The British debate concerning the supply of cotton during the American Civil War

Some aspects of the development of the British cotton industry have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention from historians in recent decades, but the nature and development of the industry's supply of its raw material has received much less examination. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the British cotton industry became heavily dependent for its raw material upon a single source: the United States. This led to a disastrous shortage of cotton during the American Civil War (1861-65). Yet some concerns over this near-exclusive reliance upon U.S. cotton had already been voiced in the years before the conflict. During the war, there was a lively national debate, involving leading newspapers, periodicals and Members of Parliament, over how the shortage of cotton could be overcome. Much of the debate centred on whather a laissez faire approach relying upon the law of supply and demand would resolve the difficulty. There was a notable desire to obtain cotton from British overseas possessions - particularly India - but with only limited success.

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