Tag Archives: globalisation

Cotton, empire and mill workers

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I finished reading Sven Beckert’s prize-winning [amazon_link id=”0141979984″ target=”_blank” ]Empire of Cotton: A new history of global capitalism[/amazon_link] in Cottonopolis, aka Manchester. I grew up in Lancashire in a family many of whose members worked in the cotton mills. The noise and hot greasy, dusty smell of the mills was part of my childhood. At school we were taught that we had been the cradle of the Industrial Revolution: John Kay, Richard Arkwright, Samuel Crompton, created their inventions just down the road. In Lincoln Square in Manchester stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln, a recognition of the support Lancashire mill workers had given to the Union side in the American Civil War, even though the blockade of southern ports created the ‘cotton famine’ that was the source of the great hardship they were experiencing.

[amazon_image id=”0141979984″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism[/amazon_image]

Not surprisingly, I’ve been immensely looking forward to reading [amazon_link id=”0141979984″ target=”_blank” ]Empire of Cotton[/amazon_link], saving it as a treat. And although I enjoyed reading it, it also left me very uneasy. The book wraps a huge amount of fascinating detail and insight around a single unwavering theme: that ‘war capitalism’, the violence of empire and slavery and thus the creation of a global trade with protected markets, made possible industrial capitalism. Now, I’m no imperialist, and there’s no question about the horrors of the slave trade – and the riches it created in the UK. David Olusoga’s recent BBC TV series about the UCL project on the legacy of British slave ownership highlighted the foundational importance of slavery for the UK’s 19th century prosperity, despite abolition. Even so, I distrusted the book. In 441 pages of great detail, was there really no room to mention those Lancashire mill hands? It isn’t an unknown story: Radio 4’s In Our Time had a fabulous episode on it earlier this year. Yet the book’s chapter on the cotton famine speaks only of ‘Manchester’ as a solo voice and its concern about the Union blockade. Life – and history – are more complicated than a [amazon_link id=”0415304458″ target=”_blank” ]Rosa Luxemburg[/amazon_link]-like frame with no room for anything that clouds the simplicity of an argument.

But this is – well, more than a quibble, just not enough to have stopped me enjoying the book. Three points were particularly interesting.

First was the analysis of the interaction between the labour-intensive upstream production and the capital-intensive downstream production, and how the technological practicalities shaped the organisation of processing, manufacture and trade. Although cotton is probably now the lowest profile industry of the industrial revolution, [amazon_link id=”B00PYY1AQU” target=”_blank” ]Empire of Cotton [/amazon_link]makes a persuasive case that it was the most powerful driver of globalised industrial capitalism – global precisely because of the differing production technologies along the supply chain.

Second is the emphasis on the interaction between private interests and the state, and the prevalence of the same kind of argument we still hear from industrialists who talk about the importance of free trade and yet constantly lobby the government to shape taxation, infrastructure, trade rules etc in their interests. The American Civil War prompted much British investment in Indian infrastructure, for example, as cotton manufacturers successfully lobbied for government assistance to create new sources of their raw material. More generally, the book quite rightly underlines the joint innovation of technologies, the organisation of production and trade, and financial and social institutional innovations.

Minard's infographic on the flows of raw cotton imports showing the effect of the Civil War

Minard’s infographic on the flows of raw cotton imports showing the effect of the Civil War

Third – and this is a truly nerdy point – I found fascinating the role of standardisation (of types and qualities of cotton) as the trade grew. In the early stages of the rise of cotton, the gathering of detailed information was a source of competitive advantage. Over time, places that collected information, and then provided it in standardised form, became central to the business. Liverpool was the centre of both physical and informational trade in the UK; in the US, although the South grew the cotton, New York became the hub. Ultimately, US standards dominated: in 1923 the Cotton Standards Act made it illegal to use anything but American standards in interstate or foreign commerce, so they became global standards. “The state also became an important supplier of statistics that made the market more legible, rendering much less central the sophisticated networks of information gathering and exchange that merchants had forged…. The state, centrally concerned with the reliable flow of inexpensive raw materials into the vortex of manufacturing enterprises, now quite literally made the market.”

