Hardly any other raw material has such a long, complex and problematic history as cotton. In the future, we would like to tell this story in various articles - and not only go into the historical, political, geographical or climatic levels, but above all talk about the perspectives that arise for us as a company.
In particular, the past year and a half and the global pandemic have once again made it abundantly clear how disproportionately opportunities and risks are distributed globally, and the responsibility to deal with this has become unavoidable. But hand on heart - our "industry", i.e. the one that focuses on raw materials, textiles and supply chains, has this responsibility anyway and in a special way.
In a first part, which will be supplemented by further blog posts and print articles in the coming months, we would like to take a look at the historical dimensions of the cultivation of cotton. This is very directly linked to the history of slavery in the United States, the inventions of the industrial age, and the effects of colonization and globalization on countries like India in particular. To this day, we see the far-reaching consequences all of this has had and continues to have - and realize that the problems are actually not as historical as we would sometimes like to believe.
Today, it is assumed that cotton fiber has been known and used to make clothing for many thousands of years; finds in Mexico prove an age of at least around 7,000 years. In India, on the other hand, gins, looms and even spinning wheels existed very early on, making the country an important hub for the textile industry more than 1,000 years ago.
The European history of cotton, however, is much different: Linen, hemp, wool or silk were initially more widespread there, cotton only really became interesting when the structures for its processing were created - with the onset of what we describe today as the "Industrial Age". What was a narrative of progress and accumulation of capital on one side of the story - the Western European, white one - came only at the price of a counter-narrative of exploitation and the subjugation of, and transatlantic trade in, people who thus became commodities.
This has been fundamentally important for the global development of capitalism, as an increasing number of texts dealing with the contexts of imperialist aspirations and the history of cotton show. They are particularly interested in looking at the reciprocal relationship between developments in Great Britain and the colonies in America. One invention was of particular importance: that of the ginnery, the Engrenier machine. After the first industrial spinning machine had been invented in 1764 with the 'Spinning Jenny', the European and American textile industry underwent massive changes.
The age of industrial mass production began - and the demand for cotton was skyrocketed to an extent that further forced slavery in the American colonies. Then, when Eli Whitney invented cotton gin in 1793, the scale of slavery grew immeasurably: By the middle of the 19th century, there were over two million slaves on more than 70,000 plantations - for whose development the displacement of the indigenous population was cheaply accepted.
This development, which can hardly be put into words, had obvious consequences for the price of the raw material: in 1860, cotton cost only 1% of what it had cost before, and "cotton" became "king," as the senator and plantation owner James Henry Hammond made unmistakably clear in a speech in 1858. Hammond, who had been a Southerner and dedicated his life to preserving slavery, so to speak, then died when the Northern states abolished slavery in the aftermath of the wars of secession in late 1865 - at least on paper.
This change had far-reaching consequences in Great Britain, because that, too, is part of the global context. Since cotton from the American southern states was no longer processed as "slave cotton," jobs in the manufactories there initially collapsed. Britain remedied the situation by forcing the territories it controlled, Egypt and India, and the tenant farmers there to abandon the cultivation of staple crops and grow cotton instead. Needless to say, the local farmers suffered and continue to suffer from these developments to this day, and economic affiliation and dependence on the Empire created conditions of poverty and famine, the consequences of which continue to this day.
Increasing demand and the simultaneous reduction of food cultivation have established structures, especially in India, where people lived and worked under the most inhumane conditions. These developments have been accelerated above all by the cultivation of transgenic, i.e. genetically modified, cotton, which has been grown in India since 2002 - and which, contrary to all promises, does not lead to an increase in yield. It does, however, lead to something else - the use of more and more pesticides, as the cotton quickly develops resistance.
Not only that, but as Indian cotton farmers rely on increasingly expensive seeds to cultivate their fields at all, they often get into so much debt that suicide becomes the only way out. Hundreds of thousands of cases are documented - and too often these cases remain just a number, completely losing sight of the fact that behind every death there is an individual with family and relationships.
However, we would like to dedicate a separate contribution to India and its long history of colonial exploitation, resistance and what has happened since the (supposed) decolonization in 1947.
Pictures: Unsplash
Sources:
