Places the British Industrial Revolution in global context, providing a fresh perspective on the relationship between technology and society.

Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.

"In its analysis of gender and class relations and their political forms, in giving voice to the many who have left only a fleeting trace in the historical record, Clark's study is a pioneering classic. . . . It also has a salience for many of our present social and political dilemmas."—Leonore Davidoff, Editor, Gender and History "Deeply researched, scholarly, serious, important. This is a big book that develops a significant new line of inquiry on a classic story in modern history—the making of the English working class. Clark shows in great and persuasive detail how we might read this tale through the lens of gender."—Thomas Laqueur, author of Making Sex

‘For this retrieval of the lost histories of black Britain Mr Fryer has my deep gratitude. An invaluable book.’ --Salman Rushdie

- While cotton was a world-changing good in the early modern period, for producers, merchants, and consumers, it was but one of many different fabrics. This volume explores this dichotomy by contextualizing cotton within its contemporary culture of textiles. In doing, it focuses on a long, under-researched region: the German-speaking world, particularly Switzerland, which transformed into one of the most prolific European regions for the production of printed cottons in the eighteenth century. Sixteen contributions investigate the (globally entangled) history of Indiennes, silk, wool, and embroideries, giving new insights into the manufacturing, marketing, and consumption of textiles between 1500 and 1900.

" ... Contains references to over 10,000 articles, books, and pamphlets on economic issues, written by more than 1,700 women, published between 1770 and 1940"--Introduction.

Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not provides a striking new answer to the classic question of why Europe industrialised from the late eighteenth century and Asia did not. Drawing significantly from the case of India, Prasannan Parthasarathi shows that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the advanced regions of Europe and Asia were more alike than different, both characterized by sophisticated and growing economies. Their subsequent divergence can be attributed to different competitive and ecological pressures that in turn produced varied state policies and economic outcomes. This account breaks with conventional views, which hold that divergence occurred because Europe possessed superior markets, rationality, science or institutions. It offers instead a groundbreaking rereading of global economic development that ranges from India, Japan and China to Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire and from the textile and coal industries to the roles of science, technology and the state.