| Reading Guide for Week 6 | |
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Beckert writes a global history of the cotton trade, which would become the most lucrative agricultural commodity exported by the United States in the first half of the 19th century. But the cotton trade involved much more than that, as it was also at the leading edge of British industrialization, as well as at the leading edge of globalization in becoming a common consumer item throughout the world. Beckert addresses some of the massive violence perpetrated toward accomplishing these transformations in the global political economy of the 19th century, including but not limited to the American South and British provincial cities like Manchester. He mentions two phenomena that we have covered this course: the brutal expropriation of land from Native Americans, and the brutal exploitation of labor from Africans. As inflicted over many generations. Both were made lawful under British and American domestic law, and both were made lawful under British and French-dominated “international” law. Beckert argues that the development of this mode of legalized, state-sanctioned violence — “war capitalism” — represented a crucial historical phase in the evolution of British- and American-style capitalism in the 19th century. His book spotlights that phase, and the centrality of the cotton trade to its evolution. One could argue that this kind of legalized, state-sanctioned violence remains a crucial component of the capitalism that prevails in the modern world, even if some of that overt violence has been relocated into preemptive surveillance, discipline, and “security” and/or much of it relocated to overseas settings largely beyond scrutiny. |