Elsa Toland is a PhD student studying the early modern cotton textile trade. Her research centers on cotton's role in the changing material culture of the colonial Americas. She is also interested in the growth of transoceanic trade routes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly those linking cotton producers in South Asia to consumers in the New World.
Elsa earned her B.A. in History at Swarthmore College with a focus in early modern material culture. She wrote her thesis on the significance of imported Indian cotton textiles for middle class women in northeastern American cities.