So, I agree with some of Beckert’s argument and do recommend reading [amazon_link id=”0141979984″ target=”_blank” ]Empire of Cotton,[/amazon_link] – but with a large pinch of scepticism.

Joseph Coyle (far right, front, aged 14 with his workmates at the Old Ground Mill in Ramsbottom, Lancashire.

Joseph Coyle (far right, front, aged 14 with his workmates at the Old Ground Mill in Ramsbottom, Lancashire.

Bringing ideas to the world

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Last week I attended the European Advisory Board meeting of Princeton University Press, the theme of the discussion being the role of university presses in the globalized 21st century. A while ago Sam Leith had an interesting article in the Guardian praising university presses for their stewardship of non-fiction publishing at a time when many commercial publishers have become fearful ‘me-too’ merchants. It could seem paradoxical: the university presses’ freedom from short term commercial pressure has created the conditions for longer term success, at least for some. Happily, Princeton University Press is one of those that’s thriving. There is a huge appetite for ideas, and the scholarly presses publishing books that address a wider audience than only academics and their libraries have been there to meet it. The appetite is also global, and again a small group of university presses have addressed the global market (much of PUP’s recent growth has been outside its home market in the US).

The other question is what will the ‘university’ part of ‘global university press’ look like in a decade or two? Higher education is ripe for disruption. It seems clear now this will not take the form of MOOCs, although they will have their market. Yet who knows what shape exactly it will take. One of my advisory board colleagues suggested publishing could be able to provide the true interdisciplinarity modern global issues require, whereas traditional university departmental silos discourage it. My hunch is that keeping a clear focus on the ‘product’ being the provision of ideas and scholarship to readers of all kinds around the world, and being agnostic about the exact means of delivering those ideas, will be the way to ride out disruptive technologies. A ‘freemium’ approach looks a good bet too: for example, the open access Digital Einstein website alongside the Quotable Einstein along with many other of his books for sale. (I note by the way there’s a holiday discount at the moment on purchases via the PUP website!)

My latest three books have been published by Princeton, and I’m delighted to be associated with such a distinguished purveyor of ideas to the world. During the holidays I’ll do my look ahead to forthcoming books in 2016 (publishers – do send me catalogues if you haven’t already) but here’s a trailer for just a few PUP titles for 2016: [amazon_link id=”B017MVYMSA” target=”_blank” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_link] by William Goetzmann; [amazon_link id=”0691167400″ target=”_blank” ]Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy[/amazon_link] by Robert Frank; and – just arrived at Enlightenment Towers, due for publicaiton on 27 January, Robert Gordon’s [amazon_link id=”B0131KW67U” target=”_blank” ]The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living since the Civil War[/amazon_link]. I’m really looking forward to reading this over the holiday, & spoiling for a fight with Prof Gordon – but who knows, maybe he’ll win me over to his ‘innovation is so over’ thesis.

[amazon_image id=”B017MVYMSA” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”0691167400″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy[/amazon_image]  [amazon_image id=”B0131KW67U” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)[/amazon_image]

 

The hamburgerized economy

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It’s Saturday, when I try to bring order to my life, and I was just sorting out the teetering pile of books when I unearthed [amazon_link id=”0691163871″ target=”_blank” ]Hamburgers in Paradise: the stories behind the food we eat [/amazon_link]by Louise fresco. It’s a notably handsome book with lovely pictures, so already enticing. Paging through, it looks a fascinating read as well. Although billed as a cultural history, it looks at the dominant role of supermarkets in the way we shop, at genetic modification, at agriculture, poverty and economic development, at the slow food movement and the globalization of food supply.

