Cotton imperialism in Africa: Rethinking the gap between metropolitan rhetoric and colonial practice

Abstract The exchange of raw cotton and consumer textiles has been widely portrayed as a core element of European imperialism in Africa. The case appears straightforward: textile industries were vital to European economies, yet depended on imported raw cotton and external markets for their surplus output. To meet these needs, colonizers allegedly enforced trade and destroyed African textile sectors, leaving Africans to resist or be coerced. This stylized rendering of ‘cotton imperialism’ was central to metropolitan rhetoric promoted by textile sector lobbyists and government officials, and often remains unchallenged in scholarship today. I show, however, that it is at odds with actual colonial efforts and outcomes across twentieth-century Africa. Colonial cotton and textile trade did expand, but in ways hardly consistent with the aims of European industries, and even textile sector actors themselves showed limited and inconsistent commitment to cotton production in Africa. Policies on the ground were shaped above all by fiscal, administrative, and political priorities in the colonies. Metropolitan rhetoric mattered, but shaped colonial policies and practices only in muted and subverted ways.