The reconstruction of the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War

1. The reconstruction of the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War Emancipation and Empire

2. America’s Civil War was fought over as number of different issues, including individual states’ rights, the power of the federal government, and most importantly: slavery. At the close of the war, the Union emerged victorious and the storied institution of slavery fell. As a result of slavery’s demise in the United States, the worldwide cotton industry lost one of its major pillars and sources of labor. There was immediately a massive scramble that ensued to try to find new land and new laborers to grow the supply of cotton that the world’s population needed. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, new pillars of the cotton industry had to be established and solidified over time.

3. A major change that took place in the cotton industry was its newfound desire to reach out to different countries, eagerly looking for new cultivators to replace the warring Americans. Before war broke out in 1861, most of the global supply of cotton was produced by slaves in the United States. Then, it was sent to British industrial towns to be woven into cloth and spun into thread. However, a drastic change took place in the years after the Civil War. Now, more of the globe was involved in the empire of cotton, with countries like Egypt, India, Brazil, and Russia, beginning to form their own systems of cotton production. The geographic spread of cotton production throughout the world was the first important pillar of cotton's postwar empire.

4. The cotton empire had to utilize completely new sources of labor to produce the necessary supply of cotton for the world. Even though slavery was no longer involved in the cotton industry, a new, incredibly similar social structure came to replace it. The new systems that were created relied heavily on cultivators, who worked for wages on rented land. They were often deeply immersed in debt, living in poverty, and politically marginalized. Local moneylenders ran their own operations with many of these cultivators, taking advantage of their low social standing and limited knowledge of business. The new system pushed more people in agriculture and the effects were felt in each of the countries that now supplied cotton.

5. Another way that the cotton industry had changed was through more government interference within it. Despite the lack of attention given to it in America, cotton production expanded after 1865. Poverty, overproduction, and resulting low prices contributed to the South's poor economy. The government’s solution to this problem was to interfere with the new system and market. President Franklin Roosevelt created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which drafted incentives for farmers who decreased production of cotton, in hopes of raising its value. Landholders decreased their acreage by up to 50%, but it was no help to the struggling economy. Sharecroppers and tenants, the most impoverished in the new cotton production system, were still living in poor conditions. The system of share cropping grew to be a success, but the sharecroppers themselves were in a situation akin to slavery. Largely due to the government's actions, the United States became even more of a respected and successful cotton supplier, and continues to be successful today.

6. Even though cotton became a force behind the United States’ economic growth after the Civil War, the industry was one of the most important in the world before the wartoo. The country had always been a large consumer of manufactured British cotton, but there was a massive increase in cotton production during the 1790s. The massive increase in the production of cotton in the country was a accumulation of the increasing British demand for raw cotton and the invention of the cotton gin. Soon, the United States accounted for 77 percent of Britain’s cotton, 90 percent of France’s cotton, and 92 percent of Russia’s cotton.

7. One of the most important pieces of the United States’ success in the cotton industry was the usage of slavery as its main source of labor. Nearly four million slaves were involved in the cultivation of raw cotton in the country’s fields and, due to the industry’s contribution to the world’s economy, they were the most important asset in global cotton production. Cotton provided huge profits to the owners of large plantations, making them some of the wealthiest men in the country prior to the Civil War and cementing their stance as firm supporters of slavery.

8. The antebellum era of the cotton industry came to a screeching halt when the South seceded from the United States in 1860. The South was completely dependent on its revenue from cotton production, just as cotton production was completely dependent on slavery. The increase in potential threats to slavery, such as the rising number of free states in the country, the election of Abraham Lincoln,  and the impending shift of power in Washington, resulted in the South’s decision to leave the Union. Then, in 1861, the attack on Fort Sumter signaled the beginning of the war between the Union and the Confederacy that would become the bloodiest in American history.

9. While war was waged within the United States, other countries had to adjust to a new cotton shortage, which was created by the temporary departure of the biggest cotton supplier in the world. It caused the Lancashire Cotton Famine, a depression in the textile industry that negatively affected a number of manufacturing towns in England. Many people were forced to wait in lines for food and coal tickets every single day, like this picture depicts, and riots were common occurrences. The Confederacy hoped that the lack of cotton would inspire foreign involvement for their cause, and blocked trade with the world. By the time they realized that this policy was going to fail, the Union had set up a blockade that prohibited trade even more. Choosing not to join the fight, foreign countries were faced with an important decision on where to turn for their cotton.

