Empire of Cotton

Cotton has created vast empires, powered the industrial revolution, generated huge wealth – and unimaginable suffering. As Sven Beckert’s gripping history shows, this humble product is at the heart of global capitalism, and its story is the story of how the modern world emerged.

Winner of the 2015 Bancroft Prize and the 2015 Philip Taft Prize

Finalist for the 2015 Pulizter Prize for History and shortlisted for the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature
Economist BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015
For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world’s most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business – if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.
Sven Beckert’s superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.
%%%Winner of the 2015 Bancroft Prize and the 2015 Philip Taft Prize

Finalist for the 2015 Pulizter Prize for History and shortlisted for the 2015 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature
For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world’s most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business – if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.
Sven Beckert’s superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.
%%%WINNER OF THE 2015 BANCROFT PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2015 PHILIP TAFT PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 CUNDHILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE
Economist BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015
‘A masterpiece of the historian’s craft’ The Nation

For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world’s most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business – if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.
Sven Beckert’s superb new book is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.

Author Biography

Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University. He is also the author of The Monied Metropolis- New York and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie.