Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert | Books | RMG Shop – Royal Museums Greenwich Shop
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Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism by Sven Beckert

Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism by Sven Beckert

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Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism by Sven Beckert is a history of the overwhelming role played by cotton in dictating the shape of our world. It is both a gripping narrative and a brilliant case history of how the world works.

  • By Sven Beckert 
  • Paperback: 640 pages
  • Published by Penguin; 01 edition (29 Oct. 2015)
  • Size: 12.9 x 2.7 x 19.8 cm


    • For about 900 years, from 1000 to 1900, cotton was the world's most important manufacturing industry. It remains a vast business - if all the cotton bales produced in 2013 had been stacked on top of each other they would have made a somewhat unstable tower 40,000 miles high.

    Just one of our definitive collection of books on Trade, Empire & Migration here at the National Maritime Museum. 

    WINNER OF THE 2015 BANCROFT PRIZE
    WINNER OF THE 2015 PHILIP TAFT PRIZE
    FINALIST FOR THE 2015 PULITZER PRIZE FOR HISTORY
    SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 CUNDHILL PRIZE IN HISTORICAL LITERATURE
    Economist BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015

    'Knowledgeable and stunning' Orhan Pamuk

    'A masterpiece of the historian's craft' The Nation

    Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of American History at Harvard University.  + Read more - Show less
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