GLOBALIZATION AND THE

ENVIRONMENT SERIES

SERIES EDITORS:
Richard Wilk
Department of Anthropology
130 Student Building, Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405 USA
[email protected]

Josiah Heyman
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Old Main Building #109
University of Texas at El Paso
500 West University Avenue
El Paso, TX 79968 USA
[email protected]

Description
This AltaMira series publishes new books about the global spread of
environmental problems. Key themes addressed are the effects of cultural
and economic globalization on the environment; the global institutions that
regulate and change human relations with the environment; and the global
nature of environmental governance, movements, and activism. The series
will include detailed case studies, innovative multisited research, and
theoretical questioning of the concepts of globalization and the
environment. At the center of the series is an exploration of the multiple
linkages that connect people, problems, and solutions at scales beyond the
local and regional. The editors welcome works that cross boundaries of
disciplines, methods, and locales, and that span scholarly and practical
approaches.

BOOKS IN THE SERIES:

The Power of the Machine: Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology,
and Environment, by Alf Hornborg (2001)
Confronting Environments: Local Environmental Understanding in a
Globalizing World, edited by James Carrier (2004)
Communities and Conservation: Histories and Politics of Community-
Based Natural Resource Management, edited by J. Peter Brosius, Anna
Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Charles Zerner (2005)
Globalization, Health, and the Environment: An Integrated Perspective,
edited by Greg Guest (2005)
Globalization and the World Ocean, by Peter Jacques (2006)
Global Visions, Local Landscapes: A Political Ecology of Conservation,
Conflict, and Control in Northern Madagascar, by Lisa L. Gezon (2006)
Cows, Kin, and Globalization: An Ethnography of Sustainability, by Susan
A. Crate (2006)
Rethinking Environmental History: World-System History and Global
Environmental Change, edited by Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan
Martinez-Alier
The World’s Scavengers: Salvaging for Sustainable Consumption and
Production, by Martin Medina
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rethinking environmental history : world-system history and global
environmental change / edited by Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Joan
Martinez-Alier.
p. cm.–(Globalization and the environment series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9780759113978
1. Global environmental change–History. 2. World history. I. Hornborg, Alf.
II. McNeill, J. R., 1954- III. Martinez-Alier, Joan.
GE149.R49 2006
333.7—dc22
2006021775
Printed in the United States of America

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Stephen G. Bunker (1944–2005)
Table of Contents

GLOBALIZATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT SERIES

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Environmental History as Political Ecology
I - THE ENVIRONMENT IN WORLD-SYSTEM HISTORY:
TRACING SOCIAL PROCESSES IN NATURE
1 - Environmental Impacts of the Roman Economy and Social
Structure: Augustus to Diocletian
2 - “People Said Extinction Was Not Possible”: Two Thousand Years
of Environmental Change in South China
3 - Precolonial Landesque Capital: A Global Perspective
4 - Food, War, and Crisis: The Seventeenth Century Swedish Empire
5 - The Role of Deforestation in Earth and World-System Integration
6 - Silver, Ecology, and the Origins of the Modern World, 1450–1640
7 - Trade, “Trinkets,” and Environmental Change at the Edge of
World-Systems: Political Ecology and the East African Ivory Trade
8 - Steps to an Environmental History of the Western Llanos of
Venezuela: A World-System Perspective
9 - The Extractive Economy: An Early Phase of the Globalization of
Diet, and Its Environmental Consequences
10 - Yellow Jack and Geopolitics: Environment, Epidemics, and the
Struggles for Empire in the American Tropics, 1640–1830

II - ECOLOGY AND UNEQUAL EXCHANGE: UNRAVELING

ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE IN THE MODERN WORLD
11 - Marxism, Social Metabolism, and International Trade
12 - Natural Values and the Physical Inevitability of Uneven
 Development under Capitalism
13 - Footprints in the Cotton Fields: The Industrial Revolution as
Time-Space Appropriation and Environmental Load Displacement
14 - Uneven Ecological Exchange and Consumption-Based
Environmental Impacts: A Cross-National Investigation
15 - Combining Social Metabolism and Input-Output Analyses to
Account for Ecologically Unequal Trade
16 - Physical Trade Flows of Pollution-Intensive Products: Historical
Trends in Europe and the World
17 - Environmental Issues at the U.S.-Mexico Border and the Unequal
Territorialization of Value
18 - Surrogate Money, Technology, and the Expansion of Savanna
Soybeans in Brazil
19 - Scale and Dependency in World-Systems: Local Societies in
Convergent Evolution
20 - The Ecology and the Economy: What Is Rational?

Index
About the Contributors
Acknowledgments

This book is one of two volumes emerging from the conference on World-
System History and Global Environmental Change, arranged by the Human
Ecology Division of Lund University, Lund, Sweden, on September 19–22,
2003. I gratefully acknowledge generous funding from the Bank of Sweden
Tercentenary Foundation, which covered the bulk of our expenses, as well
as additional funding from the Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency, and the Swedish Research Council for
Environment, Agriculture, and Spatial Planning. I also want to thank
Christian Isendahl for efficiently handling the practical details of
conference organization, and my two coeditors, J. R. McNeill and Joan
Martinez-Alier, for competently commenting on several chapters that
particularly required the expertise of a historian or an economist. Finally, I
thank Rosalie Robertson, Alden Perkins, Bess Vanrenen, and Sylvia
Cannizzaro for helping me turn a pile of papers into a book.

Alf Hornborg
Introduction: Environmental
History as Political Ecology

ALF HORNBORG

THERE ARE DIFFERENT WAYS of writing the history of environmental

problems. The dominant mode has been to assume a common human
history, a global “we” experiencing the arrow of time through cumulative
changes such as population growth, technological development, and new
patterns of resource use. Ecological degradation, seen from this perspective,
is the collective concern of a generalized humanity prompted to exploit new
territories, harness new energy sources, and develop new transport
technologies. Environmental problems, although alarming, are presented as
the inevitable side effects of “our” global success story.
The purpose of this book is to explore another way of writing
environmental history. Rather than focus on the abstract accretion of
landscape changes or technological inventions as a collective human
experience over time, it seeks to highlight how such changes are distributed
in space. It acknowledges that humanity is not a single “we” but deeply
divided in terms of reaping the benefits versus carrying the burdens of
development. The authors were asked to reflect on this distributed aspect of
environmental problems by approaching ecological changes from a world-
system perspective, viewing the world as a social system much more
inclusive than individual nations (Wallerstein 1974–1989). If the world-
system for a long time has built on unequal power relations between rich
“core” areas and impoverished “peripheries,” this inequality can also be
expected to show in how environmental burdens have been distributed.
The authors were invited to illuminate this issue through either empirical
or analytical contributions. As the field of environmental history is a
concern of several disciplines, the contributors have offered a variety of
approaches from archaeology, history, geography, anthropology, sociology,
and economics. For this reason, it seemed appropriate to have an editorial
team comprising an anthropologist, a historian, and an economist. Some of
the contributors have explicitly adopted the world-system terminology,
others have not. It soon became evident that authors were more prone to
develop new analytical or methodological approaches to environmental
inequalities the more recent their empirical material. This pattern is
reflected in the division of this book into two parts. The chapters in Part I
thus generally stay closer to empirical case studies of environmental
transformations over the past centuries or even millennia, while those in
Part II provide abstract ways of understanding environmental inequalities in
the modern world. In this introductory chapter, I hope to show how the
theoretical discussions in Part II might also be used to illuminate
socioenvironmental processes in the past. In other words, this book seeks to
suggest ways of applying modern concerns with unequal ecological
exchange and “political ecology” to the study of environmental history.
Bringing together fields, disciplines, and discourses that are as separate as
these inevitably invites conceptual and methodological confusion, but I am
convinced that such transdisciplinary communication is important and
worthwhile.
The notion of exchange being unequal in an ecological sense can only be
explored through transdisciplinary approaches. Conventional studies of
exchange, for example in economics, are not concerned with the physical
properties of the commodities that are traded or with the material
consequences of their production, transport, and consumption. Economics is
a science concerned with money, not with flows of matter and energy, waste
disposal, or loss of biodiversity. The chapters in Part II all try to show how
an understanding of the world-system in terms of such material parameters
provides a completely different picture of economic growth and
development than mainstream understandings based merely on monetary
measures.
 This book thus adopts a “materialist” perspective on environmental
history, if taking the physical facts of ecology seriously means being
“materialist.” On the other hand, the chapters in Part I all show the great
extent to which human patterns of consumption and production are shaped
by cultural ideas about what is to be regarded as good food, a comfortable
home, prestigious ornaments, a beautiful landscape, and so on. Such
cultural ideals show great variation in time and space, illustrating how
symbolically “constructed” they are. All symbolic constructs are in a sense
arbitrary products of a specific time and place, and it is not surprising that
many historians and anthropologists have found the material aspects of
human societies as irrelevant as have mainstream economists. Some
historians have even conceived of the field of environmental history as an
exclusive concern with the succession of human ideas about the
environment. The challenge for environmental history and environmental
anthropology, however, is to take proper account of both these levels of
reality: the idiosyncrasies of human meanings in particular contexts, and the
material repercussions of such cultural systems. “Materialism” should not
mean believing that cultural patterns of consumption and production are
determined by the physical environment, only that cultural behavior takes
place within a material world whose properties constrain what is possible
and determine the environmental consequences of that behavior. We need to
be able to acknowledge both the specificity of cultural motivation and the
generality of material laws.

Political Ecology
Over the past few decades, the concept of “political ecology” has become a
useful shorthand for the growing recognition, in several disciplines, of the
extent to which environmental changes and societal processes are
intertwined. The many proponents of this approach, for instance in
anthropology (Paulson and Gezon 2005), geography (Bryant and Bailey
1997), and the philosophy of environmental justice (Low and Gleeson
1998), focus on what Martinez-Alier (2002:70) calls “ecological
distribution conflicts” in modern, often Third World, settings. In integrating
cultural, political, economic, and ecological perspectives on conflicts of
interest between different social groups, political ecology requires
transdisciplinary analyses that are able to handle the great variety of factors
that enter into any such socioenvironmental conflict. Generally driven by a
more or less activist concern with the predicament of marginalized local
people in today’s world, it has made great progress in understanding the
political economy of contemporary environmental change. Although it is
reasonable to assume that processes of environmental change were no less
politicized in the past, studies of environmental history are much less
frequently couched in such a political framework. The reasons for this are
not hard to imagine. For one thing, environmental injustices seem less
worthy of attention, and more difficult to document, when the victims are
long gone. Nevertheless, there are many good reasons to apply the insights
of political ecology to environmental history. Foremost, I would argue, is
the importance of writing a politically valid environmental history of
human civilizations, from the earliest agrarian empires to the present
industrial world order. The political ecology of human civilizations would
no doubt present a completely different picture of“our” global success story
than mainstream historiography. In acknowledging the power inequalities
and distribution conflicts framing the development of industrial civilization,
it would ultimately provide a more realistic view of future prospects for
“sustainable” development at the global level.
It is important here to emphasize that what I am suggesting is not merely
an environmental history that acknowledges ecological degradation as the
flip side of economic progress. This would be very far from a new idea. In
chapter 11, Joan Martinez-Alier traces the modern history of “ecological
economics,” emphasizing how human economies are ultimately constrained
by ecological conditions, to the mid-nineteenth century, and some of its
roots to the eighteenth-century Physiocrats. As J. Donald Hughes shows in
chapter 1, such connections were obvious even in ancient Rome. Awareness
of environmental limitations has no doubt always been a part of human
experience, whether hunter-gatherers’ concern over game stocks or
horticulturalists’ concern over soil fertility. Much recent work in
environmental history in fact remains analytically confined to such
Malthusian worries about a fundamental contradiction between human
society and the natural environment. Irrespective of their discipline of
origin—whether geography, archaeology, or history—most authors of
classical works on global environmental history, even when addressing
European imperialism, thus tend to couch their concerns in the generalized
“we” mode mentioned above (e.g. Thomas 1956; Turner et al. 1990;
Simmons 1993; Redman 1999; Diamond 2005). Rather than subject the
internal structures of societal systems to critical scrutiny, such studies seem
to assume a simple dualism of society versus nature and to account for
environmental problems in terms of the inexorable progression of
technology or demography.
Rarer are historical studies that explicitly investigate contradictions
within global human society over the natural environment. These studies are
generally concerned with European strategies of environmental load
displacement during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and sometimes
make explicit use of the world-system terminology (Wilkinson 1973; Wolf
1982; Mintz 1985; Worster 1988; Ponting 1991; Pomeranz 2000; Richards
2003). They demonstrate a more profound understanding of the societal
dynamics responsible for unevenly distributed environmental degradation
and often present direct continuities with studies of twentieth-century
political ecology (cf. Bunker 1985; Goldfrank et al. 1999; Bunker and
Ciccantell 2005). Yet, I am convinced that our understanding of how
societal and ecological systems are intertwined can progress even further
than this, not only by politicizing the environment, but also by ecologizing
the world-system. I shall begin by briefly summarizing the chapters in Part
II, in order to be able to use concepts and findings from these studies to
address the issues raised by the historical case studies in Part I. Although
the chapters in this book are generally ordered in a chronological sequence,
stretching from ancient Rome and China to modern Mexico and Brazil, I
will review parts I and II in reverse order. This is justified by my attempts
to project backward in time some of the analytical relevance of theories and
methods developed to understand unequal ecological exchange in the
modern world.

Unequal Ecological Exchange

A fundamental theoretical question, for any attempt to merge ecology and
world-system analysis, is whether the global distribution of environmental
deterioration is somehow structurally determined. If the answer is yes, does
this structural determination hinge on the physical properties of the traded
commodities? Are economic sectors specialized in the extraction of natural
resources systematically disadvantaged—economically and/or ecologically
—vis-à-vis sectors specialized in the production of industrial goods? The
chapters in part II generally tend toward such a critical perspective on
global social metabolism. Economic historian Joan Martinez-Alier (chapter
11) and sociologist Stephen G. Bunker (chapter 12) provide a theoretical
framework for such a position, and the following four chapters (Hornborg;
Jorgenson and Rice; Weisz; and Muradian and Giljum) present
methodologies and empirical evidence that seem to support it.
Martinez–Alier traces the early dialogue between Marxism and natural
sciences such as physics and agricultural chemistry on the material
dimensions of economic productivity, illustrating the difficulties that
continue to plague communication between the social and natural sciences
on economic matters. Although Marx was keenly interested in the
metabolic flows between urban and rural areas, he did not think of these
flows as inherently exploitative or as a constraint on progress, as did
Malthus, but was optimistic about new technological remedies such as
chemical fertilizers. If Marx and Engels had paid more attention to Serhii
Podolinsky’s argument for an integration of thermodynamics and their
notions of surplus exploitation, early Marxist theory might have
incorporated the kind of sociometabolic perspectives that today provide a
foundation for discussions on unequal ecological exchange. Martinez-Alier
posits a tendency, over the past few centuries, for a shift in the character of
ecologically unequal exchange between cores and peripheries of the world-
system. Prior to modern transport technologies, as Wallerstein and so many
other scholars have observed, long-distance transfers were largely restricted
to “preciosities” (high-value, low-bulk commodities) like silver, spices, and
ivory, the extraction of which has considerable ecological consequences in
the periphery but slight significance for the metabolism of the core. By the
mid-nineteenth century, however, the unequal, long-distance exchange of
bulk commodities (e.g. sugar, guano, saltpeter) had become crucial to the
metabolism of some importing countries in Europe. Whether such
sociometabolic connections between world-system cores and peripheries
can be traced farther back in history than this is a central issue for several of
the chapters in part I.
In the next chapter, Bunker reiterates and expands the argument with
which he pioneered the integration of ecology and world-system analysis
(Bunker 1985). He posits a structural asymmetry between extractive
economies in the periphery and “productive” economies in the core, which
has been exacerbated with the increasing spatial separation of extraction
and production. The structural polarizations of production versus extraction
and of core versus periphery are in fact one and the same. One of his key
points is that the dynamics of scale have inverse consequences for
productive versus extractive sectors, yielding falling unit costs of
production in the former but rising costs in the latter. Furthermore, as
resources are depleted or technologies and market demand transformed,
extractive economies are unable to sustain the continuous, cumulative
development of labor and infrastructure that, by and large, have
characterized productive core areas over the past two centuries. To account
for such uneven development under capitalism, Bunker chooses to
complement the Marxian labor theory of value with a notion of “natural
values,” which, like labor, are systematically underpaid and realized by the
industrial core areas to which they are transferred.
In chapter 13, I present a similar understanding of the asymmetric
relation between centers of industrial development and their extractive
peripheries. The argument is based on previous theoretical work on the
thermodynamic conditions of an industrial world order (Hornborg 2001),
but focuses on the appropriation of land and labor “embodied” in the raw
materials imported to Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. Using historical
statistics on the inputs of land and labor in cotton and wool production, I
estimate the amount of British land and labor that were saved by displacing
fiber production to North America. By comparing inputs of land and labor
in the textile exports of England with those in some commodities imported
from its periphery, and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates, I also
estimate the unequal exchange of (natural) space and (human) time
underlying the Industrial Revolution. Using such methods, it is possible to
bring together the Marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time,
on one hand, with the more recent concern with ecological footprints (i.e.
the land requirements of a given level of resource consumption), on the
other. Rather than use the contested notion of underpaid “values,” however,
I am content to show that the earliest stages of industrial capitalism relied
on an objectively measurable, unequal exchange of embodied land and
labor. Another way of saying this is that technologies for locally saving
time and space often tend to draw on investments of time and space (labor
and land) in other parts of the world-system.
In the following chapter, sociologists Andrew Jorgenson and James Rice
empirically investigate the proposition that developed core countries tend to
externalize the environmental requirements of their consumption patterns
by exploiting resources in the periphery. To resolve this issue, they offer a
new methodological approach to examining the structure of international
trade. This approach is based on weighted export flows, that is, quantifying
the relative extent to which exports from a given country are sent to more
developed countries with higher levels of consumption, measured as
ecological footprints per capita. Their hypothesis is that countries with
greater quantities of exports sent to more developed countries will exhibit
lower domestic levels of resource consumption. Using data from the year
2000, they have found evidence supporting this hypothesis. Their study
highlights the need for social scientists to investigate how more affluent
nations use international trade to be able to reinforce their high levels of
resource consumption, while continuing to externalize their environmental
loads at the expense of the ecology and well-being of populations in less
developed countries.
In chapter 15, biologist and ecological economist Helga Weisz explores
an alternative method for defining and empirically measuring ecologically
unequal exchange. Using Bunker’s distinction between extractive and
productive economies as a point of departure, she suggests that the
combined use of a physical trade balance approach and input-output
analysis can illuminate ecologically unequal trade between national
economies or world regions. A physical trade balance is a variant of
material flow analysis showing a nation’s exports and imports measured in
weight rather than money. Input-output analysis can be used to calculate, in
economists’ words, the “intensities” of traded commodities in terms of, for
example, the amount of raw materials, carbon dioxide emissions, energy, or
waste involved in their production. By multiplying such intensities with
total quantities of imports and exports, it is possible to establish “ecological
trade balances” of nations. In quantifying total imports, domestic extraction,
the flows of goods between a nation’s different production sectors, domestic
consumption, and exports, an input-output model using such data can be
employed to calculate the indirect environmental requirements of a given
quantity of commodities beyond its mere physical volume. Applied to the
economy of Denmark in 1990, this method shows that the conventional
physical trade balance approach significantly underestimates the degree to
which domestic consumption relies on material resources from other
countries. In other words, although several sociometabolic calculations of
physical trade balances have already clearly demonstrated that industrial
core nations tend to appropriate net flows of natural resources from more
peripheral nations, Weisz shows that a more refined methodology will yield
even more unequivocal conclusions to the same effect. Her chapter
illustrates some of the difficulties involved in trying to translate economic
statistics, generally based on national territories as units of analysis, into
ecological realities. In particular, her conclusions regarding Norway and
even Britain as “extractive economies” remind us that Bunker’s (1985)
dichotomy of extractive versus productive economies was not primarily
designed to classify entire nations but regions or sectors within nations. The
dichotomy refers to a structural relationship that is only imperfectly
reflected in the relations between complete nations.
In chapter 16, ecological economists Roldan Muradian and Stefan Giljum
also apply the concepts and methods of material flow analysis to investigate
how environmental burdens are distributed between nations. Their first
finding is that so-called polluting sectors have generally increased their
physical volume of export production in absolute terms over the past few
decades, irrespective of world region. Second, they find that, in the period
between 1978 and 1996, the proportion of total exports that derive from
polluting sectors, measured in monetary value, has increased in South
America and Africa while decreasing in Europe, the United States, and
Japan. Third, they note that the European Union has remained a net
importer of products from polluting sectors during the whole period
analyzed. These findings are highly relevant for assessing the economists’
notion of’dematerialization“—that is, the proposition that economies will
become less of a burden on the environment the more developed they are—
and the sobering counterproposition known as the ”pollution haven”
hypothesis—that is, that polluting industries tend to migrate toward poorer
countries with weaker environmental standards. Much as economist
Lawrence Summers infamously suggested in 1991, there is an impeccable
economic logic in advocating a migration of “dirty” (i.e. polluting)
industries to less developed countries. The chapters by Jorgenson and Rice,
Weisz, and Muradian and Giljum all remind us that, although the
appearance of a cleaner, seemingly dematerialized economy in affluent
nations may suggest that economic growth is good for the environment,
such a view may be the product of an illusion. An alternative interpretation
is that economic growth makes it possible to shift a nation’s environmental
burden to other, less affluent countries. Moreover, we have reasons to be
skeptical of indices of sustainability that measure environmental burdens
relative to gross national product (GNP), suggesting that it does not matter
if environmental loads increase in absolute terms, as long as GNP increases
faster. The illusion of dematerialization thus simultaneously highlights the
two main obstacles to understanding socioenvironmental metabolism using
the kinds of data conventionally available to economists: the fact that
statistics on trade generally use the nation as unit of analysis, and the fact
that these statistics generally use monetary value as the only significant
metric.
The significance of the nation-state in organizing socioenvironmental
metabolism is indisputable, but in different ways than economists and
historians have generally recognized. In the age of globalization, it should
no longer be possible to imagine that a nation’s geographical extent, its
economic activities, and its environmental impacts coincide. Yet, to
correlate national statistics on GNP and environmental quality in order to
draw conclusions on the relation between economic growth and
environmental performance is precisely to make such an unreasonable
assumption. From a world-system perspective, on the contrary, it is only to
be expected that one nation’s environmental problems may be the flip side
of another nation’s affluence. Such connections are evident even where
there are no indications of coercion or imperial ambitions. What, then, is the
role of national boundaries in organizing the distribution of environmental
resources and risks? They are obviously instruments of political agency,
even when there are no attempts to expand them, simply by defining arenas
within which power can be asserted in direct and uncontroversial ways.
They may also define fields of responsibility and a minimum of social
solidarity, prompting governments—to the extent that they are able and
willing—to redistribute resources so as to cushion marginalized groups
within their jurisdiction against the worst ravages of the polarizing
tendencies of accumulative processes. Rural populations engaged in
extractive activities within affluent nations can thus be financially
subsidized by successful industrial sectors of the same nations, making it
possible for them to enjoy high standards of living, healthy environments,
and security, whereas their counterparts in poorer nations may be left
virtually unprotected. The nation-state is thus the basic social unit capable
of politically intervening in the socioenvironmental, metabolic processes
generated by the logic of capital accumulation. Not only can it decide to
alleviate the impoverishment of its internal, national periphery; states
explicitly also struggle to promote—as national interests—activities that
serve to make their external positions within world-systems as
advantageous as possible. For centuries, the more powerful nation-states
have used trade policies backed up by military force to secure vital flows of
resources from the outside. As several of the chapters in part I remind us,
not so long ago nation-states regularly struggled to expand their boundaries
to achieve such goals. As trade has replaced conquest and tribute, national
boundaries have begun to appear more stable over time, but the use of
military force to secure resource flows is far from obsolete. Increasingly,
states have also made it a national interest to export environmental risks.
As anthropologist Josiah Heyman shows in chapter 17, this gate-keeping
function of nation-states, struggling to import resources and export risks, is
most obvious on their borders. Focusing on the border between the United
States and Mexico, he explores the many subtle ways in which this
boundary zone serves to maintain the differences between citizens
belonging to the two adjacent polities. This serves to remind us that the
formation of nation-states involves a partly arbitrary construction of
territorialized identity, but also that territorializations of sociometabolic
relationships have very tangible consequences for people who happen to be
living on either side of the border. The polarizing structures of world-
systemic processes of capital accumulation are not necessarily organized in
spatial terms to begin with, but the medium of nation-states has historically
projected such structures onto geographical territories. It remains to be seen
how far the current surge of globalization can go in challenging our
attachment to the nation-state as a source of identity and a category for
understanding the structure of world society. Heyman’s contribution
illustrates the very real material processes that continue to undergird the
existence of nation-states precisely by asserting their boundaries. The
environmental dimension of this particular boundary is epitomized by the
maquiladoras, highly polluting industries concentrated along the Mexican
side of the border, where wages can be kept low and environmental
considerations ignored, but the profits from which often wind up among
owners and executives residing north of the border. It is difficult to think of
a more straightforward verification of the “pollution haven” hypothesis.
Borders between countries with very different levels of affluence, such as
Mexico and the United States, suggest sudden transformation points that
make dramatically visible what is usually perceived as polarized core-
periphery gradients in economic value. The chapter adds an important
dimension to the discussion of how environmental problems are distributed
by showing how such sociopolitical allocations are simultaneously also
cultural: the concerns of people living on the U.S. side are often expressed
in terms of keeping the “dirt” on the right (i.e. south) side of the border.
In chapter 18, anthropologist William Fisher takes us further south into
Latin America, to the vast fields of soybeans industrially cultivated on the
former savannas of Mato Grosso, Brazil. What locally is experienced as
modernization and economic progress appears, in the light of social and
environmental concerns as well as world-system analysis, as a highly
dubious development. The transformation of the partly forested savanna
landscape into treeless soybean monocultures has drastically reduced the
unique biodiversity of the cerrado and turned impoverished and eroding
soils into a medium for the conversion of imported fertilizers, pesticides,
and other industrial inputs into exported crops. As much of the soybean
exports are destined for livestock fodder in industrialized countries such as
the Netherlands or Japan, these vast expanses of extractive surfaces clearly
represent the ecological footprints—the displaced environmental loads—of
distant and more affluent economies. Even locally, soybean cultivation has
increased economic inequalities. Great numbers of small farmers have been
forced to give up their land, only a minority have found low-wage jobs on
the soybean plantations, and decreasing food security has brought an
increase in rural hunger. This chapter provides a close-up view of the
human agents who are compelled to fulfill the designs of world-systemic
processes, even though they may regret their social and environmental
consequences.

Tracing Socioenvironmental Processes through

History
With this spectrum of approaches to ecological inequalities in the modern
world, we are now prepared to reconsider the various historical case studies
of socioenvironmental transformations presented in part I. We begin with
historian J. Donald Hughes’s account of the environmental impacts of the
Roman economy during the first three centuries AD. Like other agricultural
empires before and after it, ancient Rome used military power to expand the
area of land under its control. By the second century AD, it was able to
exploit the natural resources of an area of 7,800,000 square kilometers.
Agricultural production was largely focused on grain, wine, and olive oil,
which were widely traded throughout the Mediterranean area. Maritime
trade in bulk goods such as timber and cereals had been established by the
Greeks several centuries earlier, and contemporary sources claim that
annual wheat imports to Rome from North Africa and Egypt in the first
century AD could be over 400,000 tons, or about 6,000 shiploads (Debeir et
al. 1991:29, 35). Long-distance exchange with India also brought elite
preciosities such as spices, jewels, fine woods, birds, and delicate textiles in
exchange for Roman gold, silver, art, wine, pottery, and slaves. Like ancient
Greece, the Roman economy was to a very large extent based on slave
labor, as obvious from the fact that slaves made up over 35 percent of the
population of Italy during the time of Augustus. Hughes suggests that a
slave economy is intrinsically detrimental to the environment, in part
because slaves are not in a position to feel responsibility for the land. Also,
the massive use of slave labor required a constant supply of energy in the
form of food. Emperors such as Augustus struggled to increase grain
imports from provinces like Egypt in order to feed the slaves and the urban
poor. Deforestation and agricultural intensification brought erosion,
siltation, salinization, soil exhaustion, and loss of biodiversity over much of
the Mediterranean area. Mining and smelting required great quantities of
firewood and charcoal, contributing to deforestation. Industrial pollution
and urban sewage disposal also became serious problems. Hughes
(1994:194) does not hesitate to suggest that environmental problems
contributed to the decline of Greek and Roman civilization.
Hughes specifically mentions, as an index of biodiversity loss, records of
the disappearance of various species such as lions, tigers, elephants, and
rhinos from different parts of the Roman Empire. In chapter 2, historian
Robert Marks focuses on similar records of the occurrence or disappearance
of tigers as an index of environmental change over two thousand years in
Lingnan, southern China. Records of tiger attacks, he notes, are indicators
of human encroachment into tiger habitats. As in Rome, deforestation and
agricultural intensification are the most tangible effects of human activity.
Yet, the civilizations of Rome and China are sometimes contrasted as
diametrically opposed in terms of strategies for dealing with environmental
constraints (Debeir et al. 1991; Pomeranz 2000). Slavery was negligible in
China, where slaves made up at most 1 percent of the population (Debeir et
al. 1991:60), which means that the social appropriation of energy never
took the form of a large-scale trade in slaves or in cereals to feed them.
Rather than importing food, China was able to intensify rice production and
under the Sung dynasty (AD 960–1279) exported parts of its harvests even
to Southeast Asia (Debeir et al. 1991:45). From 1550 on, Marks observes,
the commercialization of agriculture brought major changes in land use to
satisfy the rising market demand for rice, carp, silk, and sugar. By 1600,
European merchants bought silk, porcelain, and other preciosities in
exchange for silver. The annual inflow into southern China of hundreds of
tons of silver, largely derived from American mines, stimulated further
intensification, including an expansion of mulberry tree plantations for silk
production. The early-seventeenth-century scribe Deng Bi‘nan, in
suggesting that the extinction of tigers in southern China was the result of
anthropogenic landscape change, was thus reflecting on socioenvironmental
processes that implicated not only Chinese population growth but the entire
world-system.
The Chinese landscape is one of the most obvious examples of
“landesque capital”—that is, human investments in land—in the world. In
chapter 3, geographer Mats Widgren discusses the definition and global
distribution of landesque capital from several perspectives. Land improved
for purposes of agricultural production is the main form of capital
accumulation in preindustrial societies on all continents, and simultaneously
one of the most tangible ways in which humans for millennia have changed
their natural environments. There are many varieties—irrigation or drainage
canals, terraces, raised fields, forest clearance, stone clearance, soil
improvement—but only one common incentive: to increase agricultural
yield per unit of land. It is thus closely connected with sedentary settlement
and often the object of violent competition or even military conquest.
Although there are examples of landesque capital precipitating
environmental degradation (e.g. salinization, or erosion following
abandonment), Widgren points out that it has often permanently improved
the conditions for sustainable land use. He also notes that the concept is in
conflict with the notion of “carrying capacity” as an immutable feature of a
given environment. Although often attributed to central planning and
hierarchical social organization, as in Wittfogel’s classic discussion of
“Oriental despotism” and “hydraulic” civilizations, Widgren observes that
landesque capital can also be accumulated through the long-term labor
investments of local communities, particularly under political, economic,
and social conditions where investments in land are experienced as secure.
The concept of landesque capital provides us with a foil against which to
better understand what Amartya Sen has called “laboresque” capital, that is,
machinery: while the latter saves labor, the former saves land. It also
reminds us that land and labor are not as distinct factors of production as
they are sometimes visualized, for landesque capital is so by virtue of
representing embodied labor. The great variation in the quality and
productivity of land presents a great challenge for any method of natural
resource accounting based on units of land, for example, that of ecological
footprints.
Landesque capital, it seems, was precisely what spurred the seventeenth-
century military expansion of what economic historian Janken Myrdal in
chapter 4 calls the Swedish Empire. As for Rome, the primary target was
grain-producing areas around an inland sea, accessible via maritime
transport. In the century between 1560 and 1660, Sweden (which then
included Finland) briefly conquered most of the coasts around the southern
Baltic, including significant portions of Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Germany,
and Denmark. Myrdal discusses four different explanations of this
expansion, the prevalent one being that Sweden sought to gain control over
the maritime trade between Russia and western Europe. Although the
different theories need not exclude each other, Myrdal argues that the main
incentive was the pursuit of grain to alleviate an emerging food crisis and to
maintain the imperial project. Rather than continue to export grain
westward, as it had done in the sixteenth century, Sweden in the
seventeenth century began to divert grain flows, from the newly conquered
Baltic provinces, that had previously been directed to the Netherlands. The
food crisis was partly a consequence of the massive diversion of labor from
agricultural tasks to industry and warfare. The main industrial exports at
this time were iron, copper, potash, and tar, but the Swedish arms industry
also absorbed much labor. A peculiar but sociometabolically relevant
observation is that the production of gunpowder from saltpeter deprived
agriculture of great amounts of stable refuse previously used as manure,
contributing to soil exhaustion. Iron production had also seriously
impoverished the forests over large areas. This chapter illustrates the kind
of situation in which several European nations found themselves in the
sixteenth century, struggling to cope with agricultural stagnation and
overexploitation of domestic resources. Even if the seventeenth-century
Swedish strategy for coping with the situation soon proved unsuccessful,
those of other nations were less so, and the remainder of world history can
only be understood against this background.
The problem of deforestation recurs in most case studies in
environmental history, and certainly plagued ancient Rome, China, and
sixteenth-century Europe. In chapter 5, geographer Michael Williams
provides us with a global overview of this pervasive mode of landscape
change. He suggests that wood and wood products were one of four major
categories of commodity frontiers (along with minerals, agricultural
produce, and wild animal products) that can be understood through the
lenses of Wallerstein’s world-system perspective and Marx’s analysis of
capitalism. Of all land-cover changes in world history, forest clearing has
affected a greater area than any other. This is partly because timber is the
only commodity frontier where depletion actually creates a valuable
resource in the form of agricultural or pastoral land (landesque capital, if
you will). The many essential uses of wood itself, including construction
materials for shelters and ships as well as fuel for heating and metallurgy,
have given it a strategic importance second only to food. It has thus
frequently defied von Thünen’s and Wallerstein’s generalizations to the
effect that bulky, low-value commodities were not traded over long
distances in precapitalist times. Roman writers mention ships’ timbers
imported from the Black Sea coasts, Turkey, Syria, and what is now
Algeria. The Muslim-dominated Mediterranean world of the seventh to
thirteenth centuries traded pine from Portugal and teak from India.
Beginning in the same period, the Hansa league traded timber from the
Baltic hinterlands to western Europe. By the sixteenth century, almost all
Portuguese ships were built in India or Brazil, while Spain imported quality
timber from Poland in order to build the Armada, and England imported
timber from Scandinavia and Russia (Ponting 1991:278–279). Already in
the late seventeenth century, British warships were being built in North
America. By the early eighteenth century, wind- and water-driven sawmills
with multiple blades had reached the far eastern end of the Baltic, and sawn
timber was transported by ships. Journeys of up to 3,000 kilometers were
commonly undertaken to transport bulky, low-value timber between
different parts of Europe. With the European colonization of the New
World, deforestation accelerated, often to give way to plantations of cash
crops such as sugar cane, coffee, tobacco, and cotton. The global history of
deforestation (Williams 2003) provides a very graphic account of the
expansion of sociometabolic requirements (i.e. the displacement of
environmental loads) of core areas of the world-system.
Deforestation plays an important role also in chapter 6, where geographer
Jason Moore applies Wallerstein’s perspective to the sixteenth-century
relocation of silver mining from central Europe to Potosi in present-day
Bolivia. For Wallerstein and Moore, the early modern expansion of Europe
expressed a new kind of specifically capitalist socioecological relations
predicated on the endless accumulation of capital and the export of
environmental problems (cf. Moore 2003). In the mid-fifteenth century, the
mining of silver, iron, lead, copper, zinc, and tin in central Europe had
maintained the Roman legacy by seriously degrading the environment
through air and water pollution, destruction of fisheries and wildlife,
widespread deforestation, and soil erosion. The relocation of silver
extraction to the New World offered not only richer ore deposits and
cheaper labor power, but also displacement of a highly polluting industry.
When ore quality and silver output at Potosi declined, the Spaniards devised
a new technology for extracting silver from the ore as well as a system of
forced labor drafts to keep the reluctant Andean miners working. The
intensive mining activities brought severe deforestation, soil erosion, and
floods. Moore suggests that the dual strategy of intensifying technological
inputs and securing cheaper labor power represents a recurrent pattern of
temporarily checking rising costs that is characteristic of early modern
commodity frontiers, for example also the sugar frontier (Moore 2000). The
degradation of the landscape and of human bodies was symptomatic of the
same capitalist logic. The situation in the colonial New World illustrates
most dramatically how the globalization of capital extended what Marx had
referred to as the “metabolic rift” between town and country, so as to apply
generally to the polarization of production and extraction, or core and
periphery. Whether such polarizing tendencies are indeed uniquely
“capitalist” in a Wallersteinian, post-fifteenth-century sense is a contested
topic within world-systems discourse, but few would deny that the
sixteenth-century expansion of Europe represented some kind of
discontinuity in the socioenvironmental history of our planet.
 In chapter 7, anthropologist Thomas Håkansson takes us to the savannas
of East Africa to explore the impact of the ivory trade on local ecology and
land use patterns, using historical data from the nineteenth century. Like
silver, ivory is a typical preciosity or “prestige good” with high value-to-
volume ratio and negligible metabolic significance for importing societies.
Yet, its extraction, like that of silver, has had important ecological
consequences for the exporting regions (cf. Håkansson 2004). Having been
exported from East Africa as a material for prestigious ornaments at least
since Roman times (first century AD), with a marked expansion between
AD 1000 and 1500, ivory by the nineteenth century was used in Europe and
the United States for items such as combs, piano keys, and billiard balls.
Håkansson suggests that the ivory trade brought a reduction in elephant
populations that may have caused an expansion of woodland and scrub at
the expense of grass, which in turn would have attracted tsetse flies and
bovine sleeping sickness, restricting opportunities for grazing in some
areas. More significantly, the access to coastal goods and currencies
stimulated an intensification of agriculture, pastoralism, and craft
production along the trade routes in the interior, which in turn affected
settlement patterns, food security, soils, vegetation, and faunal biodiversity.
Even if the socioenvironmental changes in the nineteenth century were
particularly accentuated, such linkages between world-systemic and
ecological processes can probably be projected many centuries backward in
time. Håkansson has thus posited a general connection over time between
the intensity of specialized pastoralism and the economic trends of the ivory
trade. Another form of export production in East Africa with considerable
environmental consequences, which deserve to be analyzed in the same
manner, is iron production. In addition to the direct ecological effects of
extraction of commodities for the world market, he concludes, world-
system analyses should reckon with a number of indirect environmental
changes resulting from the circulation of foreign goods that stimulate
political processes leading to new patterns of land use.
Similar conclusions emerge from chapter 8, in which archaeologist
Rafael Gassón takes us back to South America, more specifically the moist
savannas (Llanos) of Venezuela. Like Håkansson, he suggests that even pre-
colonial patterns of land use were geared to long-distance exchange.
Agricultural intensification in the form of raised fields on the pre-
Columbian Llanos may reflect political developments stimulated by the
long-distance exchange of prestige goods such as polished stone beads and
pendants. The raw materials in these items can be traced to distant sources
such as Ecuador and the Caribbean. The incorporation of the Llanos into the
colonial world-system triggered a sequence of major socioenvironmental
transformations. The impact of epidemic diseases, raids, and slavery struck
sedentary farmers much harder than mobile hunter-gatherers, leaving
agricultural lands open to European exploitation. The sixteenth-century
introduction of cattle from Hispaniola eclipsed the indigenous fauna as the
favored game species of Amerindian hunters in the area. Cattle ranching
and the cultivation of tobacco and cotton further transformed the ecology of
the Llanos. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, however,
war and economic crisis destroyed this agrarian economy, and significant
parts of the Llanos began to revert to tropical forests, which suggests that
the original, open landscape encountered by the Europeans may in part have
been anthropogenic. With the recovery of the forest came animal species
such as herons, the feathers of which between the 1880s and 1920s were in
great demand as ornaments for ladies’ hats in Paris and New York. Most of
the local labor force abandoned the ranches and fields to hunt herons, and
the bird was almost driven to extinction. This case study, like the previous
chapter, illustrates how cultural idiosyncrasies in core areas of the world-
system—like the appetite for ivory or heron feathers—can be of decisive
significance for socioenvironmental trajectories in the periphery.
Cultural idiosyncrasies of appetite are literally the topic of chapter 9, in
which anthropologist Richard Wilk explores the origins of the eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century global food system, which provided a standard set
of foods to the armies of extractive workers all over the world. Dishes
based on these rations—such as salted meats, wheat flour, pulses, and sugar
—were eventually localized, and in many cases became the “traditional”
foods of the twentieth century. This ration system was initially developed to
support large military organizations and sailing fleets, but was gradually
extended to include a global workforce engaged in extractive industries
such as mining, logging, and fishing, as well as railroad construction. The
production of foodstuffs to feed these workers transformed the economies
and ecologies of North America, and many parts of Europe and South
America. Like later periods of globalization, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century wave of globalization brought serious environmental impacts that
are heterogeneous and dispersed, and have thus rarely been linked to each
other because of the complexity of commodity chains and trade
relationships. The chapter illustrates how opaque are the global
connections, even in the eighteenth century, between contexts of extraction,
production, and consumption (cf. Appadurai 1986), and how this very
opacity obstructs experiences of environmental responsibility. Several
factors combine to make “extractivists” notoriously unconcerned with
conservation of resources. Aside from showing the intricately specific
connections between cultural, economic, and ecological systems, Wilk’s
study reminds us that the organization of extractive activities in the global
periphery was modeled after, and often associated with, the organization of
military conquest. The analogy suggests a war on nature.
If military conquests leave culturally specific imprints on ecosystems,
ecosystems can also impinge on the fortunes of military conquest. In
chapter 10, historian J. R. McNeill reveals how the interaction of landscape
changes and human epidemiology from the seventeenth to the nineteenth
century influenced the course of geopolitical history in the lowland tropics
of the New World. The chapter illustrates the recursive relation between
world-systems and ecosystems, viewed through the lens of yellow fever and
its mosquito vectors. The establishment of sugar plantations in the largely
depopulated American tropics in the seventeenth century, to satisfy
European appetites, relied on slave labor imported from West Africa. The
slave ships also brought the West African mosquito Aedes aegypti, vector of
yellow fever, a disease to which the Africans, but not Europeans raised in
temperate climates, were often immune. The conversion of tropical
American landscapes into sugar plantations in several ways favored the
breeding of A. aegypti and the transmission of yellow fever. French and
British armies, composed of men raised in Europe, suffered disastrous
losses from yellow fever as they vainly tried to wrest the Caribbean from
Latin control. After the 1770s, the differential immunity to yellow fever
was of similar importance in preventing Spain from holding on to its
Caribbean colonies struggling for independence. McNeill aptly concludes
that European empires, through the socioenvironmental changes they had
inflicted on tropical America, had sown the seeds of their own destruction.
His study clearly illustrates how sociopolitical and ecological systems are
recursively intertwined in world-system history.

