May 13, 2025, by Chloe

The British Cotton Growing Association

This is a guest blog by Alejandra Ponce Martorell, an undergraduate student who completed a Conservation placement with Manuscripts and Special Collections in 2025 working on the records of the Cotton Research Corporation.

The cotton collection contains the papers and library of printed material of the British/Empire Cotton Growing Corporation. Founded in 1902, the corporation worked mainly in India and  African colonies such as Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Nyasaland [Malawi], and Southern and Northern Rhodesia [Zimbabwe and Zambia]. The company, from 1927, became the main governmental agency supporting cotton production in Britain. Aiming to produce suitable grades of cotton within British colonies, the collection reflects their capitalist enterprise and their drive to compete with American and Egyptian cottons.

Photograph of cotton spinning at Kaduna Textile Mills, Nigeria, 1969

The association encompassed a multi-disciplinary workforce of manufacturers, merchants, engineers, botanists, among other professions, which gives an insight into professionals and academics in the early 20th century, and how they powered urban growth in distant colonies.

The British cotton growing association encouraged the British government to invest in infrastructure projects whose main purpose is to benefit cotton production, but consequently developed urban areas. Under their work, railways, roads, irrigation works, and even medicine flourished.

Photograph of a cotton plant grown at Uganda Namulonge Research Station, Africa, 1972; CRC

A substantial amount of the collection is dedicated to financial reports and the study of cotton spinning tests and diseases affecting the plant. Varied in production value, they often contain beautiful illustrations and photographs. These agricultural and meteorological research is of high documentary value as they capture the landscape, agricultural development in former British colonies and present an invaluable source for both agricultural science historians and environmental history.

Although the correspondence of the collection mainly focuses on financial reports and cotton spinning tests, there is a lot of remarkable information hidden between the lines reflecting their racial and gender inequity, education in the colonies, and disease, both of the crops, cattle and their workers.

Photograph of insecticide spraying of cotton plants in Antigua, 1958; CRC

Through this collection, we gain an understanding of how colonial enterprises manipulated labour, land, and industrial processes to ensure profitability.  The correspondence sheds light on how British experts sought to impose European farming techniques on colonial lands, often disregarding indigenous knowledge systems, and imposing imperial control on the way their economy would behave.  Furthermore, the collection highlights the carefully crafted role of the colonies in global trade. The making of dependent states, ensuring that British affairs would flourish at the cost of the native workforce

The materials from the Cotton Research Corporation Library can be browsed online using NUsearch with the field ‘Collection’ and the name ‘Cotton Research Corporation Library’ itself, or the acronym ‘CRCL’. Alternatively feel free to visit the  Reading Room – to find out more, or to book an appointment today, please contact  mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk.

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