Charles Joseph Minard, Carte Figurative et Approximative des Quantités de Coton brut Importées en Europe en 1858, en 1864 et en 1865 (1866)

Charles Joseph Minard was a French cartographer known for his mastery of flow maps. He created this flow map in 1862 as part of a series of flow maps to illustrate the movement of cotton into Europe between 1858 and 1865 and in relation to the American Civil War. The United States is shown in blue; East Indies, China, etc. (which included India) in yellow; Egypt, Syria, etc, in brown; Brazil and the East Indies in cornflower/purple; and England in pink. Each millimeter of line represents five thousand tons of cotton. Minard had previously predicted that the United States would never again achieve dominance in the global cotton trade as a result of the Civil War, and this visualization, completed after the war was over, was intended to illustrate how profoundly the war had transformed the global trade of cotton, allowing new producers to enter the market and compete with the United States. Regardless, the U.S. quickly recovered after the war, and by 1870, cotton production had surpassed its pre-war peak.