Cotton was arguably the first modern industry. By the late 18th century, British factories burned fossil fuels and paid wage labor to mechanically process huge quantities of a natural fiber grown an ocean away. My research focuses on cotton in the twentieth century, when the traditional duopoly of British manufacturing and American agriculture began to break down. It takes a global perspective, following cotton across arbitrary national boundaries and showing how cotton helped drive globalization–and how globalization changed the way cotton was grown and consumed.
Selected publications and research papers
“Lancashire and the Undeveloped Estates” in the Journal of British Studies, 2015.
“Lancashire and the New South: British Fact-finding Missions and the Global Cotton Industry” (2012)