Editing Industrial Revolution (section)

====Cotton====
Parts of India, China, Central America, South America, and the Middle East have a long history of hand-manufacturing cotton textiles, which became a major industry after 1000 AD. Most cotton was grown by small farmers alongside food and, spun in households for domestic consumption. In the 1400s, China began to require households to pay part of their taxes in cotton cloth. By the 17th century, almost all Chinese wore cotton clothing, and it could be used as a [[medium of exchange]]. In India, cotton textiles were manufactured for distant markets, often produced by professional weavers.<ref name="Beckert_2014">{{cite book|title= Empire of Cotton: A Global History|last=Beckert|first= Sven|year= 2014|publisher =Vintage Books Division Penguin Random House |location=US|isbn= 978-0-375-71396-5}}</ref>

Cotton was a difficult [[raw material]] for Europe to obtain before it was grown on [[Plantation complexes in the Southern United States|colonial plantations]].<ref name="Beckert_2014" /> Spanish explorers found [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] growing sea island cotton (''[[Gossypium barbadense]]'') and green seeded cotton ''[[Gossypium hirsutum]]''. Sea island cotton began being exported from Barbados in the 1650s. Upland green seeded cotton was uneconomical because of the difficulty of removing seed, a problem solved by the [[cotton gin]].<ref name="Roe1916" />{{rp|157}} A strain of cotton seed brought from Mexico to [[Natchez, Mississippi]], in 1806 became the parent genetic material for over 90% of world production today; it produced bolls three to four times faster to pick.<ref name="Beckert_2014" />