Conclusion
The chapters in part I provide us with a rich platform from which to reflect
on the extent to which the arguments of political ecology and notions of
ecologically unequal exchange can be projected backward onto the
environmental history of the past two millennia. Even if the lack of
comparable data prevents us from applying the same methodological tools
as the authors in part II have applied to modern statistics, similar analytical
perspectives can be shared by both approaches. The metabolic rift between
economic cores and their extractive peripheries can be identified from
ancient Rome to nineteenth-century England, and the tendency to displace
environmental burdens ever farther from core areas is pervasive,
irrespective of whether it implies extending or transgressing political
boundaries. The ecological impacts of long-distance trade in the ancient
world can be exemplified by the Roman appropriation of timber, grain, and
metals from vast areas of Europe, Africa, and Asia. From the sixteenth
century on, such impacts are all the more obvious, for example, in the
extraction of timber and grain from eastern Europe, silver from the Andes,
ivory from East Africa, and sugar from the Caribbean. The uncalculated,
indirect environmental impacts (i.e. “ecological rucksacks”) of the
extraction of for example silver, ivory, or sugar are important aspects of the
“ecological trade balances” of colonial Spain and Britain. The modern
displacement of the most polluting industries from the E.U. to Latin
America thus has antecedents in sixteenth-century silver mining. Loss of
biodiversity in the periphery is a theme that can be traced from Roman
North Africa to the savannas of modern Brazil (cf. Ponting 1991:161–193;
Richards 2003:463–616). Another pivotal factor in human-environmental
relations throughout the millennia is the accumulation, maintenance, and
eventual abandonment of landesque capital, designed to produce for
example grain, wine, olive oil, rice, silk, beef, sugar, cotton, or soybeans as
commodities for impersonal, monetized markets. Equally ubiquitous is the
lack of environmental foresight that characterizes most market-oriented
extractive activities, whether conducted by Roman slaves or nineteenth-
century loggers. Finally, it is striking how these trajectories of political
economy tend to be determined by the seemingly arbitrary specifics of
ecological and cultural systems in recursive interaction, for example the
food preferences of mosquitoes and men. When Immanuel Wallerstein, in
the final chapter, asks what is rational, the question can be extended beyond
a critique of the logic of capitalism to a reflection on the general relation
between social and ecological systems throughout the course of human
history.
It is obvious that many of the imports to core areas, from ancient Rome
to nineteenth-century Europe, were of negligible direct significance for the
social metabolism of these areas. If we were to restrict our perspective to
this observation, we might well agree with economic historian Paul
Bairoch’s (1993:97) remarkable conclusion that “the West did not need the
Third World.” But in looking at early-twentieth-century statistics to draw
the conclusion that the dependence of the West on raw materials from the
Third World prior to 1955 is a “complete myth” (Bairoch 1993:70), Bairoch
seriously distorts our view of the dynamics of economic development and
industrialization. Let us look closer at Bairoch’s position as a foil against
which to consolidate the argument in this book.
First, as Bairoch (1993:88–97) himself concedes, the consequences of
incorporation as a world-system periphery can be destructive enough, even
if the sociometabolic significance of the exports for importing core
countries seems insignificant. To use a modern expression, the “ecological
rucksacks” of such exports (e.g. spices, jewels, silver, gold, silk, ivory,
feathers, sugar, tobacco, coffee, tea) were generally formidable, and this is
but one of the ways in which the periphery was—and continues to be—
forced to pay a high price for the economic development of the core.
Second, Bairoch’s conclusion that the role of colonialism was
unimportant in the birth of the British Industrial Revolution (Bairoch
1993:80) underestimates the recursive relation between mercantile and
financial profits, on one hand, and investments in mechanization, on the
other (cf. Wolf 1982:267–295). His mechanistic, linear notion that “during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries colonization was primarily a result
of industrial development and not vice versa” (Bairoch 1993:82) fails to
appreciate the complex ways in which these two phenomena were mutually
reinforcing aspects of the same process.
Third, his use of the category “the West” as a static economic and/or
political entity extending indefinitely backward in time beyond 1955 is
extremely misleading. Economic core-periphery relations are dynamic and
multiscaled and frequently shift over the course of history, not to mention
the variously constructed political boundaries asserted by different
governments so as to maximize advantages and minimize risks in particular
historical contexts. The imperial projects of Rome, Spain, Britain, and even
Sweden are obvious examples. A sociometabolic perspective on the
accumulation of industrial infrastructure must avoid being straitjacketed
into the fetishized nation-state categories that organize economic statistics.
We do not need to go very far back in time to find large parts of Europe
peripheral to the industrial and commercial developments in Britain and the
Netherlands. Nor should we forget how recently North America was a
source of cheap (largely slave) labor and land serving as a vast extractive
zone particularly for Britain. If Bairoch (1993:59–71) finds that, just prior
to the First World War, the “developed West” was basically self-sufficient in
minerals and other raw materials, it certainly does not mean that the
accumulation of industrial infrastructure within its present-day political
boundaries has not historically been characterized by ecologically unequal
relations of exchange between core regions and what were then their
peripheries.
The fundamental structural relationship, if we are to understand the social
metabolism underlying economic development, is the exchange between
geographical spaces experiencing an accumulation of physical capital
(cores), on one hand, and extractive areas suffering net exports of natural
resources (peripheries), on the other. Political boundaries and national
statistics frequently—if not systematically—distort and mystify this
relationship. At certain times and places an industrial core region in a given
country will find its domestic, national periphery more or less sufficient for
its metabolic requirements, at other times not. Although national statistics
would make them seem comparable entities, Canada and Singapore
obviously have very different capacities in this respect. Although the basic
structural imbalance, which Marx identified as the “metabolic rift” between
town and countryside, is as old and pervasive as urbanization itself (cf.
McNeill 2000:281–295), the past few centuries of globalization have seen
an increasing ambition—and capacity—of nation-states to displace such
imbalances beyond their own borders to the international arena.
Finally, our review of the historical evidence from the past two millennia
shows that developments in core areas, thus defined, have in fact
systematically relied on imports of bulk commodities the significance of
which, although they were much less voluminous per capita than today, was
very far from negligible for their metabolism: foodstuffs, timber, metals,
fuels, and fibers are only the most obvious examples. Even if the mid-
twentieth century to Bairoch suggests a discontinuity in the sense that
extraction of such resources for the “developed West” (Europe and North
America) was increasingly externalized beyond its modern political
boundaries, there are clear historical continuities in the fundamental
structures of unequal ecological exchange. Not only was the “developed
West” a rather recently constituted geographical and political category at
that time, but, over the centuries, structures of unequal ecological exchange
have frequently unfolded with little regard to political boundaries. As long
as it is confined to statistics on the flows of exchange values crossing
national borders, the discourse on development and underdevelopment will
thus be severely constrained.
This indeterminate relationship between economic marginality and
political inclusion is well illustrated in chapter 19, where anthropologist
Joseph Tainter compares the shifting historical fortunes of two marginal
areas, Epirus in present-day Greece and New Mexico in the present-day
United States. Both areas have experienced the redrawing of political
boundaries resulting in transfers from less to more affluent nation-states,
from Turkey to Greece and from Mexico to the United States, respectively
Their parallel developments illustrate a trajectory shared by many rural
areas within affluent nations today, suggesting a completely different kind
of marginality than that of impoverished extractive zones. In these margins
of the “developed” world, government subsidies have made extractive and
subsistence activities obsolete, leaving landesque capital abandoned and
overgrown, while communities have become increasingly dependent on
distant centers and local cohesion is deteriorating. The landscape has been
redefined and commodified as a repository of natural beauty and
stereotyped cultural traditions marketed to urban tourists. Tainter suggests
that a problem shared by local people in Epirus and New Mexico—like
people everywhere—is that they do not have access to the global-scale
information flows that increasingly affect them and make them vulnerable.
Local communities lose political and economic autonomy but not their
propensity to think locally. Tainter proposes, by way of remedy, that world-
system perspectives incorporated into educational curricula within a
generation or two might make thinking about the connections between the
global and the local the normal state of affairs. I would add that this is no
doubt already under way, not least with the aid of media such as television
and the Internet, but that access to new information technologies, like other
technologies, is in itself also a matter of unequal global distribution. Even
more apparent are the inequalities in terms of capacity to act on such
information. In these respects, the Epirotes and New Mexicans probably
have less to worry about than local communities in the hinterlands of
Bolivia, Zaire, or Pakistan. The significance of thinking globally, however,
will certainly remain crucial as long as globalized capital flows continue to
determine the fortunes of local communities. Tainter’s chapter shows how
the social, cultural, and environmental aspects of dependency and
marginalization are intertwined.
The final word goes to Immanuel Wallerstein, originator of the world-
system concept, who in chapter 20 discusses problems of global
environmental change in terms of their intellectual, moral, and political
implications. He confirms what several of the other contributors have
suggested, that the unequal distribution of environmental damage is not
accidental but has been an intrinsic part of the capitalist system from the
start. Turning our gaze around toward the future, he suggests that this
capitalist world-system is presently undergoing a terminal structural crisis,
and that the transition to a different kind of system will be completed within
fifty years. The nature of the new system that shall replace it will be
decided by all of us, he believes, through our political activity over these
next few decades. The choice, it seems, can be symbolized by what
Wallerstein calls the camp of Porto Alegre versus the camp of Davos.
Although he is relentlessly pessimistic about the possibilities of sustainable
development under capitalism, this very pessimism paradoxically permits
him to end on an optimistic note. Another world is possible.

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 I
THE ENVIRONMENT IN WORLD-
SYSTEM HISTORY: TRACING SOCIAL
PROCESSES IN NATURE
1

Environmental Impacts of the Roman

Economy and Social Structure: Augustus to
Diocletian
J. DONALD HUGHES

DURING THE THREE hundred years after its founding by Augustus

Caesar (27 BC–AD 14), the Roman Empire first reached a peak of
economic growth and prosperity, and then suffered a severe crisis and
decline (Hughes 2005:196–213), so that by the end of this period the
emperor Diocletian (284–305), a responsible ruler, believed it necessary to
enact a coordinated series of measures designed to rescue the economy.
This historical process took place within a context of environmental
deterioration and resource depletion. Roman economic activity produced
profound and long-lasting impacts on the landscape of the empire.
Exploitation of forests, hunting and fishing, mining and metallurgy,
pastoralism and agriculture, all meant the transformation of major segments
of the ancient environment. Roman trade extended outside the empire, and
had its effects on landscapes there also.

The Social Structure of the Roman Empire

The economy of the Roman Empire was organized primarily to benefit the
upper strata of society: the landlords rather than the peasantry, the rich
rather than the poor, the masters and certainly not the slaves. Above all,
power and economic benefit were concentrated in the office of the emperor
and in his household. The emperor controlled a separate treasury and his
edicts had the force of law. The emperor could affect the economic structure
and thus environmental impact, although it must be noted that Roman
understanding of economic policy was limited, and that nothing like
environmental policy existed.
A word about the social standing of women is appropriate at the outset.
The Roman tradition was extremely patriarchal in the sense that a woman’s
status was determined by that of the man to whom she was primarily
related: her father before her marriage, her husband during marriage, her
son during widowhood, and a related male guardian if none of the
previously named relationships obtained. She would be a member of the
class to which the man belonged, but could not exercise direct political or
legal participation. A woman might be of citizen class, but she was not a
citizen. For example, there were no female senators or magistrates. There
was often an empress (Augusta), but only in relationship to a male emperor.
At the same time, upper-class women could wield considerable political and
economic power through or on behalf of their husbands or other related
men. Their influence in terms of environmental impact was, therefore,
considerable. Whenever the masculine pronoun is encountered in what
follows, therefore, this fact should be remembered.

The Upper Classes

The Roman class structure began in the single city-state of Rome and had
spread across an empire that surrounded the Mediterranean Sea during the
centuries before Augustus. The upper classes (honestiores) were designated
both in terms of family and wealth. The three upper classes were the
senators, equites, and decurions.
Highest among these were the senators, originally the descendants of
patrician families, but augmented by worthy and wealthy plebeians and, by
imperial times, powerful colonial and provincial leaders. Qualification as a
senator required property in the form of landed estate. The influence of this
class in terms of environmental impacts was paramount, since its members
owned a major fraction of the land and along with the emperor had a
determining role in legislation. Many of them owned extensive ranches
(latifundia) where cattle, sheep, pigs, and various agricultural goods were
produced including oil, wine, grains, and cloth. They might invest in
various enterprises, but social and sometimes legal barriers kept them from
direct involvement in trade and commerce.
The second class consisted of equites (equestrians), who were required to
be freeborn (the emperor Tiberius added the qualification of two
generations of free birth) and to have property. This class included an
aristocratic Roman core, leading men from the colonies, and businessmen
(negotiatores). Its members held important public offices including the
prefectures in charge of supplying the cities with food and other necessities.
The principal tax collectors (publicans) were equites. This class was the
leading force in trade and commerce, organizing markets, investing in
shipping, and controlling trade in such products as grain, wine, and oil.
Crucial to the treatment of the environment, equites formed consortia
(societates) to control the exploitation of important state-owned natural
resources such as mines, quarries, and forests (Rostovtzeff 1971:110).
The third class, the decurions, consisted of members of municipal
councils in the empire. Like the first two classes, they were expected to
share high birth, wealth, and good reputation. They also performed public
duties including local administration, finances, and tax collection.
Environmental decisions on the local level, such as land questions or the
creation of infrastructure, often fell to them. These three classes had an
advantageous status under law. Together they constituted less than two
percent of the population of the Roman Empire, but they controlled the vast
preponderance of its economy.
There was a steady concentration of land ownership into the hands of the
wealthy, because over time the small farmers had gone into debt to the large
landowners, placing their land in security, and had not been able to pay
back the loans (Simkhovitch 1921:104). “For neither knowledge nor effort
can be of any use to any person whatsoever, without those expenses which
the operations require” (Columella, De Re Rustica 1.1). The landowners
controlled huge estates (latifundia) , where tenant sharecroppers and
contingents of cattle-herding slaves directed by bailiffs performed the labor.
Large consortia of wealthy families contracted with the government to
exploit mines, forests, and other resources. There were also many smaller
enterprises run by citizens of lesser rank, including freedmen, and these
often depended on funding from the more affluent. Trade was usually
conducted by the dependent enterprises, since commercial occupations were
considered demeaning to those of the upper classes, although nothing
prevented the latter from profiting through the labor of the former. They
therefore provided the construction funds and other venture capital for
merchant fleets that crisscrossed the Mediterranean and other nearby seas
including the near Atlantic Ocean, the Black Sea, and the avenue through
the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. The more direct route to India had been
opened by a Greek sailor named Hippalus using the monsoon winds not
long before the rule of Augustus. Pliny the Elder (first century) complained
that Rome spent a hundred million sesterces every year in trade with India,
and this money was exchanged not for bulky resources that might have
benefited the common people, but for more easily transported luxuries such
as spices, jewels, fine woods, birds, and delicate textiles to satisfy the tastes
of the elite (Frank and Gills 1993, 170). A statuette of the Indian goddess
Lakshmi was found in Pompeii, providing one bit of evidence of this trade
(Charlesworth 1951). Roman exports in exchange included gold, silver and
silverware, works of art, wine, pottery, and slaves.

The Lower Classes

The lower classes (humiliores) were also divided into three recognized
groups, the freeborn poor, freedmen, and slaves. The freeborn poor were
those who had never been slaves and had no slave ancestry. The majority
worked on the land, making up the preponderance of the population of the
Roman Empire, but some were self-employed tradesmen, others were
skilled or unskilled workers who sold their labor, and a large group made up
a portion of the urban unemployed. Although it is not well represented in
historical sources, the effect of this class on environmental change must
have been major, taking place in a multitude of everyday decisions and
activities throughout the empire.
Freedmen were emancipated slaves and those descended from them.
They were eligible for Roman citizenship, but that citizenship might carry
certain disabilities, and like the freeborn poor they might be dependent on
patrons from among the honestiores. Some became rich, powerful, and
envied, like the bureaucrats appointed by the emperor Claudius (41–54) or
the millionaire Trimalchio, who although fictitious undoubtedly represented
a class that existed. According to Petronius’s Satyricon (first century),
Trimalchio was considering the purchase of the entire island of Sicily to add
to his landholdings, an obvious exaggeration but one with an edge of truth.
Most of the freedmen were not rich, but people economically akin to the
freeborn poor.
The vast majority of the Roman population was rural, lived at a
subsistence level, and led precarious economic lives (Garnsey and Saller
1982:28). Most of them, probably 80 percent, labored on the land. Small
farmers managed only a slight surplus margin of production, if any, and that
was quickly commandeered by the landlords and by imperial taxes, which
weighed heavily on the agricultural sector throughout the period with which
we are concerned. The government’s basic concern, above all, was to
finance the imperial court, the bureaucracy, and the military, and to
construct public buildings and infrastructure such as roads and sewers. The
danger of famine in the countryside, and consequent political unrest, was
recognized by the progressive emperors Nerva (96–98) and Trajan (98–
117), whose edicts required landowners receiving government grants to
make subsistence payments to poor children in rural districts. The practice
of such government handouts did not genuinely ameliorate the
socioeconomic structure that was in effect designed to benefit the social
elite. The distributions may have been directed toward preventing unrest
among the poor, and possibly also toward increasing the population.

Slavery
No picture of the effect of the Roman economy on the natural environment
can be complete without an investigation of the role of slavery. As Aldo
Schiavone (2002:122–23) recently explained it,

The use of slaves became the ideal functional means of

agricultural exploitation, slave labor the basis of all
manufacturing, and the owner of land and slaves the ultimate
protagonists of every organization of production.... [I]t is
impossible to separate the society of Rome—its material
foundations, obviously, but also its ideas, convictions, mentality,
ethics, and even its anthropology—from the context of slavery.
 The status of a slave was equivocal; the law treated a slave as a
“speaking tool” (instrumentum vocale). It might perhaps be better to say
that slaves were humans reduced to the state of sources of energy: for
example, machines such as cranes used to raise masses of stone for
construction were powered by men inside wheel cages using their weight to
make the cages revolve. But gradually through Roman history, especially
during the second century, a degree of personhood was recognized. A freed
slave could become a Roman citizen, although of lower class. Slaves made
up at least 35 percent of the population of Roman Italy during the time of
Augustus, and were similarly numerous elsewhere in the Roman Empire.
Slave owners among the higher classes were known to possess hundreds or
thousands. In AD 61, for example, Lucius Pedanius Secundus had four
hundred house slaves, while field slaves and mine slaves were much more
numerous. Many agricultural slaves worked on latifundia where they would
watch grazing animals and take them to mountain pastures in summer, but
Columella (De Re Rustica 3.3.8) tells of specialized slaves skilled in
viticulture, and there were slaves who managed business for their owners.
But slaves could not be expected to exhibit initiative in improving
agricultural methods or assuring sustained yields of renewable resources
because they were obliged to obey the commands of their owners to do
mechanical and repetitive work, had little time at their own disposal, and if
they produced agricultural surplus or other income, it went to their masters.
They lacked even the marginal incentives that tenant sharecroppers had in
planning for personal and family rewards. A slave economy cannot as a rule
benefit the environment: slave labor enabled exploiters to do more damage,
and a slave class whose members were liable to be sold anywhere could not
establish a relationship of responsibility with the land. Slaves performed
most of the actual work in forestry, such as felling trees (Aubert 2001:101).
In addition, as Pliny the Elder expressed it, the fact that “agricultural
operations are performed by slaves with fettered ankles and by the hands of
malefactors with branded faces” (Natural History 18.4.21), increased the
tendency of Roman citizens to think of farming not as care of the earth, but
as degrading work. The Roman system of slave labor was not only
corrupting of human values, but environmentally destructive as well.
Roman Economic History and the Natural
Environment

Augustus to Marcus Aurelius

Augustus inaugurated a period of peace within the Roman Empire, although
wars of conquest and defense continued on the frontiers. The Pax Romana,
which lasted with few interruptions until the early third century, enabled an
expansion both of population and of the economy. Piracy at sea and
banditry on land were suppressed, opening golden opportunities for
commerce (Finley 1999:156). Expansion of the economy, however, meant
that the richer orders of Roman society, which constituted a tiny minority,
became richer. Augustus consolidated Rome’s domination of the landscape
of the entire Mediterranean world and beyond it in western Europe,
Claudius added Britain in the first century, and Trajan conquered Dacia
(Romania) in the second (Hughes 2001:73) and conducted a campaign
(ultimately unsuccessful) in Mesopotamia (Iraq). This territorial control
enabled Roman officials to enrich themselves at the expense of provincials,
and Roman entrepreneurs to exploit natural resources over an area of some
7,800,000 square kilometers. The demand for timber in construction of
large buildings and ships caused deforestation over large tracts of land. The
once-flourishing forests of Lebanon, for instance, were so depleted that the
emperor Hadrian (117–138) reserved them, prohibiting the cutting of cedars
and three other species except by imperial permission. Today the famous
cedars are represented by a few small groves.
Economic output increased due to an increase in scale rather than in
efficiency. In agriculture, new areas were cleared and brought into
production, and labor-intensive methods increased food production, a
necessity during this period of rising population, especially because a larger
proportion of people was living in cities. Rome, the capital, grew in
population and area, spreading over the surrounding countryside and
blurring the distinction between city and suburbs (Morley 1996:85). The
imperial government continued to make every possible effort to provide a
subsidized grain import to feed the urban poor, and under Augustus 80,000
tons of grain were distributed annually free to 200,000 people (Schiavone
2002:96). Augustus treated Egypt, one of the major sources of wheat
imports, as his own personal property, thus securing the role of the emperor
in providing the food supply. The emperor also took interest in an organized
business that provided a continuous supply of gladiators and animals for
entertainment in the amphitheater. These two enterprises constituted the
famous “bread and circuses” (panis et circenses), intended to keep the mob
happy and prevent revolution. They were also notorious engines of
environmental depletion: the grain dole drained the agricultural production
of the provinces, and the arena contributed to the extirpation of large
species of wildlife everywhere. Lions disappeared from Europe, tigers from
Hyrcania (Iran) and Armenia, and elephants, rhinoceroses, and zebras from
North Africa, to mention a few.

The Crisis of the Third Century

Depletion of natural resources and wasteful methods of exploitation were
underlying causes of the crisis of the third century, which manifested itself
in the form of shortages and ruinous inflation. There were no important
advances in agricultural or industrial technology except possibly the use of
the vertical undershot waterwheel to grind grain. A population decline
probably began with the great plague of 166–182 under the emperor Marcus
Aurelius (161–180), after which violence, food shortages, and returns of the
plague kept recovery at bay. Some emperors attempted state control of
resources, raising taxes including those collected in kind, and assuming
direct control over some aspects of trade. Archaeological deposits of
amphorae, for instance, reveal that the imperial bureaucracy took charge of
supplying oil and wine from Spain to Rome during the reign of Septimius
Severus (193–211), but he was the only emperor of the first half of the third
century to exercise consistent control of such matters (MacMullen
1988:14). The emperor Caracalla (211–217) enlarged the Roman citizen
body and the tax rolls by an edict granting Roman citizenship to all free
men in the empire in 212.
The size of the army, and its consumption of finances and resources,
increased by leaps and bounds. Commanders in the provinces sought to
seize power, plunging the empire into fifty years of sporadic warfare. The
battlefields were in the settled regions of the central empire, and destruction
was visited on houses, barns, orchards, and the rural population. The
average period of rule of the emperors between 235 and 284 was two years,
hardly enough time to establish policy, and all of the emperors were
military men, few of whom had any understanding of principles of
economy. Prices rose astronomically; the price of wheat in Egypt, for
example, was 8 drachmas per artaba in the second century, 24 drachmas in
the mid-third century, and 220–300 drachmas in the late third century
(Duncan-Jones 1990:147). Emperors facing financial emergency increased
the minting of coinage, thus exposing it to debasement. Due to the inflation
of the value of precious metals, the cost of the metal in coins rose above
their face value, forcing the issuing of coins in less valuable materials such
as bronze or lead (perhaps with an easily eroded wash of silver). Silver
could be used for coins of higher denominations, in a never-ending
inflationary process, but the tax base of the empire, which depended on
agricultural productivity, was shrinking. There were further onslaughts of
plague in 251–266 and afterward, and emperors made up a deficit of
manpower by allowing groups of barbarians to settle within the empire.

The Reforms of Diocletian

Population decline continued to be a problem in later antiquity, meaning
fewer farm workers, so that reductions in population and agricultural
production tended to be synergistic. This exacerbated what was happening
at the end of the third century: although constant warfare and periodic
plagues were also to blame, there was a chronic agricultural decline
deriving from the environmental damage the Romans had caused. Food was
becoming scarcer, prices were rising, and there was a general shortage of
labor. Diocletian attacked these problems vigorously, if not entirely
successfully. His edicts on occupations required civil and military officials,
decurions, landowners, and shipowners to provide heirs for their positions,
namely their own natural or adopted sons. This was intended to counteract
the drop in population by encouraging those in essential jobs to produce
children. It also turned these professions into hereditary castes. The same
principle was later applied to others on whom the food supply depended:
bakers, butchers, and food merchants, and then craftsmen, postal
employees, workers in state factories, and ordinary soldiers. It was no
surprise, then, when agricultural workers were included. Laws helped
landlords tie peasants to the soil, restricting their freedom of movement and
requiring them to remain permanently attached to the latifundia, thus
beginning a process that led toward eventual serfdom in a later period. The
flight from the land was largely stopped, but at the price of individual
freedom.
Diocletian enacted edicts against inflation, while restructuring the empire
to guarantee central control and restrict local autonomy The Edict on Prices,
issued in 301, set maximum allowable charges for various commodities,
services, and wages. It lists approximately one thousand specific items in an
attempt to control profiteering. The categories listed include food, raw
materials such as timber, clothing, transportation, service charges, and
wages. The exhaustive catalog reveals some of the environmental impacts
of the Romans at the time; for example, prices are given for wild game such
as gazelles, pheasants, and sea urchins, and for furs including badger,
leopard, and sealskin. The prices overall appear to be fair, although perhaps
a small percentage under the rates actually prevailing at the time. If
Diocletian’s wages and prices had become the actual practice, ordinary
people would have had a supportable standard of living (Williams
1985:131). The edict did not succeed, however, because it failed to take
account of such economic principles as wholesale and retail, supply and
demand, and the availability of natural resources. When the price set by the
edict for a commodity was considerably below what the market demanded,
the item disappeared from the shelves in stores; as Lactantius said, “Men
were afraid to display anything for sale, and the scarcity became more
grievous and excessive than ever” (Death of the Persecutors 7). Of course a
black market, with inflated prices, appeared under the noses of the
authorities. The environmental base of the Roman world continued to
deteriorate, and the system Diocletian envisioned collapsed along with the
unity of the empire.

The Environmental Effects of the Roman Social and

Economic System
The fact of environmental degradation as a result of the Roman economy
and social structure is quite clear. Shortages of food and rising prices were
among the debilitating effects. The landscape deteriorated: for example,
abandoned olive presses of Roman date exist in the North African desert
where today there are no trees at all, much less olives, in sight.
 Deforestation in the mountains left the slopes vulnerable to torrential
winter rains, as did the destruction of brush and grasses by grazing of
domestic animals. Erosion swept away useful soil, so that trees could not
grow again in areas that had been forested before. The sediments of this
erosion still exist and can be studied in lowlands not far from Rome, and
along some coastlines around the Mediterranean Sea, where they formed
marshlands that became the haunt of malarial mosquitoes, which forced
villages to relocate themselves to the hills wherever possible (Hughes
1994:82–86).
A related problem affecting agricultural productivity is salinization.
Water used for irrigation has salt content, and this originates from contact
with salt-bearing strata over which it flows. The amount of mineral content,
including salt, is greater when the strata are exposed by erosion. As
evaporation takes place in the fields, the salt is concentrated in the soil,
making it more saline. This problem is particularly noticeable in poorly
drained areas with warm, dry climates where irrigation is practiced, which
were common in Iberia and the southern and eastern portions of the Roman
Empire. In some limited areas it became so severe that food crops could not
grow.
Roman farmers knew agricultural remedies for problems like siltation,
salinization, and soil exhaustion through the leaching of essential minerals,
but could not always apply them due to political and military pressures. The
tax system bore most heavily on the agricultural sector of the economy,
whether the levies were collected in coin or in kind. Farmers were often
pressed into the army, so manpower available to care for the land declined.
Then the theater of war was often the countryside; farm families were
killed, their property requisitioned by the troops, their crops, buildings, and
terraces destroyed. Sometimes damage could be repaired, but often
ecosystems were not given the time to recover, making them vulnerable to
insects and diseases.
The extinction of species of animals and plants was noted above. This
has a negative effect on the total organic system of the environment.
Generally speaking, a complex ecosystem is more resilient than a simple
one. This is because an ecosystem with many species has more ways of
resisting depletion if it is subjected to stress. As one species after another is
removed, the total complex becomes more liable to disaster. Thus by killing
off many animals, the Romans were unwittingly undermining the
ecosystems that supported the economy. This was true even when the
species seemed harmful. Wolves, foxes, wildcats, and other predators were
hunted out because they sometimes raided domestic animals, but the
ordinary diets of predators included rodents that were even more damaging
to crops, thus keeping their numbers down. Ancient writers recorded
disastrous plagues of mice, for example, that consumed crops and stored
grain, and that the reduced numbers of predators were unable to control,
although none of these writers saw the connection.
Several factors noted above affected agricultural productivity in the
Roman Mediterranean, where the economy was based on the agrarian
sector. The inevitable result of the human failure to support nature was that
nature could support fewer human beings. Industry, although not as large a
part of the total economy as agriculture, had important effects. The scars
left by Roman mines are still visible today. Mining and smelting operations
did more than lay waste to local areas, however. The fuel needs of a large
operation like the iron center at Populonia could consume annually the
growth of wood provided by an average forest of a million acres. There
were many such centers, and one has to add to their fuel demands the great
amounts of wood and charcoal required by the pottery industry.
Pollution was produced by Roman industry. Its extent and importance is
a matter of controversy. That dangerous smoke was produced by some
operations is a matter of record; Strabo (Geography 3.2.8) observed that
silver-smelting furnaces in Iberia were built with high chimneys to carry the
deadly smoke away from the workers. Lead is the predominant metal in
silver ore: it and other poisonous elements like mercury and arsenic were
present in industrial processes such as the working of other metallic ores,
pottery, leather, and textiles. Workers in these materials were notably
subject to poisoning. It is less clear how much the general population was
exposed to toxic substances, but it is a public health factor of possibly
major proportions. Lead, or silver with high lead content, was used in
utensils, dishes, and cooking pots. Sweeteners, jam, and fish sauces
contained a high concentration of lead compounds. It was of course the
upper classes that used silver service and consumed these delicacies. Water
was often conducted through lead pipes or aqueducts sealed with lead, and
acidic water can be contaminated by lead. Studies of the Greenland ice cap
have shown that lead in the atmosphere due to the smelting industry
increased dramatically during Roman times. Bones from Roman burials
exhibit a variable, but often very high, lead content. The effects of lead
poisoning include interference with reproduction, physical weakness, and
dulling of the intellectual faculties, and these are cumulative, slow to
develop, long-lasting, and not easily seen to be connected with the cause. In
addition, mercury was commonly used in gold refining, and arsenic
appeared in pigments and medicines. It is likely that large numbers of
people in the Roman Empire suffered from varying degrees of
environmental poisoning produced by industrial processes.
The poor quality of the urban environment is a subject of frequent
comment, particularly by Roman poets of the early empire. Noise pollution
and smoke receive the most notice. Air pollution from smoke and dust was
bad in the larger cities, judging from contemporary ancient comment. Food
was cooked, and rooms were commonly heated, by open wood or charcoal
fires. Cities in the Roman Empire had huge public baths whose furnaces
and hypocausts were heated with prodigious amounts of fuel. Smoky lamps
and torches provided light. The air was so polluted in Rome that those who
could afford it tried to find relief by frequent trips out of the city, and some
commented that people coming back from the countryside would lose their
tan in smoggy Rome within a few days. Juvenal, in his Third Satire,
expanded the list of urban ills, complaining of traffic congestion, fires,
public works projects that destroyed natural beauty, chamber pots emptied
out of upper-story windows, and ever-increasing crime and vandalism.
Garbage and sewage disposal presented a serious health problem in
ancient cities. The larger cities had sewers like Rome’s cloaca maxima,
which emptied into the river Tiber, an efficient arrangement except when
the not uncommon floods, exacerbated by the deforestation of the Tiber
watershed, backed the effluents up into the city. It was said that at these
times, the drain in the floor of the Pantheon looked like a fountain. The
materials collected in latrines were sometimes used in tanneries. Many
cities had carts to carry the worst of the garbage outside the walls, but much
of it collected in the streets. Pompeii installed “stepping stones” so that
pedestrians could cross the muck-filled avenues. The debris of living is, of
course, one reason that ancient cities gradually rose above their
surroundings on elevations of human origin. The effects on the health of
urban populations, with water pollution, vermin, and diseases, are evident,
and the sanitary conditions must have favored the spread of the plagues that
swept across the Mediterranean world from time to time.

Conclusion
The conclusion that must be drawn is that the structure of the society and
economy of the Romans caused environmental changes that depleted their
natural resources and were of critical importance in hampering their ability
to feed the population, to maintain health, and to prosper. These changes
therefore weakened society, depleting its human resources.1 Their effects
were felt early, but were cumulative, reaching a devastating level by the
middle of the third century. The problems, modified but not solved by the
reforms of Diocletian, would continue to plague the empire in the following
centuries.

Note
1 In mentioning probable declines in the population of the Roman Empire,
as well as the various estimates of population percentages included earlier
in this chapter, it must be admitted that these are qualitative estimates based
on ancient literary sources, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence. There
are no dependable quantitative records or generally accepted proxies for
them. The Roman government took censuses including the biblical one
(Luke 2.1–5), and numbers exist, but they are of certain categories only and
are not controlled geographically. Boak (1955:3–21) gave the widely
varying estimates then available, which clustered around a population of
from 50 to 65 million at the height of prosperity in the second century AD,
with a drop to about 40 million in the ensuing period of plague and military
crisis. Boak did not commit himself to a numerical estimate of his own, but
indicated that he conservatively favored lower rather than higher figures.
The situation has not improved much since then, with many scholars
avoiding the subject entirely. A search for “population” or “census” in
indices in recent studies is enlightening only in showing the lack of such
entries. MacMullen (1988:1–57) made an impressive survey of quantitative
evidence of many kinds, but scrupulously avoided any attempt to estimate
population. Figures at this time cannot be regarded as definitive.
References
Aubert, J.-J. 2001. The fourth factor: Managing non-agricultural production
in the Roman world. In Economies beyond agriculture in the classical
world, ed. D. J. Mattingly and J. Salmon, 90–112. London and New
York: Routledge.
Boak, A. E. R. 1955. Manpower shortage and the fall of the Roman Empire
in the west. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Charlesworth, M. P. 1951. Roman trade with India: A resurvey. In Studies
in Roman economic and social history, ed. P. R. Coleman-Norton, 131–
143. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Duncan-Jones, R. 1990. Structure and scale in the Roman economy.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Finley, M. I. 1999. The ancient economy. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Frank, A. G., and B. K. Gills, eds. 1993. The world system: Five hundred
years or five thousand? London and New York: Routledge.
Garnsey, P., and R. Saller. 1982. The early principate: Augustus to Trajan.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hughes, J. D. 1994. Pan’s travail: Environmental problems of the ancient
Greeks and Romans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
————. 2001. Environmental history of the world: Humankind’s
changing role in the community of life. London and New York:
Routledge.
————. 2005. The Mediterranean: An environmental history. Santa
Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO.
MacMullen, R. 1988. Corruption and the decline of Rome. New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press.
Morley, N. 1996. Metropolis and hinterland: The city of Rome and the
Italian economy, 200 B.C.–A.D. 200. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press.
Rostovtzeff, M. 1971. The social and economic history of the Roman
Empire. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schiavone, A. 2002. The end of the past: Ancient Rome and the modern
west. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Simkhovitch, V G. 1921. Rome’s fall reconsidered. In Toward the
understanding of Jesus and other historical studies, 84–139. New York:
Macmillan.
Williams, S. 1985. Diocletian and the Roman recovery. New York:
Methuen.
2

“People Said Extinction Was Not Possible”:

Two Thousand Years of Environmental
Change in South China
ROBERT B. MARKS

THE IDEA OF SPECIES extinction emerged early in the nineteenth

century, not only in Europe, but in China as well. In France, Georges Cuvier
studied the anatomy of fossil remains, and, concluding that some species
had indeed become extinct, in 1812 published his findings in Discours sur
les révolutions de la surface du globe. Rejecting J. B. Lamarck’s theory of
“transmutation,” which purported to explain fossil remains as old forms of
existing species, Cuvier argued that great geological catastrophes accounted
for extinctions (Bowler 1993:216–217).
In China, one year before the publication of Cuvier’s book, an official by
the name of Deng Bi’nan also wrote about extinctions. While posted in
Leizhou prefecture in the South China province of Guangdong, Deng wrote
in the “local products” section of the prefectural gazetteer:

Northerners record that Leizhou produced teeth and ivory from

black elephants, and noted that in Xuwen there were bao niu (a
kind of buffalo). The Records of jiaozhou [a fourth-century text]
say that Xuwen had the giant centipede.... [An earlier]
 provincial gazetteer records that in the wilds of Leizhou deer
were plentiful, and that the “fragrant navel of the civet” could
substitute for musk-deer.... Today these do not exist [wu zhe].
(Leizhou fuzhi 1811:juan 2, 67a–b)1

Although both Cuvier and Deng had come to understand that entire
species could vanish, they had come to that understanding in rather different
ways, and they had quite different explanations for extinctions too. Like
other European naturalists, Cuvier had been examining the stratifications in
fossil records, in his case, from areas around Paris, and was seeking
explanations for the observed changes. His “catastrophic” explanation soon
gave way, via Charles Lyell in England, to a more gradualist explanation
that located the processes of species extinction as “part of the normal
operation of Nature” (Bowler 1993:283). Although Lyell did not posit a
mechanism by which species became extinct, in 1859 Charles Darwin did
with the publication of On the Origin of Species: evolution as a product of
natural selection brought about by competition and the struggle for
existence. Influenced by Malthus’s Essay on Population, Darwin arrived at
“a theory of evolution by ecological replacement. As he put it, he had
arrived at ’the absolute knowledge that species die and others replace them”
(Worster 1994:159).
Despite the differences among nineteenth-century European scientists,
they all assigned “natural” causes to the extinction of species (Worster
1994:142). Not so Deng Bi’nan. Deng articulated a relationship of living
things to “the land:”

Because local products come from the land [and because there
are changes in the land], the local products too change over
time. Of the common ones mentioned in the ancient texts, just
80–90% exist today; of the rare ones, just 20–30% survive.
[Today], there is no land that has not changed, so the times are
no longer the same either. (Leizhou fuzhi 1811:juan 2, 67a–b)
The various plants and animals in Leizhou, Deng was saying, are connected
with “the land,” and as there were changes in the land, Deng reasoned, so
too were there changes in the plant and animal community, sometimes
leading to extinction.
The question, of course, is what caused those “changes in the land”?
Deng did not have to state it explicitly, for the world in which he was living
provided ample evidence for the cause of the changes: human activity. What
this chapter will explore is the two-thousand-year history of human changes
to South China, revealing a history in which virtually every inch of the
landscape had been worked and reworked by human hands, a history that
was palpable to Deng Bi’nan: “Today, there is no land that has not
changed.” Significantly, Deng’s evidence for extinctions came from the
written record, not the fossil record. Unlike Europeans, whose connection
with their past was discontinuous and marred by the “dark ages,” literate
Chinese of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) were connected to their three-
millennia past via written records. And it was Deng’s reading of these
written records regarding the area of his posting that led him to conclude,
contrary to what others believed, that anthropogenic changes in the land had
led to extinctions.

