Charles Joseph Minard, Carte Figurative et Approximative des Quantitiés de Coton en Laine Importées en Europe en 1858 et en 1861 (1862)

Charles Joseph Minard was a famous French cartographer who was the first to master the art 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, British India in yellow, the Levant region (roughly corresponding to Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) in brown, Brazil in cornflower/purple, and England in pink. Each millimeter of thickness represents five thousand tons of cotton. Below the key, total tonnage imported to England from each country in 1858 and 1861 are shown. The seven states that seceded prior to the attack of Fort Sumter--South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas--are marked on both maps. A line graph in the upper left corner shows the yearly harvest amounts of cotton in America in blue, as well as imports into England from India (yellow) and total imports into Britain (brown). Another shows total cotton imported to France from 1851 to 1861. There is a sharp drop in the U.S. cotton "harvest" from 1860, when the issues that caused the Civil War came to prominence. Comparing the two maps gives an even clearer picture of the changes that were emerging with the Civil War. Even though the South thought it could depend on Europe's dependence on its cotton with cotton diplomacy, by 1861, the amount of cotton imported into England from India (yellow) had almost tripled, whereas the amount imported from the United States (blue) had only risen by 16,000 tons. Minard's observations on the map read, "It was said in England in 1861 that the cotton mills were threatened with near ruin because of a lack of raw materials. Fortunately, the disaster was partially averted by assistance we had not counted on and that we were far from believing would be as effective. This relief, which my chart underscores, was the considerable increase of cotton imported from India. In 1861, England received 173,000 tonnes, double the average of the preceding seven years (see the table) and approximately two-fifths of what it uses annually." He continued, "Europe, against all forecasts, received more cotton in 1861 than in the preceding years except 1860, when importation was around 900,000 tonnes due to the exceptional abundance of the cotton crop in the United States in 1859, and as the crops in that country determined imports to England and France, which constitute four-fifths of all imports to Europe." England was also then re-exporting the excess to other European countries (pink), at a rate three times higher than before the start of the Civil War.