Cellulose

Where sugar began the slave trade in the early 1500s, it was another product, cotton, that maintained it through to the late 1800s.  Cotton accounted for approximately two-thirds of the total value of U.S. exports by 1860 (when there was a total of four million slaves in the U.S.), most of these exports going to Europe where the raw crop was made into manufactured goods.  Among these European buyers of raw cotton, Great Britain was the most prominent, whose climate was ideal for the spinning and weaving of cotton threads.  During the 1800s, England experienced rapid industrial growth that stemmed from the mass manufacturing of cotton products.  The agriculture-based areas of the English Midlands were soon turned into factory towns in which workers, many of whom were children, lived under deplorable conditions that prompted humanitarian efforts across England.  Profits from the manufacturing of cotton were used to further industrialize the region.  Canals, railways, and new factories sprung up, and this industrial expansion in England would forever change its landscape.  In time however, as the countries Britain imported cotton from became industrialized themselves, England's manufacturing of cotton products met with decline.

The polysaccarhide cellulose, which makes up 90% of the cotton plant, is simply a chain of glucose molecules bonded together through condensation.  Condensation occurs when the hydroxide (OH) group of two glucose molecules interact and form an H2O molecule and leave an oxygen to bond the two glucose structures together.  Cellulose is strictly a structural polysaccharide however, as the human body cannot digest it.  Storage polysaccharides, such as starch (found in plants) and glycogen (found in animals), are digestible and are basically slight variations of cellulose.  Other compounds similar to cellulose have very different functions.  Nitrocellulose (a cellulose derivative whose glucose molecules have an NO2 group instead of an OH group) is extremely volatile and was considered as an alternative to gunpowder, but failed to replace it as a number of violent factory explosions shut down the industry.  Cellulose acetate, another cellulose derivative, was found to be less flammable and is used today in many commercial enterprises such as the photography business and the movie industry.  The effect of cellulose is undoubtedly substantial, having sustained slavery in the southern United States, which would eventually cause a civil war, and having sparked an Industrial Revolution that would began in England but soon riveted around the world.