The Land
This chapter deals with environmental changes in that part of China known
historically as Lingnan. Lingnan is the region of South China stretching
from Hainan Island in the south to the Nanling mountain range in the north;
Lingnan means “south of the mountain range,” which it is. Roughly
speaking it is the area within a two-hundred-mile radius of Hong Kong, and
is nearly coterminous with Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, an area
about the size of France (Marks 1998:ch.1).
Given the virtual absence by the twentieth century of any natural forest,
reconstructing what kind of forests originally (i.e. some two thousand years
ago, before human populations dramatically altered the environment) might
have covered Lingnan is not easy, requiring botanists to examine climatic
conditions, compare conditions in Lingnan with regions elsewhere in the
world, investigate the few, inaccessible mountain areas where forest still
stands, consult historical records, and conduct field experiments. While
much uncertainty remains, to date the most extensive considerations of the
issue have been conducted by Wang Chi-wu (Wang 1961) and by Chinese
scientists whose synthesized findings were published in 1982 (Zhongguo
ziran dili 1982). According to these studies, the original forests of Lingnan
included three main types: (1) an evergreen broad-leafed forest composed
mainly of evergreen oaks (and associated trees like the laurel), which grew
on the inland hills of northern Guangdong and throughout much of
Guangxi; (2) a tropical rain forest, growing in the lower elevations (below
100 m) in the southern parts of Guangdong and Guangxi, and on Hainan
Island, composed of many species of straight-trunked trees forming a high
canopy above the forest floor; and (3) a littoral forest on the coast,
including mangrove swamps submerged in brackish water. Lingnan two
thousand years ago, in short, was covered by tropical and semitropical
rainforests.

The People

The Original Inhabitants

Lingnan was inhabited first not by Chinese but by other peoples. To be sure,
Chinese had settled in Lingnan as early as the Qin dynasty (ca. 221 BCE),
albeit in small numbers, but even then the Chinese were invading territory
inhabited for millennia by various non-Chinese groups. In the lowlands of
the river valleys and along the coast were various Tai peoples, the largest
group now called the Zhuang, with a smaller group called the Li in the
littoral belt on the Leizhou peninsula and the coastal strip on Hainan Island
(Csete 1995).
Others called Yao migrated in at various times, but with the lowlands
already occupied, they settled in the hills and practiced slash-and-burn,
shifting agriculture. In contrast, the lowland Tai peoples grew wet rice, cast
bronze, wove silk, and by about 300 BCE had organized themselves into a
state called Yue. With a state system and knowledge of sericulture and
metallurgy, the Tai were the only people whom the Chinese did not consider
barbarians (man). But that did not prevent the Qin from conquering them,
which they did over a period of years (234–222 BCE). The Tai ruling elite
fled south to organize another state in Thailand, leaving behind the Tai
agriculturists in the lowlands.
 Predating (or concurrent with, in the case of the Yao) Chinese settlement
of Lingnan, then, a half million or so non-Chinese peoples had developed
two different agricultural regimes, one for the lowlands and one for the
uplands (Moseley 1973:12). In the lowlands, the Tai planted wet rice,
maybe in paddies and maybe in the same plot year after year, while in the
uplands the Yao slashed and burned their way through the hills, probably
waiting twenty to twenty-five years before burning them once more, and on
the coastal littoral and Hainan Island, Li peoples pursued a more desultory
approach to growing food.

Chinese Migrants
Chinese migration into Lingnan came in three principal waves, the first a
small one following the Qin subjugation of the Yue kingdom around 225
BCE, when some hundred thousand or so troops occupied Lingnan and then
intermarried with local Tai women. The second wave came in the early
fourth century CE, when nomadic tribesmen invaded north China and
sacked the Chinese imperial capital at Loyang, bringing on the “Yongjia
Panic,” when inhabitants of North China fled south. The third wave began
similarly in the twelfth century when Central Asians—this time the Jin
armies (predecesors of the Mongols)—in 1126 CE took the Song capital in
Kaifeng, forcing the Song to relocate their capital south of the Yangzi River
in Hangzhou; this third wave continued in the 1270s, when the Mongols
began their push to conquer all of China (Li et al. 1993:171–205). As many
historians have noted, when northern nomadic invaders pressed south of the
Great Wall, they set off a chain reaction wave of Chinese migration south
(Gumilev 1987:23). Many of those fleeing the war and disorder in the north
found their way through the Nanling passes and into Lingnan.
By 1850 the population of Lingnan had gone through three great waves.
In the first, beginning from the time of the first recorded human settlement
in Lingnan in 2 CE, population increased to a peak around 1200 in the
Southern Song, after which the Mongol invasions sent population declining
until about 1400, when peace returned to China under the Ming dynasty.
Relative to the population peak in the Southern Song, Lingnan in 1400 had
become relatively depopulated, and had reached a low point from which
population increased slowly but steadily for another 250 years. The second
wave thus corresponds mostly to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), with
population declining by a quarter to a third in the mid-seventeenth century
because of the wars, epidemics, and famines attending the transition to the
Qing dynasty. The third wave began in the late seventeenth century, when
peace once again returned and the population started growing, by 1700
surpassing previous levels and never declining to pre-1600 levels again.
Indeed, the third wave is not yet complete, with population increasing still,
and probably continuing until well into the twenty-first century.

Figure 2.1. Estimated population of Lingnan, 2–1853 CE. Source: Robert

B. Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late
Imperial South China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 278

The Farms
The most densely populated part of late imperial Lingnan (ca. 1400–1800)
—the Pearl River delta—became the most agriculturally rich region in
Lingnan, and hence the most densely populated. Formed of alluvial soils
that had been captured from the silt flowing down from the major rivers,
these “sand flats” (shatan), as the Chinese called them, were worked and
reworked, until they became very productive rice paddies producing, by the
sixteenth century, two crops of rice and one of vegetables or wheat annually
(Braudel 1981:151). While peasant farmers produced much of the food the
family consumed, agriculture in Lingnan could not be called “subsistence”
farming, for many nonfood commercial crops were grown and exchanged in
markets that dotted the countryside. Besides rice, peasant farmers in the
Pearl River delta grew sugar cane, hemp, cotton, and mulberries for silk
worms; the most important cycle of exchange involved rice for textiles (or
the raw materials to make them, hemp and cotton), and vice versa. Indigo,
tea, and fruits also were important crops.
But while commerce and market exchanges were an important part of the
rural economy, even in the most remote parts of Lingnan, until about 1550
it is unwarranted to think of the rural economy as being commercialized. To
be sure, as the population grew from 1400 to 1550, the gross amount of
crops marketed and the number of rural markets increased, but they did so
at the same rate as the growth of population. Indeed, the proportion of
agricultural land devoted to commercial crops in 1550 was about what it
had been in 1400. But from 1550 on, the agricultural economy of Lingnan
became highly commercialized, by which I mean that markets and
marketing activity expanded at a rate faster than that of the population.
The most immediate stimulus for the commercialization of the economy
was the expansion of export possibilities for numerous goods produced in
and around South China, especially silk, sugar, and porcelain, among other
items that Chinese merchants capitalized on, spurring further expansion of
agricultural and industrial productive capacity. Most of the trade in the early
sixteenth century was with Japan and Southeast Asia, and later with
Portuguese and Dutch traders as well. As is now well known, huge amounts
of silver flowed into China, not necessarily in payment for Chinese exports,
but because of the demand in China for silver expressed in high silver
prices relative to gold and copper (von Glahn 1996:126–142; Flynn and
Giraldez 1995:201–222; Frank 1998:111–116). After 1571, trade through
Manila also brought silver into the South China economy. Chinese
merchants from Guangdong and Fujian provinces sailed to Manila with
their goods, which the Spanish exchanged for silver from the American
mines; from there the silver flowed back to China, and the Chinese
commodities found their way to Europe. By 1600, this trade resulted in an
annual inflow of perhaps 200,000 kilograms of silver into the coastal
economies of south and southeast China, from Ningpo south to Guangzhou
(Atwell 1977, 1982).
The increased exports of silk precipitated significant changes in land-use
patterns. In the Pearl River delta, the silk industry developed on a base that
had been created first by the “sand flat” fields, and then a particular
combination of fish ponds with fruit trees. In the fifteenth century, peasant
farmers in the Pearl River delta began replacing some of their “sand flat”
rice fields with fish ponds, probably in response to increased demand from
the city of Guangzhou. The mud and the muck raked up into embankments
above the flood plain protected the ponds from flooding, while the high
water table filled the hole with water, and the pond was stocked with
various kinds of carp fry netted from local waters. On the embankments,
peasant farmers in the early Ming planted mostly fruit trees (long-yan,
litchi, etc.), giving rise to the “fruit tree and fish pond” (gno ji yu tang)
combination. The carp fed on organic matter that either dropped or was
thrown into the pond, while the muck scooped up from the pond fertilized
the fruit trees and the rice fields, and added height to the embankments and
more protection for the fish ponds.
The “fruit tree and fish pond” culture provided a ready-made base for
expansion of the silk industry when increased demand warranted. As the
demand for silk increased, peasant farmers replaced the fruit trees with
mulberry trees, giving rise to the “mulberry tree and fish pond” system, and
then began digging up even more rice paddies. By 1581, in the Long-shan
area of Shunde county, 18 percent of the productive “land” was fish ponds,
and when combined with the mulberry trees on the embankments,
accounted for about 30 percent of the cultivated land area (Ye and Tan
1985:22).2

Commercialization of Rice
As peasant farmers dug up the rice fields for the “mulberry tree and fish
pond” system, they turned to the market to purchase their food, and markets
grew both in size and in number. To meet the food demands in the Pearl
River delta, peasant farmers elsewhere in Lingnan began producing rice for
export. Throughout the East, West, and North River drainage basins, local
markets gathered rice from their hinterlands for export downriver to the
delta. As far up the East River as Heyuan, the market exported rice
downriver, and even the market in Yong’an, perhaps one of the most remote
and least accessible counties in all of Lingnan, exported rice to Heyuan. In
Guangxi, two of the three largest rice export markets were on the West
River, one in Wuzhou and the other upriver at Xunzhou; a third collected
rice from Liuzhou prefecture. Rice merchants from Guangzhou and Foshan
established offices (hui guan) at all of the third-level markets, and were
quite active in purchasing rice for the Guangdong market. Indeed, the most
important commercial crop throughout the vast Lingnan hinterland drained
by these major rivers was rice. So great was market demand for rice by the
nineteenth century that peasants in Fengchuan county (up the West River
near the border with Guangxi) “ate yams and sweet potatoes in order to sell
rice for cash,” and in Cangwu and Cenxi counties peasants without
immediate access to water transportation carried sacks of rice on their backs
to market (Luo 1987:8–15). By the middle of the eighteenth century, the
trade in rice knit all of Lingnan together into a single market, sending rice
from low-priced surplus areas to the place where demand and prices were
the highest, in the Pearl River delta. Food flowed throughout the system,
amounting to as much of 25 percent of all rice grown in Lingnan.
From the late Ming through the nineteenth century (and into the
twentieth, for that matter), the commercialization of agriculture thus had
precipitated changes in cropping and land-use patterns, transforming rice
paddies into fish ponds and mulberry fields in the Pearl River delta, and
into sugar cane fields all along the coast, down to and including the Leizhou
peninsula. A landscape in Guangdong province that had been covered with
rice fields thus was reworked under the demands of commerce into a new
landscape, one that said “trade” rather than “food.” But if these changes in
the land were restricted to fields that already supported agriculture, in the
eighteenth century pressures were building to clear more forested land for
agriculture, transforming wooded hills and plains into human artifice.
Over the century from 1753 to 1851, official state figures for Lingnan
register just a 10 percent increase in the amount of cultivated land, an
amount more or less in line with the amount of land reported as reclaimed
and added to the tax rolls. These official figures, though, are notoriously
inaccurate, not just because the Qing state never conducted a land survey to
begin with, but also because of underreporting of new lands brought into
cultivation (and hence kept off the tax rolls).
In my estimation, between 1693 and 1853, an additional 20 million mu
(one mu = approximately one-sixth of an acre) was brought into production
in each of the Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, doubling to 80 million
mu the cultivated land acreage in Lingnan from anything experienced
before. In terms of the percentage of the total Lingnan land area under
cultivation, the amount increased from about 14 percent around 1713 to 24
percent in 1853, representing some 10,000 square kilometers of land. And
because of the way in which land reclamation unfolded, most of those
10,000 square kilometers were marginal fields in the hills. After 1853, little
additional land was brought under the plow, indicating that the limits of
cultivable land in Guangdong province had been reached by the middle of
the nineteenth century.

The Tiger
The obverse of the story of land clearance is the story of deforestation, but
since eighteenth- and even nineteenth-century sources do not speak directly
to the issue, that story can only be pieced together using later and indirect
evidence. By the early twentieth century, though, the results were plain to
those who began to look. In the hills of northern Guangdong, the forestry
expert G. Fenzel observed “vast stretches of flat, barren hills, [with] wild
grass growth” (Fenzel 1929:81). If evidence both from earlier periods and
from the twentieth century can be used to illuminate the eighteenth-century
land clearance, fire had been used to remove the forest cover and to ready
the hillside for planting (Fenzel 1929:92–93).
Land clearance for agriculture was not, of course, the only cause of
deforestation: logging provided raw materials for the furniture, building,
and shipping industries. Wood from forests also had been the major source
of fuel for cooking and heating. How much this demand for energy
contributed to deforestation is anybody’s guess, but there is clear evidence
from the early nineteenth century that wood was no longer available for use
as a fuel, at least in some parts of Lingnan. According to Captain J. Ross,
who traveled overland from Hainan Island to Guangzhou in 1819 following
the wreck of his ship, “this part of China is badly supplied with firewood,
and the people are obliged to substitute straw, hay, and cow-dung.” It was
not that there were no trees, but that there were so few: “the country... was
well cultivated, though hilly, with a few groves of small pines.” The reason
for the scarcity of forest, of course, is that peasant farmers had cleared and
planted the land, which Ross described as “hilly and poorly cultivated,
producing chiefly sweet potatoes, with a sprinkling of other vegetables”
(The Chinese Repository 1849:247).
 The vast, treeless grasslands observed in the early twentieth century thus
had emerged as a result of a historical process of burning off the forest,
planting a crop for two or three years, and then moving on to another
location without replanting trees. By the twentieth century, the Yao
tribesmen whom Fenzel observed had taken to replanting trees after they
moved on; but Chinese did not do so then, and probably had not in earlier
times either. After abandoning a cleared hillside, “the land is often invaded
so seriously by weeds that further cropping is impossible,” according to
Robert Pendleton, a botanist who had studied similar processes in the
Philippines (Pendleton 1933:555). After five or ten years, scrub brush might
grow, and the soil regain some fertility, making it possible to burn it off
again. “If, however, the weeds and the brush growing up in the abandoned
clearings are removed by annual burning, tree growth has little chance to
develop” (Pendleton 1933:556).
And in Lingnan, at least in the twentieth century, peasants habitually
burned off the hills every year or two, not only rendering the hills unfit for
replanting, but also preventing trees from growing. In Guangxi, Steward
observed that the peasant farmers “habitually fire most of the burnable
slopes in the vicinity of the homes during the dry season each year. The
continuation of this practice tends to destroy the majority of the species of
woody plants and change the aspect of a once richly forested country to that
of a hilly or mountainous grassland” (Steward 1934:1). In Guangdong too,
according to Fenzel, Chinese farmers “annually burn down the grass
covering the mountains” (Fenzel 1929:42).
In the twentieth century, peasant farmers gave several reasons why they
burned off the hills. One was that “after burning off hills the grass ashes
wash down the slopes serving as a source of fertilizing material for the
lower agricultural land.” Pendleton thought this unlikely, since “there are
frequently dug contour ditches which carry away the water and eroded
material from the hills to prevent flooding of the rice of other low lands”
(Pendleton 1933:557). When Fenzel asked “the farmer why he annually
burns down the grass covering the mountains . . . [the farmer]
stereotypically replies that it is to deprive the robbers, tigers, and snakes of
their dens” (Fenzel 1929:43).

Tiger Attacks
Along with notations on natural disasters, rebellions, and dragon sightings,
the chronicles of local gazetteers are filled with reports of tiger attacks on
villages. In 1680, for example, “In Xin’an county, many tigers injured
people; [the tigers] were extremely numerous; the attacks stopped by the
end of the year” (Guangzhou fuzhi 1879, juan 80–81, entry for KX19).
Three years earlier, “hundreds of people” had been injured by tiger attacks
in Lianping county (Huizhou fuzhi 1877, juan 17–18, entry for KX16). In
the southwest littoral, tigers in 1723 attacked so many people and animals
in Maoming that thirty-seven people died (Gaoqing fuzhi, juan 49, entry for
YZ1). In Guangxi province too, tigers entered villages and attacked people
and animals, as in Huaiji county in 1752, or in Liucheng county in 1696
(Wuzhou fuzhi 1769, entry for QL17; Liuzhou fuzhi 1764, entry for KX35).
Villagers thus had reason to fear tigers, and tigers may well have been more
numerous and threatening to peasant farmers than bandits.
The relevant and interesting thing about tigers, though, is their habitat:
they live in forests, favoring in particular lowland riverine forests. Unlike
lions, who prefer grasslands or savanna, tigers stalk their prey from the
cover and the shadows provided by forests. The relationship is pretty
simple: no forests, no tigers. The converse also held: where there were
tigers, there were forests in Lingnan. And the forest had to have been quite
large: a single adult tiger requires between 20 and 100 square kilometers of
forested habitat to sustain itself, depending on the availability of large
game. The tiger thus is a “star species,” emblematic of an entire ecosystem
and the rich biodiversity required to sustain it (Wilson 1992:259).
If Chinese peasant farmers and literate chroniclers paid no attention to
forests and failed to comment on the deforestation of the hills, thereby
leaving us with no written records from which to reconstruct the story of
deforestation, they did note tigers, especially tigers who attacked villages.
Since tigers are indicators of forests, reports of tiger attacks in the
chronicles of Chinese gazetteers can serve as proxies for forests. Charting
the time and place of the tiger attacks thus should produce a picture,
however fuzzy, of where the forests were, and where they were not. For
from the point of view of the Chinese agriculturists, land reclamation, the
clearance of hills, and the annual burning over of the grasslands may have
been existential activities assuring the human population its food supply,
but from the point of view of the tiger, the same actions constituted the
destruction of their habitat. The destruction of tiger habitat by burning off
the forest cover reduced the tigers’ food supply, and contributed both to
tiger willingness to enter villages searching for food, and to their
willingness to attack and eat people.
Tiger attacks thus are meaningful indicators simultaneously of forests
and of the encroachment of humans into tiger habitat. What does the
historical record for Lingnan show? Let us begin by working backward.
Today, just a few tigers survive in the mountains on the border of northern
Guangdong and Guangxi, not surprising in light of the extensive
deforestation clearly documentable by the twentieth century (Lu 1987:71–
74). In earlier centuries, the distribution of tigers was more general
throughout Lingnan. Around 1700, according to Qu Dajun, “there are many
tigers in Gaozhou, Leizhou, and Lianzhoufu. Merchants encounter them.”
Qu also noted that “in the wilds of Leizhou, there are many deer” (Qu
1974:531–532). For the rest of Lingnan we lack the sweeping
generalizations provided by Qu Dajun, but the record of tiger attacks can
tell the story. In densely populated Guangzhou prefecture, most of the tiger
attack records are before 1700. Of interest in the Qing records are those
from the 1660s, when the coastal population was relocated inland. When
the people abandoned their fields, the land apparently rapidly reverted to
scrub if not actually forest, and with the return of forest cover came the
tigers: “Because of the relocation, grass and trees have grown in profusion
[in the abandoned areas], and tigers have become bold” (Huizhou fuzhi
1877, juan 18, entry for KX6).
Significantly, in Guangzhou prefecture the last tiger attack on record is
for 1690. After that, the record of tiger attacks ends, presumably coincident
with the destruction of tiger habitat there. A similar story can be told about
Chaozhou prefecture, where the last recorded tiger attack was in 1708. The
last tiger attack in Gaozhou prefecture (which was second only to
Guangzhou in population density in 1820) was recorded in 1723. To the
east in Huizhou, though, the records of tiger attacks continue through the
eighteenth century, and in peripheral Shaozhou and Nanxiong prefectures,
the last records are in 1813 and 1815 respectively. Records are sparse in
Guangxi, but in Wuzhou and Xunzhou, the last attacks were scattered from
1752 to 1777.
 The records of tiger attacks in Lingnan are anything but complete—some
prefectural gazetteers, such as Lianzhoufu and Leizhou, do not include
annual chronicles, and certainly some tiger attacks escaped official notice.
Furthermore, tigers lived in areas that did not record any attacks, such as
Conghua county, which Qu Dajun said “has many tigers in the hills” (Qu
1974:531). Nonetheless, I think the story that the record of tiger attacks in
Lingnan tells is clear enough. During the mid-seventeenth-century crisis
when the human population decreased substantially and forest returned to
much of Lingnan, the range of the tigers expanded, even into relatively
densely populated areas like Guangzhou prefecture in the Pearl River delta.
As population there (and elsewhere) began to recover and forests were
cleared for agriculture, tigers and people came into contact. By 1700, tiger
habitat probably had been destroyed in and around Guangzhou, while the
hills in Guangdong and Guangxi remained forested, as was much of the
southwestern littoral. As people moved into the hills and burned off forests,
tiger attacks spread outward, ending in the early nineteenth century in
northernmost Guangdong. The record of tiger attacks followed the
destruction of their habitat, and the end of tiger attacks in the early
nineteenth century dates the nearly complete destruction of tiger habitat in
Lingnan by then.
The accumulated evidence thus suggests the rapid deforestation of
Lingnan in the eighteenth century, coincident both with the population and
cultivated land areas surpassing previous peaks in the Song and Ming, and
with the periodic—if not annual—burning of grass off the hills. If, as Ling
Daxie has estimated, forests in 1700 had covered about half of the land area
of Lingnan, decreasing to 5–10 percent by 1937 (Ling 1983:25–35), then
most of that deforestation and loss of habitat occurred during the eighteenth
century.

The End
By 1800 the landscapes of Lingnan had been made and remade, and the
Chinese had left evidence of their transformations of the land not just in the
landscape, but in written records as well. Deng Bi’nan, the official we met
at the beginning of this chapter writing in the “local products” section of the
1811 local gazetteer for Leizhou prefecture, thus was living at a time when
the pace of environmental change was noticeable. If land clearance
destroyed the habitat of the tiger, pushing it to the edge of extinction, the
same fate awaited other wildlife too, as Deng reported. We can imagine
Deng, an observant, curious, and scholarly man, turning to written records
to find that they confirmed his feeling that species had been disappearing.
With his observations confirmed by the written record, Deng then lamented
both the passing of various species, and his fate at having recognized what
was happening:

The reason these extinctions were not recorded before is that

people then said that extinction was not possible.... Today it is
my task to record for posterity these extinctions in the appendix
[to the local products section of the Leizhou gazetteer], [in the
hope that my records will be of use] for later research. (Leizhou
fuzhi 1811: juan 2, 67a–b)

Deng was not living in a scholarly vacuum in Qing China, for there was a
long tradition of research with which he was no doubt familiar and which
conditioned his views of the extent and causes of environmental change.
Following the ancient Confucian injunction from The Great Learning—“the
extension of knowledge lies in the investigation of things”—Chinese
naturalists long had compiled treatises on plants and animals. One of the
more recent (to Deng) would have been the early-eighteenth-century work
by Chen Yuanlong, the Perspective of Scientific and Technological Origins,
a work that included a wealth of information from rare and now lost books
on plants and animals (Needham 1986:214). Whether Deng actually
consulted that specific work or not, and who else in his time he might have
discussed his ideas with, is not known. But the point is that Deng
understood that he was writing in a specific scholarly tradition, and that his
findings would be useful “for later research” of that particular scholarly
community.
Indeed, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had seen the flourishing
of a new school of scholarship, the kaozheng, or evidential scholarship.
Deriving from a central concern for the reconstruction of antiquity based on
rigorous study and critique of Han-era texts, kaozheng scholarship
expanded in the eighteenth century to encompass most branches of
knowledge as understood by the Chinese, including natural studies and
historical geography. Kaozheng scholars kept notebooks for recording
pertinent information as they read, and to note the sources of their
information. Scholarly findings were passed via private meetings and letters
among the scholarly elite (Elman 1984:174–77).
What Deng could not anticipate, of course, is how rapidly the world
within which he lived, the one defined by the dynamics of the Chinese
trade-tributary empire and the concerns of Confucian statecraft, soon would
become enmeshed in the new world of competing, warring nation states
emanating from western Europe, bringing an end to his other-ordered
world. His work thus was not useful for “later research” as he understood it,
but rather to an American historian at the end of the twentieth century.
Deng Bi’nan’s lament, while providing evidence of extinction, also
points to the significant question of causation of environmental change. For
Deng, the world he lived in provided ample evidence of the anthropogenic
origins of extinctions. Everywhere throughout Lingnan there were
reminders of the power of the Chinese people to remake the landscape.
Near Guilin was the Lingqu Canal, built by orders of the first emperor of
Qin to link Lingnan’s river systems with the Yangzi River; in northern
Guangdong was the Meiling Pass, “chiseled” in 716 to facilitate trade from
Guangzhou; in a prefecture neighboring Leizhou, a magistrate had
redirected the flow of a river to increase irrigation to agriculture; and in
Leizhou itself, seawalls some 25,000 zhang long (about 50 miles)
constructed in the Song (ca. 1100) created over 10,000 qing (1 qing = 100
mu, or about 17 acres) of land (Guangdong tongzhi 1822: 2085–86).
Additionally, the human population had increased so much in Deng’s time
that people pressed everywhere in Lingnan, eliminating the frontier; with
the encouragement of their emperors, they cleared and terraced mountains
to plant food; to meet foreign demand for their products, they tore up and
replaced rice paddies with cane fields or fish ponds and mulberry trees; and
to feed the urban population, they moved grain huge distances from where
it was produced to where it was consumed. In short, there was ample
evidence everywhere Deng looked of both changes in the land and of the
causes of those changes: people.
That insight, of course, has a particularly contemporary ring, for it is
quite different from the natural causes of extinction identified by
nineteenth-century European scientists, including Darwin. So, which
nineteenth-century body of thought is “true?” Deng’s views—his scientific
views—were grounded in his cultural, social, economic, and historic milieu.
Does that make them “particular,” “traditional,” or “Oriental,” as opposed
to the universal, modern truths of Western science? Fortunately, social
historians in the United States and Europe recently have dethroned the
“heroic” model of science that arose in the culture wars of the
Enlightenment (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994), insisting instead that “the
ideas of science are open to much the same kind of treatment as other
ideas.... Like all of man’s [sic] intellectual life, scientific ideas grow out of
specific cultural conditions and are validated by personal as well as social
needs” (Worster 1994:x–xi).
Thus Darwin’s ideas, as Donald Worster has shown, drew upon both
Adam Smith’s conceptualization of economic competition (reinforced by
Darwin’s encounters with the reality of industrialization in early-nineteenth-
century London) and Malthus’s “gloomy” explanation for the struggle for
existence, thereby gaining acceptance in the Victorian world of raw
capitalism and emergent imperialism: “The emphasis Darwin gave to
competitive scrambling for place could not have been so credible to people
living in another place and time” (Worster 1994:169). Moreover, while
Herbert Spencer usually is blamed for extending Darwin’s ideas into “social
Darwinism,” providing a rationale for both ignoring the poor at home and
conquering others (barbarians) abroad, the fact of the matter is that Darwin
himself harbored those ideas, especially the latter. Toward the end of his
life, in 1881, Darwin opined that “the Caucasian races have beaten the
Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence” and that “‘an endless number
of races’ had to be wiped out by ‘the higher civilized races’” for progress to
occur (Worster 1994:165). In brief, since nature was an efficient economy,
capitalism thus was natural, and Western dominance of the globe was
inevitable. To most of the world’s regret, we have lived with those
equivalencies ever since. How different might the world have been had
Deng Bi’nan’s views instead spread to the West?
Map 2.1. The location of Lingnan (box)
 Map 2.2. Lingnan ca. 1820

However congenial it might be for early-twenty-first-century

environmental historians to consider, Deng Bi’nan’s view of the
anthropogenic causes of environmental change was not precocious, in the
sense of an early flowering, for it came toward the end of two thousand
years of China’s imperial history, not at the beginning of the modern world.
Hence his view of the anthropogenic, rather than natural, causes of
extinction should be characterized more like Marx (famously paraphrasing
Hegel) did the owl of Minerva, spreading its wings only as darkness began
to fall (Hegel 1952:9).

Notes
1 The modern concept of “species extinction” was not available to Deng,
so he used what was available to him in Chinese: the term wu zhe. Wu used
alone means “without, apart from, none,” but its antonym is you, meaning
“to have, to exist.” As the opposite of “to exist,” wu thus meant “to not
exist.” And by adding the suffix zhe to wu, forming wu zhe, Deng created
the term “those that do not exist.” Whether Deng also had available to him a
Chinese taxonomical concept of “species” is an open question.
2 The “mulberry (or fruit) tree and fish pond” system often is cited an
example of a sustainable, premodern agricultural ecosystem. In any
sustainable ecosystem, natural or otherwise, the mineral and energy
resources necessary for life are recycled, and the losses from the system are
so small that they can be easily replaced (such as by the weathering of rock
or the fixation of nitrogen by bacteria). That, in essence, is what the fish
pond system accomplished. Silk worm excrement, leaves from the trees,
and other organic material were gathered and thrown into the fish pond,
providing food for the carp; the fish were harvested annually, with the muck
formed from the fish waste and other decomposed organic matter then
scooped out and used to fertilize the mulberry trees and rice fields. In the
words of a modern ecologist, “there is a closed nutrient recycling loop via
decomposition and mineralization in orchards, fields, and ponds. Nutrient
export across the system boundaries takes place only with stream runoff,
and with sales of plant or animal products” (Bruenig et al. 1986).

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3

Precolonial Landesque Capital: A Global

Perspective
MATS WIDGREN

THIS CHAPTER ADDRESSES a phenomenon of wide significance for

past and future agricultural potential—landesque capital. This is understood
as investments made in land with an anticipated life beyond that of the
present crop, or crop cycle. Irrigation canals and agricultural terraces are the
most obvious forms of landesque capital, but the clearance of stones and the
improvement of agricultural soils over the years are other, albeit less
spectacular, examples. It is argued that, alongside the more obvious factors
of climate and soil, the distribution of landesque capital—and hence the
history of land use—is an important factor in understanding global
differences in the productivity of agricultural lands. The occurrence of
landesque capital has, over the years, been explained from a number of
different perspectives: as a direct or indirect reflection of semiarid and arid
lands, as the result of diffusion, as a consequence of historical “siege”
situations, or as resulting from the accumulation strategies of chiefdoms and
empires. It is argued that most of these general approaches to the
explanation of landesque capital make the mistake of not fully taking into
account the spatial aspect of landesque capital. They tend to reflect a
historic and economic rather than a geographical understanding of
investments. Unlike monetary capital, which is fluid in space but fixed in
time, landesque capital is fixed in space but “fluid” in time. The
chronological and social contexts of its use, managements, and further
development can differ significantly from the contexts that once shaped it.

What Is Landesque Capital?

The term “landesque capital” came into wider use in the 1980s, when the
Australian geographer Harold Brookfield (1984) used the term to
characterize a type of innovation that “once created persists with the need
only of maintenance.” The term was later given a more strict definition as
“any investment in land with an anticipated life well beyond that of the
present crop, or crop cycle” (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987:9). In
commenting on the origins of the term, Brookfield (2001b:55) recently
clarified that the term “was developed within agricultural economics, and I
cannot recall from where I borrowed it when I first used it in 1984. In the
broad field of cultural ecology it is often attributed to me, but unfortunately
I cannot claim that credit.” The earliest documented use of the term that I
have been able to find is in Amartya Sen’s work on agricultural techniques
(Sen 1968 [1960]). Brookfield’s use of the term, however, does not
(directly) relate to Sen’s work and it was at least not directly from Sen that
he borrowed the term (Brookfield, personal communication, February
2005). Sen made the distinction between two types of capital goods, “those
which replace labour (e.g. tractors) and those which replace land (e.g.
fertilisers). We may call them for the sake of brevity, ‘labouresque’ capital
and ‘landesque’ capital respectively” (Sen 1968:82).
Sen exemplified landesque capital with fertilizers, irrigation, and pest
control, all of which increase productivity per unit of land (laboresque
capital, on the other hand, increases yield per unit of labor). Some of these
landesque capital investments are not enduring in the sense implied by
Brookfield’s definition (the effect of the capital input does not necessarily
extend beyond the actual cropping season, e.g. pest control). In one of his
examples, Sen makes the assumption that both laboresque and landesque
capital become exhausted on a yearly basis (Sen 1968:83). Other capital
inputs exemplified by Sen (e.g. permanent structures for irrigation) do
however correspond to Brookfield’s definition of landesque capital. There
is thus an important difference between Sen’s definition and Brookfield’s
later one. It is of course important to note the difference in approaches
adopted by these two scholars writing in different contexts: Sen’s
production-oriented approach from 1960, and Brookfield’s approach to
understanding land degradation and environmental problems from 1984.
If we are to search for antecedents to Brookfield’s definition of landesque
capital, it is in fact in Karl Marx’s definition of “la terre–capital” or “land-
capital” that more closely allied terms are to be found. With these terms,
Marx meant that capital was “fixed in the land, incorporated in it” either in
a transitory manner or on a more permanent basis (Marx 1959:618–619).
Marx was well aware of the role that different kinds of land improvement
could play, as well as the ways in which this capital could be devalued
through improper use.
It seems that Brookfield’s definition of landesque capital has gained more
ground than Sen’s. Indeed, I have only found a few articles that use Sen’s
conceptualization of landesque capital. Brookfield’s usage, on the other
hand, has become a widely used concept, especially within political
ecology. There is thus no reason to argue further about the terms. In the
following, I use Brookfield’s “landesque capital” in a manner that
approximates Marx’s “land-capital,” rather than the broader usage found in
Sen’s use of the term.
As such, the term “landesque capital” includes a wide variety of
properties of land—from irrigation structures to anthropogenic soils and
even tree vegetation (Brookfield 2001b:55). Brookfield provides several
examples to demonstrate how the use of land has resulted in increased soil
quality, and shows that these soils can retain their characteristics over long
periods of time (Brookfield 2001b:97, 168).
The clearance cairn fields in southern Sweden provide a good example.
In large parts of southern Sweden the forest soils are leached to a lesser
extent than one would expect given the climatic conditions, the parent rock,
and the time period since the retreat of the inland ice (Olsson and Troedsson
1990). These forest soils are hence more productive than would be expected
had they been “naturally developed.” This is to a large extent the effect of
widespread cultivation and stone-clearance that began in the first
millennium BC, and the subsequent periods of stone-clearance and
cultivation on outlying lands especially during the first millennium AD and
up until the early medieval period ca. 1400 (Widgren 2003; Lagerås and
Bartholin 2003). The successive clearance of stones from peripheral lands
has facilitated the reuse of such land for later cultivation–including forestry
—and, furthermore, the tillage has served to delay the natural leaching
process of the soils.1
An approach to the environment that considers landesque capital as
central thus confronts stereotyped images of relations between humans and
nature. First, it acknowledges the role of humankind in improving “natural”
conditions. In many areas of the world, humans may have altered conditions
for future sustainable use for the better, and not only for the worse, as is
often the unproven assumption in much writing on environmental history.
Another important implication of the concept of landesque capital is that it
is hardly compatible with another widely used concept in environmental
research—that of “carrying capacity.” Since humans “can change the
environment by adding fertility and building terraces” (Denevan 2001:301),
it follows that similar natural environments have been developed differently
and have received varying investments of landesque capital over time.2 We
can thus conceptualize landesque capital as a carpet of investments
covering the surface of the earth. It can be argued that the distribution of
landesque capital is as important a factor, in the understanding of global
differences in the productivity of agricultural lands, as the more obvious
factors of climate and naturally formed soils.

The Geographical Distribution of Landesque Capital

Landesque capital is unevenly spread at the global scale, a distribution that
cannot be explained by differences in climate and soils. Furthermore, at the
regional scale landesque capital often has a patchy distribution.3 No easily
accessible data currently exist to make it possible to map the intensity of
landesque capital on a global scale. A crude estimation of the global
distribution of precolonial landesque capital may be obtained from the
classifications of the agricultural regions of the world that were made
during the first half of the twentieth century (Whittlesey 1936). The areas
on these maps that denote intensive subsistence agriculture roughly
coincide with larger areas that other available sources document as having a
long history of terracing and irrigation. They of course also show a
concentration of intensive agriculture in eastern and southeastern Asia.
However, that map of course omits all the areas with abandoned
terracing, field systems, irrigation systems or anthropogenic soils either
within areas of modern commercial agriculture (as in North America) or in
areas that were previously regarded as being “pristine,” as in Amazonia (see
below). Spencer and Hale published a rough sketch of abandoned and
current terracing in the world. For the Americas, the overview by Denevan
(1992, distribution map on p. 380) serves as an introduction.4 Grove and
Sutton (1989) have mapped precolonial terracing and irrigation in Africa.
Farrington’s seminal work, Prehistoric intensive agriculture in the tropics
(1985), represents a broad approach on a global scale, while for arid lands
Barker and Gilbertson (2000) provide a recent overview.
For one specific type of irrigation—qanats (subterranean aqueducts)—
previously best known from Iran but now found in most parts of the Islamic
world (Wulf 1968), the recent work by Lightfoot (1996a, 1996b, 1997,
2000) has given us a better picture of its distribution.
The most difficult estimation of distribution concerns anthropogenic
soils. Brookfield has turned our attention to the “manufactured” soils in
Europe (plaggen), in Papua New Guinea, in central Africa, in the ancient
terraces of Peru, and in the Amazon (see references in Brookfield
2001a:185, and for plaggen Spek 2004:724–967).5
Compared to the information that was available some twenty years ago,
we now have a much more detailed picture of the global distribution of
precolonial landesque capital. North America and Africa do have rich
occurrences of terraced agriculture and irrigation, as well as farming
systems that have used different kinds of mounds, ridges, and so forth.
However, compared to the situation in the Andes and in the southwestern
fringe of North America, labor- and capital-intensive agriculture still seems
to have been of less importance in eastern North America and in sub-
Saharan Africa. At the global scale, the most pronounced difference is
between Asia and the other continents. We can thus summarize the existing
evidence in the form of a gradient: from intensively cultivated Asia, to the
rich occurrences of irrigation and terraces in Mesoamerica and the Andes,
to the more scattered occurrences of incipient intensification in North
America, Amazonia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Driving Forces behind Landesque Capital

The historiography of landesque capital runs partly parallel to the
discussion concerning agricultural intensification in a long-term perspective
(e.g. Boserup 1965; Morrison 1996). Landesque capital sometimes figures
explicitly in these discussions, but aside from Brookfield’s many
contributions on the topic, few of these contributions take their starting
point in the problem of landesque capital. A notable exception in this regard
is Bayliss-Smith (1997). Even if it has not always been framed in terms of
the concept of landesque capital, one can nevertheless say that landesque
capital has its own historiography.

