10 - The Global Atlantic Consumption Driver and British Late-Developmental Agency in Global Uneven and Combined Development

Summary

Chapter 10 analyses the ‘global-Atlantic consumption driver’ of Britain's ‘late-industrialization’ in the context of global uneven and combined development. It returns to the theme of Indian structural power which, through the Afro-Indian global cotton whip of necessity, pushed the British to develop their own cotton sector through industrialization. The story of Britain's cotton industrialization in part rests on meeting the consumption needs of the Africans who accepted predominantly Indian cotton textiles in payment. The British had little choice but to mechanise cotton-textile production first because their spinners were not sophisticated enough to spin the all-important warp thread; and second, because in the face of a tiny workforce they could not compete with the vastly superior output that the millions of Indians (and Chinese) pumped out. Moreover, the British ‘combined’ or emulated various production techniques from the Indians when it came to industrializing their cotton and iron/steel sectors, though they might also have learned from China with respect to the latter sector. Also important was the role of the late-developer British state via the imposition of high tariffs and re-export substitution industrialization. In sum, though British developmental agency was important, so too was the global context.