Journal of World History

Sven Beckert creates a single seamless narrative concerning cotton as a crop and a manufacture, which united and divided colonialism and the contrasting worlds of the Global South and the North. His narrative brings out the dialectics of capitalism through which, for example, colonial exploitation gave rise to ideologies of economic nationalism. Empire of Cotton introduces new perspectives to stimulate further research concerning commodity frontiers and commodity chains by emphasizing the role of the state in the emergence of capitalism and the enabling use of violence at the frontiers themselves.