Diffusion
For the case of terracing, Spencer and Hale proposed that there had been a
process of diffusion from centers in the “classical Near East” (Spencer and
Hale 1961:32). The notion that terracing had diffused from a center seems,
however, to fail on two grounds. First, their interpretation is too closely
linked to the now abandoned models that contended that agriculture per se
diffused from a single center in the Middle East. Second, it is doubtful
whether basic practices such as the leveling of land or the construction of
terraces were so original that their occurrence in one part of the world
necessarily depended on information gained from another place—an aspect
that is also discussed by the authors (Spencer and Hale 1961:36). In the
case of qanats, which represent a rather elaborate form of underground
technology, the diffusion thesis, as proposed by Lightfoot (2000:216), is
more convincing.

Environmental Determinism
The idea that the distribution of irrigation has a simple environmental cause
has a long history. It plays a central role in Wittfogel’s influential work.
According to his idea, large parts of Asia could only be farmed with
irrigation, which in its turn provided the necessary conditions for the rise of
hydraulic civilizations and Oriental despotism.6
It now seems clear that the origin of the idea of Oriental despotism and
the Asian mode of production goes back to a (mis)understanding by Marx
and Engels of the natural environments of Asia. Jim Blaut (1993) has
demonstrated a close connection between Marx’s and Engels’s writing on
irrigation and the way early-nineteenth-century geographers like Karl Ritter
were describing one special type of geographical-cultural system. This
system was associated with the civilizations of the river valleys of
northeastern Africa and arid Asia, but the idea was later extended to also
cover the river valleys in wetter parts of Asia. The connection between
Ritter’s “geographical-cultural” systems and Marx’s understanding of the
role of irrigation may go back to the fact that Ritter was Marx’s teacher of
geography in Berlin (Blaut 1993:82–84).
Whittlesey (1936), in his analysis of the distribution of intensive
subsistence agriculture, turned this argument upside down when he
commented that the agricultural regions of the world at the beginning of the
twentieth century could not be understood on the basis of climate alone. He
meant that the agriculture of east and south Asia “does not parallel
counterpart climates in the other continents,” and instead emphasized
“Occidental versus Oriental society and progressive versus backward
cultures” (Whittlesey 1936:209).7

Response to Siegelike Situations

The idea that terraced agriculture, and intensive agriculture in general, were
caused by siegelike situations has had a strong standing, particularly in the
African context. Within the broader context where hilltop settlement is
understood as a reflection of periods of hostilities, terraced hillsides on
marginal and rocky land have been associated with warlike situations. This
idea figures in much writing on terracing and intensive agriculture in Africa
(see references in Widgren 2004:13–14). The Belgian geographer Pierre
Gourou developed this idea in the later editions of his book The tropical
world (1961), and most recently in a book from 1991 (Gourou 1991). He
saw intensive agriculture and terracing in much of Africa as the result of
population pressure resulting from siegelike situations. This idea was one
aspect of his work to develop an understanding of farming systems that
went beyond simple environmental determinism. The case of the Iraqw
intensive farming in Tanzania, which Gourou referred to as “a particularly
clear example of intensive agricultural techniques developed by a people
‘under siege’ ” (Gourou 1991:50),8 has recently been empirically
scrutinized by Börjeson (2004), who also criticizes the theoretical basis of
the siege hypothesis.

The Political Economy of Landesque Capital

Archaeologists and anthropologists working from an explicit political
economy approach often understand terracing and irrigation as elements of
the accumulative strategies of elite groups. Control over both labor and the
means of production are seen here as central in the development of
landesque capital (see for example Earle 1997:67–104). In such political
economy approaches to chiefdoms, investments in land represent but one
factor in a longer chain of explanation.
In the same manner that Wittfogel identifies irrigation as only one link in
his model, so too does Earle posit landesque capital as but one factor in a
longer chain of explanation. Neither of these models (Wittfogel or Earle) is
thus specifically aimed to advance a general explanation for investments in
land. If we see them from the perspective of explaining investments in land,
rather than from the perspective of understanding social stratification, the
central point is that they both offer possible explanations for how labor
demands for investments in land can be met.
The “political economy model,” as developed by Hakansson (1989) in
the context of African agricultural systems, has recently been scrutinized in
an analysis of four examples of landesque capital in eastern Africa
(Widgren and Sutton 2004). A central point concerning the formation of
landesque capital is the character of the investments. As Doolittle has
pointed out, the word “capital” might mislead us to think of inputs added
over short periods of time as the result of socially coordinated efforts
(Doolittle 1984:124). The construction and maintenance of capital in some
of the cases investigated in eastern Africa do indeed require both a large
number of people and a socially coordinated effort, but other cases are
examples of incremental processes, where, to borrow Doolittle’s words,
cultivation and construction are “inextricably mixed activities” (Doolittle
1984:135; Börjeson 2004:91–94).
Concerning the mobilization of labor, we found both stratified (Watson
2004) and egalitarian cases (Ostberg 2004). Landesque capital thus can take
many forms, some of which can be understood as the result of incremental
processes, whereas others rely on more substantial investments that are
often concentrated to shorter periods of time. Most landesque-capital
farming systems are by definition also labor-intensive. The forms of labor
mobilization may vary, however. While there is a relation between
landesque capital, labor mobilization, and social stratification—and
Bayliss-Smith has also pointed to the marked inequality in gender roles
(1997)—this relation is not absolute, since there are other ways of
mobilizing the necessary labor, even for large construction works. A
common theme in many of the accounts of landesque capital is the role of
agricultural surplus—be it olive oil for the Roman Empire (Barker
2002:494), or fresh maize and food security for distant kinfolks in Tanzania
(Loiske 2004:111). Such different kinds of geographical division of labor
are important explanatory factors behind most landesque capital.

How Is Landesque Capital Used Up

If we consider landesque capital to be a type of fixed and immovable capital
in the economic sense,9 two interrelated problems require consideration.
One problem concerns how this fixed and immovable capital can be used
up. Closely connected to this is the question of whether landesque capital,
which was built up hundreds or even thousands of years ago in different
economical and technological contexts, can still be considered as capital
today, or whether it has become devalued.
Some clear cases of devaluation can be identified. Cultivating
manufactured soils without the continual reinvestment of nutrients and
organic matter might exhaust them. Concerning terraces and irrigation
systems, a decline in available labor power for their maintenance is usually
the first step in their abandonment. Final abandonment often leads to
increased erosion, and hence a successive degradation of the landesque
capital (Brookfield 1986:180). While many local, capital-intensive, and
sustainable systems were abandoned as a direct consequence of colonial
expansion, the relative role of colonialism for the abandonment of
landesque capital on a global scale is difficult to assess. The archaeological
literature provides plenty of examples of irrigation and terrace systems that
were abandoned or contracted considerably before the colonial encounter
(Lightfoot 2000:219; Barker and Gilbertson 2000). In the case of the dry
zone in Sri Lanka, the large irrigation systems declined and many were
abandoned (already) in the thirteenth century. Recent studies by E. Myrdal
indicate, however, that previous writers may have underestimated the
survival of many small-scale village irrigation tanks well into the early
nineteenth century. This opens for a deeper understanding of the relation
between a first phase of precolonial decline of irrigation on Sri Lanka, and a
second phase of decline directly connected to colonial warfare in the
nineteenth century (Myrdal-Runebjer 1996; Myrdal 2003, 2004).
In the case of Africa, the historical context of abandonment is less
evident. From the available evidence, however, one can conclude that two
of the more spectacular and best-known examples of terracing and
irrigation—Nyanga in Zimbabwe and Engaruka in Tanzania—were
abandoned well before the period of colonialism (Soper 2002; Sutton 1998).
In South Africa, however, it is possible that the extensive terracing in the
Drakensberg around Lydenburg in Mpumalanga may have been abandoned
as a direct result of contact between Boer expansion and local Pedi farmers
(Tim Maggs, personal communication; see also Widgren 2004). In
Tanganyika, Kjekshus saw the abandonment of sustainable intensive
farming as a direct consequence of the arrival of colonialism (Kjekshus
1996:27ff.), but his conclusions have been much debated (for references to
the discussion see Widgren 2004). Concerning the Pacific region, Tim
Bayliss-Smith shows, in his comparison of three precolonial landesque-
capital intensive systems, how old forms of landesque capital were either
modified or their agricultural systems collapsed when the sociopolitical
conditions changed during the colonial era (Bayliss-Smith 1997). In the
case of Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, for example, the intensive terraced
agriculture declined during the 1900s as a result of a complex set of factors
including competing economic activities, labor scarcity, low soil fertility,
and pest infestations. On the neighboring but more isolated Mfangano
Island, however, farmers continue with terracing, permanent cropping, and
construction of an elaborate network of fencing that protects the crops from
animal pests (Conelly 1994).
There is, however, no simple blueprint to explain the relationship
between recent economic changes and the role of landesque capital. Labor
shortages arising from migration can sometimes be countered by
remittances and return migrations, which in some cases have been shown to
lead to investments in agricultural improvement and the reestablishment of
landesque capital.10
Landesque capital can also be devalued as a result of technological and
economic change, which leads to new forms of capital investments in the
land. The vine terraces in southern Europe are recent and obvious examples.
Two phases of investments during the twentieth century can be
documented. In the first phase, mechanization left its mark in the landscape
in the form of new forms of terraces. In the second phase, the modern type
of sloping fields adjusted to mechanized farming came into existence (see
Andresen and Curado 2003 for an example from Portugal).
Looking at the areas of the world that were influenced by colonial
expansion we thus have to deal with three different chronological contexts
where landesque capital has been abandoned. First, many large systems
were abandoned well before European colonial expansion, as were also
many capital-intensive systems in areas where colonial contact was not a
factor. Second, in a certain number of instances, the direct connection
between abandonment and colonial expansion can be proven. Third, recent
developments, mainly in the form of rural-urban migration, can be seen as a
factor behind much recent abandonment of capital- and labor-intensive
small-scale agriculture (cf. Denevan 2001:296).

Bringing Old Landesque Capital into Use

My argument above that old landesque capital is an important factor for
understanding not only past but also future agricultural potential, rests,
however, on the assumption that present-day technological complexes in
farming do not differ much from those of the past. In large parts of the
world, farming populations have not been drawn into heavily mechanized
and commercial agriculture, but are mainly dependent on the land and their
own labor for their immediate survival. Most of these farming societies are
still nonmechanized. The choice is not between animal traction and
mechanized farming. Tillage with hand implements is still important in
large parts of the poor world. In these cases, inherited landesque capital is a
capital asset in the true sense of the term.
Guyer and Lambin (1993) observe that the technological complexes
associated with ancient terracing and irrigation may have a potential beyond
subsistence farming. In the case of the urban hinterland of Ibadan in
Nigeria, they show that fields cleared by hand rather than those cleared by
tractor are “at the cutting edge of crop innovation” and that the “most
rapidly expanding crops—tomatoes and peppers—are almost exclusively
grown on hand-cleared plots” (Guyer and Lambin 1993:851). Recent
success stories in sustainable smallholder farming, such as the case of
Machakos, are also based on similar types of technology and terracing to
those used in older examples (Tiffen et al. 1994). A volume by Reij et al.
(1996) demonstrates the potential and current use of such methods for soil
and water conservation in Africa.
There is, however, a big difference between systems that have continuity
and those that today only remain as archaeological features. In the latter
cases the knowledge and the social, cultural, and economic contexts have
been lost. Prehistoric terraces and raised fields can also provide models and
inspiration for small-scale, sustainable, labor-intensive agriculture.
However, the documentation of successful attempts to bring abandoned
landesque capital back into service is not overwhelming and mainly
concerns initiatives made by development agencies (Brookfield 1996;
Wessels and Hoogeveen n.d.; see also references in Denevan 2001:237). On
the basis of these publications it is difficult to assess the wider possibilities
for putting old landesque capital to use.
The most detailed studies of the role of ancient landesque capital in
relation to new expansion of which I am aware are the ethnographical
accounts of the recent cultivation of terra preta soils in the Amazon. For
instance, German (2003) meticulously records crop repertoires, crop
preferences for different soils, and the wider context of labor and political
economy in which these old anthropogenic soils are used today. Through
the identification of incentives and preconditions for their present
cultivation, she also deepens our understanding of the intricate interplay
between crops, social contexts, and surplus production that provides the
framework within which these soils were once developed.

Conclusion
When landesque capital figures in broad syntheses of societies and their use
of natural resources, it has thus been seen either as a cause of certain types
of hierarchical political and social organization, as in the case of irrigation
and “Oriental despotism” (Wittfogel 1957), or it has been seen as one of the
means of accumulation in such a hierarchical organization (Earle 1997). As
I have tried to show, neither of these approaches succeeds in fully
explaining landesque capital. The main problem is that they both often
make the mistake of underestimating the chronology involved by only
connecting landesque capital to a certain phase of political and economic
organization. This was a point made in Edmund Leach’s criticism of
Wittfogel, based on the chronology of the Sinhalese irrigation system:

It all looks like a colossal and highly organised piece of

bureaucratic planning, the work of one of Wittfogel’s idealised
Oriental Despots. But if so, the planning must have been done
by a kind of Durkheimian group mind! The system took about
1,400 years to build ... elaborations and modifications went on
for at least another 600 years. (Leach 1959:13)

From the perspective of a historian, a certain type of agrarian landscape

might be understood in terms of being connected with a specific period in
the development of a chiefdom or empire. But in most cases, fields,
terraces, and irrigation systems continue to play a role long after that period
and they will usually also have antecedent phases. Anyone who has tried to
investigate, for example, the chronology of canals in still-functioning
irrigation systems, or of clearance cairn fields in the Swedish forests will be
aware of the large chronological time span that is usually involved. Rather
than being attributable to a specific social context at a specific time,
landesque capital has a tendency to survive in different social contexts.
Landesque capital is incorporated in the land and therefore its spatial
character is much more evident than its chronology. Unlike monetary
capital, which is fluid in space but fixed in time, landesque capital is better
understood in terms of being fixed in space but “fluid” in time.
Furthermore, systems of capital-intensive land use are not only based on
the physical structures involved. They are usually the expressions of
continuous learning processes in the communities involved (Geertz
1968:34). The spatial fixity of landesque capital is thus not only a question
of the physical structures. It also involves the locally developed knowledge
systems of agriculture, irrigation, weather, crops, and so on, within a certain
region, a complex best understood with the French term terroir (Levy and
Lussault 2003:919).
I am thus skeptical of too close associations between landesque capital
and hierarchical political and economic structures. I do of course agree with
those who say that ownership and control of landesque capital, under
certain circumstances, can be crucial for the accumulation strategies of
political entities, from chiefdoms to empires. But that is not the same as to
say that the development of landesque capital is dependent on the existence
of chiefdoms or empires, any more than it is an indicator of arid lands. The
conditions of the political economy of societies that are conducive to the
development and maintenance of investments in land must be sought along
another gradient. Political instability, a lack of social control of labor, and
rural insecurity are at the extreme negative end of this gradient (cf. Blaikie
and Brookfield 1987:17; Butzer 1996:147). At the positive end are the
political, economic, and social conditions where investments in land are
likely to be seen as secure, and where individuals and communities can
perceive the long-term returns. While the exchange of agricultural products
was important in many of the cases discussed above, whether through
informal exchange or formal trade, there is no simple correlation between
the volume of exchange and investments in land. It is probable that the
nature of exchange is more important than its volume for creating
incentives to invest in the land.

Notes
1 See also Renberg et al. (1993) and, for similar field systems in Norway,
Pedersen (1999).

2 According to Denevan, carrying capacity can “only be calculated at a

given point in time for a specific piece of uniform land with a specific
technology and a specific standard of living” (2001:301). Marx argues
along similar lines when he writes that soil fertility “always implies an
economic relation” (Marx 1959:651).

3 Africa: Widgren (2004:2–6), Amazonia: Glaser et al. (2001).

4 Detailed accounts are found in Butzer (1992); Denevan (2001);

Whitmore and Turner (2001); and Doolittle (2000). See also the recent
popular account by Mann (2005).

5 The understanding of prehistoric land use in Amazonia has turned many

assumptions of virgin rainforests upside down (Denevan 2001:104–110,
123–124; Glaser et al. 2001; Lima et al. 2002; German 2003). Willis et al.
(2004) have recently compared this to similar evidence in other parts of the
world, including the Congo basin and the Indo-Malay region of southeast
Asia. The question of whether prehistoric land use in these latter areas has
also led to profound transformations of soils remains to be researched.

6 Wittfogel (1957:12) qualified the circumstances under which these

relations might have operated:

It is only above the level of an extractive subsistence economy,

beyond the influence of strong centers of rainfall agriculture,
and below the level of a property-based industrial civilisation
that man, reacting specifically to the water deficient landscape
moves towards a specific hydraulic order of life.

7 A more recent discussion of environmental determinism can be found in

Morgan (1988), who compares Tamil Nadu and eastern Tanzania (see also
Gunnel 1997).

8 My translation.

9 Cf. Harvey’s (1982:232) discussion on the built environment and

infrastructure.

10 See for example Tiffen et al. (1994) and, for the arguments relating to
migration, Jokisch (2002).

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4

Food, War, and Crisis: The Seventeenth

Century Swedish Empire
JANKEN MYRDAL

The Empire as an Option

It is an enigma that a small country in the north, with about one million
inhabitants, for a time in the seventeenth century, could play a role as a
great power in Europe. The explanation could point to the inherent strength
of this particular state, but also to a period of crisis in Europe when the
Swedish Empire was both a result and a cause of crisis.
The definition of “empire” used in this chapter is: an aggregate of
separate states, where one politically sovereign state dominates over its
dependencies. A large state consisting of equal parts is not an empire, but a
relatively small core that controls a subjugated periphery can be considered
an empire. The option to build “empires” thus appears to arise as soon as
sovereign states have been formed.
The specific question approached in this chapter concerns why and how
the Swedish Empire was built. At a more general level of abstraction I am
also asking why empires are built. Discussions of this issue often focus on
the largest and most famous empires known, but examining the history of a
rather small “empire” can also make some contribution to a better
understanding of the general question.
All nations do not struggle to build empires. Culture and economy can
thrive in a context of political fragmentation, the long history of Europe
being a prime example. Two mutually interacting and sovereign nations can
create a win-win situation, while an empire can in fact constitute a lose-lose
situation, that is, disadvantages for both the core and the periphery.
 Throughout history a general tendency to form larger political entities
prevails, but not in a linear and simple fashion. Certainly, Rein Taagepera
(1978, 1997) could prove that by measuring the area of territory under
control, one could estimate the degree of political concentration.1 Area is,
however, an insufficient measure, principally because no differentiation is
made between control over wastelands and control over regions with
affluent economies and high population densities. In a later calculation of
the proportions of global population concentrated in large states, Taagepera
(1997:489) came to the conclusion that the concentration of power over
populations had been “essentially stationary” over the last two thousand
years.2 If one considers the most populous state in the world (normally
China), this state has accounted for about 20–30 percent of the world’s
population over the last two thousand years (McEvedy and Jones
1978:126–127). The second in order, in terms of population size, has
seldom accounted for more than 15–20 percent of the world population,
often less.3 Peak periods for concentration of world population to the largest
states were from the second century BC to the second century AD and again
from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century.
During these long waves of history there has been an ongoing reshuffling
of regions into different constellations. Many nations of today have
previously had periods as a “Great Power,” during which they have
controlled surrounding regions. Nostalgia for those glorious days, “the
zenith of the nation,” may prove hazardous if allowed to affect politics
(consider, for example, the case of the Balkans), which suggests a further
reason to discuss the inner logic not only of the largest but also of the
smaller empires.

A Baltic Empire
In the aftermath of the Black Death, a Scandinavian Union was formed, in
which Norway and Sweden were in effect placed under Danish suzerainty,
even if the union was formally between three sovereign states. Civil wars
followed, in which the Swedish nobility fought together with a militarized
peasantry, organized from below on the community level but led by the
nobility. Foremost among the goals of these struggles were the lowering of
taxes levied on the peasantry and the Swedish nobility’s control over the
state. Following a hundred years of struggle, an autonomous Swedish
Kingdom reappeared in the early sixteenth century.
This Lutheran kingdom emerged as one of the best organized in Europe.
The centralized state bureaucracy registered every single farm on an annual
basis, and the kingdom could mobilize resources and manpower to an
extent that few other nations could match at the time (Roberts 1968). The
nobility in Sweden had been rather weak, and could thus easily be recruited
as loyal state servants, which was one of the factors that facilitated the
establishment of a strong state (Anderson 1974:173–185). Having been well
organized during the civil wars, the peasantry could be molded into a state
army based on conscription. The peasantry had political representation in
the form of a recognized estate of peasants in the riksdag (the other estates
being for the nobility, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie). The more influential
and prosperous peasants thus took some responsibility for state policies
regarding wars and taxes (Myers 1975:11, 88–90, 114–116). From its
former suppressed position, Sweden was gradually transformed into an
expansionist state, a metamorphosis not uncommon in history.
This formation of a strong state was connected with the expansion and
economic transformation of Sweden. Not only agriculture but also internal
trade in bulk products expanded in the sixteenth century. For example, state
protection of the trade in oxen from southern Sweden to the mining districts
in the north was a prerequisite for the rapid growth in exports of iron and
copper. This geographical division of production in the country
strengthened the state because it stimulated both political support and
economic development. Relative to population, the size of the Swedish ox-
trade, for instance, was comparable in size to the continental trade
(Söderberg and Myrdal 2002; Dalhede 1999). An efficient state and a
growing economy were the foundation for political expansion.
Using Taagepera’s methodology, I have estimated the geographical
expansion of Sweden in figure 4.1. The territory of Sweden-Finland grew
from an original size of about 0.6 million square kilometers in the early
sixteenth century to about 0.9 million square kilometers in the middle of the
seventeenth century. This was followed by a decline in the early eighteenth
century, and subsequently a collapse during the Napoleonic Wars, when
Sweden lost Finland and contracted to its present borders, albeit for a time
in union with Norway. The task of quantifying the area is not without
problems, as the importance of different regions is ignored. However, maps
can be used to show the course of events regarding the acquisition or loss of
provinces (map 4.1).
Expansion started on a small scale with the takeover of northern Estonia
in the 1560s, following the disintegration of the Teutonic Order. Sweden’s
expansion then continued eastward during a period of Russian weakness
around 1600. Livonia (today southern Estonia and northern Latvia) was
incorporated after successful wars with Poland. In the late 1620s, ports
along the Prussian coast fell into Swedish control for a period of time.
The Thirty Years’ War had been in progress for a decade when Sweden
intervened in 1628. The Protestants had been close to defeat, but the
Swedish armies changed the fortunes of war with their more mobile
military system and more aggressive style of warfare (Parker 1996:23–24).
“The Swedish period” turned into a demographic catastrophe in Germany.
After years of brutal warfare, peace negotiations were initiated, and in 1648
Sweden gained control over Bremen and West Pomerania in northern
Germany, two relatively small but important provinces.

Figure 4.1. The increase in area under control of the Swedish state.
Diagram by P. Myrdal and j. Myrdal
 In the 1640s Swedish armies attacked Denmark and forced it to
relinquish some of its provinces. In 1655–1657 the Swedish armies under
King Charles X Gustavus occupied large tracts of Poland, but were
eventually expelled largely as a result of widespread popular resistance
(Topolski 1986:96–99). This victory is, to this day, mentioned in the Polish
national anthem. Denmark accordingly seized the opportunity to attack its
old foe Sweden, but following their retreat from Poland the Swedish armies
marched on Denmark and overran the country during the winter of 1657–
1658. Denmark was again forced to cede provinces, and had by then lost
one third of its total area. In a follow-up attack in 1658–1659 Swedish
armies besieged the Danish capital of Copenhagen, threatening Denmark as
a sovereign nation. However, the Dutch fleet was able to save the Danes
from this fate. This marked the zenith of the period of Swedish expansion,
which was followed by a prolonged period of decline. Sweden’s career as
an expansionist empire thus lasted about one century
 Map 4.1. The extension of Sweden and dependent provinces. Maps by J.
Myrdal and K. Hallgren

Interpretations
The aims of the Swedish expansion have been a topic for Swedish
historiography for decades. The main theories are as follows:
First, the Thirty Years’ War was fought for the sake of the Protestant faith
(cf. Oredsson 1994). Sweden was threatened by the Catholic Habsburg
emperor, whose armies had subjugated Denmark. King Gustavus Adolphus
of Sweden struck first, before his country could be attacked. After he led his
army south from northernmost Germany in 1630, the inner logic of the war
unfolded. Swedish armies marched as far as south of the Danube. This is
the traditional interpretation.
Second, the geopolitical position of Sweden provides an important
explanation, and was mentioned in King Gustavus Adolphus’s declaration
of war as he became engaged in the Thirty Years’ War. Potential enemies
surrounded Sweden. The Danish king maintained a claim to Sweden long
after 1520. Sweden and Poland were both ruled by the same royal family,
the Vasa family. The Polish branch of the Vasa line was the oldest, and had
a justified claim to the Swedish crown. Russia had been pressing westward
since the late Middle Ages and had been in nearly constant conflict with
Sweden-Finland. German princes and the Hanseatic towns had intervened
in Sweden for centuries. The wars were mainly defensive. This explanation
has often been combined with the above-mentioned interpretation based on
religious motives.
Third, Sweden tried to gain control over the lucrative trade flowing
across the Baltic from Russia into western Europe. After several attempts to
gain control over all of the Baltic ports, Sweden even tried to lay hold of the
Sound between Sealand and Scania by attacking Denmark. This is the
modern interpretation of economic history, which has been prevalent since
the 1940s (see maps in Attman 1944; Barraclough 1978:188–189).
Fourth, the basic energy source needed to fuel an empire was food, and
the aim of the expansion was to conquer regions with a surplus production
of grain. This is the explanation favored in this chapter. Before turning to
the fourth explanation, I will comment on the first three.
The religious factor is important. In contemporary propaganda King
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was presented as the lion from the north
who sought to protect the true faith. When Sweden entered the religious war
her main allies were the Protestant German princes. But the religious
interpretation has some deficiencies. One is the repeated conflicts with
Protestant Denmark; another is that Catholic France was Sweden’s ally
already in 1631, and in fact her main ally from 1638.
A theory presented by Randall Collins seems to support the geopolitical
explanation. In his general “Geopolitical Theory,” resources are considered
as the primary factor. A second factor concerns the “marchland” position. A
state on the geographical periphery often has the advantage of having its
back free, an advantage that is lost during expansion (Collins 1999:39–42).4
This theory relates fairly well to the Swedish period of expansion, when
real and potential enemies tended to grow with every war—the Polish
adventure being a prime example.
Trade over the Baltic had been a cornerstone for the Hanseatic League
during the Middle Ages. The sixteenth century saw a rapid increase in the
volume of trade. Dutch and to some extent also English merchants took
over more of the trade. From Russia and the Baltic countries came flax,
linen, hemp, furs, hides, tallow, and wax through ports such as Reval and
Riga. Poland and the Baltic countries exported grain from these ports and
from ports along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, especially Danzig.
The Swedish government imposed heavy duties on trade, and in the late
1620s a considerable part of the state budget was financed with revenues
collected from toll stations.
A problem with this interpretation is that the trade goal could only partly
be achieved through conquest, as Swedish decision-makers must have
realized. For example, when Sweden attacked Poland in the 1650s, Dutch
trade interests rightly feared the imposition of heavy Swedish tolls on the
Russian trade and intervened (Roberts 1967:149).

Population and Food Production

In general textbooks on seventeenth-century Sweden, the country is often
described as a dynamic exception to the situation in most of Europe, where
economic depression reigned.5 This positive rendition of Sweden is,
however, only partly correct. Sweden was hit by the general crisis, but
reacted in a specific way.
In the sixteenth century, populations were growing throughout Europe. In
Sweden, the household growth rate was about 0.6–0.7 percent per annum,
which corresponded to growth rates in other European countries. In the
seventeenth century, most of Europe experienced population stagnation or
even regression. In Sweden, however, the number of inhabitants continued
to increase, albeit at a slower pace (Myrdal 1999b:222; Palm 2000:49). The
population in the area corresponding to contemporary Sweden increased
from about half a million inhabitants in 1500 to 1.5 million in 1700.
Woodland and mining districts were regions of expansion, but the plains
followed the European pattern of stagnation. In the decades around 1700,
the size of the population in Sweden-Finland experienced a brief downturn
as a combined result of famine, war, and plague, but the population soon
recovered and began to expand again.
Agrarian production, however, did not follow the population figures.
While the sixteenth century had been characterized by colonization and
some technological innovation, as in much of Europe, this was not the case
for agriculture in the seventeenth century, either in Sweden or in much of
Europe (Myrdal and Söderberg 1991; Myrdal 1999b; Söderberg and Myrdal
2002). Measuring total production is a complicated task, and several
sources have to be combined, each one with its specific information. The
main sources for estimating overall food production are: (1) tithe registers;
(2) land registers; (3) manorial accounts concerning production and
consumption; (4) registers over import and export of grain; and (5) grain
prices.
Tithe registers from Sweden are among the best that exist for early
modern Europe, both in terms of quality and quantity. From around 1540,
all farms were registered on an annual basis, and the tithe for each farm was
normally given in the different varieties of grain (rye, barley, wheat, or
oats). Most of these accounts have been preserved. Lately this enormous
quantity of material has been researched using source-critical perspectives,
and a national diagram of tithes in Sweden has been constructed for the
period 1540–1680 (Leijonhufvud 2001). Increase of the tithe in grain
production in the woodland areas and the stagnation on the plains
corresponds to the overall population change. The tithe also confirms what
we know from other sources about famine and food shortage for specific
years.
The main question is, however, whether this material provides an
accurate assessment of grain production in a long-term perspective and at
the national scale. The collection of a tax will often be undermined by the
taxpayers’ tendency to cheat, and an old tax is often less properly paid than
a newly introduced tax because people have learned how to take advantage
of the system. Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the tithe is a form of
taxation that was common for all of Europe and can thus be used for
international comparisons.
 The total amount of tithe collection in Sweden increased slightly in the
sixteenth century, but was followed by a slight decrease in the seventeenth
century. Similar rather flat curves have been constructed for France,
Belgium, and other countries.6 A conclusion is that Sweden’s trend in
agrarian production was similar to that prevailing in other countries (even if
the curve probably underestimates the increase in the sixteenth century).
Land registers are abundant in Swedish state archives. Most of the
sixteenth century was characterized by an expansion of acreage, with
clearances and the establishment of new cottages and farms. From the
seventeenth century, the rate of expansion began to diminish. Large-scale
village maps represent one specific type of land register. In an ambitious
project, the state planned to draw up a map for every village in the country.
This project was launched in the 1630s and continued until the 1690s. Most
villages and hamlets were in fact covered—several of them more than once
(Tollin 1991:11–15). The increase in acreage in production during the
seventeenth century was limited, and in reality many fields were left
deserted, the most common reason being unpaid taxes (Myrdal 1999b:371).
In the manorial accounts, the yield is assessed in terms of the size of the
harvest in relation to seed. Yields did increase somewhat in the sixteenth
century, but in many regions there was a decrease in the second half of the
seventeenth century (Leijonhufvud 2001).

Food Crisis and Political Aggression

Manorial accounts document information about food consumed by the staff,
including ordinary farm workers. A comparison between the sixteenth and
the seventeenth century shows a significant decrease in the amount of
calories available to an ordinary farmhand or dairywoman. Even if we
consider the sources critically, the difference is so large that it must have
reflected a real change (see Morell 1989). The quality of food also
decreased, with relatively less meat and butter being given to the staff. It is
important to add, however, that the Swedish population was comparatively
well fed in the sixteenth century, and the decrease started from a high level.
Bones from archaeological excavations of cemeteries provide further
information. Male stature had been rather stable during the Middle Ages
and into the early modern period, with a mean height for males of
approximately 172–173 cm throughout the Middle Ages. The osteological
evidence from later periods is scanty, but excavations from one cemetery
with sufficient material from the Middle Ages to the mid-seventeenth
century show that male stature began to decline in the seventeenth century.
The stature of military recruits as documented in soldier enlistment rolls
from the early eighteenth century completes the picture. These sources
indicate that the mean stature for males at this time had decreased to around
165 cm (Werdelin, Sten, and Myrdal 2000). The connection between height
and nutrition is not straightforward, but this change adds to the general
picture of a declining standard of living in Sweden during the seventeenth
century.
Grain prices are determined by market organization, the efficiency of
transportation, and not least by levels of demand. During the sixteenth
century the grain prices in Sweden, as in the rest of Europe, rose in relation
to other commodities. In most of Europe this trend continued until about
1630, but then grain prices started to fall in Germany, France, England, and
other countries. Demographic stagnation caused a slump in demand and this
trend was to continue until the early eighteenth century. In Sweden,
however, grain prices continued to increase in relation to other commodities
throughout the seventeenth century (Fischer 1996; Söderberg and Jansson
1988; Palm 1991). The cumulative evidence suggests that Sweden struggled
with a stagnating domestic food production and was facing an emerging
food crisis in the seventeenth century, as population continued to increase
while agricultural production declined.
Trade represented one potential solution to the problem, but Sweden was
not a rich country. Bulk trade had been growing in the sixteenth century and
most of the grain from the Baltic was shipped to the Netherlands, the
industrialized economic center of western Europe. Indeed, even Sweden
was exporting grain to the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, principally
in the form of wheat from the plains in eastern Sweden.
This situation had totally changed by the mid-seventeenth century.
Sweden not only ceased to export grain, but had instead begun to import, or
rather commandeer, grain from its new provinces. From about 1630, tens of
thousands of barrels were imported every year from Estonia and Livonia.
The Baltic provinces that had been conquered in the early seventeenth
century had been contributors of grain to the Netherlands. Approximately
one hundred thousand barrels of grain, mostly rye, were exported westward
in the 1620s. In the 1630s, these grain exports were increasingly channeled
to Sweden, and after about 1650 all grain from the Baltic provinces was
directed to Sweden. During years of famine, which were common in the
late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in Sweden, several hundred
thousand barrels of grain were more or less forcibly exported from the
provinces on the eastern shore of the Baltic and shipped to Sweden (Åmark
1915; Heckscher 1935–1936; Soom 1961; Hegardt 1975; Sandström 1990).
Scania (then eastern Denmark, now southern Sweden) was conquered by
Sweden in the 1650s. Before the Swedish occupation about one hundred
thousand barrels, mostly barley, were exported to Germany every year from
this province. Immediately after the Swedish conquest, all of this export
was directed to Sweden proper, and farmers in Scania were prohibited from
sending any grain abroad (Bjurling 1945, 1956; Ersgård 1977; Tomner
1977; Johannesson 1969).
Parts of northern Germany were annexed to Sweden in the peace
negotiations that marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War. These provinces
had been devastated by the war, but already in the mid-1680s Pomerania
sent more than ten thousand barrels of grain to Sweden. Later, in the
eighteenth century, Pomerania was one of the main exporters of grain to
Sweden (Boëthius and Heckscher 1938; Peters 1966; Högberg 1969). The
Swedish attack on Poland can also be understood as an attempt to gain
control over the richest granary in northeastern Europe. The immediate
result of the war was a sharp decrease in grain exports from Poland to the
Netherlands.
Estimating the proportion of total grain consumption in Sweden that was
covered by imports from the provinces is problematic. An informed guess is
that this proportion rose to about one-tenth of the total production in the old
provinces of Sweden, and more in years of scarcity. King Gustavus
Adolphus and his successor King Charles X Gustavus both declared that
their goal was to conquer rich provinces, by which they meant those with
fertile soils capable of generating reliable agricultural surpluses.
Accordingly, when Sweden faced the loss of its main provinces along the
Baltic coast in the early eighteenth century, Fabian Wrede, an elderly
Swedish statesman, wrote in a memorandum: “It is so with Sweden that it
cannot support itself with grain: the Baltic provinces are our granary”
(Myrdal 1999b:244).
Efforts to seize food-producing provinces were not unique to the Swedish
case, nor the self-defeating character of expansion. However, comparisons
with other historical cases must consider their specific circumstances and
settings. The Roman Empire is no doubt the most famous parallel, but it
endured for many centuries, through both expansion and decline. It also
covered a vastly larger land mass. Nevertheless, there is a similarity with
the small Swedish empire of the seventeenth century, as Rome similarly
conquered one grain-producing region after the other and directed exports
to the imperial center. Sicily was the first granary of Rome, then came
northern Africa, and last and most important, Egypt. The rest of the empire
was also similarly organized to support the center.7 Another similar case is
the Ottoman expansion into southeastern Europe, which annexed one food-
producing province at a time.8

The Inner Logic of a War Economy

An important explanatory factor for the agricultural stagnation in the
seventeenth century was the Little Ice Age. It struck hardest in marginal
climatic regions, which applies to most of Sweden. A second factor was
that the sixteenth-century expansion had reached its maximum extent, in
relation to ecology and available technology. After the crisis of the late
Middle Ages many fields could be recultivated. This, together with a more
intense cultivation, caused an initial rise in levels of productivity. However,
without further technological change, this increase had finally, in the early
seventeenth century, to come to an end.
A third factor may have been that the dynamic nonagrarian sector
absorbed great amounts of labor previously employed in agriculture, and
the expansion of this sector was itself a part of the war economy. An
“economic-military structure” was established. The army and the fleet
needed resources created in Sweden, even if plundering often financed the
actual warfare. Resources were raised in the home country through ever-
increasing levels of taxation and conscription.
The Swedish armies consisted to a comparatively large extent of
conscripts from Sweden and Finland. About one-third of every generation
of young men who had reached the age of twenty went to war, most of them
never to return (Lindegren 1992; Myrdal 1999b). The losses were at their
highest during the period from the 1620s to the 1650s, in the 1670s, and
again in the early eighteenth century. Young men from other peripheral
regions in Europe, such as Scotland and Switzerland, also went to war, but
in Sweden they did not go voluntarily.
A sustained population increase could thus actually be seen as one of the
factors that allowed the Swedish state to build an empire. Even if not
clearly stated in contemporary sources, population growth may also have
tempted the Swedish government into war as a solution to the potential
problems created by villages overflowing with young men who had poor
prospects in life: better they should fight in foreign wars than rise in
rebellion at home.
During the most intensive periods of warfare there were 1.3 women to
every man in the Swedish home provinces (Myrdal 1999b:230). The
women on the farms often had to take over male duties such as ploughing
and heavy transports.
Sweden had exported iron and copper since the Middle Ages. In the
sixteenth century there was an increase in production, at least partly
facilitated by technological innovation. Exports of iron grew about
threefold from the late Middle Ages, and reached 4,000 metric tonnes per
year by the middle of the sixteenth century. Exports subsequently increased
at an even faster rate and by the late seventeenth century 30,000 metric
tonnes of iron were exported on an annual basis, much of it to England.
Sweden was then one of the main exporters of iron in Europe. About 80
percent of the labor needed to produce iron was supplied by the peasants;
they cut wood, produced the charcoal, transported the coal and the iron, and
so on. An estimation of the amount of labor provided by peasants for iron
production in the middle of the seventeenth century is 3–4 million
workdays per annum (Sundberg et al. 1995; Myrdal 1999b).
Copper exports grew from less than 100 metric tonnes per year in the
mid-sixteenth century, to 2,000 metric tonnes annually in the mid-
seventeenth century. Sweden then dominated European copper export.
Other products based on utilizing forest resources and peasant labor were
potash and tar, and Sweden-Finland became the leading exporter in Europe
of both products. Exports of tar, for example, increased from around
400,000 liters in the mid-sixteenth century to 12–15 million liters in the
mid-seventeenth century. In large areas of Sweden-Finland, men and
women had to devote months of labor each year to nonagricultural tasks
(Heckscher 1935–1936; Karlsson 1990; Åhman 1983; Liljewall 1996),
workdays taken from agriculture and enforced mainly by fiscal pressure.
Peasants had to pay their taxes largely in money or iron and were thus
forced to work in these nonsubsistence sectors.
Furthermore, a military industry was established, and Sweden produced
not only all of the cannons, muskets, rapiers, and other weapons that were
needed to satisfy the country’s military requirements, but even exported to
countries such as Denmark. In the eighteenth century, this proto-industry
was redirected to nonmilitary production (scythes, shares, etc.) and became
an important generator of economic progress.
A peculiar result of the war economy in the seventeenth century was that
the state demanded that all stable refuse be collected so that the saltpeter
could be used in the production of gunpowder. Accordingly, a nationwide
organization comprising one thousand saltpeter collectors was instituted.
This was harmful in that it deprived the agricultural sector of nutrients that
could have been used as valuable manure (Myrdal 1999b:302–304).
A well-organized state apparatus mobilized resources: young men, forest
products, iron, copper, small industry, and so on. The economic-military
structure acquired provinces that could sustain the core of the empire with
grain. The center of the empire was the fast-growing capital of Stockholm,
the population of which had increased from around eight thousand in the
mid-sixteenth century to sixty thousand in the late seventeenth century. The
capital had to be fed, and most of the grain imports arrived at the port of
Stockholm itself.
At the end of the seventeenth century the Swedish armies were defeated,
and internal social conflicts grew. Soldiers deserted the army, copper
production declined as a result of overexploitation, and years of famine
plagued the country. Ideological legitimacy for the war economy
diminished. The peasants protested, the bourgeoisie protested, the clergy
protested, and even the lesser nobility protested, as their wages were not
being paid as a result of impending federal bankruptcy.9 The end of the
seventeenth century witnessed a political revolution, and the former basis of
the war economy—that is, high taxation and the conscription of young men
into the army—was brought to an end. Sweden’s time as an empire was
over.
However, Sweden was to emerge from its war economy with a more
developed infrastructure for nonagrarian production. Swords could literally
be turned into ploughshares. The country continued to import grain from
Estonia and Livonia even after these provinces had been lost to Russia, but
now by paying for these imports.

