The growth of the global capitalist economy has been enabled through the expansion of vast frontiers of land, labour, food, energy and raw materials, usually in areas including flatlands, valleys, mountains and forests over the past 500 years. Since the sixteenth century, extractive economies have spread across geologically and climatically distinct ecosystems, spanning most parts of the world. This transformation has been a distinguishing feature of capitalist expansion that has impacted social, political and economic structures and resulted in uneven development between core and periphery, town and countryside. 1 The cyclical nature of extractive economies and their tendency to deplete the natural resources on which they depend means that they encourage and spur further exploitation of resources, thus resulting in ever more expansion into new frontiers. The driving forces behind this process are cost reduction and increasing productivity. This process of appropriation, exploitation, dispossession and ecological fragmentation is what is identified as a ‘commodity frontier’, a term first introduced by Jason Moore. 2 Central to this concept is the idea that nature and society are ‘mutually relational’ and not divided. 3 As articulated by Moore, the world-ecology perspective embraces the view that ‘social relations do more than produce environments…Human history, at every turn, is co-produced—by, with, and through extra-human natures, organic and inorganic’. 4
This edited volume explores the dynamics of global capitalist expansion through the concept of the ‘commodity frontier’. Elaborating on the concept, Moore states ‘the production and distribution of specific commodities, and of primary commodities in particular, have restructured geographic space at the margins of the system in such a way as to require further expansion’. 5 The expansion of the capitalist system occurs in these frontier areas; this is ‘possible so long as there remains uncommodified land’. 6 Moore highlights that socio-ecological degradation of land and labour is central to this process of expansion and extraction, leading ultimately to the exploitation of new resources and further capitalist expansion. Essentially, a commodity frontier entails a process whereby there is a shifting incorporation of new supplies of land and labour for the global marketplace. As Moore maintains, one commodity frontier can ‘set into motion a vast complex of economic activities’. 7 This is not surprising given that ‘the capitalist world economy is inherently expansionary… [and] based on ceaseless capital accumulation’. 8
This book was born out of a research collaboration involving a network of scholars across the world who work extensively on topics related to global commodity production, rural societies, labour history, environmental history, political ecology and the history of capitalism. Since 2014, this network of scholars has collaborated and interacted through four separate workshops focusing on commodity frontiers:
- ‘Capitalist Growth, Commodity Frontiers, and Sustainability’, October 24–25, 2014, Harvard University
- ‘Global Capitalism and Commodity Frontiers: A Research Agenda’, December 4–5, 2015, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam (in collaboration with Ghent University, Research Group- Communities-Comparisons-Connections, and Harvard University, The Weatherhead Initiative on Global History)
- ‘Global Commodity Frontiers in Comparative Perspective’, December 9–10, 2016, Institute of the Americas, University College London, and Institute of Latin American Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
- ‘Commodity Frontiers and Global Capitalist Expansion: Social, Ecological and Resource Policy Implications’, December 6–7, 2017, Zayed University (Dubai, UAE), Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (in collaboration with Ghent University, Harvard University and the International Institute of Social History).
This volume builds on the momentum generated by these workshops. It aims to provide a global, comparative and interdisciplinary perspective on the dynamics of commodity frontier development and expansion, with a particular interest in how commodity frontiers have in one way or another impacted land and nature, people’s relationship to the physical environment, and social, economic and political structures. This socio-ecological transformation resulting from the rise of export-oriented agriculture and the exploitation of soil, labour and natural resources has been one of the key processes in the emergence and consolidation of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume address issues that expand upon our definition and understanding of ‘commodity frontiers’. They explore the socio-ecological changes that defined capitalism and the ‘market widening’ and ‘market deepening’ processes that drove the cyclical decline and expansion of commodity frontiers. 9 They also delve deeply into the socio-economic and political dynamics at the local level that drove the emergence and expansion of frontier zones—physical and social spaces that can accommodate or facilitate economic exploitation (and thereby global economic integration) and in so doing forever alter existing social and political structures.
There is a limited body of scholarship that explores the dynamics of capitalist expansion through the lens of the commodity frontier concept. Jason Moore’s research on the world-ecology paradigm as well as silver and cotton frontiers has set the stage for much of the recent research that has been done by scholars. Sven Beckert’s book Empire of Cotton highlights the centrality of the global countryside in the expansion of global capitalism and the role of an emerging European state system in propelling this expansion through the violent control of land, labour and nature. Socio-ecological degradation fuelled the cyclical nature of cotton frontiers. 10 My own research on the United Arab Emirates in the early part of the twentieth century explores how oil frontiers generated the emergence of ‘secondary commodity frontiers’ centred around agricultural production. Driven by state and colonial forces, this agricultural frontier contributed to a socio-ecological reordering that served to further integrate the country and region into the global capitalist economy. 11 Building upon the paradigm of capitalism as world-ecology, Aaron Jakes examines nationalist discourses amid agro-ecological degradation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egyptian commodity frontier. 12 A related body of work explores the connection between commodities and empire building as well as the commodity chains that have driven the world economy since the sixteenth century. 13 Furthermore, there are case studies that analyse how commodity expansion and production have contributed to the evolution of working classes. 14 Finally, recent research examines an issue that is key to commodity frontiers—knowledge transfer as related to development projects and global colonialist enterprises. For instance, Joseph Morgan Hodge in his book Triumph of the Expert explores how the engagement between science and the state informed twentieth-century British colonial development agendas (particularly vis-a-vis land and the environment) in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean. Scientific experts were, of course, key in shaping and implementing rural development projects and environmental policies, often drawing on their prior experiences in other colonial areas. 15 Finally, Toby Jones examines how the Saudi state was forged through the development of water and oil. Jones explores how the emerging Saudi state in the early twentieth century established its power by managing and controlling natural resources. Science and technology, via global networks of expertise, were key in harnessing these resources. Thus, the interplay between state institutions, multinational corporations and engineering companies proved instrumental in reshaping Saudi society and the environmental landscape. 16
The theoretical approach of this work contributes to the existing scholarship on global capitalist expansion and provides a fresh perspective for understanding the factors that contribute to frontier creation and expansion, regardless of the commodity at hand. Specifically, the current volume brings together research on diverse frontiers across time and space with the aim of drawing out parallels and thereby broadening our understanding of ‘commodity frontier’ dynamics. Furthermore, it explores the role of the state and other political and economic actors in driving commodity frontier expansion and analyses how local peasants and labour shaped the evolution of frontier zones through, for example, resistance. The frontiers explored in the book include those with fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural commodities and land resources. The book approaches the issue of commodity frontiers from a bottom-up perspective, focusing on the ecological, economic, policy and/or social implications of frontier creation and perpetuation at the local level. By applying an inductive approach and not starting at the global level, the book aims to better link the local and global.
The authors address various questions aimed at further developing the ‘commodity frontier’ theoretical concept.
- What are the drivers of commodity frontier expansion (markets, states, science, etc.)?
- What are the key f...