American violence against nonwhites uniquely drove the cotton boom

Evidence

A key factor that made the cotton economy boom in the United States, and not in all the other far-flung parts of the world with climates and soil suitable to the crop, was our nation’s unflinching willingness to use violence on nonwhite people and to exert its will on seemingly endless supplies of land and labor. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 554

Categorization

• XREF: A flagship contested empirical claim for the reader’s case study — the sort Wilentz-style critics would dispute for overreach, worth testing.
• QUESTION: The comparative claim (why cotton boomed in the US and not in other suitable climates) is stated without evidence here — worth chasing the scholarship.