A Dysfunctional Empire in a European Crisis

Monocausal explanations for historical phenomena should generally be
avoided. Religion, geopolitics, and the Swedish attempt to control the Baltic
trade were all important factors in the imperial expansion of Sweden. The
first two factors were essential for mobilizing popular support in the home
country, a support that gradually declined as the burdens increased.
However, a fourth factor in understanding the Swedish Empire as an
economic-military structure was the goal of conquering rich provinces so
that these could be used to finance further expansion.10 This, of course, was
not something peculiar to Sweden in this period. Rather, it was a part of a
general military revolution in Europe and the rest of the world, which
heralded an enlarged scale of warfare. Armies now engaged hundreds of
thousands of soldiers, fortresses covered huge areas, and investments in
artillery and ships raised state expenditure to new levels (Roberts 1967;
Parker 1996; McNeill and McNeill 2003:189–191).
Immanuel Wallerstein (1974) has emphasized that a European-wide (and
worldwide) division of labor in basic production and bulk trade represented
a fundamental change at this time in history. This was also a decisive factor
for the Swedish endeavors—otherwise there would have been no markets
for the products generated by mobilizing resources in Sweden. Sweden
produced bulk products for the wartimes of the seventeenth century. The
first breakthrough for bulk trade had been based on textile and food
products in the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, but the
prolonged wars in the following century harmed large-scale trade with
agricultural products, such as the ox-trade from Denmark and eastern
Europe, and the grain exports from Poland.
 The general European crisis in this period has been a topic of fierce
discussion over the years. Nearly all countries experienced stagnation, but
with pronounced regional differences. In Spain and Italy the stagnation
began in the late sixteenth century, and much of France also experienced a
stagnating economy at that time. Germany was hit in the early seventeenth
century, while England and Holland experienced stagnation in the late
seventeenth century.11
The Malthusian doctrine suggests a basic explanation for this stagnation,
and because change in agricultural techniques ceased there was stagnation
in the overall production of food (Le Roy Ladurie 1974; Overton 1996).
The Swedish reaction to this crisis in agricultural production was, as we
have seen, political expansion. This can actually be seen as the general
reaction in Europe at a time when the continent engaged in all-embracing
warfare. Many scholars have stressed the importance of wars as a central
component in the ensuing vicious circle (Hobsbawm 1967:15; Trevor-
Roper 1967:85; Elliot 1967:112; Steensgaard 1978:39).
The Swedish Empire can thus be seen as both a consequence and a cause
of crisis. War zones along its advancing front were ravaged by massive
destruction. In Lithuania the wars in the 1620s caused a steep decrease in
population, and many villages were deserted and “overgrown with
brushwood and their former position was unknown even to local peasants”
(Liitoja-Tarkiainen 2000:240). Estonia and much of the Baltic region
experienced a series of wars, and between the late sixteenth and the late
seventeenth centuries the population fell to half (or even a third) of what it
had been (Turpeinen 1997:408; Bardet 1997:574). In Poland, population
decreased by 25–40 percent in the 1650s as a result of “the Swedish
deluge,” but other disasters including plague and wars with Russia also
contributed to the Polish decline (Topolski 1986:99–100; Gieysztor
1997:569; Kriedte 1983:102). In Germany there was an overall population
decrease of 40 percent during the Thirty Years’ War—and in large areas in
northern Germany and southwestern Germany the population decrease was
over 66 percent (Pfister 1994:14; Atlas zur Geschichte 1973:59; Moore
1981:47).
The “Swedish wars” in Denmark from 1643 to 1660 caused
depopulation, especially at the end of the period. In the area covered by
contemporary Denmark, that is Jutland and the isles, the total population
was about 555,000 in 1650 and fell to about 430,000 in 1660. In the early
1650s the country was ravaged by the plague, but an even worse decimator
was the war of 1657–1660. In southern Jutland about sixty thousand
succumbed, and in some parishes two-thirds of the population died. Farms
were left abandoned for decades, and their fields were covered by heather
(Lassen 1958, 1965:11; Johansen 2002:21–23).12 In Scania the population
remained stagnant between 1620 and 1690, and the region experienced a
slump in the intervening decades.
In this huge, devastated area of Europe, fields and farms were left
deserted, much as they had been during the late medieval crisis following
the plague. A difference compared to the late medieval crisis, however, was
that depopulation in the seventeenth century had a more patchy pattern,
reflecting the routes of the armies. The Swedish armies were not the only
ones to blame—the Habsburgs, the French, the Russians, and others also
conducted ruthless warfare, leaving plague and famine in their wake.
At the core of the Swedish Empire we instead find a situation with
considerable pressure on resources, especially on the woodlands. Iron
production, for example, had to be spread over half of Sweden because of
the shortage of timber in the mining districts.13
The Swedish Empire can thus be understood as part of a dysfunctional
societal reaction to a growing European crisis. Michael Roberts provides an
excellent account of the events in his classical essay on the military
revolution. The medieval concept of war as an extension of feud had
included a legal right to loot and to take booty. But when the scale of
warfare expanded, Europe endured a period of wars where the “ordinary
conduct was of exceptional savagery” (Roberts 1967:214–215). Enormous
armies lived off the countryside, stripping it bare, or sometimes simply
destroyed it to make it useless for the enemy armies. A new international
agreement had to be reached in order to restrict the looting, and a new
national policy had to be established, where the protection of a country and
defense of its borders became even more important. From chaos came
order.
Empires can be perceived as the result of expanding economies. The
Swedish Empire, however, clearly resulted from a crisis, if seen at the
European level. A stagnating economy spawned a more intense competition
over resources, typical for all complex societies (Tainter 1988:121–122).
This struggle took the form of ruthless wars between nations, a societal
reaction that placed further burdens on economy, population, and ecology.

Notes
1 Taagepera’s estimates have often been used, but seldom been studied
from a source-critical perspective, which is especially relevant for earlier
periods.

2 The reliability of estimations decreases as one goes back in time.

3 Table in Myrdal (2003). The state that controlled northern India was
normally second largest in terms of population (cf. Livi-Bacci 1992:31).

4 Collins remarks that states in the middle of a geographical region tend to

break up into smaller units, which would be an appropriate description of
Germany in the seventeenth century.

5 For quite the opposite picture, of an underdeveloped Sweden, see

Wallerstein (1974:312).

6 For a wider discussion of the tithe as a source, see Le Roy Ladurie and
Goy (1982). On France: see Neveux, Jacquart, and Le Roy Ladurie
(1975:17, 244); on Belgium: Daelemans (1978); Jansen (1978); on The
Netherlands: Priester (1998). For a critique of the tithe as a source, see e.g.
Hoffman (2000).

7 The classical economic history of the Roman Empire is Rostovtzeff

(1957[1926]). For modern archaeological research, from an economic-
historical perspective, see Greene (1986). Concerning the Roman Empire as
a self-organizing system, with several examples e.g. from southern France,
see Van der Leeuw and de Vries (2002).

8 I thank John McNeill for pointing out this example to me.

9 The lesser nobility often owned little or no land at all, but were
employed as state servants such as officers and clerks.
10 Wallerstein (1974:312–313) gives a similar account. He argues that the
expansion of grain production in Sweden was hindered by climatic
downturn. The Swedish nobility hence needed conquest and thus a strong
state, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used mercantilism
as a lever for industrial advancement.

11 On this debate, see Aston (1967) and Parker and Smith (1978). Cipolla
(1981:248–249) has emphasized regional differences, with a relative
expansion of the North Sea regions. For summaries, see Kriedte (1983:62–
69); de Vries (1994:13–14); and Fischer (1996:72–96, 468–472).

12 The Swedish army had plundered for two years, but was driven out
from Jutland by Denmark’s allied forces from Poland, Brandenburg, and the
Habsburg emperor’s Austrian armies. Economic collapse followed with
typhus and famine.

13 See Sundberg et al. (1995) for an “emergy analysis,” inspired and

coauthored by H. T. Odum, of the use of Swedish woodlands at this time.

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5

The Role of Deforestation in Earth and

World-System Integration
MICHAEL WILLIAMS

THE TASK OF COMBINING world-system history and global

environmental change (the Earth system) is an important and intellectually
complex challenge. However, the union is not easy, has rarely been
attempted, and barely been successful. Most historians of environmental
change remain steadfastly empirically historical (e.g. Hughes 2001;
McNeill 2000; Richards 2003), ignoring the theoretical contributions of
those like Braudel (1984), Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989), Foster (1999),
and Marx (Berman 1981).1 They “don’t know quite what to do with social
theory,” Jason Moore has written recently, “and the environmentally-
orientated social scientists don’t quite know how to translate their
perspectives into historical research” (Moore 2003:307). Of course the
division is not quite so stark; there have already been some interesting
exercises in cross-fertilization. For example, Terlouw’s (1988, 1992)
attempts to integrate world regional geography with the world-system,
Hans-Jürgen Nitz’s (1993:1–25) attempt to give historical specificity to the
theoretical concerns at a variety of scales, and Dodgshon’s (1993) critique
of the inner social dynamics of the world-system.
For Moore, the way forward to achieve this synthesis between the two
systems has been to look at the details of silver mining and sugar
plantations as exemplars of the major global commodity frontiers. He
investigates how the geographical entities of core, periphery, semiperiphery,
and external arena interacted, as feudalism went through crisis and
capitalism rose triumphant. The analysis of these commodity frontiers is
seen through the lenses of Wallerstein’s socioecological insights and Marx’s
ecological critique of capitalism. Each enables one to analyze the
“emergence of far-flung divisions of labour and the consolidation of a
capitalist world economy predicated on the endless accumulation of capital”
(Moore 2003:309). The environmental transformations that accompanied
these commodity frontiers were both the result and the cause of further
expansion and transformation of the world-system, sending out recurrent
waves of exploitation to the farthest corners of the globe.
Silver and sugar were by no means the only commodity frontiers. An
extended list could well include other minerals (gold, iron, phosphates) and
more especially and importantly many different foods (tea, coffee, cocoa,
wheat, rice) and organic consumer goods (cotton, tobacco), and of course,
animal products like whale meat and oil, fish protein, and furs, feathers, and
skins—what Richards (2003:463–616) calls the products of “The World
Hunt.” These are all reminiscent of Walter Prescott Webb’s (1952) early, but
curiously neglected, work on the post-Columbian exploitation by the
European world of what he called “The Great Frontier” of fish, furs, metals,
wheat, and meat. In addition to mineral, food, and animal products there
was a fourth major category of commodity frontier. That was wood and
wood products, which next to food was “the other great basic need” in the
early modern economy and a “continuing ‘growth’ crop” (Wallerstein
1974:44–45, 1980:161–162).
This chapter looks at timber and timber products in an attempt to
integrate studies of the “Earth system” with studies of the “world-system,”
focusing on the role of long-distance trade and export production in
transforming the natural environment (Lund Symposium 2003). In order to
do that the chapter is divided into four main sections:
1. The nature of deforestation and wood procurement and trade as a
manifestation of the Earth system is examined.
2. Some of the main characteristics of the Wallersteinian/Braudelian
world-system will be discussed, against which the historical specificity
of the early modern European situation will be placed.
 3. Both the Earth system and world-system are then brought together in
an examination of case studies of the long-distance timber trade.
4. Finally, the very special nature of timber depletion is emphasized: it is
about the only commodity frontier where the depletion of the main
product—timber—frequently creates a new and valuable resource in
the form of changed land-covers of agricultural and pastoral land.

Although the exact order in which these four themes are examined may be
questioned, taken together they may, among other things, lend greater
understanding to the political and distributional aspects of environmental
deterioration and change, and global inequalities.

The Earth System: The Nature of Deforestation

There can be no better way of achieving the complex and interrelated aims
of synthesizing the world-system with the Earth system than by
concentrating on the processes that have transformed the land-cover of the
globe. Humans have cleared the forests to create cropland, converted
grasslands to create grain lands, drained wetlands to create dry land, and
irrigated arid land to create productive land. Of these processes, forest
clearing has affected a greater land area than the others. At least 7.01 × 106
km2 of dense forest and 3.13 × 106 km2 of open forest have been eliminated
by humans since postglacial times, the bulk of it before 1950 (Williams
2003).
Deforestation is as old as the human occupation of the Earth, and is part
of the age-old quest of humanity for shelter, warmth, and food.
Consequently, the attraction of forested environments is not difficult to
appreciate. Trees provide wood for construction, for shelter, and for making
a multitude of implements. Wood provides the fuel to keep warm, to cook
food and make it palatable, and even to smelt metal and make ceramics.
The nuts and fruits of the trees are useful for human foods, medicines, and
dyes, and the roots, young shoots, and branches provide food for animals.
Very simply, the forest has provided essential materials for human survival,
second only to food.
But wood has a multiple importance. Because it is an energy source in
metal-making it has been crucial in the manufacture of armaments, and
until the mid-nineteenth century was the basic material for constructing
ships, the very means of long-distance trade and capitalism’s exploitation of
the commodity frontiers of the world. Consequently, until recently, wood
occupied a strategic position in most parts of the world akin to that of
petroleum today, or what steel was before. So important was the supply of
timber and naval stores for maintaining a navy that they were worth going
to war over in order to ensure supplies; witness the British efforts to keep
the Baltic Straits out of hostile hands during the Napoleonic Wars.
But timber is even more multifaceted than that; it was more than a
positive, useful, and essential commodity, because its clearing (i.e.
deforestation) provided the land for growing crops—land, moreover, often
covered by a deep humus accumulation and initially rich in nutrients. Thus,
as we will see in the fourth and final section of this chapter, deforestation
was the prelude to the emergence of many other commodity frontiers,
especially those of the food and vegetable crops of the tropical world, like
coffee, sugar, tobacco, and rubber. In short, deforestation is subsumed in the
global emergence of most food crops, with the notable exception of grain
crops in the world’s grasslands, which flourished after the invention of the
steel-tipped plough in the mid-1830s.
In contrast to draining and irrigating, clearing requires no sophisticated
technology or cooperative effort. In prehistory individual humans with
stone or flint axes needed only boundless energy to fell trees. The addition
of fire and browsing animals completed what the axe did not accomplish.
The substitution of metal for stone axes around 3,500 years ago, and then
saws in the medieval period, eased the back-breaking task of clearing and
accelerated the rate of change, but neither altered the basic process of
destruction and land-use transformation. In contrast, since the mid-
twentieth century, power saws have made a major and accelerating impact.
Nevertheless, taking the long view, tropical forest destruction since 1950 is
a mere continuation of an ever-upwardly sloping curve. Admittedly,
compared to previous deforestation episodes it is more rapid and
detrimental to global biodiversity, and it is occurring in more sensitive and
irreversibly damaged environments.
So, in summary, wood has been an essential raw material for energy and
construction throughout most of human history, it has had strategic
importance for shipbuilding and metal-making, its clearing was the means
of making new land, and felling is a reasonably easy resource conversion
technique.

Wood Procurement
The procurement of wood presents a paradox. It is a bulky, low-cost
commodity that in theory should not travel far. The classical position is laid
out in what was probably the first-ever theoretical statement on commodity
exploitation by Johann Heinrich von Thünen (1826), a wheat farmer from
the Mecklenburg district of northern Germany. He postulated that there
would be a roughly concentric zonation of land use around the marketplace,
dependent on the transport costs, which rose with increasing distance from
the center. In that zonation timber (unlike grain, for example) would be
located close to the marketplace because of its bulky, low-cost nature.
While the zonation of grain seemed to happen at a local scale on the
preindustrial northern European plain, the essential nature of timber
produced a more complicated picture. Constant demand meant that it was
soon chopped out on nearby locations, and deficiencies in the region were
made up for by imports from further afield. Similar movements happened
on a world scale.
It was not as if lumber was a high-value product. Perhaps the nearest
comparable commodity moved in bulk was wheat, and that was anything
between four to six times more valuable than sawn lumber and ten to twelve
times more valuable than logs per unit weight—and even wheat was said
not to be worth moving if the price was low (Rector 1953:28–29). That
lumber continued to be moved around the world irrespective of its bulkiness
and low per-unit value was a measure of its essential nature. We have
become accustomed to the idea that strategic wooden products like masts
for sailing ships were moved vast distances, but it is salutary to think that
prosaic English drawing rooms built during the early seventeenth century
were often paneled with oak that came from Silesia or Galicia, and
occasionally with “Riga wainscot,” oak that came from Kazan on the
Russian forest-steppe edge. Timber had turned the trade of the world upside
down, propelled land-cover change over vast areas, and pushed the
commodity frontier into new far-flung regions.

World Trade System: The Wallersteinian Model

Let us now shift our focus from the changing Earth system (as exemplified
by deforestation and the timber trade) to the role of timber and land-use
change in the emerging world-system. The von Thünen land-use model
does not explain or capture the complexities of the spatial structure of the
early modern European world-system. However, the model devised by
Wallerstein (and Braudel before him) has greater utility.
Wallerstein developed the concepts “core,” “periphery,” and “external
arena,” which have pronounced geographical expression and historical
continuity. The economic system is conceived of as being centered around
the “core” with its trade metropolis, which controls the world economy. The
core controls world trade by setting prices for goods both at the point of
production and at the point of consumption. It is a coerced and unequal
exchange based on exploitation. The second domain is the “peripheral”
zone, which is dependent on the core. It supplies the core with raw
materials, which are the “lower-ranking goods” (that is, goods whose labor
is less well rewarded), but which are an integral part of the overall system
of the division of labor, because commodities involved are essential for
daily use. The third domain is the “external arena,” defined as those other
world-systems with which a given world economy has some kind of trade
relationship, based primarily on the exchange of preciosities, or what was
sometimes called “the rich trades” (Wallerstein 1974:302).
In both Wallerstein’s and Braudel’s models there is a fourth structural
zone located between the core and the periphery, Wallerstein’s “semi-
periphery” and Braudel’s “intermediate zone.” This characteristic of
indeterminacy refers to its intermediate geographical position, intermediate
wealth, and intermediate economic diversification. It is more diverse than
the periphery and has many intermediate trade centers that deal directly
with the metropolitan core area. They are what Braudel calls “relay cities.”
This theoretical model lends understanding to the historical situation.
Before the sixteenth century, Europe was a peripheral appendage of the
civilized world—a mere “peninsula of peninsulas” in the words of H. C.
Darby (1961:20). That world consisted of the land-based empires of Ming
China, the Ottoman Middle East (soon to spread to North Africa), and the
precursors of Safavid Persia and Mughal north India, soon to become (1508
and 1526 respectively) the mighty polities that they eventually were. In
these empires contacts by sea were relatively unimportant (figure 5.1).2 The
continents were isolated from one another, except for a few overland
trading routes that linked Europe with India and Africa for the movement of
high-cost goods, such as tea, porcelain, indigo, spices, and pearls, that is,
what Wallerstein called “preciosities.” With the application by the European
trading nations of improved technology for ships’ rigging, ocean maps, and
navigational aids, it was Europe that leaped ahead. It broke out of its land-
based territory, and by making use of its access to the Atlantic, Baltic, and
North Seas, turned the continents inside out and in effect reoriented them to
face the sea, and established sea contacts between them.
By 1700 it was a very different picture from that of the late fifteenth
century From being on the periphery, Europe now moved to being at the
center or core of innovation, trade, and change, to become the most
dynamic region in the world. Peripheries and external arenas of raw
materials were created around it. Western Europe’s periphery stretched from
Scandinavia (fish, wood, and metals), through the Baltic rimlands region
(grain, wood, flax, naval stores), to the Black Sea and Hungary (livestock).
In the south it encompassed the Italian and Iberian peninsulas (sheep, wool,
wine) and extended across the Atlantic to the Caribbean islands and
fringing lands, which provided tropical products. Of course, it was not a
stable arrangement. As the commodity frontiers and their environmental
transformations changed, so did the “zones.” In the process, “the external
arenas of one country often became the periphery of the next” and even
“core states became semi-peripheral, or semi-peripheral areas peripheral”
(Wallerstein 1974:350). It was a highly dynamic arrangement.
 Figure 5.1. The European economy on a global scale, and other empires,
ca. AD 1500. Sources: After F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–
18th Century, vol. 1, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the
Possible (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 26; and G. Barraclough, ed.,
The Times Atlas of World History (London: Times, 1978), 154–155

Despite the seeming simplicity of the Wallerstein/Braudel geoeconomic

megastructures, it is difficult to give the constituent domains geographical
specificity, as they are dynamic and shift through time (Taylor 1988;
Terlouw 1992; Wallace 1990). Nevertheless, an attempt has been made in
figures 5.1 and 5.2 to give a generalized view of the global arrangement.
The situation around 1500 is relatively simple to reconstruct, as it
incorporates actual or potential political entities and their predecessors, but
the late-eighteenth-century pattern cannot be defined by nation states, and
can only be sketched broadly, especially at the scale at which we are
working. In reality, the parts of the structure are vague, especially as
Wallerstein initially considers nation-states as the elementary units of the
system and then later asserts that market forces ignore national boundaries.
Because of the scale and the uncertainty, the periphery and external arena
are combined—in theory, the external arenas become incorporated into the
periphery—and the relay cities are indicated schematically, while the
intermediate areas are sketched in broadly Despite its imperfections and
limitations, however, it is offered as a visual guide to what is basically a
geographical concept.
Figure 5.2. The European economy on a global scale, and the emergence of
a core and periphery /external arena, ca. 1775. Sources: After F. Braudel,
Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, vol. 1, The Structures of
Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (New York: Harper and Row,
1981), 27; and G. Barraclough, ed., The Times Atlas of World History
(London: Times, 1978), 198–199

Ever since the breakdown of feudalism in the late fourteenth century,

Europe had been moving toward a more entrepreneurial, commercial,
merchant, money- and credit-driven, profit-oriented market system—
capitalism, no less. This transition is best described as the advent of
modernity. It was first clearly discernible in the late sixteenth century, when
truly capitalist states engaged in a new sort of international exchange
economy were in evidence first in northern Italy, then by 1650 in the Low
Countries and then Britain (Williams 2003:155–159). The concomitant rise
of Amsterdam and London as international trading, financial, and
information-exchanging centers was important. “Everywhere,” said the
Dutch historian Herman Van der Wee, “money was on the march” (Van der
Wee 1970:290).
A driving force that stimulated consumption was the increase in Europe’s
population from about 82 million in 1500 to about 105 million in 1600, and
then 140 million in 1750. But rising numbers alone were of less
significance than the increasing purchasing power of the population, a
power aided by the influx of gold and silver bullion from the New World.
For the rich of western Europe, all aspects of life improved considerably, as
they did for the expanding urban commercial and professional classes. The
intermediate group of skilled artisans and small farmers were also
marginally better off, and the “fairly ordinary man as consumer was
beginning to emerge as a person of importance in the demand picture”
(Minchinton 1977:168).
As Europe shifted from being periphery to being core, the economic
system and means of production interacted with each other in an upwardly
ascending spiral of consumption and production. The link between the two
was overseas trade, and the ship its symbol. That archetypal discoverer,
entrepreneur, colonizer, and adventurer, Sir Walter Raleigh, was convinced
of the preeminence of those “ascendant at sea” when he coined the dictum,
“Hee that commaunds the sea, commaunds the trade, and hee that is Lord of
the Trade is Lord of the wealth of the worlde” (Lefranc 1980:600). It was
an awesome prediction of what was going to happen. The traditional
relationships between people and their environment in the peripheral parts
of the world were shattered as Europe extracted the potential of the land and
its vegetation, commodifying nature for its own use.
In summary, the increase in demand for all goods put increased pressures
on land resources. In particular there was a shift from the medieval
preoccupation with land-based trade in small quantities of high-value
luxury goods—Wallerstein’s “preciosities”—from the largely unaffected
external arenas of contact in Africa and most of Asia, to the movement of
lower-ranking goods in bulk from the periphery of the Americas and the
East Indies. The very names of these goods indicate their origin and have
passed into everyday usage. For example, “muslin” for high quality,
lightweight fabric from Mosul, “calico” for thicker cotton fabric from
Calicut, and “china” for tableware. All these and many more were destined
in large quantities for an increasingly widening segment of affluent people
who consumed a disproportionate amount of the world’s resources.

Linking Earth and World Systems

Now let us bring together the first two strands of this argument, the paradox
of the low value but long distance traveled in the procurement of wood and
wood products, and the early modern European place in the world-system.
These are joined in the examination of (1) the long-distance trade of timber,
and (2) the very special characteristics of deforestation, namely the
substitution of food and fiber crops for trees. These were crops that grew
mainly in the tropical world and eventually entered into world trade.

Long-Distance Timber Trade: Antecedents

The most common and most bulky commodity traded was timber. Its long-
distance trade had many antecedents that went back into antiquity.3

THE ROMAN AND MUSLIM MEDITERRANEAN. Reasonably well

documented are the movements that focused on Rome, which grew to be
one of the largest cities in the world until modern times. It had nearly half a
million inhabitants in 86 BC, 1 million in 5 BC, and between 1.2 and 1.4
million in the fourth century AD. Not only were there more buildings that
demanded large constructional timbers but also bigger buildings, as well as
the demands for heating, baths, and cement-, plaster-, and glass-making.
Consumption far outstripped local supplies, and wood was garnered from a
radius of about 100 km. Larger timbers were floated down the west-flowing
peninsular rivers up to 500 km to the north and then coastwise to the Tiber
and upstream to Rome.
When it came to the strategic interest of ships’ timbers, the local trade
changed to a more regional one that spanned the whole Mediterranean and
Black seas (map 5.1). Theophrastus and other writers give clear details of
the sources of supply. Timbers came from the Pontus and Bithynian
provinces on the southern coast of the Black Sea, Colchis on the far western
shore, where the Bolshay Kavkaz mountains rise and run to the Caspian
Sea, Cilicia on what is the Toros Daglar (Taurus) mountains of southern
Turkey, the Syrian mountains, the Dalmatian coast, Liguria, and Catalonia.
Some even came from Numidia on the north African coast in what is now
Algeria. It is impossible to know the quantities moved but they must have
been considerable.
 Maps 5.1. Major timber- and grain-growing areas and trade routes in the
Mediterranean basin, fourth to first century BC. Sources: After M. M.
Lombard, “Une carte du bois dans la Méditerranée musulmane (VIIe–XIe
siècle),” Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations 14 (1959): 23–54; and
A. G. Sherratt and S. Sherratt, “The Growth of the Mediterranean Economy
in the Early First Millenium BC,” World Archaeology 24 (1993): 361–378

The timber supply lines of the Muslim seventh- to thirteenth-century

world were not that dissimilar, focusing particularly on the pine of
Catalonia and Dalmatian timber (when the Venetians were not being
vigilant). Supplies, which were gathered within the Mediterranean, were
supplemented by even longer-distance trading of pine from the Atlantic
coast of Portugal and teak from the Malabar coast of India (map 5.2).
Timber for shipbuilding was the prime attraction of these long-distance
routes, but timber for construction and fuel for metal-smelting, ceramics,
and domestic heating also loomed large.

THE BALTIC TRADE. The Baltic trade was vast and of long standing, and
was the first global manifestation of low-value goods being moved in bulk.
From the Middle Ages the Hanseatic League had organized trade in naval
stores (masts, wood, pitch tar, turpentine, flax) and general timber, potash,
and wheat, upstream from the settlements on the river edges to the towns
established at their mouths by the Teutonic Knights. The Baltic hinterland
was what Wallerstein (1974) called one of Europe’s “Internal Americas,”
and a notable exception to the pre-1500 trade in preciosities. A wave of
colonization in Poland and Lithuania in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
stimulated further clearing for more extensive agricultural and urban needs,
as well as exports. Danzig, with its many water-driven saw mills, emerged
as the dominant shipbuilding center and hub of the export trade, with lesser
centers at Konigsberg and Riga.
So profitable was this trade that the landowning nobility on the Polish,
southern shores pressured the peasantry into grain-growing during the
summer and into logging during the winter, and the German princes in
Prussia and Lithuania claimed the forest as a state monopoly. Thus
lumbering became an adjunct to the feudal system, and the “lopsided
development of agriculture and forestry under massive pressure of western
demand” took place in Poland and adjacent territories at the expense of
local crafts and industries (Glamman 1974:459; Malowist 1959, 1960a,
1960b).
With their labor supply secure, the landowners contracted out their
exploitation to Dutch, German, and increasingly British large-scale
entrepreneurs. A contract would be drawn up in, say Deptford, Amsterdam,
or La Rochelle, and credit advanced to a Baltic merchant house, which
would engage middlemen to negotiate with forest-owners to produce the
required amount of timber, and sometimes to transport the trunks to port,
paying so much per tree.
Maps 5.2. Wood and timber in the medieval Muslim Mediterranean world.
Sources: After M. M. Lombard, “Une carte du bois dans la Méditerranée
musulmane (VIIe–XIe siècle),” Annales Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations
14 (1959): 23–54

Resource exploitation was aided by local topographical and climatic

conditions. Gradients were gentle, and felling could be done in the winter
months when the sap was low, and the huge spars and trunks hauled out of
the forest easily on horse- and ox-drawn sleds on the snow cover to the
edge of the many substantial rivers that flow across the north European
plain. Then, with the spring thaw, individual logs were thrown into the
smaller streams to be collected at some strategic point and assembled into
great rafts of over a thousand logs that could be navigated downstream, and
these “rafts” were piled high with smaller sawn lumber, fuel wood, grain,
and also potash.
At the Baltic ports, the rafts were floated into mast ponds, broken up, the
choicest “sticks” reserved for the highly strategic masts, and the rest sawn
into whatever lengths and widths the market demanded—balks, planks,
deals, or battens. Lumber was originally sawn laboriously by hand, but
productivity was stepped up manyfold with Dutch- and German-designed
wind- and water-driven mills with up to 10 blades per frame. As these had
already diffused east into the Finnish/Russian towns of Narva, Nyen, and
Vyborg by 1700, and Fredrikshamn and Helsingfors by 1710, they must
have been adopted in the main south Baltic milling centers well before that
date. The timber was loaded into comparatively small ships of 250–400
tons which had shallow drafts, and were preferred because of the many
offshore spits and bars in the shallow and sandy Baltic ports (Åström 1975;
Albion 1926; Soom 1961).
Each river had a major trans-shipment port at its estuary, and each tapped
specific supplies in its hinterland (map 5.3). The Stettin trade along the
Oder and Warta was almost exclusively in oak from central Germany and
even Silesia, but fragmented political control upstream hindered
development, and it was both easier and less costly for Prussia to transport
lumber from Mazovia and Lithuania. The Danzig trade along the Vistula
reached into Galicia and even to the Carpathian edge, from where both oak
and fir were obtained. Riga on the Dina specialized in masts from Livonia,
and later as far east as Vitebsk, and with connecting canals it could draw on
the fir and oak from as far south as Volhynia, and along the Dnieper beyond
Kiev in the Ukraine, from where the famed “Riga Wainscot” came. Memel
on the Neman was developed in the eighteenth century to exploit the areas
of oak and fir not reached from either the Vistula or Duna. St. Petersburg
traded almost exclusively in fir; what little oak existed was used by the
Russian navy (Malowist 1960b; Albion 1926:140–142).

Map 5.3. The Baltic and Scandinavian timber trade in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. It is impossible to show political boundaries with any
certainty over this long period because of the frequent and substantial
changes of states. For example, Sweden extended around the eastern Baltic
and included Livonia until 1658; the two parts of Prussia were joined after
1720; and Poland did not exist as a separate state entity but was variously
partitioned between neighbors until 1810
 So essential were the rivers as the means of cheap transportation in this
trade that this was one place where von Thiinen’s rule held sway As
distance increased from the river edge so overland transport costs rose, and
that affected the type of land use and production, resulting in commodities
of higher value replacing those of lesser value per unit of weight. Thus fuel
was produced in the zone nearest the river, beams, masts, and planks further
inland, and labor-intensive high-value products like tar, pitch, turpentine,
and potash in more distant locations. Further away still, in the most remote
zone, glass- and iron-making based on charcoal and finished wooden
products dominated. An associated feature of this production regime was
the temporary summer lumber camps that replaced permanent settlement,
the huts being moved on as the supplies were cut out (Åström 1988).
For over three hundred years these forests were repeatedly cut over and
culled for large mast timbers so that by the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, when the huge demands of the Dutch, English, French, and even
Spanish navies came into being, the wave of exploitation was forced
eastward into the less disturbed forests of the Russian borderland, and
especially of Finland. The oak forests of east Prussia were exhausted
(Mager 1960), and exploitation moved far into the headwaters of the Rhine,
Weser, Main, and other rivers to tap timber resources in the remote
Thuringian and Black Forests.
It is difficult to capture the total complexity of this trade because of the
many different products, different measures, and discontinuities of the
record. Of the many geographies of trade just one must suffice. Map 5.4
shows the export and import of deals (wide planking) in 1784, the unit of
measurement being the “long hundred,” or 120 pieces of up to 20 feet long
(Åström 1970). Europe was clearly divided into “timber-rich” and “timber-
deficient” areas, and one-way journeys of up to 3,000 kilometers were
commonplace for this low-value product. Timber transcended the
commonsense rules of production and trade.

NORTH AMERICA: MASS MOVEMENT OF TIMBER. All the lessons

learned in the Baltic trade were multiplied many hundredfold in the trade
within North America in later centuries, where industrial logging reached
its apogee. Now mechanization and steam power for mills and railroads
were allied to bulk transport along rivers. Loggers realized that half of the
cost of getting a log from the stump to the mill involved transport.
Therefore they explored every means possible of moving the bulky logs en
masse in astronomical quantities. Allied to this mass movement was the
monopolization of the business. Owners attempted, and often succeeded in,
owning vast tracts of timber land for their exclusive use, cutting off all
available timber and rarely being concerned with the regeneration of the
forest. In the nineteenth century there always seemed to be new and more
forest to cut out and the mill could move on, though by the early years of
the twentieth century timber exhaustion tempered this exploitative attitude,
mills became fixed, and replanting took place.
The details of this trade would on its own fill a paper. Suffice it to say,
distances of 1,000 to 2,000 miles by river and then by rail were not
uncommon as supplies in the American west and south reached the
consuming core in the industrial northeast seaboard, which was fast running
out of large timber. The point is that timber was so essential for construction
and fuel that its procurement transcended all economic considerations and
was achieved at any cost. In the process over 153 million acres (around 62
million ha) were deforested by lumber companies alone, and this says
nothing of the 304 million acres (122 million ha) that were cleared for
agriculture (Williams 2003:301–324, 1989:193–330).4
 Map 5.4. The geography of the European trade in Baltic “deals” (planks)
for the year 1784. The map shows shipments originating in the Baltic and
customs-cleared through the Baltic Sound (Straits). The unit of measure is
the long hundred, or 120 pieces, up to 20 feet long. Source: Based on S.-E.
Åström, “English Timber Imports from Northern Europe in the Eighteenth
Century,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 18 (1970): 31–32

Affluence, Deforestation, and Changed Land-Cover

While timber procurement was a resource-destroyer, destructive of the
original vegetation, it could be a resource-creator as well. In the
Wallersteinian world-system model the “external arenas” provided the
preciosities, while the “peripheral zone” supplied the raw materials and the
“lower-ranking goods” produced by labor, which, although poorly
rewarded, were integral to the global division of labor, because the goods
were essential for the daily use of the core. However, this is where the
spatial divisions become blurred. Initially these goods were regarded as
preciosities—expensive, exotic products or luxuries that only the wealthy
could afford. Yet, from the mid-seventeenth century onward, rising
affluence for many, better global transport, and the consequent cheapening
of commodities meant that their consumption filtered down through the
various layers of society until they became staples or commonplace
“necessities of everyday life,” as Fernand Braudel (1984a) called them.
Preciosities were now produced in bulk and in that process the external
arenas took on more of the characteristics of the classical periphery, but
now at a global scale.
Tea, coffee, chocolate, and sugar were not essential but they certainly
varied diet, and rapidly became part of what Marshall Sahlins (1988:40–45)
has called the West’s “soft drug culture.” Some goods like silks and tobacco
were more purely optional. Cotton answered to basic needs for cheap and
hygienic over- and underclothing. These tropical staples were thus added to
the traditional staples of wheat, wood, wine, and dyes.
Many of these “lower-ranking” goods were tropical products, the
growing of which led directly to tropical forest clearing and changes in
land-cover. Sugar is the classic example of this global shift. Geographically
its growth was “a means of both financing colonial endeavours as well as a
motive for the occupation of yet more territory” (Galloway 1989:48).
Socially it fostered habits of consumption, changed dietary habits, and was
a source of wealth and power; economically its production in the plantation
system altered the global distribution of population through slavery and
emigration (Moore 2003:347–357).
When that transition in consumption got underway, the impact on the
biomes of the world really began, as sugar cane, tea bushes, coffee bushes,
and numerous other crops replaced wild tropical vegetation, and global
land-cover was irrevocably altered. Peasant proprietors shifted
imperceptibly from predominantly subsistence agriculture to an agricultural
regime with a considerable cash crop element in it. The development and
refinement of the plantation, with its cowed and subjugated indigenous
labor or imported slave labor left an indelible mark on huge expanses of the
world. Said one eighteenth-century observer:

Whether coffee and sugar are really necessary to the happiness

of Europe, is more than I can say, but I can affirm that these two
vegetables have brought wretchedness and misery upon
America and Africa. The former has been depopulated, that
Europeans may have land to plant them in; and the latter is
stripped of its inhabitants, for hands to cultivate them. (de Saint-
Pierre 1775:105)

In a word, both the societies and the landscapes of the tropical world
changed forever. Forests were cleared and converted to the profitable
production of crops, many of them not even indigenous to the region. From
Java to Jamaica, Fiji to Malaya, Brazil to the Congo, tropical regions were
utterly transformed by the drive toward managed tropical agriculture
(Walvin 1997).
When the purposeful movement of “settler societies” to the temperate
lands of North America, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, southern
Africa, and southern Brazil got under way in later years, the impact on the
global forests was devastating. Through timber procurement and timber
elimination, the world-system irrevocably enmeshed the Earth system
within its workings, always reacting reciprocally as both cause and effect in
an ever-upwardly ratcheting cycle of change, and the modern global
economy was under way.

Notes
1 It is difficult to cite Marx’s many publications but a good summary of
his “environmental” writing can be found in Berman (1981).

2 How great this trade was is difficult to discern, though it might have
been considerable. However, it was only with European expansion that
there was the mass movement of bulky commodities and raw materials
(Abu-Lughod 1989; Chaudhuri 1985).
3 The following paragraphs are based on Williams (2003:85–95, 128–
130).

4 The American story is dealt with in Williams (2003:301–324), and even

more fully in Williams (1989:193–330).

