Three elements - imperial expansion, expropriation, and slavery - became central to the forging of a new global economic order that eventually led to the emergence of capitalism. And the story of the development of cotton perfectly illustrates the stages of this process.

From the early months of the Influenza pandemic – in Ireland as elsewhere, attempts were under way in universities and laboratories in pursuit of a therapeutic vaccine for influenza.  They did not succeed: this influenza-type infection was undoubtedly lethal, and they knew that it was not a bacterium; but  they simply did not know, at this stage in the pandemic, precisely what order of  complexity they were dealing with.