Earlier Cotton Kingdom:
It was January 1860. The annual meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce was attended by 68 members. It was the most industrialized city in the world and these people were cotton traders and textile industrialists. They have changed the world in the last 80 years. It had become a global network of agriculture, trade and industry. Cotton grew all over the world and turned to British factories. Two-thirds of the world's spindles were here. The army of laborers twisted it into a thread and woven it into cloth. Traders then took it to world markets.
These gentlemen were happy. In his speech, President Edmund Potter said that the rapid growth of the industry has made the whole country prosperous, especially Manchester. Manchester, the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, China, India, South America and Africa were also discussed at the meeting.
"There is no other example of such success in human history,"
said Henry Aishworth, a cotton industrialist.
This pleasant mood was not without reason. These people were at the center of the empire spread all over the world. It was a cotton kingdom. Tens of thousands of workers worked in their factories. Large spinning machines operated. Cloth came out of the machines that made a loud noise. Cotton grown by American slaves was the most abundant. And the products made here went to the corners of the world. That's why I was interested in world affairs here. However, his own profession was completely isolated from politics. They were merchants of thread and cloth. Owned factories with noisy, dirty, crowded and unpleasant environments. Their cities were blacker than the charcoal of a coal-fired steam engine, where the stench of human sweat and waste permeated. They were running a large empire but did not look like a sultan.
Hundred years ago, their ancestors would laugh at the idea of a "cotton kingdom." Cotton was grown on small plots of land and worked by sitting in front of a fire. The cotton industry in Britain was small. Not that people were unfamiliar with cotton. In Europe, muslin, splinters and sticks used to come from India. In European villages, men and women made cloth at home. In the Americas, Africa, and Asia, cotton was grown along with millet, corn, and yam. It was used to make cloth to meet domestic needs or the wishes of the rulers. For centuries, cloth was made and dyed in Dhaka, Kano, Tutti Hwakan and other places. Some of it was also traded.
A woman sitting on a stool spinning a wheel outside the hut. This was changed by the Industrial Revolution. In 1860, there were millions of steam engine-powered spindles operated by day laborers (including children). These workers also worked fourteen hours a day and made millions of kilograms of yarn. The work left home and went to the factory. Slaves worked in fields thousands of miles away, and these hungry factories received food for cotton. West African camel-laden camel caravans were replaced by smoky ships at sea.
No one realized, and a complex interconnected industrial complex came into being globally.
The people who complimented themselves in the room that day were themselves unaware of his past.And as much as the world is different from its past, it is more different from its future. If they were told how the cotton empire is going to change the world in the future, they would not believe it.
One hundred years later, by 1960, cotton was once again moving to Asia, China, the Soviet Union, and India. Also the production of yarn and cloth. Only a few textile factories survive in the UK and the rest of Europe. Its strongholds ... Manchester, Mulhouse, Barman, Lowell ... They were littered with abandoned factories. The workers were unemployed. In 1963, the Liverpool Cotton Association, once the world's leading trade association, was selling its furniture at auction. The cotton empire, much of which was dominated by Europe, had collapsed.
Cotton The fiber of life:
Today cotton is everywhere. And it's so common that we forget what it is. This is the great achievement of humanity. While you are reading this phrase, it is likely that you are wearing something made of cotton. And it is very likely that you have never separated a cotton flower from its branch, never seen a net of raw fiber or heard the sound of a power loom tearing the eardrums. Will
This plant is both known and unknown. We ignore its presence. It is on our body. They sleep with it covered. It makes a cradle for newborns. It makes currency notes, even coffee filters. Vegetable oil is made for cooking, as well as mouthwash. We also have ammunition to fight our wars. It is also part of the book.
Cotton has been the world's leading manufacturing industry for 900 years. From the eleventh century to the beginning of the twentieth century. Other industries have since surpassed it, but it remains important in terms of employment and trade.
Last year, the world produced 123 million bales of cotton. Each weighed 400 pounds.
They could make twenty T-shirts for everyone in the world. If they were placed on top of each other, it would become a tower four thousand miles high. If they were together, they would travel around the world. From China to India and the United States, from West Africa to Central Asia, cotton fields are spread. Its fiber is sent to factories with millions of workers. Products made from it are bought and sold all over the world, from remote villages to supermarkets in big cities. These are just some of the goal setting shareware that you can use. It is the fiber of our lives.
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This series is about the rise and fall of the cotton empire. Its trade, production and use, which mobilized cotton and changed the face of the world. Unlocked the biological treasures of this ancient plant. The world changed ancient industries, skills and big markets and those who succeeded in it eventually fell victim to their own success.
Millions of people worked on this trip. Spend your life in the cotton fields, in separating the fibers from the flowers of this hardy plant, in loading the cotton bales into the carts, from the carts to the boats, from the boats to the trains, in these "evil factories" at an early age. In working from China to the United States. Wars were fought to gain access to these fertile fields. Landlords handcuffed countless people, employers wiped out the childhood of factory workers, the advent of new machines emptied settlements of ancient population centers, and laborers, slaves or freemen, toiled for their bread. Stay The women and men, who used to grow this plant with food on their small plots of land, lost their way of life.
The domestic industry ended. Agricultural implements and power looms came in their place. People left their wheelbarrows and fields. They were caught in a never-ending cycle of pressure and never-ending debt. The cotton empire, from its inception, has been a global struggle. Between slave and landlord, merchant and state official, farmer and merchant, laborer and industrialist. And the Cotton Empire created the modern world and its modern struggle.
This story is the economic history of the world through the eyes of this plant.
(to be continued)
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