In her review of Immanuel Wallerstein`s seminal The Modern World-System, Theda Skocpol was referring to the study of capitalism and its historical evolution when she said that she could "think of no intellectual project in the social sciences that is of greater interest and importance". This remains true almost 40 years later: we live in a world defined by capitalist modernity, which continues to be shaped by the dynamics of the global capitalist system. Even as elites in the advanced industrialised nations and the developing world continue to benefit, and profit, from the continued expansion of the capitalist economy, it is the working classes of the world, in the factories and the fields, whose exploitation continues to underpin the entire economic system.

The contradictions of capitalism, its ability to simultaneously generate tremendous wealth and deprivation, were glaringly demonstrated by the financial crisis of 2008, which visited ruin on millions of people around the world even as the banks and governments that caused the crisis to happen absolved themselves of responsibility and received little more than mild rebuke for the roles that they played. Elsewhere, in the Global South, the rise of China, India, Brazil, and others has the potential to fundamentally change the world's economic order, ending over half a millennium of European (and North American) supremacy, ushering in another phase of what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction"; the disruption and replacement of older social forms and processes of production as part of capitalism`s relentless expansion and innovation.

In this context, Empire of Cotton by Harvard historian Sven Beckert is an ambitious and ultimately rewarding book, charting as it does the rise of capitalism as seen through the emergence and expansion of the cotton trade.

As Beckert traces the history of cotton and its contribution to the development of global capitalism, he narrates a story that tells us about the innovation, technological change, tremendous productive forces unleashed by the economic transformation of the world and, perhaps more importantly, also focuses on an aspect that often goes unremarked in many standard accounts of the subject: namely the way in which violence, dispossession, and brutality were an intrinsic part of this process.

At the start of the book, Beckert points out how, until the late 18th century, cotton was a commodity that was largely produced in India, China, Mexico, and other parts of Asia, Africa, and South America; there was a market for cotton textiles in Europe, but little cotton was actually grown there. This all changed rapidly and dramatically, with Europe (and Britain in particular) becoming the dominant player in the global cotton trade by the 19th century.

This tremendous economic shift was, according to Beckert, made possible by the fusion of private, capitalist interests with state power, as competing European actors rushed to monopolise global trading networks and chains of commodity production. The charter companies that formed the basis of mercantile capitalism (the East India Company is an example) would not have been able to play the pivotal economic role that they did without the patronage of their governments, and it was by their efforts that, largely through colonial conquest, significant sections of the world were incorporated within the circuits of production and exchange that were being forged by the European states.

It was at this point in time that cotton was transformed from being a commodity produced at a relatively small, local scale, to one whose obvious value prompted a transformational increase in the scale of its production and trade. While those writing in support of capitalism often emphasise how its growth and productive capacity are made possible through the actions of entrepreneurs and innovators consistently and constantly making the best of emerging opportunities, Beckert`s account of the cotton trade lays bare the way in which the development of industrial capitalism, while obviously based on the emergence of new technologies and organisational techniques, would not have been possible without slavery and exploitation. Indeed, in explaining the rise of Britain as the world`s foremost cotton manufacturer (and industrial power in the 19th century), Beckert convincingly demonstrates how it was slavery, on the American plantations in the South, that was crucial to producing the cotton that fuelled the development of machines and industry in Manchester and elsewhere.

The tremendous increase in the slave trade in the late 18th century was almost entirely due to the creation of these cotton plantations, and it was the labour of these indentured workers that produced the raw materials used by manufacturers in Britain and other parts of Europe. Rather than being inimical to capitalism, as has often been suggested, Beckert argues that slavery was intrinsic to its development. Similarly, slavery on the American plantations was mirrored by the exploitation of wage labour in Britain itself, with men, women, and children being given a pittance in exchange for the work they performed in the factories and mills that formed the linchpin of the cotton trade.

