Overview
Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.
Full Product Details
Author: Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 17.50cm
, Height: 2.10cm
, Length: 24.60cm
Weight: 0.920kg
ISBN: 9780521166706
ISBN 10: 0521166705
Pages: 436
Publication Date: 16 April 2015
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
'... a remarkable volume full of insight and originality ... Riello deserves a wide audience and the book will be of interest to a readership well beyond the audience for world economic history, including cultural and social history, the histories of art, design, fashion and, of course, textiles themselves.' Reviews in History (history.ac.uk/reviews) 'Mr Riello's meticulous approach and scholarly prose make for a dense work but one that is wide-ranging, beautifully nuanced and often surprising. Like its namesake, Cotton deserves a wide circulation.' The Wall Street Journal 'Reveals much about globalisation ...' Financial Times 'This is a brilliant study of two periods of globalization, centered and driven first by twelfth- to seventeenth-century Indian production of cotton textiles, and second by the gradual triumph of Europe, particularly Britain, beginning in the eighteenth century. Essential.' B. Weinstein, Choice '... strikingly broad in coverage and even bolder in the sweep of its claims, geographical, chronological and methodological. ... [a] rich and elaborate work.' Eric Jones, EH.Net
'... a remarkable volume full of insight and originality ... Riello deserves a wide audience and the book will be of interest to a readership well beyond the audience for world economic history, including cultural and social history, the histories of art, design, fashion and, of course, textiles themselves.' Reviews in History (history.ac.uk/reviews) 'Mr Riello's meticulous approach and scholarly prose make for a dense work but one that is wide-ranging, beautifully nuanced and often surprising. Like its namesake, Cotton deserves a wide circulation.' The Wall Street Journal 'Reveals much about globalisation ...' Financial Times 'This is a brilliant study of two periods of globalization, centered and driven first by twelfth- to seventeenth-century Indian production of cotton textiles, and second by the gradual triumph of Europe, particularly Britain, beginning in the eighteenth century. Essential.' B. Weinstein, Choice '... strikingly broad in coverage and even bolder in the sweep of its claims, geographical, chronological and methodological ... [a] rich and elaborate work.' Eric Jones, EH.Net
'... a remarkable volume full of insight and originality ... Riello deserves a wide audience and the book will be of interest to a readership well beyond the audience for world economic history, including cultural and social history, the histories of art, design, fashion and, of course, textiles themselves.' Reviews in History (history.ac.uk/reviews) 'Mr Riello's meticulous approach and scholarly prose make for a dense work but one that is wide-ranging, beautifully nuanced and often surprising. Like its namesake, Cotton deserves a wide circulation.' The Wall Street Journal 'Reveals much about globalisation ...' Financial Times 'This is a brilliant study of two periods of globalization, centered and driven first by twelfth- to seventeenth-century Indian production of cotton textiles, and second by the gradual triumph of Europe, particularly Britain, beginning in the eighteenth century. Essential.' B. Weinstein, Choice
Author Information
Giorgio Riello is Professor of Global History at the University of Warwick and a member of Warwick's Global History and Culture Centre. He is the author of A Foot in the Past (2006) and has co-edited several books including The Spinning World (2009), How India Clothed the World (2009) and Global Design History (2011). In 2009 he received the Newcomen Prize in Business History, and in 2010 he was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize.