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6

Silver, Ecology, and the Origins of the

Modern World, 1450–1640
JASON W. MOORE

THE DEBATE OVER THE “RISE OF THE WEST” has sharpened in

recent years, particularly with the New World History’s critique of
Eurocentric historiography (Frank 1998; Pomeranz 2000). In the process,
however, the specificity of Europe’s overseas expansion has often been
eclipsed (e.g. Richards 2003). This is unfortunate, because Europe’s early
modern expansion—while not the talisman of technological or economic
superiority once assumed—expressed a new and destabilizing
crystallization of socioecological power and process, one predicated on the
endless accumulation of capital. But far from a narrowly social logic,
endless accumulation embodied a globalizing mode of producing nature
that presumed the endless export of ecological problems. This was
something new. For ecological degradation was not simply a consequence
of European expansion, but constitutive of capitalism’s very essence—its
(presumably) limitless drive to accumulate capital.
Early modern silver mining sheds light on the ways that environmental
transformations were at once cause and consequence of the rise of
capitalism. Clustered geographically in a central European zone
encompassing parts of present-day southern Germany and southern Poland,
Hungary, and the Czech Republic, Europe’s mining and metallurgical
sectors at the end of the long medieval crisis expressed a remarkably
prefigurative form of capitalist production. From the 1450s, central
Europe’s booming mining regions were sites of huge capital investment,
large-scale industrial production, and aggressive monetization. “In no other
branch of the economy did early forms of capitalism develop so fast or
entrench themselves so firmly as in the mining industry” (Kellenbenz
1976:80). The extraction of ore and production of metal was closely and
strategically articulated with leading agencies of capital accumulation,
foremost among them the Augsburg-based Fuggers (Nef 1964; Lynch
2002). Out of this peculiar set of local-global antagonisms emerged a
specifically capitalist configuration of nature-society relations predicated on
the endlessly globalizing conquest of nature.
Silver loomed especially large in this movement of endless conquest. The
modern world’s first extractive efflorescence predated American silver,
nourishing the arteries of accumulation in a European economy
“desperately” short of “sound money” at the dawn of modernity (Yun
1996:119). This infusion of sound money at the scale of accumulation was
articulated in the closest fashion with transformations in the division of
labor. Foremost among these latter were the rapid extension and deepening
of commodity relations in the central European countryside, propelled at
once by silver mining’s profitability and the environmental degradation that
consistently threatened to undermine such profitability. These interlinked
transformations at multiple scales—not simply local and global, to be sure1
—fueled a significant accumulation of monetary wealth in the hands of (so-
called) “merchant” capitalists such as the Fuggers, who were directly
involved in extractive enterprises from Castile to Sweden to Hungary. By
itself such newfound monetary wealth would have achieved little that was
new. What gave this accumulation its revolutionary character was the
world-historical alchemy of transforming “wealth” into “capital.” For the
era’s metallurgical sectors were producing not only wealth qua “sound
money” and resources, abstractly conceived. They were implicated in the
production of a new set of socioecological relations—significantly, the
formation of large-scale industrial capital and a quite prefigurative
metallurgical proletariat (Kellenbenz 1976:80–81)—that compelled and
presupposed infinite growth. It was this very presupposition that
underpinned the metallurgical sector’s significant contribution to world
accumulation and compelled and enabled a subsequent geographical shift in
silver mining—and a renewed wave of global capitalist expansion—by the
mid-sixteenth century.
This chapter tells the environmental history of this global shift through
the optic of the commodity frontier and the relocation of silver mining from
central Europe to Potosi in the 1540s. The socioecological contradictions
set in motion by the silver commodity frontier in late-sixteenth-century
Peru (including present-day Bolivia), by the 1640s would in turn give way
to another round of geographical expansion, as silver mining’s center of
gravity shifted to New Spain (Mexico). In this the silver frontier expressed
a broader pattern—including tobacco, fisheries, wheat, timber, indigo, and
dyewood, but sugar and silver above all—namely, capitalism’s tendency
toward an unusually rapacious and globally expansionary form of what
Gadgil and Guha call “sequential overexploitation” (1992). In one region
after another, ecological sustainability was increasingly subordinated to the
imperatives of profit-maximization and empire-building: a strategy whose
short-run gains were realized through rising ecological problems (and costs)
over the middle run. Typically within fifty to seventy-five years, these
contradictions undermined regional profitability and compelled a shift in
the frontier’s center of gravity.
Capitalism did not invent large-scale mining. But if mining and its
monstrous record of environmental devastation dates back to antiquity
(Hughes 2001:63–66), its revival in the 1450s embodied and enabled
broader changes in Europe’s political economy. Metallurgical production of
all sorts rose dramatically, particularly war-driven copper and iron output.
The annual output of central Europe’s silver mines expanded fivefold
between 1460 and 1530, an astounding production figure not reached again
until the nineteenth century (Nef 1964:42). While Europe’s fifteenth-
century silver boom resembled premodern extractive cycles in certain
respects, its articulation with European expansion made a crucial difference.
The rapid geographical expansion effected by Europe’s overseas empires
meant that mining’s socioecological contradictions could now be attenuated
—and extended—through global expansion.
These contradictions were evident from the 1450s. Even at this early
date, central Europe’s gigantic ironworks “filled [the air] with such a stench
and smoke as to trouble travelers as well as inhabitants” (Nef 1964: 44).
Even contemporary boosters were forced to concede that “the strongest
argument of [mining’s] detractors” was environmental degradation—the
poisoning of streams and the ensuing destruction of fisheries, widespread
deforestation, the “extermination” of wildlife, and soil erosion (Agricola
1556:8). A significant share of this pollution derived from the confluence of
the economic expansion with a new smelting process involving a gigantic
volume of lead—on the order of 50 kilograms of lead for every kilogram of
silver extracted (Lynch 2002; Novak et al. 2003:439).2 Much as mercury
would do in the sixteenth century, most of this lead found its way into rivers
and streams, effectively enclosing the riparian commons as a dumping
ground for metallurgical capitalism. It would do much the same to workers’
bodies, who suffered not only predictable forms of silicosis but also—in the
great Joachmistal mining town especially—from lethal exposure to uranium
ores (Mould 2001; Agricola 1556:6).
Of much more direct concern to the world-historical trajectory of central
Europe’s mining boom was the enclosure of the forests. Everything turned
on wood, it seemed. And it was not just the volume but the speed at which
the new demands were made, for construction and above all for fuel. For no
silver or iron could be produced without wood fuel, and lots of it. The
metallurgical commodity zone expanded into the forests at a ferocious pace.
A pound of pig iron—which except for cast-iron products typically required
further processing—consumed approximately 15–20 lbs. of charcoal,
reduced from about 75–100 lbs. of wood (Smil 1994:150, 156). While
central Europe boasted enormous forest resources, what counted was
proximity; charcoal’s fragility limited transport to about five miles, less if
the terrain was treacherous (Hammersley 1973:606). This attenuated but did
not eliminate a generalized condition of sharply rising demand on the
region’s forests after 1450, stemming from the broad-based upsurge in
multiple extractive activities, comprising lead, copper, and zinc in addition
to iron and silver. Of special importance was iron. After 1450 central
Europe emerged not only as the leading silver producer but also its leading
iron manufacturer, accounting for half of Europe’s output by 1500
(Cameron 1993:118).
Producing some 30,000 tons of iron annually, a figure rising fast through
the first half of the sixteenth century, demanded access to forests on a
massive scale. Looking at England in the early seventeenth century,
Hammersley proposes that one ton of pig iron could be produced on a
sustainable basis from the “natural increment” of 8–10 acres. Factoring in
additional fuel consumption for wrought- or bar-iron manufacture, on this
basis we might estimate conservatively the sector’s consumption at 400,000
acres (give or take), not a large figure relative to regional forest cover. But
except under very unusual circumstances sustainability was not the rule;
especially in boom years (and there were many in the century after 1450),
early modern smelters would have been under enormous pressure to expand
production beyond the “natural increment.” This increased profitability and
cut costs over the short run but undermined the ecological basis for it over
the middle run of a quarter-century or so. Even if we assume a modest rate
of relative deforestation, say 5 percent annually of the forests engaged by
iron smelters,3 we would have a fairly consistent pattern of “original” forest
clearance, somewhere on the order of 15–20,000 acres each year, or
somewhere on the order of 1.1–1.5 million acres for the period between
1450 and 1525.
Is this an overestimate? Probably quite the opposite. Kellenbenz
(1974:256) cites a 1564 forestry report on the Neusohl copper smelters that
puts annual consumption at twenty-four thousand loads of charcoal; surely
an exaggeration, but if true this would have required the “natural
increment” of 580,000 acres.4 Moreover, smelters, especially iron smelters,
relocated frequently as local forest stocks dwindled. This relocation, in turn,
favored a transition from hardwood forests such as oak to softwoods like
pine and fir. These latter assumed a virtually monocultural presence in
mining regions such as the Upper Palatinate by the end of the sixteenth
century; forests outside the sustained grasp of the metallurgical sectors
retained their diversity for several centuries (Westermann 1996:938).
Although the softwoods grew faster than hardwoods, they were poor
substitutes in charcoal manufacture, which meant consuming even greater
numbers of trees.
This metallurgical revolution devoured central Europe’s forests with
unprecedented velocity. By the sixteenth century there was “a general
deforestation in Europe, which surpassed that of the thirteenth” (Appuhn
2000:865; for Germany, see Blickle 1981:37–39, 73–74; Westermann 1996;
Williams 2003). What took some six centuries for feudal Europe to effect
(Darby 1956), the emergent capitalist order achieved in just over a century.
The new scale of metallurgical production surely played a crucial role in
this, even if we recognize with Michael Williams (2003) that the
demographic recovery of the peasantry was statistically predominant in
aggregate forest clearance. Two points here deserve special attention. First,
in mining-intensive regions such as the Upper Palatinate the direct
metallurgical activities of extraction and smelting constituted about half of
peasant consumption; a similar figure holds for the great mining center of
Joachmistal in the early sixteenth century (Westermann 1996:934–35, 937).
Second, the demographic expansion can in no way be considered
autonomous—although not mechanically derivative—from the transition to
capitalism. While the old seigneurial-agrarian demographic order retained
some vigor (Seccombe 1992), the remarkable expansion of “proto-
industrial” activities was taking its toll on Braudel’s allegedly stable
“biological ancien regime” (1981). Mining and metallurgical production
loomed especially large in this destabilization, their expansion constituting
favored “secondary occupations” for peasant households (Kellenbenz
1974:263). To the extent that such semiproletarianization proceeded—
central Europe’s metallurgical sector alone was reported to have employed
upward of one hundred thousand workers in 1525 (Nef 1964:43)—
sociobiological reproduction was correspondingly unhinged from access to
land and the conditions established for rapid population growth (Seccombe
1992).
It was, then, less population expansion qua independent variable (pace
Williams 2003) than the demographic transformations—not to mention the
social tensions (Scott 2002)—associated with the penetration of commodity
production and exchange into peasant society. The social organization of
human nature and the social organization of extra-human nature together
worked new pressures on central Europe’s forests. From this standpoint it is
scarcely surprising that fuel costs moved sharply upward from the last
quarter of the fifteenth century. “From 1470 onward, in all of central
Europe, the price of wood was rising, slowly at first, then rapidly” (Cipolla
1976:229). Charcoal was by far the largest item in the budget of any
smelter, sometimes as high as 70 percent of operating costs (Kellenbenz
1974:257). Already by the 1460s, fuel scarcity had compelled Nuremberg—
not coincidentally the first site of modern “forest sowing” (Powers
1999:265)—to relocate its copper smelters some two hundred kilometers
northward following the industry’s virtual shutdown; that is, at the very
moment when the extractive boom was commencing, and therefore
precisely at the time when demands on the forest were escalating most
rapidly (Wellmer and Becker-Platen 2002:725). Fuel demands intensified
still further with declining ore quality. The rich veins tapped, tin yields
declined by nearly half and silver yields by more than 90 percent over the
course of the fifteenth century (Blanchard 1978:88). The ensuing escalation
of the fuel/ore ratio entrained rapid forest exploitation, by 1500 bringing
some metallurgical complexes to the brink of “economic collapse” (Powers
1999:264). The following half-century would bear witness to a cascading
series of such socioecological crunches, of which rising fuel costs were
only the tip of the iceberg (Kellenbenz 1974:256–257; Cameron 1993:118).
Ecological politics entered into this situation in three important ways.
First, by the later fifteenth century, territorial states began to actively
regulate forest access for their own revenue-maximizing interests, above all
favoring fuel-intensive commodity sectors (Kellenbenz 1974:257; Waring
1987:239). These measures “regulated” forest access typically by seeking to
limit peasant access (Westermann 1996), which predictably generated a
kind of Polanyian countermovement of the “self-protecting society” (1957).
Forest enclosures intensified the contradictions of the peasant demographic
regime and set in motion increasingly serious resistance. This took the form
of a series of agrarian revolts beginning in earnest by 1476, culminating in
the German Peasants’ War of 1525 (Brady and Middlefort 1981). Access to
forest commons loomed large in the revolt’s famed “Twelve Articles”
(Blickle 1981:198–199). The timing is important, for it coincided with the
very apex of the central European mining boom. The contrast with the
situation a century earlier was sharp indeed. In 1450, “there were still
extensive forests, so there were few conflicts between peasants and forest
overlords.
... By 1525 the situation was entirely changed” (Blickle 1981:73,
emphasis added). Not forest scarcity in the abstract but forest enclosures
were central to the concerns of the movement. The radical cleric Thomas
Munzer in 1524 decried these enclosures through which ”every creature
should be transformed into property—the fishes in the water, the birds of
the air, the plants of the earth: the creatures too should become free”
(quoted in Marx 1972 [1843]:49). Finally, mining and working-class
formation were, then as now, closely interwoven. Worker unrest intensified
after 1500, and wages rose accordingly, inducing a further squeeze on
profitability (Blickle 1981:120–122; Kriedte 1983:39; Lynch 2002:34–35;
Nef 1964:49; Waring 1987).
By the 1540s these contradictions had reached a boiling point. Braudel
(1982:325) puts this well:

Europe, because of her very expansion, was acting as if she had

decided to delegate the trouble of handling of the mining and
metallurgy industries to dependent regions on her periphery. In
the heart of Europe, not only were falling yields limiting profits,
but the ‘fiery furnaces’ were destroying forestland, and the price
of wood and coal was becoming prohibitive, so that the blast
furnaces could only operate part of the time, thus immobilizing
fixed capital to no purpose. Meanwhile wages were going up.
Small wonder then that the European economy as a whole
applied to Sweden for iron and copper; to Norway for copper;
before long to distant Russia for iron; to America for gold and
silver.

Braudel’s perceptive observation reveals the dialectical connection between

the rise of capitalism and the global extension of extractive industries.
Ecological contradictions were interwoven with those of market, state, and
class in central Europe’s decline. This may well be a useful means of
conceptualizing ecological crisis, positing environmental determinations as
opposed to a narrow environmental determinism. As we have seen, central
Europe’s metallurgical-led ecological revolution crystallized an unstable
cocktail of rapid commodification with the largely “premodern” structure of
peasant society. The competitive dynamics of the silver commodity
complex—articulated closely with financial capital on a continental scale—
gave rise to new large-scale mining enterprises that devoured forests with
unprecedented speed, while the resilience of peasant society limited the
possibilities for fundamental internal restructuring. Within fifty to seventy-
five years, these reached a crescendo that signified the demise of central
Europe’s extractive regime as central to world accumulation. Large-scale
mining did not disappear; the region’s centrality was however displaced
through global expansion. It was the inability of regional socioecological
formations—such as central Europe’s extractive regime—to regain the
competitive edge (once lost) that expressed early capitalism’s profound
geographical restlessness. Thus did central Europe’s silver regime give way
to Potosi in the mid-sixteenth century.5
The relocation of silver mining to the New World offered a near-perfect
combination of relatively favorable ecological and social conditions:
fabulously rich ore deposits and accessible sources of cheap labor power. If
Europe’s mining complex faced formidable obstacles at home, in the New
World it could play a crucial role in reshaping the hemisphere’s
socioecological order. Among other things, while the peasantries of western
and central Europe remained formidable political actors, the Andean
peasantry had been politically disarmed by virtue of epidemiological assault
and brute force following Pizarro’s 1532 invasion. By 1600, Europe
produced only one-tenth of the American bullion arriving in Seville, and
this was only a portion (albeit a large one) of New World bullion exports
(Brading and Cross 1972:545).
City-building was the lynchpin of Spain’s colonial strategy. This
approach, “the direct opposite of the British gradualistic model, permitted
Spain to conquer and control an entire continent in a few years with a very
small occupying force” (Portes 1977:61). In Peru, this urban-imperial logic
was carried to an extreme. At once dominant and dominated, mining
boomtowns ruled over their hinterlands, even as they were subordinated to
broader imperial and economic structures. They were the organizing centers
not only of underdevelopment in the economic sense, but of a profoundly
unequal ecological exchange between American peripheries and European
cores, enabled by a new, multilayered and globalizing town-country
antagonism. The mining frontier thereby created an increasingly serious rift
in the metabolism between the country and the city—a “metabolic rift”—
within Latin American regions and at the scale of the world-economy
(Foster 1999). Ecological wealth flowed from country to city in the New
World, and thence from urban centers in the periphery to the core. Such
wealth could take the form of agricultural and pastoral commodities as final
products, or constitute crucial industrial inputs for extractive centers.
Mineral wealth above all represented an astonishing crystallization of
organic energy. Among the chief consequences of this globalizing
metabolic rift was a pattern of “sequential overexploitation” (Gadgil and
Guha 1992:121), whereby the exhaustion of local ecological wealth
(including local sources of labor power) necessitated the geographical
expansion of commodity relations, either through the progressive extension
of city-hinterland relations within regions or the outright relocation of
production.
Nowhere did the socioecological contradictions of the extractive-driven
metabolic rift appear more starkly than in Potosi, located in the viceroyalty
of Peru (present-day Bolivia). The New World accounted for 74 percent of
the world’s silver production in the sixteenth century (Barrett 1990:225).
Potosi’s output dwarfed its closest competitor, Zacatecas (Mexico), by a
factor of seven (Garner 1988:911). Almost overnight, Potosi emerged as
one of the capitalist world-economy’s largest cities; with 100,000 residents
in the 1590s and 160,000 by 1611, it was in the same league as London,
Seville, and Amsterdam (Larson 1988:89; Hanke 1956:54; Mols 1974:42).
Together with the mercury mines of nearby Huancavelica, Potosi’s silver
complex pioneered a rapid expansion of commodity production throughout
the viceroyalty of Peru, with profound implications for the health of land
and labor alike.
Potosi’s dramatic ascent owed as much to Europe’s expansionary
political economy as it did to geology. In the quarter-century following the
discovery of silver in 1545, the path from rock to pure silver was circuitous
indeed. In this era, mining remained largely under Indian control. Indians
mined silver ore, much of which found its way into Spanish hands as
tribute. These tributary payments were then sold back to the Indians, who
smelted the ore in thousands of dispersed guayras, small wind-ovens
specially designed for the high altitude. Subsequently, the Spaniards
acquired the pure silver through the market, where their purchasing power
was augmented by their control of the highly lucrative coca leaf trade (Stern
1988:850–851). Coca, it seems, was the opium of the sixteenth century.
This system worked as long as ores remained rich. As ore quality
declined, more and more fuel was necessary to extract less and less silver.
By the 1560s smelting was no longer an effective—that is to say profitable
—means of extracting silver (Cobb 1947:124). Fuel costs began to rise, and
silver output fell two-thirds between 1546 and 1571 (Bakewell 1987:239).
Mine work became correspondingly more arduous and less remunerative
for Indian workers, who increasingly decided that the game was not worth
the candle. By 1561, there were 20,000 Indians living in Potosi but just 300
working the mines, 94 percent fewer than a decade earlier (Cole 1985:4).
“In short, the pillage/conquest economy established after 1532 had reached
its limit” (Andrien 2001:49).
Potosi’s socioecological crisis did not go unnoticed from above. Spain’s
imperial ambitions fed on American silver (McNeill 1982:109). The
contraction of silver production was a very serious matter indeed, all the
more so as it was followed by: (1) “an enormous increase” in military
expenditures after 1566; and (2) an increasingly severe fiscal crisis within
Castile, where Philip II tripled taxes and thrice declared “bankruptcy”—in
reality converting short-term into long-term debt—between 1557 and 1577
(Parker 1974:561–569). As if to go from bad to worse, Philip’s financial
woes were underpinned by an impending agroecological crisis that would
only deepen in the closing decades of the sixteenth century (Phillips 1987).
It was in this context that the Crown convened a “special junta” in 1568 to
address the emerging crisis, empowering a new viceroy—Francisco de
Toledo—to implement a sweeping reorganization of the Peruvian mining
frontier (Assadourian 1992: 56–58).
Toledo’s challenge? Find a cost-effective solution to the problem of
declining silver output. Potosi’s revival depended on two decisive
innovations: (1) the replacement of smelting with an amalgamation process
that used mercury to extract silver from the ore; and (2) the large-scale
replacement of voluntary with forced labor through a system of rotating
forced labor drafts, called the mita.6 The first presupposed the second. The
perfection of an amalgamation process adapted to Andean conditions
preceded by just a year Toledo’s proclamation of a geographically
expansive mita in 1572. Mercury amalgamation made possible the
profitable extraction of silver from low-grade ores, but it demanded a huge
and tractable labor supply. Thus amalgamation and the mita were at the core
of a series of socioecological transformations that were profoundly
implicated in the commodification of land and labor throughout the region
and its deepening articulation with a globalizing capitalist system.
This era of accelerated social and environmental transformation unfolded
at multiple geographical scales. At the point of production, control passed
from Indian to European hands, replaying on an extended scale the earlier
transition from small-scale artisanal mining to large-scale industrial
extraction in central Europe a century earlier (Waring 1987; Cole 1985:18).
Gone were the small wind-ovens used by Indian miners. In their place were
huge stone tanks, capable of holding 5,000 lbs. of crushed ore (Bakewell
1987:214). The ore itself was crushed in stamping mills (ingenios) powered
by hydraulic infrastructures that outstripped by a considerable margin their
European predecessors (Lynch 2002). Some thirty dams stored water
accumulated during the brief and torrential wet season, driving 140 ingenios
(Craig 1993:218). Silver production skyrocketed nearly 600 percent
between 1575 and 1590 (Bakewell 1987:242). In equal measure, the
ambitious reshaping of the region’s waterscapes generated ecological
contradictions that would ultimately seal Potosi’s fate. “Potosi was
[consistently] plagued by disastrous floods,” likely intensified by
widespread deforestation (Brown and Craig 1994:305). The collapse of the
principal reservoir dam in 1626 killed several hundred and destroyed many
ingenios, adding to Potosi’s cumulative woes on the eve of the seventeenth-
century crisis. From this disaster, “the ingenios of Potosi never fully
recovered” (Craig 1993:145).
Relative to smelting, mercury amalgamation was a “cold” rather than
“hot” technology. Yet, because it enabled such a large increase in output
over so short a time, the consequence was more, not less, deforestation.
Mercury extraction itself demanded a considerable volume of charcoal,
resulting in deforestation around the mercury mines at Almaden (Spain) and
Huancavelica (Peru) (Parsons 1962; Brown 2000). Moreover, the mercury-
silver amalgam required further heating to get at the pure silver. A 1603
source reports 2,000 Indians bringing wood and firewood to Potosi, with
another thousand transporting and making charcoal; this compared to 4,600
working directly in the mines (Cole 1985:29). The surrounding area was
quickly stripped of trees, and timber for stamp mills was trucked in from as
far as 200 miles away (Bakewell 1984:24). By 1600, rising fuel costs led
refiners to stop heating the stone tanks containing crushed ore and mercury
(Bakewell 1987:214).
Deforestation weighed particularly heavily on highly vulnerable
mountain ecosystems, which suffer from high rates of soil erosion and
enjoy only a “fragile stability, easily upset by unintentional human action”
(McNeill 1992:352). By the mid-seventeenth century, one contemporary
would observe that there “is no sign” that the mountains surrounding Potosi
“ever had a forest,” although

when it was first discovered it was fully covered of trees....

Today, not even weeds grow on the mt., not even in the most
fertile soils where trees could have grown. The barrenness is
most alarming because the mt. is now merely a conglomerate of
loose gravel with little or no fertile land, pockmarked with
sterile mineralized outcroppings. (quote from Burke 2000)

Ecological contradictions degraded bodies much as they denuded the

landscape. The course of events in Potosi captures what seems to be the
basic socioecological pattern of early modern commodity frontiers.7 In the
early stages, high yields translate into high wages and decent working
conditions. But sooner or later yield declines. When this happens,
profitability begins to hinge on (1) rising capital intensity, manifest not only
in surface infrastructures but also in deeper mines; and (2) securing cheap
labor power. While technological and social innovations could temporarily
check rising costs, they could not do so indefinitely within the region.
Drawing workers either from outside the commodity economy, or only
loosely articulated with it, mineowners found themselves in a favorable
position not only to enjoy the fruits of cheap labor but to exploit them with
little regard to their workers’ health (Tandeter 1981:104). In itself, the death
and bodily damage suffered by Indian mineworkers posed no serious threat
to profitability over the short run. In contrast to African slavery, however,
the exploitation of the mitayo “did not place any investment at risk....
Immediate profitability was the overriding consideration of the entrepreneur
in his relation with the forced laborers” (Tandeter 1981:104). To this extent,
the mitayo regime may have been even more lethal than slavery. This
problem was reinforced further as the practice of hiring out mitayos
increased in the later sixteenth century. As we shall see, such
overexploitation represented not only a monstrous legacy of early European
expansion, but also favored the reconstitution of the region’s division of
labor in a strongly capitalist direction.
 Potosi’s renaissance was driven initially by the exploitation of tailings,
ore that resisted the smelters. But these were exhausted by the end of the
1570s. The solution? Dig deeper. A rising proportion of mitayos was put to
work in the increasingly deeper, and as a consequence increasingly
dangerous, mines. Work-related fatalities and disease escalated sharply.
Mineowners increasingly disregarded colonial prohibitions and imposed
fixed quotas, dramatically extending the working day. In the 1570s, for
instance, the colonial state prohibited more than two trips a day for apiris,
workers who carried the ore from the mine depths to the surface. By the
1580s they were carrying as many as two dozen loads of 25 kilograms
upward some 300 meters. Mine shafts often flooded, forcing mitayos to
work “knee-deep in water,” rendering them susceptible to all manner of
respiratory diseases, especially pneumonia. Rest periods—originally two
weeks for each one worked—were increasingly disregarded (Cole 1985:23–
25; Cobb 1947:86–89). By 1600, “the proprietors decided they were losing
time changing shifts, so they started keeping the workmen underground
continuously from Monday evening to Saturday” (Rowe 1957:174). The
mines, said mineowner Luis Capoche, had become a “harsh executioner of
Indians, for each day it consumes and destroys them, and their lives are
made misery by the fear of death” (quote in Bakewell 1984:145).
Notwithstanding this increasingly brutal labor regime, ecology proved
stubbornly resistant. Yields continued to decline. By the mid-1580s,
“workers were taking out only half the amount formerly produced” (Cobb
1947:77).
The contradictions that flowed from the point of production were enabled
by the imperial refashioning of Latin American political ecology. The late-
sixteenth-century silver boom presupposed a radical recomposition of
Peru’s ecological wealth and its sociospatial division of labor in ways that
favored the maximization of commodity production in Potosi, and the
progressive commodification of internal and external nature (labor and
land) throughout the region. All of Peru was to be at the service of Potosí.
Our attention goes first to labor recruitment. Needless to say, the Indians
were not in a hurry to work for the Spaniards. The solution was found in the
mita, a rotating annual labor draft. Imposed in 1572, the mita conscripted
one in seven adult males for work in the mines, textile workshops, “and any
other task ... deemed worthy of the state’s patrimony” (Stern 1982:82). The
Potosi mita was by far the largest and most geographically expansive. In the
1570s, the annual draft mobilized some 13,500 workers, drawn from a
region that stretched some 800 miles north to south and as much as 250
miles east to west (Bakewell 1987:222).
This large-scale mobilization of bodies was predicated on the large-scale
reorganization of space. The mita’s immediate precondition was the
empire’s reorganization of village life throughout the Andes. Beginning in
1567, the colonial state initiated the “wholesale resettlement of the native
population”—perhaps as many as 1.5 million people, roughly the
population of contemporary Portugal—into “Spanish-style towns” (Rowe
1957:156). These nucleated villages (reducciones) effected three major
socioecological transformations, reinforcing their obvious advantages for
tax collection and political control (Gade 1992). In the first instance, the
concentration of Indians into more densely populated encampments
provided fertile epidemiological terrain for Eurasian diseases (Andrien
2001:57). Second, large-scale resettlement often entailed the removal of
Indians from lands prized by Spanish colonials (Ramirez 1996:71–72).
Third, the reducciones undermined preconquest political ecology based on
“verticality,” the core strategy of which involved “working as many
different microenvironments as possible” so as to minimize ecological
vulnerability (Stern 1982:5). Throughout the Andes, the close proximity of
distinct regional environments—“the coast, the piedmont, the altiplano
highlands, and the tundra steppe (puna)”—encouraged highly
interdependent agropastoral linkages. Potato cultivation in the highlands,
for instance, was supported by fertilizer (guano) supplied by coastal
communities, which in turn consumed highland foodstuffs. Throughout the
Andes, there had evolved a “synchronized [pattern of] ecological
relationships between coast, piedmont, highland, and puna,” constituting “a
finely calibrated system of food transfers” (Wolf 1982:59, 134–135).
The reducciones insisted on a new agroecological order corresponding to
the labor demands of the silver frontier. At its center was common-field
agriculture, a cultivation system that emphasizes agropastoral linkages,
access to commons, and community regulation of landholding (Thirsk
1964). Where verticality presumed exchanges across ecological zones, such
that farming and herding were geographically discrete, common-field
agriculture sundered such exchanges by stressing agro-pastoral integration.
From the standpoint of the colonial state, the great advantage of the
common-field system was its geographically expansive character,
emphasizing land as a means of maximizing the productivity of scarce labor
in place of older, intensive land-use practices. The new system minimized
the labor formerly allocated to supervising and guarding herds and fields,
and maintained soil fertility by substituting European livestock for vertical
guano transfers (Godoy 1991). Its adoption was accelerated by viceroy
Toledo’s 1575 “edict mandating a plow and oxen for each Indian
agglomeration” (Gade 1992:469). This technological innovation promised
an important change in Andean socioe-cology, shifting from a labor-
intensive to a land-extensive approach—one also linked to the sharp
reduction of agricultural diversity that preconquest peasants deployed to
safeguard against crop failure (Wolf 1959:198–199; Zimmerer 1996:44–
55).
The livestock-plow system was complemented and indeed made possible
by a second moment of “ecological imperialism”: the invasion of
Europeans’ favored crops, wheat above all. Commercial production dates
from the late 1530s. “In some locales [Indians] were growing it as ... a food
staple by the late 16th century” (Gade 1992:465). If the common-field
system reduced necessary labor by cutting supervision costs, and the
livestock-plow system effectively substituted land and animal power for
human labor, wheat offered a further labor-saving (but land-consuming)
bonus. Relative to indigenous crops, wheat demanded little labor and
enabled plow agriculture by tolerating the new animals’ grazing patterns
(Godoy 1991:407). In contemporary Europe, the chief ecological trade-off
was its tendency toward low yields and soil exhaustion: wheat “devours the
soil and forces it to rest regularly” (Braudel 1977:11). It was the colonizers’
great fortune, however, that the New World’s fertile soils attenuated this
tendency. Initially, wheat cultivation in Peru supported seed/yield ratios
three to six times higher than Europe’s average, liberating still more labor
from the demands of subsistence production (Slicher van Bath 1963:330;
Super 1988:20–22). American soil favored the transfer of a European
agronomic complex that created a relative surplus population in the face of
demographic contraction, and provided a crucial subsidy for the mining
economy.
 The increasing frequency of famines and the generalization of
malnutrition that ensued (Cook 1981) expressed the dietary moment of
what we might call “disarticulated primitive accumulation” in the
Americas. An ecological surplus was extracted from the bodies and fields
of the indigenous peasantry in a way that paralleled the extraction of
surplus labor, in both instances for the benefit of accumulation centers
abroad rather than the creation of a home market.8 This was the
“disarticulated”—and therefore intrinsically globalizing—nature of the
New World’s metabolic rift in the transition to capitalism. Silver was central
to an epochal reworking of nature-society relations in the long sixteenth
century, a reworking that was cause no less than consequence of the rise of
capitalism. The large-scale transformation of nature was not new. But its
global and theoretically endless transformation certainly was. The
sociotechnological capacities that enabled overseas expansion also,
crucially, enabled (and indeed necessitated) capitalist and territorialist
agencies to “jump scale” when the going got rough in any particular locale
—this is the story of the silver commodity frontier, and not the silver
frontier only.
The globalization of capital that was part and parcel of the rise of
capitalism created everywhere, but in the Americas most dramatically, a
globalizing rift in the metabolism of town and country. The silver mining
frontier not only ensnared whole regions in its commodity-producing web
but ensured that ecological wealth would flow from countryside to (mining)
town, and from colonial city to imperial metropole. At each step nutrient
cycling was disrupted as local ecologies were harnessed to Europe’s
territorial and capitalist ambitions. In classic Polanyian fashion (1957), the
ensuing “fictitious” commodification of labor and land undermined the
socioecological bases for regional accumulation regimes, setting the stage
in these instances not just for the eventual resurgence of the “self-protecting
society” but also for a new round of global expansion. Hence the recurrent
waves of global conquest, from central Europe to Peru to New Spain. By
the sixteenth century, it seems, Europe’s ruling strata had discovered not
just America, but a new and radically transformative political ecology of
civilizational expansion.

Notes
Special thanks to Alf Hornborg, J. R. McNeill, and Diana C. Gildea for
comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
1 See White’s important—and largely unheeded—essay (1999) on
environmental history and geographical scale.

2 Silver ore was found in combination with a heavy concentration of either

copper or lead in central Europe’s mining regions, and this naturally
affected the volume of lead imported for smelting purposes.

3 Westermann (1996:938) believes the rate of deforestation was higher—

around seven percent annually for iron producing Upper Palatinate in the
sixteenth century. This figure, he stresses, must be taken as a “minimal
estimate” that does not account for unusual periods of high demand.

4 Calculated from Smil (1994) and Hammersley (1973).

5 This is not to deny the significance of Japan’s silver production for the
history of east Asia during this period (Frank 1998). From the standpoint of
the rise of capitalism, however, Japanese silver was not decisive, quite aside
from the quantitative predominance of American silver production (Flynn
and Giraldez 2002). The real distinction rests in the distinctive historical
geographies of the Japanese and American complexes. In stark contrast to
the former, the Potosi-centered silver frontier was a commodity frontier. In
this respect, it expressed and contributed to a movement of endless global
expansion whose success or failure turned on the generalization of
commodity production and exchange. Japan’s silver frontier did not.

6 The Incas deployed a broadly similar system of labor drafts, also called
the mita. Stern (1982) distinguished the two systems by calling the Inca
institution the mit’a and the Spanish, the mita.

7 The resemblance to the sugar frontier is striking (Moore 2000b).

8 The European peasantry too was subjected to a similar logic of dietary

immiseration, albeit with less gruesome consequences (Moore 2003b).

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7

Trade, “Trinkets,” and Environmental

Change at the Edge of World-Systems:
Political Ecology and the East African
Ivory Trade
N. THOMAS HAKANSSON

DURING THE LAST two thousand years the capitalist world-system and
its predecessors have flooded the unincorporated areas of the world with
vast amounts of glass beads, cowries, pieces of cloth, brass, copper, and
iron, guns, tools, and utensils (Guyer 1995; Einzig 1949). Such trade
occurred in the absence of political domination or alienation of producers’
access both to the means of production and to raw material extraction.
Unfortunately, with respect to this type of trade there is very little
theoretical guidance to understand the linkages between regional historical
developments and world-systemic processes. Because the populations are
not forced to participate through political means, Chase-Dunn and Hall
(1997:63) suggest that such areas should be regarded as being only weakly
incorporated into world-systems. Accordingly, I call this type of economic
interaction “unincorporated trade.” The ivory trade of precolonial eastern
Africa is an example of economic relationships that have been common for
millennia between world-system centers and areas not directly under their
political and economic control.
 During the nineteenth century, the ivory trade system in East Africa
underwent two related transformations that are salient to my analysis. First,
there was a change from a decentralized system of trade without any clearly
defined exchange nodes to a pattern of well-defined trade routes and nodal
points of commerce. Second, the decentralized trade was controlled by the
communities of the coastal hinterland while in the later development trade
was conducted and controlled by coastal merchants and international
capital. This historical change enables me to examine the effects of changes
in the spatial and organizational parameters of long-distance trade on land
use in the context of trade between the interior of Kenya and the coast.1
Although most work in political ecology tends to focus on the impact of
capitalism on labor and the commoditization of resources, the distribution
of power and labor control are factors that apply to kin-ordered societies as
well (cf. Robbins 2004:79–80). In any society the ability of those who
wield power to mobilize the labor of others and to constrain their
management of land has effects on land-use patterns (Blaikie and
Brookfield 1987:74; Franke 1987). I argue here that long-distance trade
affects local social relations of production and power, which, in turn,
structure the incentives of households in using the natural environment. The
particular character of environmental exploitation depends both on
indigenous political and economic structures and processes, and the
character of the wider exchange system. Thus, the analysis of the political
ecology of unincorporated trade must be more open-ended than that of
incorporated areas, where local production is affected and coordinated by
political and military power deriving from outside centers and interests. The
political ecology of unincorporated trade should include analyses of how
local societies convert trade goods into social labor through kinship,
marriage, and various forms of clientage, rather than through systemic
center-periphery hierarchies (cf. Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998; Hornborg
2001:81).

The Ivory Trade and the World-System

At the end of the eighteenth century, the coastal towns of Lamu, Mombasa,
and Tanga/Pangani were the principal nodes that linked the northern East
African interior to the Indian Ocean trade. Scattered in between were also a
number of smaller ports and settlements that acted as outlets for interior
products. The island of Zanzibar, under Omani rule, was beginning to
overtake these towns as the major entrepot for the overseas trade with the
interior. The East African coast came under the political and economic
domination of Oman, whose new commercial orientation and relationship
to the British led to a program of political conquest of the coast. In the
beginning of the 1800s, the capital of Oman was moved to Zanzibar and
soon took over Lamu, and then Mombasa in 1837. The Omani
administration tried to centralize all trade through Zanzibar, made money on
customs, and invited local Indian financiers to take over the ivory trade.
The Omani governors had little interest in fostering political alliances with
the hinterland traders but encouraged the unfettered expansion of caravans
and profit seeking (Sheriff 1987).
At this time the trade was still organized according to a pattern that can
be traced back at least to the beginning of the second millennium. Prior to
the 1800s, the demand for ivory emanated primarily from India, the Middle
East, and China. Trade was embedded in multiplex social networks,
political alliances, and intermarriage. The relationships between the towns
and their mainland neighbors included military cooperation against
common enemies, participation in town governments by interior people,
mediations, hospitality and feasting, and gift giving (Willis 1993).
Procurement of ivory and its transport and marketing was in the hands of
the interior peoples. Seldom did the towns themselves organize any trading
expeditions to the interior, and throughout the first half of the nineteenth
century interior communities actively resisted any such attempts (Sinclair
and Håkansson 2000).
As the demand for ivory in the Western world boomed in the mid-
nineteenth century, the coastal towns became increasingly involved in
organizing trade, financed by Indian trading firms. In addition, localized
slave trade was emerging in parts of the region. Ethnic boundaries and
confederacies collapsed as a result of the reorientation of trade from an
interior initiative to large intrusive caravans originating from the coast. In
response to this shift in trade structure, new forms of political mobilization
emerged that were based on the control of nodes in the trade routes. This
change was the result of several interdependent factors. The steep increase
in demand for ivory could not be satisfied through the established trading
organization, and the cost of ivory on the coast increased partly as a result
of inflation in the value of cloth currency in the interior. The increase in
capital accumulated on Zanzibar enabled the coastal merchants to mobilize
and provision large armed caravans of thousands of people that could easily
put down any resistance in the interior.2

The Trade System before 1850

A crucial aspect of the early trade system was that the main goods involved
were difficult to control by any single group. Elephants were widespread
and not possible to monopolize. Before the nineteenth century elephants
probably inhabited all of eastern Africa and were found in most habitats,
from dry steppe to the mountain rain forests (Kingdon 1979:40). During the
first half of the nineteenth century, elephants were still common in many
parts of the region (Håkansson 2004). The supply of coastal goods was
likewise difficult to control by the societies in the interior. By 1800 a
multitude of coastal towns and villages were reception points for ivory and
the source of exotic goods. These towns provided the interfaces for
exchange along the coast, but their inhabitants did not send caravans into
the interior. Along the coast, and in the interior, a wide variety of products
and services were exchanged through many different arrangements3 such as
periodic markets, individual trade partnerships, kinship, and marriage links.
In order to assess the impact of the ivory trade on political ecology we
must distinguish the effects of the flow of coastal goods from regional
exchange processes internal to eastern Africa. Until the nineteenth century,
the interior of eastern Africa was divided into several regions of frequent
economic and social interaction. Within these smaller systems, livestock,
people, agricultural products (grains, root crops, and bananas), as well as
iron, tools, decorations, copper, salt, medicines, religious/magical artifacts,
and specialist services, circulated. The East African economies were
integrated through a common value system based on cattle, which were
everywhere in demand and exchangeable for other products as well as
serving as the most valued prestige goods in social transactions. The social
reproduction of families and kinship was dependent on a regional system of
exchange in which cattle were ultimately used to build political power and
to secure the growth and wealth of kin groups (Håkansson 1994, 1998;
Schneider 1979; Waller 1985).
The coastal goods entered the regional systems as one further category of
value that provided additional avenues for investment and transactions, and
that affected social and economic relationships.4 Cloth and beads were
major articles of barter from at least the ninth century onward (Freeman-
Grenville 1966:8, 21, 110). Burton and Speke (1858:215) observed that
“Money is not current at Usambara. The small change is beads, the higher
specie is American domestics [cotton cloth].” By exploiting the variations
in exchange rates that followed a spatial continuum, traders could optimize
returns in trade goods, which were in turn diverted into local social
payments (Håkansson 2004).