It is for these reasons - the geostrategic competition that impelled European economic expansion and colonialism, the alliance between states and private capitalists, and the violence inherent to slavery and capitalist production - that Beckert refers to this entire period as being an example of 'War Capitalism', rather than the more neutral 'mercantilism'. By the mid-19th century, the dominance of European cotton manufacturers had been established, but many of the mechanisms that had underpinned their meteoric rise continued to be employed as global economic and political conditions changed.

Following the American Civil War, which brought an end to plantation slavery and disrupted global cotton supplies for years, British and other cotton manufacturers recognised the need to develop alternative sources of supply for their factories. It was at this juncture in history that India and Egypt witnessed a fundamental transformation of their economies. Under colonial rule, both territories saw traditional, small-scale cotton production being replaced by production for the global market, with this change being underpinned by the destruction of the traditional social order in order to make way for institutions more conducive to the process of capitalist development. Private property rights, taxation and revenue collection, bureaucratic oversight, and incentives to engage in cash crop production, all combined to ensure the loss of American cotton supplies could be offset through the efforts of farmers in Asia and Africa. As Beckert points out, this was all accompanied by a tremendous amount of societal dislocation; local livelihoods and food security were eviscerated, and colonial conquest, premised as it was on force, ensured that the producers of cotton derived far less benefit from it than those who profited from its sale.

Colonialism also ensured that places like India and China could become markets for the goods being produced in factories expanding in response to a relentless desire for profit.

Karl Marx once said that, "the cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it [the bourgeoisie] batters down Chinese walls", and the manner in which cotton textiles produced in Britain flooded Indian and Chinese markets is emblematic of this observation. Through tariffs and other interventions, the European states protected their own industries from external competition while simultaneously using their control over the colonies to pry them open, eviscerate their local manufacturing sectors, and transform them into lucrative markets for European goods. In less than a century, these parts of the world went from being relatively self sufficient economies with thriving manufacturing sectors to dependent, subordinate cogs within the global capitalist machine, providing raw materials to European factories that would sell manufactured goods back to them.

Eventually, Beckert argues, that working class mobilisation in the West, coupled with the declining importance of the cotton industry to the economies of the advanced industrialised nations, led to an amelioration of the condition experienced by workers in the factories and mills. What this did, however, was prompt an even greater reliance on external labour to buttress the growth and production of cotton, as evinced by the shift of cotton manufacturing from the textile mills of Manchester to the cities and towns of China, India, Pakistan, and other parts of the developing world. Here, as the predations of multinational corporations, local capitalists, and corrupt governments show, the cotton industry remains dependent on the continued exploitation of the working classes. The spatial dynamics of the cotton trade may have shifted in the 20th century, but the industry continues to be defined by much of the brutality that facilitated its initial emergence on the world stage.

Although Empire of Cotton is an engaging read, its attention to detail means that it may sometimes appear a bit opaque and inaccessible to non-academic audiences. Nonetheless, by attempting to tell the history of modern capitalism through focus on a commodity like cotton, Beckert is successfully able to weave together a diverse array of themes that are of great historical interest and contemporary relevance. For example, demonstrating the importance of colonial conquest to the expansion of the cotton trade provides us with broader insights into the processes that established current global terms of trade, just as an emphasis on the tribulations of the working classes illustrates a more general point about the nature of capitalist production. Similarly, one of the great strengths of the book is the way in which it makes considerable space for stories and vignettes about individual capitalists, government officials, and workers all of which serve to show us how individuals and their networks of influence, power, and even resistance, merit as much scrutiny as broader process of economic and social change.

There are important lessons to be learnt from this book. In a time of austerity, with governments around the world insisting on the need to scale back social spending even as the gap between the rich and poor continues to increase, it is perhaps more important than ever to expose and question the links between states and elite economic actors the same kinds of relationships that underpinned the rise of the cotton industry. Similarly, in the developing world, the race to the bottom that often characterises attempts by states to attract capital has led to the further impoverishment of the working classes, the destruction of the environment, and the entrenchment of corrupt, rent-seeking governments and elites. Inasmuch as the history of cotton helps us understand the violence and brutality inherent to capitalist development, it would be worthwhile to reflect on how this is as true today as it was a century ago.