were surrounded by company owned farmland. In this system, men and the sons worked in the fields, while their wives and daughter worked on looms within the factory. This illustrated an awkward transition from farm life to an industrial economy. Women were now more likely to earn wages for their work, instead of just working on the family farm. This idea can also tie back to the evolution of white women article in which the theory on progressive gender roles and expectation of women’s’ work come into play. If there is an economic need for women outside of the house then it becomes okay for women to work. If the economic need did not arise they would have still been stuck in the home.