Authored and edited

Empire of Cotton
Winner of the
Alfred D. Chandler Prize
Bancroft Prize
Cundill Prize Recognition of Excellence
Philip Taft Prize
Cabot Prize
Premio Cherasco
Other Distinctions
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
New York Times, One of the Ten Best Books of 2015
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.
In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.