Traders and Hunters: The Kamba

In his landmark study of the political economy of Zanzibar, the historian
Abdul Sheriff (1987:169–170) states that when the coastal traders had taken
over the ivory trade, the Kamba “were [an] exhausted shell, sucked dry of
their economic vitality by international trade and thrown by the wayside.”
Although a colorful metaphor of capitalist exploitation, it is based on a
misunderstanding of the nature of the Kamba trade, which cannot be
understood as a form of unequal exchange.
The Kamba both hunted elephants and purchased ivory from others. The
trade was organized through large enterprises that coordinated up to one
thousand people in hunting, trading, and transporting as well as smaller kin-
based groups of hunters and traders. At their peak the Kamba organized
caravans numbering around five hundred persons, who traveled the 300-
kilometer journey from Kitui to the coast several times per year (Jackson
1977:49). In addition to hunting, ivory was obtained from communities in
central Kenya, where cloth and beads entered into the regional markets
(Leakey 1977:442; Muriuki 1974:108). For example, Athi foragers supplied
the Gikuyu with ivory that they traded to the Kamba, and also traded
directly with Maasai and Kamba in exchange for goats (Muriuki 1974:101).
The Kamba of Kitui became the dominant ivory traders in the central part
of the East African interior from the end of the 1700s, when they expanded
their trading networks from Lake Turkana in the north to Kilimanjaro in the
south (Lamphear 1970; CMS n.d.:Krapf, March 16, 1848). The highlands
around Mount Kenya receive much rain, have fertile volcanic soils, and
were covered with dense forests. As the land slopes toward the coast
average annual rainfall decreases from 1,000–1,200 mm at an elevation of
1,000–1,400 meters to 600 mm at 650 meters in the plains below the fringes
of the Kenya highlands. Soils become thinner, and the vegetation changes to
a dry wooded grass savanna (map 7.1) that extends to the humid coastal
strip (Morgan 1973:292–293). Except in the higher elevations, rainfall is
extremely variable both temporally and spatially, and droughts are frequent.
Highland Kitui receives enough precipitation for a successful harvest in
seven out of ten years, and the plains only in one year out of three (O’Leary
1984:14).
According to oral traditions, the Kamba ancestors first settled in the
seventeenth century at Ulu in the highlands east of Mount Kenya, in what is
now known as Machakos, where they combined irrigated agriculture on
terraced slopes and shifting cultivation with cattle husbandry (Jackson
1976:197–198; Lindblom 1920:502). Unlike the highlands, the plains
country usually offered excellent pasturelands and hence a chance to
accumulate wealth. The large-scale cattle owners were concentrated in dry
open country in Ulu and Kitui (Ambler 1988:54). The basic social units of
the Kamba were patrilineages of different size that agglomerated into
neighborhoods with cross-cutting kinship and affinal ties. The clans were
dispersed, and the localized lineages were the effective kinship units.
Lineages from different clans formed neighborhoods that cooperated in
everyday affairs (Forbes Munro 1975:14).
Map 7.1. The East African hinterland
 The bulk of the ivory trade emanated from the pastoral communities in
Kitui while the people of Ulu provided considerable support in the form of
porters, hunters, and some financing in the form of livestock. Little is
known about the political ecology of the Ulu communities at that time. In
this area local leaders also built wealth in cattle and people, but pronounced
inequalities seem to have been precluded by two factors. First, participation
in the ivory trade as porters and hunters allowed families to gain access to
coastal goods that they bartered for livestock and food. Second, while
agricultural surplus was produced for exchange purposes, the accumulation
of cattle led to a shift in residence from Ulu to Kitui rather than continuous
expansion of cultivation (Ambler 1988:14).
During the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century the
Kitui settlements grew in size as a response to their expanded engagement
in the ivory trade. The expansion of trade led to the integration of coastal
goods into the regional network and enabled further expansion east into
Kitui (Jackson 1976:240). Many Kitui Kamba used the coastal goods both
to enlarge their herds and to obtain foodstuffs, on an annual basis as well as
during food shortages and droughts, from Ulu and the Gikuyu (Jackson
1976:218; Muriuki 1974:86).5 Cloth from the Kitui provided the Ulu
communities with the means to obtain food from the highland communities
where bead and cloth currencies entered into the regional markets (Leakey
1977:442; Muriuki 1974:108). The amount of grain that was needed during
a severe drought can be illustrated by the famine of 1898, when five
thousand Kitui people traveled to the highlands, where they obtained about
150 metric tonnes of grain from the Gikuyu and other cultivators in
exchange for livestock (KNA n.d.:57). Hence, access to currencies among
the Kamba contributed to agricultural intensification outside their home
areas.
From the perspective of world-system theory this trade did not appear to
have entailed any clear exploitation of the interior by the coastal elites and
the centers of the world-system. Agriculture was not the dominant
economic activity in Kitui, where people invested trade gains in cattle. In
addition, the labor demands of cultivation in Ulu and Kitui were seasonal
and allowed men and women to engage in trade during the dry seasons.
Furthermore, from a regional perspective there were increased productive
diversification and perhaps more agricultural products available than if the
Kitui had spent more time in trying to produce more crops on their own
land. As several authors have argued with respect to East Africa and other
regions in the world, the importation of currencies can reduce transaction
costs and thereby stimulate trade and productive diversification and provide
food security (Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998:143). Although the suppliers of
food obtained cloth and beads with no use value, Kitui’s access to these
currencies actually freed labor for other activities that contributed to the
economic diversity of the region as a whole. Especially Kamba women
were active in regional trade and transported a variety of goods throughout
the highlands and adjacent lowlands. Furthermore, the increased
engagement in the ivory trade was also accompanied by a considerable
degree of diversification in the local production of consumption goods, such
as pottery, iron implements, poisons, medicines, and leather, that circulated
in exchange for food, livestock, cloth, beads, and imported metals (Jackson
1976:216–218). There were even specialized craft villages (Jackson 1977).
The goal of the households was to minimize cultivation and accumulate
cattle. While the Kamba colonies near the coast had become completely
pastoral (CMS n.d.:Krapf, September 1, 1845), those living in Kitui
regarded cultivation as a necessary evil that they were forced to maintain as
a supplement to other food sources in the form of milk and imported crops
(Lindblom 1920:501; Krapf 1968 [1860]: 356; CMS n.d.:Krapf, November
30, 1849).
The Kamba conformed to Cohen’s (1974:xvi—xvii) model of ethnicity as
a form of political mobilization that facilitates the control and
monopolization of trade. A supracommunity identity above the
neighborhood and clan emerged among the Kamba during the nineteenth
century. Indeed, the diaspora settlements maintained social and ethnic
boundaries vis-à-vis their host communities by refusing intermarriage and
by upholding their own particular customs (CMS n.d.:Krapf, January 30,
1845). These practices earned them reputations as aloof and arrogant
(Lindblom 1920:572). Although trading families transformed coastal goods
into cattle and social expansion, the organization of the trade required
extensive redistribution of wealth, which precluded the development of
pronounced inequalities (Jackson 1976:210).
Wealth and poverty of people in most East African societies were
measured in terms of how many heads of livestock a person or family
owned and how many dependents a person could count as subservient to
him or her. How did the relative equality in livestock per family or
household affect land use? First, the size of the family herds was
constrained by the availability of labor. Second, the welfare of the herds
was directly connected to the welfare of the family. Hence, herd owners
dispersed their settlements to optimize sustainable land use and herd growth
throughout the highlands in Kitui (Mutiso 1979; O’Leary 1984:26), and
localized concentrations of cattle must have been avoided.

Intermediaries: Rabai and the Mijikenda

As the Kamba caravans approached the coast they were blocked by the
Mijikenda communities that controlled all trade with Mombasa and other
ports in their vicinity. Having traveled 300 kilometers through the dry and
nearly unpopulated steppe, caravans entered the humid coastal region,
which from Lamu to Pangani is characterized by a relatively high annual
rainfall from 900 mm in Lamu to 1,200 mm in Tanga on the northern
Tanzania coast. Rainfall permitting agriculture is restricted to a strip of land
about 50 km wide in the north, extending to a width of 150 km in the south
at the Pangani River. Beyond this, rainfall declines rapidly to less than 700
mm per year, and the lush coastal vegetation changes abruptly into dry
scrubland and semidesert. South of the Sabaki River the coastal hinterland
forms a band of relatively high agricultural potential and is populated by
several communities of Bantu speakers that today are known as the
Mijikenda, Giriama, Kauma, Chonyi, Jibana, Kambe, Ribe, Rabai, Duruma,
and Digo to the south. Their ethnic and political loyalties centered on
fortified sacred villages called Makaya (pl. Kaya).6 Their total population in
the mid-nineteenth century was estimated to be about fifty thousand, of
which thirty thousand belonged to Digo south of Mombasa (Krapf 1968
[1860]:159; CMS n.d.: Rebmann, January 20–21, 1848).
These groups were mainly cultivators but also kept varying numbers of
cattle, sheep, and goats. The traditional food crops were sorghum, millet,
and finger millet, which were largely replaced by maize during the
nineteenth century. In addition, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, and yams
were cultivated. Coconut palms were also grown, especially in Digoland
and Rabai. The tree provided a strong drink made from fermented coconut
milk, which was traded throughout the coastal ridge and coast itself (Spear
1978:3). Other goods such as metals, metal tools, ornaments, and salt were
obtained from the Swahili (CMS n.d.:Krapf, January 1, 1845).
The social organization of the Mijikenda during this period is little
known. The primary means of group identification was the fortified Kaya
villages that served mainly as ritual centers. Kaya members constituted a
political and ethnic community that conferred rights and obligations on its
members. At the end of the nineteenth century most were patrilineal, but
Rabai and Duruma practiced double descent, and the Digo were matrilineal.
However, it was the collective community institutions of Rabai and Giriama
that enabled them to control and benefit from the ivory trade. Although both
groups were organized according to descent, such allegiances were
contained within a system of cross-cutting collective institutions of age-sets
and -grades, and semisecret societies of elders that organized community
rituals for healing and fertility (Burton 1872:89; Udvardy 1990; Spear
1978:59).
Most Kamba trade had to pass through Rabai, and those caravans who
passed through the territory had to pay fees to the elders (CMS n.d.:Krapf,
March 25, 1845; Spear 1978:88). The Rabai acted as intermediaries and
brokers to the Kamba caravans and either bought ivory from the Kamba and
resold it to the traders in Mombasa or extracted brokers’ fees from both the
former and the Swahili traders. The Kamba caravans usually went to Rabai,
and frequented Giriama mainly during the annual trade fair at Emberria in
western Giriamaland. The goods were either resold to coastal traders
residing in the area or taken directly to Mombasa. This system of
government ensured that the Rabai could act collectively to tap the proceeds
of the ivory trade, and the redistribution of the proceeds among the
homestead heads. Although the Kaya institutions gave elders as a group
power over younger people, they also prevented significant accumulation of
wealth and clients by individual families (Willis 1993:43). The ivory trade
was controlled by the male council of elders through appointed Kaya agents
(mwanandia) , who were responsible for dealing with the Swahili. The
coastal goods were monopolized by the old men (Spear 1978:106), who
shared the goods among themselves (CMS n.d.: Krapf, February 17, 1845).
As among the Kitui Kamba, trade made it possible for the Rabai and
Giriama to minimize the use of land for food production.
 By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Rabai were not self-
sufficient in food but relied on their profits from the trade in palm wine to
purchase crops and livestock. According to one historian, they became food
importers and wine exporters as a result of their specialization in coconut
farming (Herlehy 1985a:95). However, this deficit in subsistence
production predates the dominance of the wine economy. Already in the
beginning of the 1800s Rabai food production was so low that they had to
obtain grain from Mombasa on a regular basis (Willis 1993:50). The earliest
eyewitness account of Rabai and other Mijikenda is that of Lieutenant
Emery, commander of the short-lived British protectorate in Mombasa
1824–1826. In his log he notes the frequent visits of “Whaneekas” (Rabai
and other neighboring Mijikenda) to deliver ivory and copal but seldom any
attempts to sell foodstuffs (PRO n.d.). Although reluctant to leave
Mombasa he apparently made a short trip to what must have been
southeastern Rabai territory (Emery 1833:282), which he describes as
follows:

Their lands are little cultivated; cassada [cassava] is the chief

produce of their grounds, although the country is capable of
producing any thing: it resembles a park with clusters of trees
here and there, as if planted by art. Small pieces of water are
also seen to which the natives drive their cattle always before
sunset, previous to taking them to the pens.

Further east, about 15 km from Mombasa, a belt of semideciduous forest

stretched northward along a limestone ridge and surrounded most of the
Mijikenda Kaya villages. This forest was part of a distinct floristic region
called the Zanzibar-Inhambane Regional Mosaic, characterized by
widespread forest mixed with wooded grassland with a high number of
endemic forest trees (Chapman and Chapman 1996). From the detailed
accounts found in the diaries of the missionaries Krapf (CMS n.d.:February
17, 1845) and Rebmann (CMS n.d.:January 20–21, 1848), it is clear that, in
the middle of the nineteenth century, this forest still formed a largely
continuous band from the border of Rabai to Giriamaland (map 7.2). In
Rabai, however, most of the forest had been removed and replaced by
coconut plantations. Today only remnants surrounding the Makaya remain,
the largest of which are only about one and a half square kilometers
(Chapman and Chapman 1996).
Before discussing the reason for this expansion, it is necessary to briefly
explain the cultural context of palm wine (uchi in Kirabai). All Mijikenda
used uchi for important rituals, for drinking, for libations to the dead, and as
part of bridewealth payments. Rabai grew palms for their own rituals as
well as for export to other Mijikenda and to hinterland neighbors who
consumed it purely for recreation. Palm wine symbolism is complex and
combines ideas about both female and male fertility (Udvardy 1990:74).
Although Rabai referred to the palm as mother (ame) and as a source of
nourishment and sustenance, only men could own palms, which were also
planted next to graves of deceased older men (Herlehy 1985a:77–78).
During the eighteenth century the ritual needs for uchi seem to have been
supplied by Swahili plantations on the coast. As regional and coastal
commerce grew in volume through the expansion of the ivory trade and the
inclusion of new export products such as copal, Rabai and others on the
coast had to strengthen their collective organization in order to capture
more of the gains from that commerce. Although the male elders who
resided in Kaya could, as a collective, extract resources from younger men
and women in the forms of fees and fines, they could not exploit labor
outside kinship and marriage relationships. Only kinship contained the
long-term institutional means of controlling social labor and maintaining
access to resources over generations.
 Map 7.2 Approximate extents of Kenyan coastal ridge forest and coconut
palms around 1850 (map 7.2a) and 1960 (map 7.2b). Sources: CMS : Krapf
February 17, 1845; Rebmann, January 20–21 , 1848; The Kenya Coast:
Map and Guide 1973; Spear 1978; Willis 1993

The redistribution of trade gains left families vulnerable to fluctuations in

trade. Intermittent lack of trade goods led to food shortages that could only
be alleviated by pawning children to the coastal Swahili in exchange for
food (cf. Willis 1993:43). Hence, in order to avoid indebtedness, and to
build social and economic power, family households attempted to
accumulate wealth independently of the Kaya and to use it to attract clients
and dependents that provided labor and political support. Family
households transformed gains from local and coastal trade into livestock
and also planted palm trees, which were considered family property.7 Both
provided long-term assets that families could draw on for survival and
expansion. The intensified commerce in the area and population increase in
the towns provided an expanded market for uchi. Already in the middle of
the nineteenth century, palm trees had become a remunerative investment
that led to the removal of indigenous forest.
Ironically, the very process of strengthening and maintaining collective
political control contributed to demand. During the eighteenth century, uchi
was used by Kaya elders only during important rituals such as initiation into
age-sets and secret societies. During the nineteenth century, collective
rituals and feasts increased in number (Herlehy 1985a:73–76). Although it
is impossible to demonstrate a clear causal link, there is a relationship in
time between the increase in coastal commerce and the proliferation of
community events. As trade with the coast and the hinterland increased, so
did the opportunities for elders to skim the gains as community leaders. At
the same time, the trading activities in goods such as palm wine, livestock,
copal, and foodstuffs created opportunities for individual accumulation,
threatening both the political position of the elders (Spear 1978:116;
Herlehy 1985a:287) and the control of the ivory trade. Hence, the increase
in civic events that entailed the consumption of palm wine and livestock
can be seen as a way to reinforce collective control by forcing individual
households to share their potential wealth while at the same time stressing
community values.8 However, the very act of intensifying community
rituals generated an increased demand for palm wine and thus the planting
of more palms.9

The Political Ecology of the Caravan Trade

With the expansion of industrial capitalism in the United States and Europe
the demand for ivory increased, as did the profits to be made on the East
African coast. The spatial structure and volume of trade changed radically
from a diffuse pattern of flexible pathways to a more rigid network of trade
routes and points for provisioning and for the purchase of ivory and slaves.
The shift in the trade system simultaneously established exploitation of
labor and environmental resources by local leaders and outside economic
interests. In the late 1840s, coastal caravans from Pangani, Mtangata, and
Tanga in Tanzania took control over much of the trade with the interior of
Kenya and northern Tanzania (Sheriff 1987; Glassman 1995).10
The caravan trade from the coast represented a geographical shift in
commerce from Kitui to Ulu, and a reorganization of Kamba participation
from network-based collective enterprises to more individualized operations
(Cummings 1985:201). 11 Caravans from Mombasa and Pangani destined
for Lake Victoria and northern Kenya camped in Machakos primarily to
obtain food supplies, and to hire Kamba men as porters, because this was
the only major provisioning center for caravans going inland or to the coast
across the dry steppe toward Mombasa (Forbes Munro 1975:25). The
collective trading networks in Kitui began to disintegrate in the 1860s. The
leadership that was once dependent on hunters and warriors no longer
required their support. Individual big-men were now able to obtain capital
or trade goods without reliance on extensive networks of supporting
households (Cummings 1985).
The trade-induced transformation in the political economy of Ulu was
accompanied by a change in the exploitation of the environment. The new
leaders of Ulu did not base their political influence on large-scale
redistribution (Jackson 1976:241). With the establishment of provisioning
stations and the shift in the ivory trade to individual networks and contacts,
it became possible to control the flow of goods and to concentrate wealth
within the leaders’ families and immediate kin groups. The path toward
building large families and political power still went through cattle, but the
coastal goods used to obtain them could be secured without large-scale
organization and redistribution of wealth. The provisioning of food to the
caravans became a new means to obtain wealth, either by using the trade
goods in barter for livestock elsewhere or through the direct exchange of
crops for livestock (Forbes Munro 1975:41). The inequalities in cattle
holdings that resulted from the new trade pattern allowed the new elites to
exploit the labor of less fortunate Kamba in exchange for food or livestock
for bridewealth (Cummings 1985).
While successful cattle accumulation prior to the shift in the trade pattern
had compelled households to migrate into Kitui, herds were now retained
on the restricted grazing areas in Ulu, close to the trade routes. Such
concentrations of cattle may have reduced the grass cover, in part because
the declining frequency of fires allowed the tree cover to expand (Gichohi,
Mwangi, and Gakahu 1996). Indeed, there are accounts from the late
nineteenth century that describe former grazing areas of cattle accumulators
as covered by thick bush and trees (Mutiso 1979). Furthermore, the
emigrants from formerly prosperous but drought-ridden areas (Jackson
1976:241) increased the human population in Machakos, which together
with the production for sale to caravans by petty traders led to an expansion
of cultivation using client labor to expand food production. In the Kenya
highlands numerous local traders and leaders competed to attract caravans
to their settlements. Caravans went to the supplier who could promise the
most reliable and abundant supply of agricultural products (Ambler
1988:102; Cummings 1985). The pressure to cultivate led to precarious
agricultural activities such as planting on steep hills and along
watercourses, which promoted erosion. The reduced fallow period depleted
soil fertility, and the cutting of trees for fuel resulted in serious deforestation
(Ambler 1988:118–119; Lindblom 1920:26).
On the coast, as a consequence of the diminishing number of caravans
from Kitui, the Rabai lost their role as intermediaries. The other Mijikenda
groups also suffered from this economic and political marginalization. The
Giriama, who had been active traders, continued to sell ivory at the coast
but in lower volumes, and the smaller Kaya groups that had indirectly
profited from the trade by selling foodstuffs and crafts also found
themselves faced with declining access to wealth. The only remunerative
alternative source of wealth was palm trees. Consequently, from the end of
the nineteenth century, the indigenous forest was cut at an increasing rate to
provide space for coconut plantations. By 1900 all the Mijikenda were to
some extent cultivating coconut palms (Herlehy 1985b). As the Rabai and
other Mijikenda lost their control over the ivory trade they began to exploit
their local resources in order to regain access to wealth. Deforestation was
not a result of subsistence needs dictated by population growth but emerged
from strategies to build individual and family power in a changed political
economy.

Conclusion
Unincorporated trade was involved in political processes that acted on the
environment through settlement patterns and land use. The pattern of land
use was shaped by the access to valuables and investment in wealth-
generating assets such as cattle and palms rather than direct subsistence
needs (cf. Kelly 1985:241). Hence, a political ecology of unincorporated
trade must include the way in which exotic goods were made
commensurable with valuables and assets in the regional economy, and the
way in which exotic goods were connected to prestige spheres.
The transformations in the exchange system marginalized the interior
communities from the profits of the coastal trade. The effects of this
exclusion on land use parallel the marginalization thesis in the political
ecology of capitalist penetration in rural and disempowered areas (Robbins
2004:77), but with one important difference. While marginal populations
that are incorporated into capitalist relations of production are transforming
their environment to manage subsistence, the Kamba and Mijikenda were
struggling to maintain access to wealth for social reproduction, not
subsistence. Nevertheless, their changed position in the world-system
similarly led to increased exploitation of local resources in order to access
wealth.
World-system theories do not offer much guidance for understanding the
relationship between exchange and environmental exploitation in the
context of unincorporated trade. Before the onset of the coastal caravan
trade it is difficult to detect any core-periphery processes of exploitation in
the interior. Rather, there are indications that trade contributed to regional
integration, productive specialization, and economic growth during the first
half of the nineteenth century. Under conditions of internal control of the
coastal trade, those communities that were part of the ethnic trading
confederations practiced sustainable land use. They relied on access to trade
goods to import food and used the trade to increase their holdings of long-
term assets that yielded prestige goods. The highly redistributive nature of
the collective political economy ensured widespread access to the means of
social reproduction in the form of livestock. The result was a close
reciprocal relationship between family households and the land they used.
However, the reliance on coastal goods as currencies created a dependency
on outside economic fluctuations.
 Although exploitation in terms of labor time or economic value is
difficult to ascertain, there is the intriguing possibility that the intensified
killing of elephants for the ivory trade reduced ecological complexity and
productive potential for human societies. Reduction in elephant herds
would have led to an increased growth of scrubs and trees, transforming a
species-rich savanna and pasturelands to a wooded expanse infested with
tsetse flies and reduced biodiversity (Håkansson 2004). Thus, the ivory
trade reduced the productive potential of the land, but it did so indirectly,
rather than by draining the land of resources exported to Europe.
The caravan trade created the preconditions for increased agricultural
exploitation not only by providing the opportunities for local elites to
exploit labor but also by creating food shortages that forced people to enter
into clientage. This led to population concentrations and, in some regions,
exploitation of areas not suitable for intensive cultivation. The crucial
variable involved, in conjunction with hierarchy and inequality, was
competition between local leaders for access to trade goods (cf. Allen and
Crittenden 1987). These elites had their own sources of subsistence and
could manage agricultural production purely for exchange purposes, while
dependent households lacked the power to independently regulate their own
use of the land. This in turn led to environmental transformations that
predated the incorporation of these areas into the capitalist world-system.

Notes
1 I would like to thank John McNeill and Monica Udvardy for critical
comments on the manuscript and the Swedish Research Council for
financial support. Archival research has been carried out in the Church
Missionary Society archive and the Public Records Office in Kew, England.
Seven months of field research in Rabai, Kenya, were conducted in 1985–
1986.

2 Most of the slaves imported to Zanzibar and the East African coast came
from south-central Africa: Malawi, southern Tanzania, and Mozambique.
The slave raiding in northern Tanzania was relatively modest and short in
duration.

3 Since, except for short distances, river transport was not feasible, much
of the transport was human, and to some extent donkeys were used.
Distance became a very important variable for positioning within the
system.

4 The societies were thus not caught in a strong dependency on coastal

goods for the realization of social relationships, and the original qualities of
indigenous currencies may have had the capacity to mitigate instabilities
introduced by the interface currencies (Guyer 1995:8).

5 Although Ulu (Machakos) big-men and -women were not directly

involved in the ivory trade, the Kitui traders spent considerable time
maintaining social relationships with them. These men and women were
leaders of villages that supplied a large portion of porters and hunters
(Jackson 1972:259–260).

6 Already in the first half of the nineteenth century, and possibly much
earlier, several of these groups identified themselves in relation to their
Kaya of origin (Willis 1993:28).

7 According to one informant: “Prior to the adoption of palms, the wealth

of Rabai was cattle.” Today the palm is of cultural importance to most
Mijikenda. According to one of my informants, palms are necessary for life
and income—they provide cash for education. Cattle never lost their
importance as prestige goods but palms provided durable wealth that
required less space and care.

8 During community civic and religious ceremonies all were expected to

bring uchi. If anyone did not attend these events or did not bring uchi they
were severely fined. These drinking feasts occurred with more regularity
and by midcentury these festivals were so frequent that some European
observers commented that the Rabai seemed to spend all their time drinking
(Herlehy 1985a:76). Elders also received gifts of uchi as guardians of Rabai
society and economy. It was common to give at least one kadzama for
advice and services in rendering judgment (Herlehy 1985a:81).

9 Finally, the graded system of collective power that culminated in the

secret societies required high fees of cloth, money, livestock, palm wine,
and food. The highest-ranking societies demanded considerable wealth to
be distributed by the applicants to the members in the form of bulls, cloth,
palm wine, and food (CMS n.d.: Krapf, September 11, 1852; Spear
1978:61). Only those who had access to social labor from a large household
could enter the inner circles of collective power. To build a large following,
an individual needed access to wealth such as palm trees and livestock that
could be accumulated outside the redistributive system. Thus, the very
collective institutions that worked to redistribute wealth contributed to the
growth of household-based resources in the form of palm trees and
livestock.

10 In contrast to their activities in Kenya, the caravans in Tanzania also

searched for slaves. Often the traders extended capital and guns to local big-
men or -women who emerged as local chieftains at certain points (Giblin
1992:55). The slave raids devastated production systems and contributed to
population shifts to areas of trade and areas where protection and patronage
could be obtained.

11 The reason for this decline has not been fully investigated. It is known
that warfare among the pastoralist Maa-speakers in the region, together with
incursions of the Orma pastoralists from the north, created difficulties for
traders (Lamphear 1970).

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8

Steps to an Environmental History of the

Western Llanos of Venezuela: A World-
System Perspective
RAFAEL A. GASSÓN

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO DEVELOP an environmental history that combines

social and natural aspects of the landscape. However, many ecologists,
geographers, anthropologists, and historians who work in the lowland
savannas of western Venezuela, the Llanos, still prefer to deal with just one
side of the nature/society interface. A brief review, from a world-system
perspective, of four examples (agricultural intensification, cattle ranching
and hunting, tobacco farming, and the trade in feathers) taken from different
periods of the history of the Llanos prompts us to reconsider this view. A
world-system perspective is important in studies related to environmental
history and landscape use, because it provides a way to study both
environmental and social changes within the same theoretical framework.
In this chapter I discuss how the incorporation of local societies and
productive landscapes into pre-Columbian, colonial, and capitalist
economies transformed specific aspects of traditional technologies,
relations of production, and productive landscapes. World-systems are
defined as intersocietal networks where the interaction is an important
condition of the internal structure of the composite units and generates
changes in these local structures. World-systems refer not only to global or
large-scale interaction networks, but also to the world in which these
peoples lived and which was important to their lives (Chase-Dunn and Hall
1991:7, 34).
The western Llanos of Venezuela are located in a large, irregular area
between the Oirá River valley, at the southwestern Colombian-Venezuelan
border, and the Sarare River valley, a tributary of the Cojedes River, and
from the eastern Andean piedmont to the left bank of the Apure River.
Topographically, the region can be divided into the piedmont, characterized
by low hills, alluvial fans and terraces, and the alluvial plains, with an
extensive network of rivers and meandering seasonal streams (Vila
1960:109). In general, the Llanos have a continental, homogeneous,
macrothermic and isotherm climate, with two “seasons.” All living
creatures of the area must adapt to this seasonal climatic regime, which
alternates rainy and dry periods with marked changes in plant phenology,
water and nutrient economy, fire, biomass, and so forth. These cycles show
unpredictable variations over the medium and long term (Harris 1980;
Moran 1993; Sarmiento 1984; Solbrig 1993). Soils are of Quaternary
origin, with heavy texture and imperfect drainage, and are affected by
seasonal water stress (Sarmiento 1990:17). The savanna’s vegetation is
characterized by high primary production and abundant phytomass, which
exhibits marked seasonal fluctuations. The savanna /forest boundary has
always been dynamic, which can be attributed to climate, soil types,
microrelief, and human activities (Hills and Randall 1968:105;
Corpooccidente 1982).

Prehispanic Agricultural Intensification and Long-

Distance Exchange
The current consensus about prehispanic human adaptation and evolution in
the western Llanos of Venezuela was summarized by Garson (1980:44) as
follows: The Llanos (1) must be distinguished from highland savannas and
tropical forests; (2) were the historic loci of diverse peoples including large-
scale, complex cultures; (3) are favorable for agriculture and the provision
of protein needs for large populations; (4) have a culture history that can be
explained by ecological variables, directly affecting human demography;
and (5) should no longer be viewed as peripheral areas but as centers of
development in their own right. The available data indicate that in the
western Llanos of Venezuela, a great diversity of ways of life and levels of
social organization coexisted, which included diversified hunters-and-
gatherers, specialized fishers, and food producers, organized in egalitarian
as well as hierarchical societies. The ancient farmers of the piedmont and
the lowland savannas used a variety of agricultural techniques, which
included terracing, irrigation systems, and slash-and-burn in the piedmont,
and kitchen gardens, clear gardens, slash-and-burn, and raised fields
agriculture in the lowlands (Morey 1975; Zucchi 1984).
The prehispanic raised and drained fields of the lowlands of Venezuela
have often been interpreted as examples of small and peripheral agrosys-
tems, albeit important in view of their possible relation to evidence for
demographic and sociopolitical phenomena (Sanoja 1981; Denevan 1982;
Matheny and Gurr 1983; Zucchi 1984; Spencer, Redmond, and Rinaldi
1994). Spencer and Redmond’s studies have indicated that complex
societies or “chiefdoms” appeared in the Llanos between AD 500 and 600.
This conclusion is supported by the appearance of settlement hierarchies,
the presence of monumental architecture and engineering works, a large
increase of the regional population, social differentiation of housing and
funerary structures, and the presence of complex social relations with other
political units, which included long-distance exchange and war (Redmond
and Spencer 1990; Spencer 1991; Spencer, Redmond, and Rinaldi
1994:138–139). Specialized techniques for intensive cultivation were
already in use in the savannas of Barinas during the Late Gaván phase. The
analyses suggest that the productive potential of site B27 (La Tigra), a 35-
hectare drained-field facility located near the regional center, exceeded the
needs of consumption of the associated local community. Since there is no
evidence of population pressure, the authors propose that the agricultural
surpluses were used as the economic base of chiefly activities such as long-
distance exchange and warfare (Spencer, Redmond, and Rinaldi 1994:138–
139).
Other investigations of the political economy and landscape organization
of these complex societies are being conducted at El Cedral, dated between
AD 680 ± 50 and 690 ± 50 (Gassón 1998; Redmond, Gassón, and Spencer
1999). In examining the possible reasons for agricultural intensification in
this region, we similarly discovered that the productive potential of the
drained fields system associated with the regional center at El Cedral was
higher than the estimated needs of the regional population. Hence, we
proposed that part of the agricultural production could have been devoted to
other activities, including exchange, war, and ceremonial feasting. Ceramic
evidence of public feasting at El Cedral indicates that this activity was one
of the most important components of the political economy of this polity. In
spite of the fact that the local population and food production were more
centralized, the importance of ceremonial feasting suggests a pursuit of
social consent and the need to secure allies and followers through the
redistribution of goods (Gassón 2003:197).
Long-distance exchange has been documented in the Llanos. For
instance, in the Gaván and Cedral regions, several types of polished stone
artifacts such as beads and pendants indicate that raw material was imported
from distant areas such as the Venezuelan Andes, the Maracaibo Lake
Basin, and even Southern Colombia, Ecuador, and the Caribbean (Spencer
and Redmond 1992:153–154). A green stone pendant from El Cedral
representing a small frog or reptile belongs to the class of objects that
Boomert considered as one of the main items traded in exchange networks
between the tribes of the lowlands and coasts of northern South America
(Boomert 1987:33–37). This does not mean that these systems of
intensification appeared because of the incorporation of local polities into
world-systems, but it can safely be assumed that long-distance exchange
played a role in the development of these productive landscapes.
However, raised fields were apparently not in use during the posthis-
panic period. The available archaeological data indicate that the best-known
systems were used only during prehispanic times, while the ethnohistoric
data of the area indicate that the European explorers and conquerors only
rarely came across intensive areas of cultivation in other areas than along
the main riverbanks. The few references available refer to these techniques
as something from the past, as if they were from another epoch or in disuse.
The famous verse written by Juan de Castellanos reads, “de labranzas,
viejos camellones,” that is, old raised fields (Castellanos 1955:539). The
recently discovered chronicle of Galeotto Cey also refers to earthen
structures like mounds and causeways that were made in times of
prosperity, that is, in former times (Cey 1994:78).
Climatological and comparative archaeological evidence suggests that
climatic change might have played an important role in the disappearance
of intensive agricultural systems in northern South America before the
arrival of the Europeans, at least for those systems that depended on rain
water. A global climatic phenomenon called the Little Ice Age (a period
from about 1430 to 1850, during which the climate in the northern
hemisphere was cooler and drier) affected the climate of the Venezuelan
Andes, and probably also modified the hydrological regime of the Llanos
(Rull 1987:13; Rull and Schubert 1989:71).
The vegetational and climatic sequence revealed by the analysis of the
palynological record from the Venezuelan Andes is strikingly similar to
those obtained in Bolivia, Colombia, and other parts of South America.
There are many indications that drier conditions were predominant in South
America during the last centuries before European contact. In the Central
Andes, data obtained from the Qelccayya ice cap indicate a significant
decrease in precipitation that persisted until around AD 1400. These
climatological changes have been suggested as the proximate cause for the
collapse of the Tiwanaku state (Ortloff and Kolata 1993:205). Similar
episodes have been recognized in the high Cordilleras of Colombia, the
eastern Llanos, and the San Jorge River basin. In the low San Jorge River, a
long sequence of sociocultural development and raised field construction
ended around AD 1200–1300 as a consequence of a long dry period (Plazas
et al. 1988:76). Bray concludes that: “The sequence of wetter and drier
periods . . . may, therefore, be valid for the whole of northern South
America” (Bray 1995:104). More research is obviously needed on the
differences between the agrarian landscapes of the first millennium AD and
the time of the European invasion.

The Colonial Encounter

It is commonplace to state that the incorporation of the western Llanos into
the global economy brought many changes to the Amerindian communities.
However, a closer look at what happened to large agricultural communities
in contrast to hunter-and-gatherer communities, and the consequences of the
introduction of cattle ranching and large-scale tobacco cultivation, is useful
in order to illustrate the fundamental changes that occurred in landscape
organization.
Nancy and Robert Morey used the changes experienced by the Achagua
and Guahibo to illustrate the fate of farmers and hunter-foragers of the
Llanos after contact with colonial society. The Achagua were once one of
the most complex groups in the area, with large and well-organized farming
communities. The Guahibo, on the other hand, were hunters-and-gatherers
organized in small and mobile bands. Traditionally, these two groups
maintained economic relationships based on the exchange of agricultural
staples for fish and meat (Morey and Morey 1973:229–228).
Unfortunately for the Achagua, their large and impressive towns also
sealed their fate. Since the very beginning of colonization, the Achagua
were brought to the Spanish settlements or encomiendas as regular laborers.
The Catholic missions also contributed to the reduction of the population,
by exposing the Indians to epidemic diseases such as measles and smallpox.
There is no doubt that disease had a far-reaching impact on the aboriginal
population (Morey 1979:96). In addition, armed raids or entradas in search
of new souls for the missions and/or slavery frequently ended in the killing
of many Amerindians. In contrast, hunters-and-gatherers like the Guahibo
and Yaruro largely escaped these problems. Although there is no way to
measure the impact of epidemic diseases, armed raids, and slavery on these
people, their social organization and settlement pattern limited the extent of
their destruction. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Guahibo began
to play an active role in the slave trade, thus replacing the exchange
relationship with the Achagua with predation (Morey and Morey
1973:237). As a result of these events, by the end of the nineteenth century,
the majority of the sedentary farmers had disappeared, while others had
been assimilated into the communities of hunter-and-gatherers.
The introduction of cattle into the western Llanos of Venezuela set the
conditions for the appeareance of a new way of life, the hatero (from hato:
cattle ranch), and of a new category of local inhabitants, the llaneros, the
mixed-blood descendants of Indians and colonizers. Historical accounts
indicate that cattle entered the region long before the colonizers, and
immediately became one of the most important prey for Amerindian hunter-
gatherers. Cattle hunting still constitutes an important activity for hunters-
and-gatherers like the Guahibo and Yaruro, and it is one of the main reasons
for conflict between Indians and local cattle ranchers (Montiel 1993:36–
37). Among the Hiwi (Guahibo), Hurtado and Hill found that although they
hunt at least six mammal species, cows are the main source of meat. They
do not provide additional data on these activities, given their sensitive
nature (Hurtado and Hill 1990:305, 342).
 Although Crosby states that it took several generations for the bovine
stock to adapt to the humid lowlands of Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela
(Crosby 1988:199), there are plenty of indications that cows and horses
were well adapted to the Llanos environment before the establishment of
European settlements in the area. Cattle were introduced on the mainland
by the Germans between 1529 and 1538, when northwestern Venezuela for
a short period of time was under their governorship, in lieu of payment of
large sums of money owed by the emperor Charles V to the Welser bankers.
The original herd, brought from the island of Hispaniola, was composed of
about three hundred to five hundred animals, which were moved from Coro
(Falcon state) to El Tocuyo (Lara state). Several historians have argued that
some animals of the original herd might have escaped or been stolen by the
Indians who handled them during the journey from El Tocuyo to Tunja,
Colombia. Others believe that the Indians obtained some animals through
trade, learning to handle them long before the colonizers introduced cattle
ranching in the colonial economic structure (Garcia and Rojas 1996:64).
Although there are no factual data to support these arguments, it is clear that
colonizers found an abundance of wild cattle in the Llanos: “To the East, on
the llanos and the banks of the Casanare and Apure rivers, there are more
than four hundred thousand head of feral cattle which are good only as prey
for the tigers born in that land as well as other wild animals and poisonous
snakes” (Simon 1992:129). It should be pointed out that the Spaniards thus
appear to have come across an abundance which existed in situ, instead of
having to create it themselves. As an example, in the Pedraza region
(Barinas), great herds of wild cattle were discovered in 1607 (Santamaria
1968:21).
In spite of the early presence of wild cattle in the western Llanos, cattle
ranching was only developed during the late seventeenth century, when the
first ranching settlements were established in the region, and leather and
candle grease became profitable exports (Briceño 1985:49). However, this
early pastoral economy did not favor the peopling of the Llanos, since cattle
ranches needed few laborers and only simple facilities. Later on, however,
the development of a cattle ranching economy came into contradiction with
the Indians and mestizos not settled in towns or hatos, because they began
to appropriate the wild cattle that roamed the savannas. The llaneros did not
consider them as private property, but as game. To stop this hunting, two
strategies were adopted: a legislation against cattle hunters and branding of
cattle (Pinto 1980:23–24). An example of this are the measures adopted in
1787 by the governor of Barinas to try to eradicate “cattle thieves and
malefactors” (Garcia 1996:29). The conflict between the cattle ranchers and
the llaneros endured until after the War of Independence, being one of the
main causes of the failure of the First Republic of Venezuela in 1814.
Tobacco cultivation also illustrates the changes that occurred in the
organization and use of the landscape of the Llanos. Tobacco production by
the encomiendas and missions, along with maize, cotton, beans, manioc,
and livestock, was the basis of the agrarian economy of the western Llanos
(Montiel 1987:19). During the early colonial period, the Dutch were the
main consumers of tobacco from Barinas. This excellent tobacco, called
Varinium, was exported in large quantities to Europe (Wagner 1991:36).
During that time, the consumption of tobacco was more popular in England,
Holland, and Germany than in Spain, and the farming and smuggling of
tobacco became a problem for the Spanish crown, which tried to limit
tobacco’s cultivation and trade (Rivero 1972:42). The importance acquired
by Varinium tobacco on the international market led to greater efforts to
satisfy the demand, and this increased the exploitation of indigenous labor
and further contributed to the reduction of the Indian population. Alonzo
Vasquez de Cisneros reported that in 1593 there were 950 Indians in the
local encomiendas, while at the time of his visit, in 1620, he counted only
233 Indians. The decline of the local indigenous population forced Vasquez
de Cisneros to establish regulations on the recruitment, treatment, and
payment of the Indians. Workers could not live more than two leagues away
from the haciendas, and were to be paid two and a half pesos per month
(Montiel 1987:15). In the end, Spain tried to stop tobacco cultivation on the
mainland, which only led to the impoverishment of the Province of
Venezuela, since many farmers left tobacco cultivation to the Indians and
mestizos. Regarding this development, Simon stated that

This town [Barinas] ... is one of the most famous in the world
because of its fine tobacco, particularly in foreign nations:
England, France, Flanders, Germany, Hungary, and in many
parts of Asia.... It has two hundred and fifty indians divided
among eight encomenderos and the same number of neighbors,
who make a living from the tobacco trade cultivated by negroes
 who produce each year more than three thousand loads. (Simon
1992: 128–129)

Around 1660, the scarcity of labor for tobacco cultivation and the
numerous taxes led to economic stagnation in Barinas, aggravated by the
new taxes imposed to cover military expenditures. The problem of tobacco
smuggling became so acute that, in 1777, a royal decree known as the
Estanco del Tabaco established a monopoly on the tobacco trade. This
provided Spain with large amounts of money with which to cover
increasing military expenses in America, due to competition with rival
nations such as England, Holland, and Portugal (Arcila Farias 1977:9). The
royal decree empowered the intendent to charge 24 silver reales from the
local producers for each load of tobacco. The tobacco farmers were free to
manage their businesses as long as they payed the tax but, if they failed to
do so, the intendent was authorized to prohibit further cultivation. In
addition to this, only the royal tobacco store was authorized to sell tobacco
products.
Despite all of these problems, in the western Llanos the period between
1750 and 1810 was one of relative prosperity, with a dense population and
significant production of tobacco, maize, cotton, meat, leather, and many
other products. However, social and economic world processes such as the
conflict between Spain and her colonies continued to have an impact on this
corner of the world.

