Cotton


Book Description

Despite the increased variety of manufactured fibres available to the textile industry, demand for cotton remains high because of its suitability on the basis of price, quality and comfort across a wide range of textile products. Cotton producing nations are also embracing sustainable production practices to meet growing consumer demand for sustainable resource production. This important book provides a comprehensive analysis of the key scientific and technological advances that ensure the quality of cotton is maintained from the field to fabric.The first part of the book discusses the fundamental chemical and physical structure of cotton and its various properties. Advice is offered on measuring and ensuring the quality of cotton fibre. Building on these basics, Part two analyses various means for producing cotton such as genetic modification and organic production. Chapters focus on spinning, knitting and weaving technologies as well as techniques in dyeing. The final section of the book concludes with chapters concerned with practical aspects within the industry such as health and safety issues and recycling methods for used cotton.Written by an array of international experts within the field, Cotton: science and technology is an essential reference for all those concerned with the manufacture and quality control of cotton. - Summarises key scientific and technological issues in ensuring cotton quality - Discusses the fundamental chemical and physical structure of cotton - Individual chapters focus on spinning, knitting and weaving technologies










Cotton


Book Description

Here is a vital new source of "need-to-know" information for cotton industry professionals. Unlike other references that focus solely on growing the crop, this book also emphasizes the cotton industry as a whole, and includes material on the nature of cotton fibers and their processing; cotton standards and classification; and marketing strategies.




China's Cotton Industry


Book Description

The cotton processing industry is a distinct sector of China’s rural economy which recently underwent a momentous transition from plan to market. China is the world’s largest producer as well as consumer of cotton, and cotton processing links the agricultural production of this important commodity to China’s booming textile industry. Alpermann examines the political economy of the cotton processing industry, analyzes the process of cotton policy making and discusses reform outcomes on a national scale and the central state’s response. He then goes on to examine the implementation of economic transformation and institutional change in two traditional cotton-growing regions, looking at how local governments and the former monopolist cope with the changes brought about by marketization. Studying the cotton industry provides a lens through which to observe the changes in the way the state governs the economy during China’s transition and helps to assess the diverging claims about the nature of the political economy in China. As such China's Cotton Industry is an essential read for anyone studying Chinese business, econmics or politics.




The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages, 1100-1600


Book Description

This book traces the dynamic advances in textile technology and changes in the structure of demand that accompanied the rise, in the late Middle Ages, of an Italian industry geared to mass production of cotton fabrics. The Italian manufacture, based on borrowed techniques and imitations of Islamic cloth, was the earliest large-scale cotton industry in western Europe. It thus marked a pivotal stage in the transmission of the knowledge and use of this textile fibre from the Mediterranean basin to northern Europe. The success of the Italians in creating new markets for a wide variety of products that included pure cotton, as well as mixed fabrics combining cotton with linen, hemp, wool and silk, permanently altered the patterns of taste and consumption in European society. Cotton, in various stages of proceeding, was at the heart of a complex network of communications that linked the north Italian towns to the source of raw materials and to international markets for finished goods. In the developing urban economy of northern Italy, cotton played a role comparable in magnitude to that of wool and shared with the latter certain basic features of early capitalistic organization.




Empire of Cotton


Book Description

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's 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. “Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times 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 Cotton and Textile Industry: Innovation and Maturity


Book Description

This shortform book presents key peer-reviewed research on industrial history. In selecting and contextualising this volume, the editors address how the field of textile history has evolved. Themes covered include entrepreneurial, technological and labour history, whilst the book highlights the strategic and social consequences of innovations in the history of this key UK sector. Of interest to business and economic historians, this shortform book also provides analysis and illustrative case studies that will be valuable reading across the social sciences.







Cotton


Book Description

Today's world textile and garment trade is valued at a staggering $425 billion. We are told that under the pressure of increasing globalisation, it is India and China that are the new world manufacturing powerhouses. However, this is not a new phenomenon: until the industrial revolution, Asia manufactured great quantities of colourful printed cottons that were sold to places as far afield as Japan, West Africa and Europe. Cotton explores this earlier globalised economy and its transformation after 1750 as cotton led the way in the industrialisation of Europe. By the early nineteenth century, India, China and the Ottoman Empire switched from world producers to buyers of European cotton textiles, a position that they retained for over two hundred years. This is a fascinating and insightful story which ranges from Asian and European technologies and African slavery to cotton plantations in the Americas and consumer desires across the globe.