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A Microhistory of the Global Empire of Cotton: Ivanovo, The ‘Russian Manchester’*

2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 244; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/pastj/gtz017

1477-464X

Alison K. Smith,

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis

Abstract The serf village of Ivanovo became one of the major centres of cotton production in tsarist Russia. This unexpected juxtaposition of serfdom and the beginnings of capitalist industry has made Ivanovo into an object of curiosity within histories of the Russian economy and of Russian serfdom. Thinking about Ivanovo as both a site of microhistory–the study of the ‘typical exception’–and as part of the global world of cotton both helps to explain Ivanovo’s development and helps to disrupt the notion of distinct phases of economic development that necessarily go along with distinct phases of political development. This article focuses on one period of Ivanovo’s history: a period beginning in the late 1820s, when Ivanovo’s owner, Count Sheremetev, began to manumit some of his wealthy serf industrialists. Many of them remained in the village and continued to produce the cotton calico that had already brought them their wealth and the village its fame. Although a feeling of a village society divided into separate classes had already begun to develop, this process gave new form to that development. In particular, the very institutional form of serfdom helped to create a stronger vision of a separate working class and industrial class.