“Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet... What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?... England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South. No, you dare not to make war on cotton. No power on the earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King.” Cotton’s central place in the national economy and its international importance led Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina to make the famous boast above in 1858. When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, many observers anticipated “the cotton famine” in the South would turn into a catastrophe for the British economy. Nevertheless, the American Civil War did not cause a major economic crisis in Great Britain because it prompted the British merchants to turn to other markets. In addition to major markets, such as Egypt, India, and China, the Ottoman Empire was also considered as a potential source of cotton imports. In my paper, I present the considerable efforts made by the British towards extending cotton cultivation in the coastal plains of Western Anatolia during the American Civil War. I use Ottoman, British, and French archival documents, such as petitions, parliament papers, commercial statistics and consular correspondence, as well as travelers’ accounts to discuss socio-economic and environmental impacts of cotton production on Western Anatolian landscape. In my paper, I suggest that ‘King Cotton’ was an active catalyst accelerating the social, economic, physical, and environmental changes in Izmir and its hinterland in the 1860s.