[amazon_image id=”0691163871″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Hamburgers in Paradise: The Stories behind the Food We Eat[/amazon_image]

Now, I love food and prepare most of our meals from scratch, buying few ready-made items. Quality is important to me. Eating as a family, round a table, talking, is essential. Yet the slow food movement makes me uneasy, as it often seems to reject the productivity needed to feed everyone, and to embody an approach few can afford. Agricultural productivity needs to increase again. As it happens, I just spotted this tweet on exactly this subject:

AgBioWorld
Global middle class is booming, so is demand for food. More crop per acre is the only way! https://t.co/LM9PFbRAbi https://t.co/VL09pRxOFv
21/11/2015 14:18

On the other hand, the scandals of industrial food production – horse meat disguised as beef, the treatment of animals including stuffing them with antibiotics, obesity, the high-salt, high-fat, high-margin products etc – are unacceptable and probably unsustainable. We will soon be publishing a terrific book by David Fell on food policy and taxation in our Perspectives series. meanwhile, I’m going to read [amazon_link id=”B00XB19ZB0″ target=”_blank” ]Hamburgers in Paradise[/amazon_link] over the Christmas holiday. Fresco concludes: “Without food there is no evolution and no civilization. We are what we eat, literally. … What it means to be human is concentrated in food and our understanding of it. Inevitably, part of that is the consciousness that many have too little to eat, or cannot choose to have the things tah are associated with a decent meal.”

Global value chains

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I’m very excited, as perhaps only an economist could be, by a new (and free) VoxEU e-book, The Age of Global Value Chains: Maps and Policy Issues. As the first sentence in the foreword states: “The study of global value chains is the only way to fully understand the nature of today’s geographically dispersed production and trade.” This understanding is being extended by new sources and uses of data, the World Input-Output Database in particular – the e-book has an appendix describing this.

GCVs front cover

The book divides into a descriptive first part (including a look at network structures) and a second part looking at the impacts of the increased specialisation in production across national borders. These impacts in turn are divided between the macro level (including productivity, wages and jobs) and the effects at the level of firm organisation. If I have one complaint (without having read the book yet) it is that there is no essay looking at global value chains from the perspective of urban economics, and the sub-national clustering of specialised supply chains.

Still, it’s a mild complaint about a book to say there should be more of it. I’ll be reading this one eagerly, all the more so as there are troubling signs that world trade growth is slowing. And, as I argued in my post on the FT’s The Exchange, that could be related to the global productivity puzzle.

Economics of empire – then and now

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I’ve enjoyed reading Tristram Hunt’s T[amazon_link id=”014104778X” target=”_blank” ]en Cities that made an Empire[/amazon_link], out now in paperback. It’s a clever prism on British imperialism, taking a tour of major colonial cities and using a period in their history to explore the wider politics and economics of colonialism, and the cultural relations between the “mother country” and her colonies as expressed in architecture and urban design in particular.

[amazon_image id=”014104778X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Ten Cities that Made an Empire[/amazon_image]

The geographic and historical tour starts in Boston in the late 18th century (the Revolutionary War), then Bridgetown, Barbados (looking at slavery and the triangular Atlantic trade), Dublin (and the painful relationship between the two countries), Cape Town (as the base for the extension of Empire), Calcutta (early Indian adventurism by the East India Company), Hong Kong (the opium wars), Bombay (the apogee of Victorian Empire), Melbourne (and the distinctive characteristics of an Anglo-Saxon colony), New Delhi (and the independence movement) and Liverpool (where Empire ended on 22 April 1981 when Tate & Lyle closed its refinery and the docks stood empty, Tate & Lyle blaming EU membership and the change in trading patterns that involved).

The wide perspective makes very clear the commercial interests driving the politics of imperialism, from the slave trade to the exploitation of Indian cotton supplies and the market it provided for cheap Lancashire textiles, and the eastern triangular trade of Indian opium to China, Chinese luxuries to Britain and British manufactures to India. I can’t read anough about the Lancashire cotton industry for obvious reasons & have [amazon_link id=”024101171X” target=”_blank” ]The Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism[/amazon_link] on my wish-list.

[amazon_image id=”B00PYY1AQU” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism[/amazon_image]

There was also a *fabulous* In Our Time recently about the Lancashire weavers standing (at great cost to themselves) with the Union and the slaves during the American Civil War – Abraham Lincoln presented a statue to Manchester afterwards, in recognition of the support.

Lincoln in Manchester

Lincoln in Manchester

Modern globalization is driven just as much by drugs, arms and slavery, or people trafficking as we now call it; but these are veiled and never discussed in policy conversations, although of course the financial and professional support these trades require is big business. Nor do economists analyse it much; after all, you can’t download the data from the internet and run it through Stata. I often think we should take this illicit global economy far more seriously.