The history of cotton can be traced to domestication. The history of the domestication of cotton is very complex and is not known exactly. Several isolated civilizations in both the Cotton candy frappuccino starbucks price and New World independently domesticated and converted cotton into fabric.

This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. The oldest cotton textiles were found in graves and city ruins of civilizations from dry climates, where the fabrics did not decay completely. The oldest cotton fabric has been found in Huaca Prieta in Peru, dated to about 6000 BCE.

It is here that Gossypium barbadense is thought to have been domesticated at its earliest. 5000 BCE in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced. The cultivation of cotton and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level in the 4th century BC. The latest archaeological discovery in Mehrgarh puts the dating of early cotton cultivation and the use of cotton to 5000 BCE. The Indus Valley civilization started cultivating cotton by 3000 BCE. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian, mentions Indian cotton in the 5th century BCE as “a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep”, which suggests that the fiber was not yet known in Greece at the time. Handheld roller cotton gins had been used in India since the 6th century, and was then introduced to other countries from there.

Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of the dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the 16th century. Egyptians grew and spun cotton from 600 to 700 CE. Cotton was a common fabric during the Middle Ages, and was hand-woven on a loom. Cotton manufacture was introduced to Europe during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. India had been an exporter of fine cotton fabrics to other countries since the ancient times. Sources such as Marco Polo, who traveled India in the 13th century, Chinese travelers, who traveled Buddhist pilgrim centers earlier, Vasco Da Gama, who entered Calicut in 1498, and Tavernier, who visited India in the 17th century, have praised the superiority of Indian fabrics.

The worm gear roller cotton gin, or churka, came into use in India between the 13th and 17th centuries is still used in India through to the present day. A woman in Dhaka clad in fine Bengali muslin, 18th century. During the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. Cotton cloth started to become highly sought-after for the European urban markets during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In early modern Europe, there was significant demand for cotton textiles such as chintz from Mughal India. Egypt under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century had the fifth most productive cotton industry in the world, in terms of the number of spindles per capita. Cotton’s rise to global importance came about as a result of the cultural transformation of Europe and Britain’s trading empire.

Indian cotton textiles, particularly those from Bengal, continued to maintain a competitive advantage up until the 19th century. In order to compete with India, Britain invested in labour-saving technical progress, while implementing protectionist policies such as bans and tariffs to restrict Indian imports. The cotton industry grew under the British commercial empire. British cotton products were successful in European markets, constituting 40. Britain’s success was also due to its trade with its own colonies, whose settlers maintained British identities, and thus, fashions. Cotton’s versatility allowed it to be combined with linen and be made into velvet. It was cheaper than silk and could be imprinted more easily than wool, allowing for patterned dresses for women.

It became the standard fashion and, because of its price, was accessible to the general public. The Lancashire textile mills were major parts of the British industrial revolution. Their workers had poor working conditions: low wages, child labour, and 18-hour work days. Anglo-French warfare in the early 1790s restricted access to continental Europe, causing the United States to become an important—and temporarily the largest—consumer for British cotton goods. Cultivation of cotton using enslaved Africans and their descendants brought huge profits to the owners of large plantations, making them some of the wealthiest men in the U. In the non-slave-owning states, farms rarely grew larger than what could be cultivated by one family due to scarcity of farm workers. Slaves were fobidden to use for themselves commercial cotton, selected to produce fibers as white as possible, but it seems that their use of cotton with naturally colored fibers was tolerated.

Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton diplomacy, the idea that cotton would cause Britain and France to intervene in the Civil War, was unsuccessful. Prior to the Civil War, Lancashire companies issued surveys to find new cotton-growing countries if the Civil War were to occur and reduce American exports.

India was deemed to be the country capable of growing the necessary amounts. The main European purchasers, Britain and France, began to turn to Egyptian cotton. The South continued to be a one-crop economy until the 20th century, when the boll weevil struck across the South. The New Deal and World War II encouraged diversification. I need some meat and meal.