19th Century Global Economy

19th Century Global Economy

Please read the following text and answer the questions below. The questions are based on the images that I will provide. You can use any source, if you need it. The commercial networks of the Atlantic world were already well established before the Industrial Revolution, and Europeans were also trading widely with South and East Asia before the end of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the advent of an industrial economy in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century created such a demand for raw materials and such a need for new markets abroad that it became profitable for manufacturers and merchants to ship much larger amounts of goods over long distances than ever before. As different industrialized regions in Europe became more and more dependent on overseas markets, people in Europe came to be aware of the extent to which their own activities were linked to other parts of the world. Awareness of these linkages did not always mean that they possessed complete or accurate information about the people who produced the cotton that they wore, or who purchased the manufactured goods that they made, but the linkages stimulated their imagination and changed their consciousness of their place in the world. This awareness is well illustrated in the cartoons shown here, which come from the British illustrated news in the 1850s and 1860s. The first (image A) depicts John Bull (representing British textile manufacturers) looking on as U.S. cotton suppliers fight one another during the Civil War in the united States. He states, “Oh! If you two like fighting better than business, I shall deal at the other shop.” In the background, an Indian cotton merchant is happy to have him as a customer. The second cartoon (image B) depicts the ways that the increasingly interconnected global economy might stimulate a new kind of political awareness. Emperor Napoleon III has placed a French worker in irons for participating in a revolutionary movement. The worker compares his situation to that of an African slave seated next to him, saying, “Courage, my friend! Am I not a man and a brother?” on the wall behind the two men a poster refers to the Portuguese slave trade—Napoleon III himself came to power by overthrowing the Second Republic in France, a government that had abolished the slave trade in French territories. Here’s image A: https://media.wwnorton.com/college/history/western-civilization18/VE/ch19_VE_a.jpg Image B: https://media.wwnorton.com/college/history/western-civilization18/VE/ch19_VE_b.jpg What constellation of private and national interests were at play in the relationships portrayed in image A? What significance might contemporaries have attached to the possibility that the British may have chosen to buy their cotton from an Asian source “over the way” rather than from North America? In image B, what is the message of the cartoon’s suggestion that the slave and the worker might discover their equality only in the fact that they are both in chains? What was at stake in comparing a worker to a slave in mid-nineteenth-century Europe? Why does the caption read “Poor Consolation?” How does the racial imagery of these images relate to their intended message?