British Imperialism in India: Cotton and the Creation of a Core and Periphery

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British Imperialism in IndiaCotton and the
Creation of a Core and Periphery
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Cotton

• Where was most cotton produced before the U.S.
  Civil War?
• Who purchased most of that cotton?
• What was it used for?

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• During the Civil War (1861-1865), the South
  couldnt export cotton to Great Britain.
• The factory owners in Great Britain were
  desperate to obtain cotton.
• How did the British government respond to this
  situation?

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Question 2 What does this graph show?

Table 1 Cotton Exports from India, Egypt, and
Brazil, 18601866, in Million Pounds. Sources
Government of India, Annual Statement of the
Trade and Navigation of British India and Forign
Countries vol. 5 (Calcutta, 1872) vol. 9
(Calcutta, 1876) Roger Owen, Cotton and the
Egyptian Economy, 18201914 (Oxford, 1969), 90
Estatisticas historica do Brasil (Rio de Jeneiro,
1990), 346.
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• Subsistence farming vs. cash crop
• More cotton less food
• What might be the consequences of this shift?

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• Drop in food production El Niño weather
  patterns Famine

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Estimated Famine Deaths in India
Year Number of deaths
1876-1879 6.1-10.3 million
1896-1902 6.1-19.0 million
Total 12.2-29.3 million
Statistics from Mike Davis, Late Victorian
Holocausts El Nino Famines and the Making of the
Third World (London Verso, 2001), p. 7.
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De-Industrialization in India

• Indias Share of World Manufacturing Output

1750 1830 1900
24.5 17.6 1.7
Statistics from Mike Davis, Late Victorian
Holocausts El Nino Famines and the Making of the
Third World (London Verso, 2001), p. 294.
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• Core industrialized nations like Great Britain,
  America, Germany, and Japan
• Periphery (Peripheral) countries that provided
  raw materials to the industrialized nations very
  slow to begin industrializing themselves

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Where are the core countries?
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• Millions died, not outside the modern world
  system, but in the very process of being
  forcibly incorporated into its economic and
  political structures.
• - Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts

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Definitions

• Sovereignty (noun)
• the state of being politically independent
  having independent control as a nation (Glossary
  Definition)
• sovereign (adj.)
• A country that does not let others boss it
  around or rule over it (informal def.)

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Core Edge Periphery

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Were these countries core, edge or periphery by
1910?

• Germany
• France
• Austria
• India
• United States
• Great Britain
• Japan
• Egypt
• China

• Russia
• Mexico
• South Africa
• Nigeria
• Others?

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Editorial Call for Indian Independence!

• An editorial is an opinion piece written for a
  newspaper or magazine. (YEAR 1885) (See p.361)
• Write an editorial for an Indian newspaper
  calling for independence from British rule.
• Guiding Questions
• What are your major complaints about the British?
  
• (Be specific use specific information
  statistics)
• 2) How do you feel toward the British?
• 3) Why should the Indian people risk their lives
  to break free from Great Britain?
• (Length aprox. ¾ page, neatly hand written)