Mississippi, the nation’s largest cotton-producing state, was economically and politically dependent on cotton, as was the entire South. In many respects, cotton’s financial and political influence in the 19th century can be compared to that of the oil industry in the early 21st century. This industry, fueled by the labor of enslaved people on plantations, generated huge sums of money for the United States and influenced the nation’s ability to borrow money in a global market. The cotton industry was one of the world’s largest industries, and most of the world supply of cotton came from the American South. On the eve of the American Civil War in the mid-1800s cotton was America’s leading export, and raw cotton was essential for the economy of Europe. At home its social and economic institutions rested upon cotton abroad its diplomacy centered around the well-known dependence of Europe…upon an uninterrupted supply of cotton from the southern states.
If slavery was the corner stone of the Confederacy, cotton was its foundation.
0 kommentar(er)
