Nature's Evil

The 1840s was a time of crisis all over Europe. The demand for textiles and manufactured goods in the colonies stagnated. Again, British industry was changing its resource platform. The new development project – metal, coal and railways – was just evolving. The resource platform has changed time and again, but the world continues to produce and consume enormous quantities of cotton – 123 million bales in 2013. To replace this volume of cotton we would have to rear 7 billion sheep, which would require all the land of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals. ‘The great divergence’ which allowed the West to outstrip the East came about thanks to cotton – a traditional product of the East that was imitated in the West. 35

Uzbek cotton, Russian textiles

The Russian customs tariff in 1822 followed a reduced version of mercantile principles: encouraging the import of raw cotton, it protected the internal market from manufactured goods, but transportation was still entrusted to foreign vessels. Thanks to this tariff, Russian manufacturers were able to make a profit processing American cotton. There was huge domestic demand for calico prints, and cotton factories sprang up to replace proto-industrial sites that had specialised in flax processing. Powered by waterwheels, cloth factories in the Moscow region adapted their looms for cotton. In the village of Ivanovo, surrounded by flax fields, new dynasties of textile manufacturers appeared; most of them belonged to the ‘priestless confession of Old Believers’ – a radical, semi-clandestine sect who didn’t recognise the Orthodox priesthood. Hired labour was cheap and credit was informal. Looms were imported from abroad, as was the cotton. In 1832 an English steam-powered machine was brought to Ivanovo. Out of the 130 factories in Ivanovo in 1844, many had the right to have their own serfs, and the bigger ones had nearly a thousand of them. But almost half the factories belonged to peasants, some of whom were still serfs. 36 The bureaucrats were surprised by the growth of this town, which was absent from the administrative map – the whole town belonged to Count Sheremetyev, one of the biggest serf-owners. But the economic growth of such places was phenomenal. When the Soviet powers made Ivanovo a regional centre in 1929, this region was third in the whole Soviet Union for the value of its industrial output.

Russia contradicted the thesis that capital-intensive machinery was adopted only in countries where the workers were highly paid, such as England. According to the economic historian Robert Allen, if the cost of labour was low, as it was in India or Poland, it was more profitable for employers to hire extra workers and develop cottage industries than to spend money on machinery. 37 Russia was different: labour was cheap, but persecuted communities, especially the Old Believers, had accumulated large amounts of capital, were unable to export it and therefore used any business opportunity available. During the decade before the Crimean War, the number of spinning machines tripled. Then cotton prices rose fourfold during the American Civil War, and this boosted the import of cotton from Central Asia.