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Notes on Chapter 4 of "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert.
The rapidly rising labor productivity detailed in the last chapter resulted in rapidly rising prices for raw cotton input to the industrial system.
Before U.S./carribean slavery showed the way out for them, the British tried to import sufficient quantities from (e.g.) Greece, the Ottoman Empire. The tenacity of feudal relations in the Ottoman Empire kept output flat (p.86). Counter-intuitively, the British East India Company resisted efforts to increase export volumes.
In 1780, Britain imported no cotton from North America (p.85). In that decade, the majority of the vast majority of cotton sold on world markets was grown by slaves in the West Indies and South America.
But by 1857, 68% of cotton arriving in Britain was from the U.S., most grown by slaves. Slavery had never played an important role in cotton production before the rise of the British industry (p. 84). It was the first major industry in human history that lacked local raw materials (p.85).
The plantation system was developed in the Caribbean and South America before being adopted and dramatically expanded in the U.S. (p.97).
The first successful slave revolution, lead by the former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture, occurred in Saint-Domingue in 1791 and created the state of Haiti. Before the revolution Saint-Domingue accounted for 24% of British cotton imports, four years after its start, 4.5% (p.96).
Next Chapter: "Slavery Takes Command"
Previous Chapter: "Wages of War Capitalism"
Notes on C.L.R James' book on the Saint-Domingue revolution, "The Black Jacobins"