ABSTRACT
Studies on the cotton industry proliferate. Remarkably, the cotton industry has figured in recent debates over the amplitude and significance of the British Industrial Revolution, the loss of British competitive advantage, and the wealth and the poverty of nations in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. As research moves forward, it seems obvious that the comparative history of the European cotton industry in the period before the “cotton famine” has been grossly neglected. There have been several splendid books and articles on some national cases but the comparative perspective has barely been touched. In particular, to date no study has systematically analyzed the cotton textile industry in the Mediterranean basin during the early industrialization period. This chapter fills that gap by adopting a comparative perspective. More specifically, this chapter concentrates its energies on providing a careful analysis of the technological choices of four cotton industries: the two largest producers in the Mediterranean basin and the two largest producers in the world, from 1830 to 1860.
