Spinning World: Global History Of Cotton Textiles, 1200-1850

by Giorgio Riello

Eric Hobsbawm famously wrote, 'Whoever says Industrial Revolution says cotton.' The modern history of cotton textile is well known, and cotton's contribution to industrialization processes around the world much appreciated. However, the medieval and early modern antecedents of this produce are far less clear, and so the purpose of this collection of essays is to explore the per-modern history of cotton. To explore the nature of this history, and the importance of the Indian subcontinent, whose cotton goods traversed the world and which lay at the center of a vast worldwide trading system, requires a global perspective, which the essays in this volume provide. Ranging from China and Japan, to Europe, the Ottoman Empire, South-East Asia, and East and West Africa, the essays explore the global exchange and use of cotton textiles in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic worlds, as well as the impact of Indian cotton on local consumption and production systems. Taken together, they provide a wide-ranging picture of cotton cloth in the centuries between 1200 and 1850, as well as a framework which decenter Europe in the per-modern global order.

506 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

Giorgio Riello is chair of early modern global history at the European University Institute in Florence and professor of global history and culture at the University of Warwick, UK. He has written on early modern textiles, dress and fashion in Europe and Asia.