The Globalization of Cotton As a Result of the American Civil War
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SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION: THE GLOBALIZATION OF COTTON AS A RESULT OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by RICKY-DALE CALHOUN B.I.S., Murray State University, 2002 M.A., Murray State University, 2005 AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2012 Abstract Cotton was the most important commodity in the economy of the industrialized Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, as vital then as petroleum is today. It was widely believed that a prolonged interruption of the cotton supply would lead not merely to a severe economic depression, but possibly to the collapse of Western Civilization. Three quarters of the world’s cotton supply came from the Southern states of the United States. When the American Civil War erupted and cotton supplies were cut off, the British Cotton Supply Association was faced with the difficult task of establishing cotton cultivation in other locations. In order for the effort to succeed, the British had to obtain and distribute millions of pounds of American cotton seeds. The United States government, the Illinois Central Railroad, and a number of organizations and individuals cooperated to obtain the necessary seeds that the British had to have. American farm equipment manufacturers assisted by designing, making, and distributing portable cotton gins and other implements needed by cotton growers overseas. U.S. consuls overseas sometimes assisted the Cotton Supply Association with seed and equipment distribution. This dissertation is about the implementation of the grand economic strategies of the United States and Great Britain. It is also about the people who implemented those strategies on the ground, people as diverse as Union agents who went into Confederate territory to procure cotton seeds, farmers in Illinois, British consuls who distributed seeds grown in Illinois to farmers in the Ottoman Empire, and English colonists who flocked to Fiji with high hopes of becoming cotton planters. It attempts to measure the impact of the cotton boom and subsequent bust that resulted from the American Civil War on societies around the world. SEEDS OF DESTRUCTION: THE GLOBALIZATION OF COTTON AS A RESULT OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR by RICKY-DALE CALHOUN B.I.S., Murray State University, 2002 M.A., Murray State University, 2005 A DISSERTATION submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Sciences KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY Manhattan, Kansas 2012 Approved by: Major Professor David A. Graff Copyright RICKY-DALE CALHOUN 2012 Abstract Cotton was the most important commodity in the economy of the industrialized Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, as vital then as petroleum is today. It was widely believed that a prolonged interruption of the cotton supply would lead not merely to a severe economic depression, but possibly to the collapse of Western Civilization. Three quarters of the world’s cotton supply came from the Southern states of the United States. When the American Civil War erupted and cotton supplies were cut off, the British Cotton Supply Association was faced with the difficult task of establishing cotton cultivation in other locations. In order for the effort to succeed, the British had to obtain and distribute millions of pounds of American cotton seeds. The United States government, the Illinois Central Railroad, and a number of organizations and individuals cooperated to obtain the necessary seeds that the British had to have. American farm equipment manufacturers assisted by designing, making, and distributing portable cotton gins and other implements needed by cotton growers overseas. U.S. consuls overseas sometimes assisted the Cotton Supply Association with seed and equipment distribution. This dissertation is about the implementation of the grand economic strategies of the United States and Great Britain. It is also about the people who implemented those strategies on the ground, people as diverse as Union agents who went into Confederate territory to procure cotton seeds, farmers in Illinois, British consuls who distributed seeds grown in Illinois to farmers in the Ottoman Empire, and English colonists who flocked to Fiji with high hopes of becoming cotton planters. It attempts to measure the impact of the cotton boom and subsequent bust that resulted from the American Civil War on societies around the world. Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... viii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... ix Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1, Cotton’s Peculiar Kingdom ............................................................................... 9 Chapter 2, Parameters of the Cotton Crisis ....................................................................... 33 Chapter 3, The Warp and Weft of Grand Strategies ......................................................... 63 Chapter 4, Seeds of Destruction........................................................................................ 99 Chapter 5, The Ottoman Centre ...................................................................................... 129 Chapter 6, The Ottoman Peripheries ............................................................................... 170 Chapter 7, Palestine ........................................................................................................ 211 Chapter 8, Egypt ............................................................................................................. 241 Chapter 9, Latin America and the West Indies ............................................................... 278 Chapter 10, India and the Far East .................................................................................. 320 Chapter 11, The Friendly Islands .................................................................................... 365 Chapter 12, The Restoration of King Cotton .................................................................. 400 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 455 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 462 vi List of Tables Table 1 .............................................................................................................................. 62 Table 2 ............................................................................................................................ 282 Table 3 ............................................................................................................................ 406 vii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank Dr. David Graff and the members of the committee, Dr. Charles Sanders, Dr. Andrew Long, Dr. Stephen Long, Dr. Derek Hoff, and Dr. Farid al-Salim. Special thanks is extended to Dr. Mohaned al-Hamdi in the economics department for his advice about the economies of Iraq and Egypt in the nineteenth century. Victoria Brenneis and the staff of Hale Library are owed special thanks for their help in obtaining obscure and hard to get books and microfilms, some from as far away as Australia. Thanks are extended to the personnel of the Anderson County Courthouse and the Anderson County Historical Society Museum in Garnett, Kansas, for allowing me access to county records and assisting in the search. Similar thanks go to the personnel at the Coffee County Historical Society Museum in Burlington, Kansas, and the Kansas State History Museum in Topeka. viii Dedication To every person, man, woman, or child, of any race, color, or nationality, who has ever toiled in a cotton field anywhere in the world. ix Introduction As Time moves on, the origin and the purpose of the four- years-conflict…ceases to be a mere episode in the private history of a particular people, on a particular spot…it expands far beyond the narrow limits of the land upon which so many lives were sacrificed.1 As was obvious to General Camille de Polignac when he wrote those words in October 1913, the American Civil War had lasting global ramifications. Speaking to a British audience at Oxford University in 1913, Union army veteran and historian Charles Francis Adams, Jr., remarked that, “Other and equally momentous struggles” had by that time effaced the American Civil War in the consciousness of foreign generations born during the interceding half century.2 Even greater struggles would further efface it in the next fifty years. Likewise, most ordinary Americans came to see the Civil War as a uniquely American experience, one that except for the Trent Affair and the exploits of the Confederate navy’s far-ranging raider Alabama was confined within the borders of the United States. Yet no matter where historians may focus their efforts, be it Victorian-era England, Latin America, Africa, India, Egypt, the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, or even the remote South Pacific islands they discover that