Editor's Introduction

Empire of Cotton is grafted upon a grand ambition: It is as much a study of cotton as a study of the emergence of global capitalism. Sven Beckert uses a specific commodity, cotton, as a lens on the development of the modern world itself. At the World History Association Conference in Ghent, Belgium (sponsored by the World History Association and Ghent University), Beckert presented a keynote address on “Cotton and the Global Origins of Capitalism,” and in a subsequent roundtable talk, Peer Vries (University of Vienna), Ulbe Bosma (International Institute of Social History Amsterdam), Eric Vanhaute (Ghent University), and Beckert himself (Harvard University) debated his book. This Journal of World History Special Forum brings together Sven Beckert’s adapted keynote speech and the interventions of other participants.