Decline of the British Cotton Industry

The Decline of the British Cotton Industry:

Trick of History, or Historical Inevitability

At one time, and for more than 100 years, the cotton industry in Great Britain was the most powerful in the world, and indeed was one of the backbones of both the British Empire and World Economic Development in the 19th Century. One school of historians argue that the decline of the cotton industry in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was "a trick history played on the managers of the British cotton industry" (McCloskey & Sandberg, 1971, 102; Bellamy, 1962, 106). This analysis will refer to them as the "Fatalists," and assert that their belief is that life (both social and economic) is nothing more than a series of random acts, some more important than others. To the Fatalists, the study of history is the study of mankind's and societies' reactions to the events with which they are confronted.

Still others (Lazonick & Mass for instance) argue that the decline in the British Cotton industry was as explicable as cancer and was the direct, inevitable result of the ways in which those same managers chose to produce and sell their cotton in the prosperous pre-War (WWI) years (Lazonick & Mass, 1990, 1-44). The school of historical research that they represent in this debate is sometimes called "Casualist," since the belief is that history is nothing more than a series of situations (causes) that cause successes or calamities (effects). It is instructive to explore both of these sch

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e company. This had the effect of getting more cotton into England, but it was also the cause of English sheepherders growing nervous and demanding protection for their products. This caused Britain to begin trying to protect its markets. This protection in turn led to the decision to establish its own cotton mills, thereby solving the problem of protecting its markets. The cotton mills caused the effect of what is now known as the Industrial Revolution. Historic events, when related in a "cause-effect" sequence like this tend to be more memorable and have the added advantage of giving clues to the contemporary observer. Krupotkin, in his seminal 1912 work, Fields, Factories and Workshops creates one of the most prolific and astute Causalist histories of the British Cotton market available. His research and work is often quoted in many of today's scholarly works, including those cited at the beginning of this essay. A closer look at that work is instructive. In describing the contemporary (that is, 1912) attitude of the English toward its cloth-making prowess, he says, quoting a noted economist of the time, Neumann Spallart, the statistician and almost the poet of world-trade: Our cloth is made out of fibres grown and

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