THE FIBERS OF AMERICAN ORDER: TRADE POLITICS AND THE PURSUIT OF COTTON SUPREMACY, 1933-1947

Between 1933 and 1947, Southern politicians and officials tied to the cotton sector significantly reshaped the American state to benefit American cotton interests. By employing Elizabeth Sanders’ model of core and periphery, this dissertation argues that Southerners used their political power in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations to use the state to prioritize the interests of the cotton periphery over the manufacturing core that had dominated the American political economy since 1865. They did this by drastically reshaping American agricultural policy, trade policy, and diplomacy to ensure that, during the New Deal, white American cotton interests were given the tools to survive a hostile global trade environment. By the 1940s, as the Second World War drew to a close, these same cotton interests used the American state to create and dominate global cotton markets.