IOWC Speaker Series: Yuan Yi, "China at the Center of the Global Cotton Trade: When Cotton Was Yellow"
Yuan Yi (Concordia University)
My project explores the rise and fall of nankeen, a fabric handwoven out of cotton varieties known to be native to Nanjing, China. Characterized by a yellow tint and sturdy texture, nankeen was a major export item to Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A popular material for men鈥檚 breeches and trousers, it fueled the rise of the dandy look, which preferred somber shades over lavish details. While eagerly importing nankeen from China, the global consumers including the Founding Fathers of the United States strove to reproduce it by dyeing cotton 鈥渘ankeen鈥� or growing 鈥渘ankeen鈥� varieties. All these efforts to produce and reproduce a natural hue no longer appreciated today formed a critical part of the "preindustrial" global trade. By reconstructing a bygone industry in which Chinese farmers grew now-endangered cotton varieties and spun and wove them by hand for faraway markets that coveted the sturdy yellowish fabric, my project illuminates how global capitalism worked without machines. One distinctive feature of the nankeen industry was that it allowed different cotton species and varieties to thrive. The demise of nankeen coincided with the emergence of machine spinning, which ushered in the monoculture of select cotton varieties with long and white fibers suitable for the new production system. The history of nankeen thus challenges our fundamental assumption that cotton is white, forcing us to ask how and why it has become predominantly white.
Light refreshments served.