cottonocracy

English

Etymology

cotton +‎ -cracy

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɒkɹəsi

Noun

cottonocracy (plural not attested)

1. (US, historical) A government dominated by the cotton industry, as in the United States prior to the Civil War.
   • 1840, Robert Owen, The New Moral World, volume 7, page 1027:

     The whole school argue political or national economy as a party question: it is Cottonocracy versus Cornocracy — the nation is to be crucified between them.

   • 1855, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Nature and human nature, page 23:

     Make a question between our nation and England about fifty desarters^[sic], and if the ministers of the day only dared to talk of fighting, the members of all the manufactoren^[sic] towns in England, the cottonocracy of Great Britain, would desert too!

   • 1996, Bill Schwarz, The Expansion of England: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History:

     The Lancashire cottonocracy was still waiting for El Dorado, and was quite prepared to believe that the opium trade was delaying its arrival.