Flower of the cotton plant:
This is not surprising when you see a cotton plant. It is a very common plant that comes in many shapes and sizes. Before the creation of the World Cotton Empire, different cultures grew different cotton plants. In South America there was a small shrub-like plant with yellow flowers, which had long fibers. In India, the plant was six feet tall with purple or yellow flowers and small fiber. There was another similar species in Africa.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the cotton kingdom was dominated by a single species. It was a type of G-horstom that grew in Central America. It was a two to three foot tall plant. Its leaves were hairy on the inside and three or five-leafed. The flower petals were soft. There were large flowers of gray color. The four-part capsule-shaped ones, which were as big as apples, and were made of fine silk cotton wool, sold hand-in-hand in trade.
Indian weavers, American slaves, Greek merchants, Lancashire craftsmen.
They were all related to each other because of this gray flower. In 1900, one and a half percent of the world's population belonged to this empire. Millions of men, women and children either grew it or transported it or worked in its factories. Its alchemical powers created wealth, slavery and free labor, the state and the market, colonialism and the destruction of free trade, industry and ancient industries. Railways and steamships. A lot has happened behind this flower.
The Liverpool Cotton Exchange incident affected an Alabama farmer. The fate of those working on the khadi in Dhaka was linked to the Al-Sisiya spinning mill. The railway line between Manchester and Liverpool changed the strategy of the Boston merchant and the tariffs of Washington and London. The agrarian reforms of the Ottoman Empire affected the lives of slaves in the West Indies. The activities of freed slaves in the United States affected the villagers of India.
The history of cotton also reminds us that no state of the economic system is permanent or stable. Each new time creates a new volatile situation, creating contradictions that lead to a wider regional, social and political reorganization.
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Much has been written about cotton. Its date is unknown. Libraries are full. Reading it all together makes clear the history of human economics.
Just being limited to one genus of cotton and seeing its footprints gives us an opportunity to see how human relationships are formed between its growth, its transportation, its finances, its factory manufacture, its sale and its use. The history of a single event or area limits us.
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From the point of view of the cotton plant, man has traveled 5,000 years. With the help of this remarkable thing we will try to solve a big mystery. How did the modern world come into being? And for that we first go to a small village in present-day Mexico where the cotton plant used to grow. In a world that was very different from ours.
Attached is a picture of the G Arboreum plant.
This purple flowering plant was a native variety of cotton in Pakistan and India. After the cotton revolution, its cultivation became scarce.
Great Cotton Empire Echkatel:
Five hundred years ago, there were dozens of villages on the Pacific coast. This area is in Mexico today. People grew corn, beans, zucchini and peppers. The sea creatures were caught. They used to collect honey and wax. Ceramic pots with colorful and geometric embroidery were his most beautiful creations. In addition, they used to grow a plant with white fibers. This plant could not be eaten. It was called Echkatel. It was the most valuable commodity in their crops. It was cotton.
The cotton plant was grown with corn. It would be harvested every autumn. The villagers would break the fiber from the plant up to the waist and put it in their bags and take it to the mud houses. With great difficulty its seeds were separated by hand. It was cut on a mat. Its fibers were straightened by combing. It was a few inches long. The ceramic disc was inserted into a thin wooden spindle and rotated. In this way the fibers would be joined together and become a white thread. Cloth was made in the khadi. For this, two sticks were used which were tied with thread. One would hang from a tree, the other with a weaver. The weaver used the weight of his body and made it into a never-ending dance to form a web of threads on top of each other. The result is a strong, flexible fabric. It was dyed with indigo and scarlet. Some of the clothes were sewn and used by themselves. The rest of the Tutu was sent to the Aztec rulers as an annual tribute to Huacan.
In 1518 there were eight hundred bales of cotton, each weighing 115 pounds, sent by twelve villages to King Moktizuma II.
There were 32,000 dyed cotton fabrics. And there were 48,000 white clothes. This tribute was the result of thousands of hours of hard work and mastery of the art.
For centuries such scenes were seen in parts of the world. Sulawesi from Gujarat, Rio Grande from Upper Volta. From the Nubian valleys to the Yucatan, cotton was grown in the fields of three continents and textiles were made at home. This skill was developed from generation to generation. It is a hardy plant that does not need much help from the farmer. It has "morphological plasticity". According to botanical scientists, it has the ability to grow by adapting to a variety of conditions. The height has to be kept small or big and even when to produce flowers ...
People who have been growing cotton for thousands of years were unaware that this was happening all over the world. It requires that the temperature does not fall below ten degrees as it rises and stays above most of fifteen degrees. It thrives in an area where there is no haze for 200 days of the year and annual rainfall is 500 to 700 mm. Its seeds are sown at a distance of three feet and in 160 to 200 days the plant grows.
It was discovered that its fibers could be turned into thread. And this thread can be used to make a fabric that is easy to wash, does not stick to the body, protects from sunburn and to some extent from the cold. A thousand years ago, cotton textile became the largest industry in Asia, Africa and the Americas. There was a complex network of growers, spinners, weavers and consumers, mostly at the local level.
(to be continued)
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