Chapter 1. Introduction: Africa’s Piece of the Global Textile Puzzle -- Chapter 2. An Industry Vanishes: Cotton Cloth Manufacturing in Malawi’s Lower Shire Valley, 1850-1930 -- Chapter 3. Rise of the Coastal Consumer: Coast-Side Drivers of East Africa’s Cotton Cloth Imports, 1830-1900 -- Chapter 4. The Limits of the Caravan Trade: Cloth Imports into Interior Central East Africa, c. 1850-1900 -- Chapter 5. Globalization or Colonial Taxation? Explaining the Decline of Textile Production in Ufipa, Tanzania, c. 1880-1940 -- Chapter 6. Drivers of Divergence: Textile Manufacturing in East and West Africa from the Early Modern Period to the Post-Colonial Era -- Chapter 7. Conclusion: Global-Local Interactions and Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Cotton textile industries vanished from much of East Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book investigates the underlying causes of industrial arrest in the region through a series of in-depth case studies. Findings are considered in light of existing studies on comparatively more resilient textile centers elsewhere on the continent to derive insights into the determinants of differing industrial trajectories across sub-Saharan Africa. The author argues that scholars have placed undue weight on global forces as the primary drivers of industrial decline in the Global South. Rather, this book reveals how local factors – principally demographic, geographic, and institutional features – interacted with external forces to influence unique regional outcomes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as sub-Saharan African was increasingly integrated into global trade networks and European colonial empires.