A thread in the colonial web : the Malmö cotton textile industry 1855–1872

Cotton, as a raw material, links two critical processes in world his­tory: industrialisation and colonialism. The industrial production of cotton textiles played a key role in the industrialisation of West­ern Europe and, simultaneously, the emergence of colonialism on a global scale. Cotton would also come to play a key role during the early years of Swedish industrialisation, despite conventionally being seen as a successful case of industrialisation through the do­mestic consumption of domestic products, ignoring the obviously non-Swedish character of the raw material. Recent research paints Sweden as a ‘junior partner’ that was firmly integrated into the dominant colonial powers. The aim of this text is to recontextualise the emergence of the Swedish cotton textile industry given the expanding international research field focusing on the interconnectedness of the industrial revolution in Western European countries and the colonial system of violence, resource extraction and labour exploitation. We do so using the example of Malmö, focusing on the period from 1855 to 1872, when the first cotton industries were established in the city and industrial capitalism in Sweden took off. In dialogue with current research on Sweden’s position in the colonial world, we can conclude that the Malmö cotton textile industry is not an example of formal Swedish colonialism, Swedes being directly involved in colonialism or settler colonialism. In­stead, we find the notion of ‘colonial complicity’ useful. Complici­ty, in this context, refers to an ambiguous position of participation and benefit from colonial discourses and practices.