10. British bureaucrats eventually made the decision to supply themselves with raw cotton and saw India as a place to begin growing cotton for world exportation. Soon, manufacturers provided cottonseed and cotton gins for potential Indian growers, while starting to discuss plans for new infrastructure plans. However, the most important advancement was a law that allowed cultivators to devote their effort and land entirely to cotton, since they would get an advance on food grains. It allowed India to become the center of the explosive growth all around the world, going from contributing 16 percent of Britain’s cotton to contributing 75 percent just two years later.

11. Egypt soon became a notable cotton provider, as it underwent a transformation that was similar to India’s. Political figures, like Viceroy Sa’id Pasha led the charge to transform land previously devoted to producing food to land devoted to the cultivation of cotton. Egypt became modernized through its exposure on world markets, creating new cotton gins and new railroads. The changes were staggering, as 40 percent of farmland was used to grow cotton and Egypt exported cotton at five times the rate that it had before the Civil War.

12. Other places with a significant impact on the growth and manufacturing of cotton were West Africa and Brazil.  West Africa had the labor base required to succeed in the cotton business, but did not have the economic means to produce and export the product globally.  On the other hand, Brazil's cotton exports grew exponentially in the years after the Civil War, rising from an average of 26.9 million pounds of cotton in the three decades before the war to 66.7 pounds annually after the war.  Brazil was relied on for quality cotton grown without slave labor, a necessity for a world gaining independence from the moral wrongs of slavery.

13. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the economy of the the South was in shambles.  The once thriving cotton market had been destroyed, by the freeing of the slave workers and the introduction of foreign countries into the market the United States South had previously dominated.  The money lost by the war and the lost jobs of many of the men devastated southern leaders, and it was decided a new system for growing cotton needed to be developed to place the Southern United States back on the cotton map.

14. A new system of cotton growth evolved after the former Confederate states adjusted to rejoining the Union.  The new system, called sharecropping, relied on cultivators to grow the cotton, while living on the piece of land.  Merchants and landowners made them pay rent to live on the property, and sharecroppers made the money for the rent by meeting a quota for each harvest.  This new system was flawed, and sharecroppers were mistreated by landowners and soon fell into a vicious cycle of debt they could not escape.

15. Before the Civil War and its effects on the cotton industry, the government's only true role in the growth of cotton was to enforce slavery as a way of extracting labor.  However, after the war the government has a large part in the growth of cotton, similar to plantation owners before the war.  Government worked to make cotton more valuable, to increase productivity, and created incentives to motivate sharecroppers to bring in a good harvest.

16. The United States regained their hold over the cotton market extremely quickly, and by 1870 were exporting however much, surpassing competition in foreign countries such as India or Egypt.Today, cotton is the United States' number one value added export, and annual business revenue stimulated by cotton exceeds $120 billion. Advances in technology, and an only increasing need for cotton have made it possible to cultivate and sell cotton globally on a scale that would have been impossibly in 1800s.  The system of sharecropping was an important step needed to get to the booming cotton market of today.

17. Pictography: Albaz, Alsayed. “Egyptians Picking Cotton.” 2009. Egypt Independent. http://www.egyptindependent.com/node/7004 Carver, Eleazer. “The Celebrated ‘E. Carver’ Cotton Gin”. 1877. TreasureNet. http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/168046-cotton-gin-nameplate.html “Cotton Fields”. Gunturu NRI. http://gunturunri.org/?page_id=9 “Georgia Slaves Picking Cotton”. 1839. National Achieves. http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2012/04/commemorating-civil-war-learning-experience9825 “Houses of Parliament”. Eyedea. http://www.eyedea.org.uk/ Lange, Dorothea. “African-American Sharecropper House with Child on Steps”. 1939. Fine Art America. http://fineartamerica.com/featured/african-american-sharecropper-house-everett.html “Line for Food and Coal Tickets at a District Provident Society Office”. 1862. LIFE Photo Archieve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cotton_famine_life_magazine_manchester.jpeg Miracle, Marvin. “Woman Picking Cotton”. Africa Focus Collection, University of Wisconsin. http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/AfricaFocus O'Sullivan, Timothy H. “Gettysburg, Pa. Bodies of Federal soldiers, killed on July 1, near the McPherson woods”. 1863. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/gettysburg/dead-civil-war-soldiers.htm “Sunil Eximp Corporation Raw Cotton”. 1982. Sunil Eximp Corporation. http://www.indiamart.com/sunileximpcorp/ “Union vs. Confederacy”. HistorySpaces. http://historyspaces.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html