Connie’s Reviews > Empire of Cotton: A Global History > Status Update

It is slow going because there is a lot to take in. It definitely lays to rest any ideas that capitalism did not depend on government intervention and support in order to succeed. It also shows how war capitalism transitions into industrial capitalism, introducing the concept of a wage class (industrial labor).

"The coercion and violence required to mobilize slave labor was matched only by the demands of an expansionist war against indigenous people" location 2174 in ebook format. The domination of the growing cotton industry engulfed the United States leading to the forced removal of native peoples as well as the rapid rise in the number of enslaved Africans.

I get distracted by researching events and data the book highlights.

"Cotton, quite simply, was exotic to Europe. The fiber grew in far away lands, and many Europeans reportedly imagined cotton as a mixture of a plant and an animal-a "vegetable lamb." Stories circulated in medieval Europe about sheep growing on plants, and bending down at night to drink water; other fables told of sheep attached to the ground by low stems (page 22)