The World The Slaves Made: Cotton and Anglo-American Finance

In the nineteenth century cotton was the largest export item produced by the United States for a global market. By 1815 the United States was the largest producer and Great Britain, the largest consumer of cotton. The commodity proved deeply important to economic development and industrialization in both countries. Given the pivotal role of cotton in the nineteenth century this makes sense– cotton was the primary export of the early Republic, and by 1815 Great Britain was the largest consumer of the American crop. The production and sale of this crop was reliant on the labor of slaves and the provision of credit by British merchant banks. Thus, working on cotton permits consideration of the worlds of finance, and slavery and where they intersect. A consideration of cotton on a global scale serves to emphasize the vital role played by money and credit, as well as the importance of slave labor to both British and American economic development.

I will discuss briefly the role British finance played in making cotton king in the antebellum United States.  Through a consideration of events around the panic of 1837 and the financial landscape of the Civil War this paper will demonstrate the importance of cotton, and by extension, slavery,  to the development of an Atlantic financial system that contributed to industrial development in Great Britain and the United States.   Further, this paper will highlight the necessity of finance to the maintenance of plantation slavery in the antebellum South.