___The eBook of fully indexed with umpteen endnotes from original sources. It comes with excellent photos, charts and diagrams. Readers who have 96 dpi monitors (or less) will need a magnifying glass to make out the small print on some of the graphics. (Someday I hope Kindle will support zoom functions for embedded graphics.) I would not recommend reading this eBook with an iPhone or minimum-definition eReader.
___Beckert documents the origins of cotton in India and China. Indian cotton was a luxury item for aristocrats of the Roman Empire.
___The British East India Company introduced cotton to Europeans and adopted technological improvements for spinning and weaving. Soon British merchants around Liverpool open sweat-shop factories and employed children from orphanages who worked 13-hour shifts in cramped, unsavory conditions. Meanwhile, the East Indian Company bought yarns and cloths from Indian cotton producers. These they sold to Africans in exchange for slaves who were sent to the Western Hemisphere to work the cotton fields. In the USA the cotton gin enabled easier cotton harvesting and processing. Soon cotton plantations in the USA supplied Europe with 90% of the raw cotton for mills.
___The cotton industry has always been a government sanctioned Ponzi scheme that provides cotton clothing to well-heeled consumers at rock-bottom prices. It went hand-in-hand with colonialism of the 18th- & 19th-centuries. Beckert coins a new phrase for the cotton enterprise. He calls it WAR CAPITALISM.
___Government laws have enabled the cotton industry, which has used slavery, land grabs, wage slavery, violence, rape and even genocide to further its aims. The global cotton racket throughout its history has used the same methods as do drug cartels. Yet, cotton vendors are perfectly licensed and legal. Today the USA government spends more on its own cotton producers than it gives to foreign aid.
___This eBook wonderfully written and produced. I recommend it for anyone who dares to face the facts. The dark truth of human capitalism.