Modern Cotton Yarn Industry, Space Research (1889-1936)

As the most important industry, the cotton textile industry, especially the cotton industry, played an important role in the process of modernization in our country, which was concerned by academics as well. Based on the classification of related researches, I find that there is less research about the spatial changes of cotton industry. Meanwhile, there is less focus on the evolution of one specific industry in Shanghai, although studies of Shanghai, the largest industrial city in modern times in China, have been very deep-going. Under such circumstance, I try to make a historical economical and urban geographical study on cotton industry, taking the cotton industry in modern Shanghai for instance.This thesis takes the list of cotton mills in Shanghai as the main material, coupled with other statistical reports, to make the cotton mills database in modern Shanghai, which is the core material of the study. On such base, related elements are chosen to rebuild and analyze the development of cotton industry in modern Shanghai in chronological order and five periods are pointed out, which are different from other researches before. At the same time, related geographical information is collected and the spatial analysis is done, which reveals the spatial distribution pattern and its characteristics in development. On the base of the rebuilding and analysis of cotton industry in time and space, this paper borrows the definition of social structure to reveal the management of cotton mills belonged to different countries by analyzing related social attributes in and out of enterprises, which enriches the knowledge of development of cotton industry in Shanghai under time and spatial perspective and furthermore generally shows the developing process of cotton industry in Shanghai from 1889 to 1936.