European fashion desires masked trade’s plunder as world-changing motors

Evidence

If silk is the fabric which lures Europeans across the globe on the promise of easy money and unfamiliar opulence - in the process, transforming European aspirations so that the world becomes an entity to be charted, circumnavigated, discovered, in order that the magical alchemy of trade (meaning theft) can spread and meet its societychanging potential - then cotton is the cloth which suggests the opening into industrialization and empire. As the world hurtles through the industrial era, transforming social relations and global interdependence, we have forgotten the role of superficial whims for pretty clothing - because world history must be driven by more substantial motors than fashion. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2853