This volume offers new and global perspectives on the cotton industry. One group of essays sets it in its global context. A second group undertakes a detailed survey of eight different states, including the major players in the world league of cotton textile producers. The data and the views presented offer a range of challenges to currently-accepted interpretations, not least the depreciation of the role of the industry during British industrialization and the myth of the destructive impact of western competition upon the craft industries of Asia.