The Crisis of Colonial Society and the Feathers Trade

The crisis of colonial society destroyed the agrarian economy of the Llanos.
As is well known, the Venezuelan War of Independence (1810–1821) was
particularly violent, causing the loss of many human lives and also of great
numbers of livestock (Lynch 1980:246). In 1811 the new Republic of
Venezuela published the so-called Ordenanzas de Llanos, a legislation for
the consolidation and protection of the incipient private property of the
region. The new laws imposed a tax penalty and a hundred whiplashes on
cattle hunters, unless they had been authorized by the landowners. The
intention underlying this measure was to associate cattle with land
ownership, to eliminate the communal, traditional ways of life, and to
promote the extension of private property in the area, assigning rights to
cattle only to the ranch owners. These new laws reduced the formerly free
Indians and llaneros to a condition of semiservile workers, forcing them to
carry an identity card and to accept the status of cattle ranch employees.
Anyone encountered more than once without employment would be
condemned to prison for a year, while cattle thieves were condemned to
death. This was the main reason why, at the beginning of the war, the
llaneros strongly opposed the wealthy criollo landowners (Izard 1986:128–
132; Lynch 1980:232).
Several factors contributed to the destruction of the agrarian economy of
the Llanos. The first was the drastic reduction of the population and
livestock, and the abandonment of great expanses of land formerly
dedicated to agriculture and cattle ranching. Brito Figueroa indicates that
Venezuelan livestock (cows, horses, and mules) were reduced from
4,500,000 head in 1812 to 256,000 in 1823 (Brito Figueroa 1975:221). In
addition, the traditional technology was very primitive in relation to the
global economy, since agriculture was basically based on the slash-and-
burn system inherited from the Indians. Between 1800 and 1930, the hato
economy mainly focused on the production of leather, salted meat, and live
cattle. Barinas cattle were exported through internal ports of the Apure and
Orinoco rivers to Angostura, Colombia, or Maracaibo. However, there were
few investments in infrastructure such as roads (Garcia and Rojas 1996:77–
78). Finally, conflict arose not only between the powerful and the
powerless, but also between farmers and cattle ranchers. The diverging
interests of cattle ranchers and farmers generated contradictions in the
organization and use of the landscape, and in 1846 Codazzi wrote that

the Barinas province has two guilds engaged in constant and

reciprocal fighting... the farmers and the cattle ranchers. To the
former, it is convenient to have many people concentrated in the
farmlands.... The others need vast tracts of lands even if they are
bad, and badly located. If some prefer to be in the crossroads
traveled by many, the others search for lonely places, where no
one passes. (Codazzi 1960:172–173)
 The official end of the War of Independence did not end the crisis of the
colonial society, which continued until 1870 with the so-called Guerra
Federal (Carrera Damas 1984:67). To make things worse, the growing
international market was not interested in an independent Venezuela, which
only produced tropical luxury products such as tobacco, leather, and coffee.
Although the end of the Spanish monopoly brought free trade, the
competition with other areas producing for the European markets revealed
the low competitive capacity of the Venezuelan producers.
An unexpected consequence of the destruction of the agrarian economy
was the recovery of the tropical forests that covered the western Llanos.
Estimates made by Veillon (1976:105) show that, just before the War of
Independence, only 21 percent of the western Llanos was covered by
forests. With the exception of the dense forests of Ticoporo, San Camilo,
and Caparo, these had a patchy distribution. As a result of the wars (1810
through 1870), urban centers of the Llanos were reduced to sparsely
populated hamlets, and in many cases, towns simply disappeared. In
addition, vast expanses of savanna were abandoned, and extensive
secondary forests appeared. Thus, 125 years later (1950), up to 45 percent
of the western Llanos was again covered with forests. With the recovery of
the forest, many species of animals returned to the area. This brought
another unexpected consequence: the hunting of birds for their feathers.
One of the strategies used by cattle ranchers to cope with the economic
crisis was to exploit heron feathers, since the nuptial feathers of the white
heron (Casmerodius albus) and the small white heron (Leucophoyx thula)
were in great demand in the fashion markets of Paris and New York, where
they were used as ornaments for ladies’ hats. Depending on their quality,
these feathers, called aigrettes, could fetch a price even higher than gold
(Zerpa Mirabal 1998:199).
This short-lived industry began in the 1880s, and during the following
years experienced a tremendous increase in demand that brought about an
economic boom that lasted until 1913, when the First World War affected
the fashion industry. In addition, conservationists in the consumer countries
arranged campaigns against the use of feathers, which also reduced the
demand. After the war the prices rose again, but the economic crisis of
Venezuela and the changes of fashion in the 1920s led to the final fall of
this industry (Zerpa Mirabal 1998:199).
 During this short time period, the exploitation of aigrettes had a
considerable impact on the economy of the Llanos region, stimulating
capital accumulation that supplemented the cattle ranching economy.
However, it also caused conflicts between the landowners and the heron
hunters, since the former considered that the birds nesting on their land
were private property. In order to solve these problems, special regulations
were established for this activity. The demand for heron feathers was so
great that it almost caused the bird’s extinction, since the hunters not only
gathered fallen feathers, but killed the birds to obtain more of them. To
make things worse, the nests were left without protection, thus killing the
brood (Mondolfi 1993:184). The exploitation affected not only the local
fauna, but also agriculture and cattle ranching, since most of the labor force
abandoned the ranches and agricultural fields to hunt birds and collect
feathers, deepening the economic crisis of the area. In addition, the cattle
ranchers and landowners who had become feather traders did not take
advantage of their sudden wealth by investing it in their property. In spite of
the efforts that were made in some cities (e.g. San Fernando de Apure) to
improve the local infrastructure, this was not the norm, and the lack of
foresight and change in fashion soon ended the feather boom. Finally, the
1922 oil boom brought a sudden end to the agrarian and pastoral economy
that had characterized preindustrial Venezuela (Salas 1982:47).

Conclusion
The research carried out on prehispanic complex societies of the western
Llanos of Venezuela suggests that an important part of the agricultural
surplus was used to maintain regional exchange networks. With the Spanish
arrival and the expansion of the world-system in the western Llanos, the
regional networks gravitated toward the Orinoco River axis, which was
dominated by Europeans in alliance with indigenous tribes. Through this
process, the dense and sedentary food-producing societies were destroyed,
favoring the development of small, semisedentary, and decentralized
groups, which became the foundation of the llanero way of life, based on
slash-and-burn agriculture and the exploitation of wild cattle. Cattle
ranching and agriculture were the basis of colonial wealth until the crisis of
colonial society and the subsequent periods of war. As in many other parts
of the world, the application of a world-system perspective here reveals a
series of economic patterns centered on the production or exploitation of
sumptuary goods (primitive valuables, leather, tobacco, feathers) destined to
satisfy the needs of an impersonal, international market beyond the reach
and comprehension of local actors. These economic activities produced a
series of changes in the llanero landscape, some of which are still
observable today.

References
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9

The Extractive Economy: An Early Phase

of the Globalization of Diet, and Its
Environmental Consequences
RICHARD WILK

THE LITERATURE ON GLOBALIZATION is replete with millenarian

and utopian ideas about the uniqueness of the present moment, constantly
showing us that the intoxication of modernism has not really disappeared, at
least from the world of professional visionaries. For those of us interested in
the world food system, it is commonplace to hear that we have just entered
an era of globalization and McDonaldization, and that until recently all food
was local, traditional, seasonal, and diverse. The real history of the
globalization of food systems is much deeper and more complex than I can
even begin to describe here. Instead I want to pull out one part of an earlier
global food system, to show that it had common qualities, a coherence that
allows us to trace some common characteristics in many localities around
the world.
Further, I want to demonstrate that this food system was not simply
determined by costs and benefits, but that to understand it we need to
incorporate culture and particularly gender at a fundamental analytical
level. They cannot be added as an afterthought, or be treated as an
epiphenomenon. The gendering of consumption is fundamental to
understanding the environmental impact of this food system, as is the
particular social organization and cultural expressions of the consuming
groups.
Early modern European economic expansion involved very diverse ways
of wresting resources and wealth from nature. Colonization, trade, and
plantation agriculture have all been well studied, and each reflects
innovation and rapid adaptation to local circumstances, culture, labor
sources, and geography. Another form of extraction was simply an
extension of methods that had long been used by Europeans for the direct
appropriation of the products of nature through fishing, logging, mining,
and intensive gathering. This involved the formation of mobile male work
groups, armed with specialized tools and skills to spend long periods in
distant and often hostile environments. This was a specialized extractive
workforce that was progressively deployed over larger and more distant
parts of the earth as the modern period progressed.
Most of the scholarship on extractive economies has focused on the
direct effects of extraction; the destruction of forests through logging, the
hunting of beaver, flamingos, and whales to the edge of extinction, and the
despoiling of rivers from mining. Scholars have neglected the indirect
effects of extraction; they are much harder to study because they are so
diffuse in time and space. These indirect effects are directly mediated by
social organizations and cultural practices that characterize the extractivist
labor force.
The key distinguishing feature of the extractive economy that bears most
directly on these indirect impacts is that the labor force was not responsible
for its own reproduction. The extractivist worker was usually a male living
in a homosocial group, apart from women most of his life, provisioned by
other people. The gendering and isolation of the workforce was crucial to
its particular relations with the natural world.

The Extractivist Economy

Extractive economies, by their mobile frontier nature, are poorly
documented. My primary research has focused on the forestry economy in
Belize, but comparative accounts from extractive economies in other parts
of the world disclose striking parallels with the Belizean case, which shows
that each one is a variation on a common theme. Extractive economies were
heterogeneous and locally specific, each with its own unique characteristics.
They varied widely in their relationships to colonial and plantation
communities ; in some cases they were seasonal, as with chicle gathering in
Central America. Sometimes workers were only extractivists for a part of
their lives, as with modern crab fishermen in Alaska. In other cases they
were lifelong full-time specialists, like Belize loggers, Georgia pine tar
tappers, and New England whalers. Sometimes, as with the North American
fur trade, or the rubber tapping in South America, these industries
appropriated and intensified indigenous foraging and hunting economies.
Yet each shared a number of common characteristics and had a common
pattern of effects on both local and far distant natural environments.
On the face of it, the only advantage of a specialist extractive workforce
is its low cost and mobility. But how could it be cheaper to pay the full cost
of provisioning a worker, when colonialists found it possible in many places
to extract labor and commodities at far below the cost of reproduction
(Meillassoux 1981)? To make extractive labor pay, a source of cheap food
was required, so the foundation of the global extractive economy was a
system for preserving and providing a low-cost reliable diet. The second
advantage of a mobile extractive workforce, completely detached from the
social support of a subsistence economy, was the high degree of
specialization and work discipline. Most extractive work required arduous
labor and high degrees of skill, gained through harsh training. In small
spaces, as on board ship or in hard-rock mines, it was possible to create the
necessary discipline through coercion and force. But in forests and
frontiers, most extractivists worked in gangs organized by entrepreneurs, or
acted as independent contractors, and discipline was enforced by a system
of debt-servitude, usually based on advances against wages or payments.
Sometimes the prospect of high rewards and instant wealth provided the
incentive to accept privation and danger.
Another key aspect of the extractive economy was the danger and
insecurity of the working conditions. Extractivists were constantly exposed
to workplace injury and death, hostile indigenes, warfare, crime, and often
to arbitrary authority and corporal punishment. Given the nature of the
global markets for their products, extractivists were often subject to boom-
and-bust cycles that left them unemployed and impoverished for lengthy
periods, if not redundant for the rest of their lives. Industrial synthetic
products gradually replaced many of the raw materials they produced; for
example, the logwood that was extracted from the swamp forests of Belize
in the eighteenth century was replaced by aniline dyes in the second half of
the nineteenth century. Changes in metropolitan fashions for corsets or
feathered hats could destroy the livelihood of an entire workforce halfway
around the world, causing them to disperse and seek entry into other
extractive work, or attempt to return to an agricultural or industrial
economy. Different groups of extractivists often competed with one another
in the same market, so the success of one led to the decline of another. New
rich territories could open up, leading to gluts, price collapse, and the
displacement or idling of workers. The Belize mahogany economy endured
at least five boom-and-bust cycles between 1840 and 1950. New
technologies like steam tractors or harpoon guns could suddenly make a
lifetime of skill and experience useless and redundant.
The cyclic and insecure nature of the extractive economy, combined with
its tendency to despoil the resources it depended on, led to constant
exploration for new resources at the margins of the world economy, which
meant that extractivists were often the first Europeans to penetrate
territories that had not previously been part of the capitalist trading world.
This was usually to the great detriment of the indigenous inhabitants. The
cyclic and harsh nature of their work, the discipline and debt, gave
extractivist workers little stake in legal systems or property rights. The
transition from extractive worker to bandit, pirate, smuggler, or poacher was
easy, and it was often possible to move quite freely back and forth between
the legal and illegal economies, or to inhabit the gray areas in between.
The insecurity of their livelihood made any kind of long-term resource
management implausible. As others have noted, most extractivists have
little incentive to conserve or ensure for the future; their approach to any
resource is more like mining than it is like any form of cultivation. The lack
of legal regulation at the margins of the expanding European world
economy meant that property rights were impossible to enforce, so with
open entry, it made sense to exploit a common resource until it was gone.
Some markets worked well enough to drive up prices when commodities
were increasingly scarce, giving extractivists an incentive to press resources
into extinction, as with sandalwood on Vanuatu.
 The indirect, often geographically distant, effects of the subsistence
system that supported extractivists vastly compounded these direct effects
on resources. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europe became the center
of a vast global network that provisioned the highly diverse extractive
communities with a surprisingly uniform ration, as well as a changing set of
luxury products and drugs that were an incentive to maintain production.

The Extractivist Ration

Staples
The history of rations is long, extending back as far as the first
establishment of standing armies, and the first long-distance mariners.
Roman soldiers got about two or three pounds of grain, especially barley
and wheat, per day, and variable amounts of wine, olive oil, fermented fish
paste, and spices (Roth 1998). In later Europe the ration was based on grain,
pulses, and preserved meat or fish. When the English Tudor ship Mary Rose
sank in 1545, it took to the bottom samples of the sailor’s daily ration of the
time: hard biscuit made from wheat flour, salted meat, peas, and hard salted
cheese (Nelson 2001). British naval rations remained remarkably stable
through time; figure 9.1 reproduces the weekly diet of the common sailor
aboard Horatio Nelson’s flagship Victory in 1797. Beer, oatmeal, and cheese
were provided only because the ship was close to port; on longer voyages
biscuit and salt meat were served seven days a week, supplemented only
with peas, and a higher rum ration substituted for beer. The ration was
similar, though often less abundant, on merchant ships. The rations of other
navies and armies were similar, though southern Europeans tended to
substitute wine for beer, and included olive oil, salt fish, and more pulses.
TABLE OF THE DAILY PROPORTION OF PROVISIONS ALLOWED
TO EVERY PERSON ON BOARD HIS MAJESTY’S SHIPS.

Figure 9.1.

Stimulants were just as essential to the ration as the carbohydrates and

protein provided by bread and meat. Alcohol, coffee, and tobacco were
ubiquitous, and by the nineteenth century sailors expected sugar as well.
Even slaves expected a steady supply of tobacco. Those who consumed this
ration were understandably a very large market for a wide variety of
nostrums, potions, liniments, and patent medicines, which they usually had
to buy for themselves. Alcohol, opium, coca, and other non-European drugs
were common ingredients.
By the eighteenth century, most European countries had developed a
semi-industrial infrastructure to provide the rations to support the navy,
military, and merchant marine, often under direct government control. The
large-scale processing of flour into ship’s biscuits, for example, was a very
early example of machine-aided mass production (Falconer 1815). There
were several reasons why this ration became the basis for the support of
extractive labor. First, the infrastructure for production, processing, trade,
and transport of the victuals was already in place. Second, they were cheap
and widely available. Third, extractivists were often recruited directly from
the military and naval establishments; as Rediker (1987) points out, the
trade economy of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries was largely
a maritime enterprise, built on the language and culture of sailors and ships.
The ration was an accustomed diet for extractive laborers, one that stored
and traveled well, and required minimal preparation. Only large boiling pots
(called “coppers” on board ship) were needed to make the salt meat edible.
The food was otherwise preprocessed.
The infrastructure built in Europe to provide this ration was formidable;
it was one of the earliest industrial processes. National security in many
countries depended on the steady provision of naval stores, and salt in
particular became a vital resource. The preservation and preparation of
rations required the combined and coordinated efforts of trades as diverse as
butchers, coopers, salt makers, blacksmiths, bakers, brewers, millers,
woodcutters, fishermen, and distillers. (These are in addition to the already
formidable trade establishment required to make the most complex of all
preindustrial artifacts, the sailing ship.) Farmers throughout Europe saw a
growing demand for pork and beef, a market that became the cash
cornerstone of otherwise self-sufficient peasant economies. The Baltic,
North Sea, and Newfoundland fleets provided a steady stream of preserved
fish. In the early stages, the demand for bulk commodities supported
smallholders and artisanal fisheries throughout Europe, but as demand grew
and markets became more centralized, large commercial enterprises
dominated the trade, fueling an expansion that turned many independent
small producers into poorly paid laborers.
This countertrade in foodstuffs was an essential element in the growth of
the European, and later, North American economy, as was the import trade
in agricultural and extractive commodities. In fact, some of the very
commodities produced by extractivists, for example, sarsaparilla used in
patent medicines, and salt from the Caribbean coast of South America, were
imported to Europe, processed, and then reexported to be consumed by
extractivists themselves. The tobacco, coffee, and sugar that formed such an
essential part of the ration were also the products of colonial plantation
agriculture that were exported to Europe and North America for elaborate
processing, preservation, and packaging, before being reexported around
the world to support extractive industries.
Initially, a majority of extractivist rations were drawn from longstanding
European regional specialties and trade routes. Scottish and North Sea
herring, Cheddar cheese, Brittany sardines, Yorkshire ham, Irish salt pork,
and Dijon mustard, for example, were established local products in
European markets which later became recognizable protobrands within the
world market in preserved provisions. From at least the late seventeenth
century, however, the British colonies in North America provided cheaper
flour, meat, fish, and rum than was available elsewhere (Marx 1973:65). By
the nineteenth century, North American staple products had driven most
European goods out of the mass markets and back into specialty niches.
Even Norwegian loggers ate American bacon.
Various studies of the growth of the North American colonies suggest
that this export trade was crucial in capital formation (McCusker and
Menard 1991). The earliest New England fortunes were founded on the
export trade in dried cod. Pork proved a crucial export product for the
colonies, for swine consumed waste products of other industries; they were
also an advance guard along the expanding western forest frontiers.1 They
were fattened on mast in unclaimed forests, and with the products of
swidden agriculture, then driven to rivers where they were slaughtered,
salted, barreled, and sold. In 1859 a Kentucky writer reported seeing six
acres of pork barrels piled three tiers high at the Louisville slaughterhouses
(Simmonds 2001:84). Few countries could compete with the low price of
North American wheat and salted meat, until improved preservation
techniques (including canning, industrial drying, and chilling) allowed other
low-cost producers, particularly in Australia and South America, entry into
the market in the nineteenth century.2
Of course, low-cost basic rations were not only used to support gangs of
men engaged in extractive industry. While slaves on some of the sugar
producing islands of the Caribbean had time off to work their own
“provision grounds,” on many islands they received rations including salt
fish, salted or dried meat, and flour. Aboriginal populations around the
world developed tastes for particular products from this food system, or
were dependent on it after being dislocated from their own subsistence
systems. Groups as diverse as Western Desert Australian aborigines, Plains
Indians, and Hawaiians depended on wheat flour in barrels, rum, sugar,
tobacco, and coffee.
The industrial labor forces in Europe became dependent on some
elements of the extractive ration, though local fresh and preserved products
could sometimes compete with the cheap imports because of tariffs and
other barriers to trade (Tannahill 1988). Nevertheless, salt beef, fish, and
pork became the cheap protein sources for poor people in many parts of
Europe and developed areas of North America. Today some of their
descendants have transformed the same products into nostalgic luxury foods
such as corned beef and bacalao.
The provision of these staples had enormous environmental
consequences that are difficult to trace, because production was so widely
dispersed. These effects were further ramified, because the labor forces
engaged in producing, processing, and transporting the rations of
extractivists also had to eat.3 Supporting a global extractive workforce
entailed the depletion of fisheries in places as geographically distant from
one another as the North and Baltic Seas, Newfoundland, and Monterey
Bay. Swine production in North America exerted economic pressure that
destroyed aboriginal subsistence, and altered and destroyed forest
ecosystems. The impact of the extensive grazing of cattle, first on the island
ecosystems of the Caribbean, and then on the mainlands of Mesoamerica
and North America, has been well documented (Crosby 1973; Sauer 1992).
Sailors let goats, swine, cattle, and other domestic animals loose on island
after island in the hope of returning to hunt, with drastic consequences for
local flora and fauna.
Intensive fishing no doubt contributed to the disastrous failure of the
North Sea herring fishery in the late nineteenth century, which devastated
the coastal economy, despite a shift to alternative species (especially
mackerel). The effects of expanding cultivation of coffee, tobacco, and
sugar on rainforest and riverine environments are equally well known. What
is rarely appreciated is that many of these products were not just directly
imported to Europe and other metropolitan centers for direct consumption,
they also supported hordes and teams of extractive laborers who were
further destroying and despoiling in order to produce still different
commodities.

Luxuries
Any study of colonial imports discloses huge quantities of luxury products
from Europe, including everything from fine millinery to musical
instruments and fine wines. Figures 9.2, 9.3, and 9.4 reproduce
advertisements from Belize City merchants from 1826 to 1882, listing
cargos of merchandise that include both workers’ rations and a long list of
luxury products. Conventional colonial historians tend to view these
imports as the perquisites of the local elite, for whom they were essential
signifiers of gentility and metropolitan sophistication. They maintained the
cultural superiority of local European elites. Close attention to the habits of
the working classes as described by contemporary accounts show, however,
that when money was available, laborers, often to the extreme discomfort of
the local elite, consumed many of the same luxury products. Periodic binges
were an essential part of the extractivist lifestyle and social organization.
When extractive workers were paid off they temporarily had lump sums
that they quickly expended on fine food, clothing, and liquor. Extractivists
were therefore a major market for high quality, expensive European
specialty products, as well as the bulk unbranded goods that formed their
daily diet.
Figure 9.2.
 Figure 9.3.

From reading hundreds of these advertisements, it is clear that liquors of

all kinds, particularly flavored liqueurs and wines from France and southern
Europe, were imported in huge quantities. Pickles and dried fruits,
traditional ship-board luxuries, were always well represented, and
throughout the nineteenth century, fine hams, salmon, and tongues were the
luxury counterparts of the everyday salted meats and fish. Fine biscuits and
soda crackers similarly mirrored ship’s hardtack and daily flour “journey–
cakes.” In Belize, even the basic rations of slaves, and later waged workers,
were of relatively high quality, compared to the daily fare of the European
poor. The Belize mahogany worker’s weekly ration of five pounds of pork,
seven pounds of flour, a pound of sugar, and a half–gallon of rum would far
exceed in both quality and quantity the diet of a contemporary English
factory worker, or a French peasant farmer. Of course only men collected
these rations, and only when they were working. Women had to fend for
themselves and their children.
Figure 9.4.
 Another interesting trend over time is the transformation in the practice
of branding. Quality was always a concern when buying bulk food
commodities, and adulterated wheat, rotten salt pork, and sour wine were
common problems. Branding was an attempt to provide a history for goods
to serve as a mark of quality and reliability. Initially only the higher-priced
luxury products carried the pedigree of a place of origin. In the earliest
advertisements, towns and regions of origin serve as these marks of quality,
since these places were well known for their specialization in a particular
foodstuff. Products were even named for their place of origin, as with port,
marsala, and burgundy. Later in the nineteenth century, countries become
more prominent than particular places or regions, so American bacon,
French wine, and Scottish herring were common marks of quality. By the
end of the century, individual companies established export brands (often
these were initially based on country names, as with Anglo-Swiss milk).
Many of these, like Beck’s beer, Swift’s meats, and Huntley and Palmer
biscuits are still with us.
The ecological consequences of the luxury export trade are very difficult
to track, as the sources of supply and fashionable goods shifted constantly.
Sometimes the origins of goods are obscure, as with the reindeer tongues in
an advertisement from 1840. Later these were supplanted by buffalo
tongues, presumably from the slaughter on the North American Great
Plains, and finally these gave way to lamb tongues from New Zealand and
Australia. Today Danish canned pig tongues are still imported to Belize,
along with plastic buckets of Canadian salted pigtails. Large-scale
production of glass bottles, stoneware jugs, wooden barrels, kegs, firkins,
and other packaging undoubtedly contributed to the demand for wood that
deforested much of Europe, as did the distilling and baking industries.
Even so minor a luxury condiment as the anchovy, given a steady market
dispersed among Europeans throughout the world, could become a major
industry of huge local importance. In 1859 Simmonds reported that
anchovies came mostly from Brittany. Entering world commerce preserved
in oil or salt in small kegs, weighing about 12 lbs. each, 50 to 100 tons were
imported into England per year, and in 1852,
 576 millions of sardines were taken on the coast of Brittany. . . .
Half of these were sold fresh and the other half preserved. . . .
160 vessels manned by 3500 sailors and fishermen are engaged
in the trade. The preparation, transport, and sale of the fish
employ 10,000 persons. 9000 of these, of whom one half are
females, are occupied all the winter in making and mending the
nets. (Simmonds 2001:252)

For the most part luxury export production in Europe and North America
was spatially dispersed, and drew on a huge number of different resources,
some of which were gathered and traded from far away. The commodity
chains were often incredibly complex and tangled. Just to give one
example, a substance called isinglass was used in the nineteenth century to
clarify wine and beer for export (it was also used to make jellied desserts,
and in medicinal plasters). It was extracted from swim bladders in fish-
processing factories on the north Atlantic coast of Canada and New
England. Some of it came from a fishery for a small shark, the spotted
dogfish, which were primarily fished for their livers, which were rendered
into a popular medicinal oil. The rest of the shark was dried and fed to hogs,
yet another export commodity (see Simmonds 2001).

Direct Impacts on the Local Environment

It is much easier to trace the dramatic effects of ravenous crews of
extractive workers on the local environments where they worked. Miners,
loggers, whalers, trappers, and fishermen did not just subsist on rations.
They constantly supplemented their diet, both trading with local people, and
hunting and fishing on their own for whatever fresh meat they could find.
While indigenous people’s exploitation of wild animal foods was limited
by population, technology, and common property regimes designed to limit
access and control harvest, mobile groups of extractivists knew no such
limits. By their very nature they were nonterritorial, and their lifestyle was
built on a different relationship to resources from that of settled people who
had developed systems of property rights and controlled access.
The very nature of most early extractive economies was their marginal
position in relation to state regimes. They were almost entirely
unsupervised by any European power that might have an interest in
conservation of resources for the long term, and their social organization
and technology enabled them to ignore any local system that might limit
their pillage. Most of the men in the extractivist workforce came from
European lower classes, in a society where hunting and fishing were highly
regulated privileges, and poaching was a serious crime. In the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries many men arrested for poaching in rural parts
of England were sold or indentured and transported abroad, and of these a
proportion would have ended up as extractive workers. So consuming wild
game had symbolic as well as nutritional significance, as a way to reclaim
what had become the privilege of the elite in Europe. More than one
traveler in Belize remarked that local laborers ate fish and game that would
have graced the tables of only the wealthiest of European nobility.
The social and working lives of extractivists also had a strong effect on
their relationship to wild animals. If workers were not themselves slaves,
they tended to work under some other sort of coercive regime, including
debt servitude or indenture. Their work was physically dangerous—whalers
for example had notoriously high mortality rates, and Alaskan offshore
crabbing is still the most dangerous occupation in the United States. If they
were not outlaws, like many Caribbean buccaneers, turtlers, and loggers,
they lived in lawless places, where possession was always uncertain and life
was cheap.
Most extractive industries had a predominantly male work environment.
The intense solidarity of work groups was built and maintained through
practices of obligatory generosity. When men had money, drink, or other
resources, they were expected to share generously until it was gone, a
pattern that has been called “crew culture” (Belich 1996:430–437; Wilson
1973) This provided the basic dynamic for what I have called a “binge
economy,” built around a rhythm of hard work alternating with release
(Wilk n.d.). Long periods in the mines, or forests, or out at sea, living on
rations while doing arduous, dangerous labor were punctuated by wild
binges of sex, drink, feasting, gambling, and spending. Wild boomtowns,
red light districts, frontier settlements, and ports grew up around the world,
devoted to serving up these entertainments, draining the workers’ purses.
Then broke, they headed back to work.
 Exotic game often filled the menu when men were on a binge. Local
populations of favored species were often depleted quickly to meet the
demand for these feasts. Manatees quickly disappeared from the parts of
Jamaica near the pirate haven of Port Royal; within two years of the
beginning of the California gold rush, San Francisco Bay had been swept
clean of oysters (Margo 1947).
This was an economy without accumulation, where the time horizons for
economic decisions were extremely short. Workers, especially when young,
rarely planned anything beyond the next port, paycheck, or lucky strike.
Individuals and groups were highly mobile, and their occupation of any one
place was always temporary. Extractivism thrived on expanding economic
and colonial frontiers, often laying the groundwork for a more permanent
economic system, which would then drive the extractivists out and force
them to move on to new areas. One could hardly think of a group less likely
to develop a long-term sustainable relationship to a resource base. Instead,
in a highly competitive environment, the rule was to take all that was
available, since if you did not someone else would.
This is not to say that extractivists did not regulate themselves in any
way, and that the rule was always cutthroat competition. Many groups
developed rules to regulate competition and maintain peace and order
among themselves. Even Caribbean pirates worked under signed articles
that specified how spoils would be divided. Another example comes from
seabird-egg harvesting, a large business in many parts of the world right up
through the beginning of the twentieth century. On the Pedro Keys in the
Caribbean, egg gathering was regulated by a

custom which recognises the first coming vessel as commanding

for the season. The second vessel in seniority is called the
Commodore, the first being styled the Admiral. They have a
code of laws, to which, in a spirit of honourable compliance, all
are expected to show obedience; and in case of any infraction of
the obligations thus voluntarily imposed upon themselves, a jury
selected from the several vessels tries complaints, and with due
formality inflicts punishment for offenses. (Simmonds
2001:166)
 It is important to note that these regulations had nothing whatsoever to do
with limiting the harvest; only to keeping the peace so that all could gather
more effectively. The rules merely codify general principles that tended to
characterize most extractive economies, which can be summarized as
“finders keepers,” “first come, first served,” and “free-for-all.” This
economy provided a huge incentive to explore and look for new resources,
since the old ones are already split up, and latecomers get poorer access.
The effects of this open access on the animal life of the regions where
extractivists worked and traveled were drastic, especially on fragile island
ecosystems. The millions of sea turtles that teemed in the Caribbean Sea
almost became extinct (Jackson 1997). Sailors, hunters, sealers, and
fishermen dined freely on tortoises in the Galapagos, dodos on Mauritius,
and baby seals in Alaska. Extractivists hunted and ate an amazing variety of
birds and mammals, from penguins to porpoises, albatrosses to walrus.
Hunting was, for many extractivists, the only available form of
recreation, which they pursued with enthusiasm and a competitive spirit.
Accounts mention times when men engaged in contests to see who could
kill the most animals, even when there was no particular need for meat. In
Belize, for example, the fun of a parrot hunt would result in nothing more
than a parrot-tongue pie. At times hunting could also produce a nice
supplementary income for extractivists. In Belize, turtlers, chicle gatherers,
fishermen, and loggers often killed crocodiles for their skins, macaws for
feathers, jaguars and ocelots for pelts, and manatees for meat that could be
salted, and especially their fins, which were pickled and considered a great
delicacy.
Since they moved often between city and country, extractivists
informally traded many other kinds of wild foods and resources to elite
urban consumers, in a trade that usually went unreported and unremarked,
but which nevertheless had a dramatic effect on nature. To mention just a
few examples, in Belize loggers and other extractivists brought to the city
such things as live baby animals for pets, palm hearts, the salted roe of
freshwater fish like tarpon and snook, iguana and turtle eggs, river turtles,
crabs, and crayfish, wild allspice, sarsaparilla, and a large variety of other
medicinal leaves, roots, bark, and seeds. Since we know nothing of what the
wild flora and fauna populations were like before the time of the extractive
economy, it is impossible to assess the effects of all these activities.
Whatever the scale, this trade certainly undermines the use of the terms
“untouched” and “primeval” for the Belizean rainforests, words in common
use among international and local conservationist groups. (And the forests
exploited by extractivists were the anthropogenic product of at least four
thousand years of indigenous occupation as well.) It is often hard to tell
which did more damage—the indiscriminate introduction of European
animals and pests, the destruction of indigenous people and their knowledge
of local ecologies, or the way the extractivists treated every place they
stopped as a food bank to be robbed and abandoned.

Nature as the Enemy

The work environment and social lives of extractive workers varied widely,
according to local circumstances, countries of origin, and mode of
extraction. But my comparison of very different extractivist groups,
separated in time and space, discloses a consistent pattern in the way they
related to nature and the natural world. In simple terms, extractivists see
nature as a dangerous enemy, which needs to be fought for survival.
From the vantage point of an educated middle-class academic, it is
almost impossible to imagine living in the intensely male culture that
developed among extractivist groups. These men developed their own
argot, mostly unintelligible to outsiders and initiates (though it was a
continual source of slang impressions in common speech [Grose 1811]).
The work regimen required high degrees of physical strength and skill, and
a physical adaptation that left a permanent mark on men’s bodies. One
could identify a logger, a sailor, or a fisherman just by looking at their
hands, gait, and posture. They adopted particular modes of dress, grooming,
and body modification that were themselves a lasting physical language of
identification.
Men in extractive work groups depended on each other to an
extraordinary degree. One man’s error could kill or maim an entire crew.
Apprenticeship and entry into the crew was therefore not easy; it required
testing that proved a new member’s ability. But once in the group, men
treated each other with intense loyalty and care. While showing nothing but
toughness and even violence toward outsiders, members of work crews
were often tender and caring with each other, and they often claimed
kinship closer than blood. Recent scholars have speculated about the
possibility of sexual relationships in the isolated homosocial environment
on board ships and in camps (Burg 1983; Linebaugh and Rediker 2000).
This social environment meant that danger was usually externalized;
within the group a man was safe, but outside, among other people or in
nature, there was constant peril. From our modern analytical standpoint we
can see how most extractive workers were oppressed by a ruthless
economic system; work discipline was often harsh, and laborers had few
rights or protections (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000). So-called free laborers
were often treated worse than slaves, who at least had commodity value.
But while extractivists did resist their exploitation through violent rebellion,
theft, and daily subversive acts, they were not organized as a class, and they
recognized no solidarity with other workers. Instead, within a masculine
workplace culture, they developed a fierce pride in their own abilities and
skills, and each crew or work group was highly competitive, if not hostile to
others. Fights between different logging crews, for example, or between
loggers and men of other occupations, were common.
The fear and anger provoked by their exploitation was aimed to some
extent, therefore, at rival groups, but more often the main focus was nature
itself, which presented daily challenges and dangers. Bosses, supervisors,
merchants, and other crews were predictable and were therefore treated as
risks of the job. Nature, on the other hand, was fickle and unpredictable, so
it was a source of true uncertainty. Aspects of nature like violent weather,
poisonous plants and animals, and dangerous crossings were objectified and
often named; encounters were seen as gambles ruled by luck and the
supernatural. Ahab’s foe was the killer white whale, not the merchants and
bankers who drove the whaling industry so far into foreign waters that a
single voyage could take three or four years (Philbrick 2000).
My point is that extractive workers, often the first and only Europeans to
enter many ecologically unique areas of the world, were the least likely
possible group to treat those resources with respect or stewardship. The
popular literature tends to portray the extractive working classes as a
disorderly rabble of greedy and lawless wastrels, destructive by their very
nature. Instead, I would argue, there are very good reasons why they took
whatever they wanted from nature, without thought for the future. Many of
them knew that they had no future, that their lives were likely to be short.
Their claims on particular resources, as in the case of placer gold miners,
were impossible to defend. And both the social lives and cultural milieu of
the extractivists provided incentives to treat the world as a place to be
plundered rather than cultivated.

Conclusion
While the heyday of extractive economies was the nineteenth century, many
can still be found that share, to greater or lesser extent, the same set of
social and economic characteristics. Spike Walker’s recent popular book
Working on the Edge describes the life of king crab fishermen in Alaska in
terms that would be entirely familiar to a Belizean logger in the 1850s.
Workers endure a difficult initiation, long periods of arduous, dangerous
labor, and then they binge on liquor, sex, drugs, and high-cost luxury
consumer goods. They are both highly competitive and highly protective of
their crewmates in the face of common danger. The same can be said for
offshore oil workers, long-line open ocean fishermen, and contemporary
rainforest loggers. Nothing could be more different from the kind of stable,
settled, and sustainable extractive economy represented by the lobster
fishery in New England, as described by Acheson (2003). Lobster
fishermen have recognized territories close to their homes, live in conjugal
families in stable communities, and tend their resource in a manner more
like farming than extractivism.
The Alaskan crabbers, on the other hand, are engaged in what will
probably prove an unsustainable fishery, despite government regulation.
Like most mobile extractivists, the king crab fishers are likely to push the
resource over the edge, and then move on to another lucrative short-term
fishing boom. It is important to recognize that the unsustainability of the
fishery is not a product of the social or cultural lives of the workers
themselves, though they are easy to blame. As in logging, mining, whaling,
and other enterprises, the largest share of the profits in the system goes to
the contractors and employers, the suppliers, merchants, and providers of
red-light services. This entire superstructure is ultimately dependent on the
hides, oil, wood, metals, and other commodities that flow from extraction,
but unlike the laborers themselves, those who run the superstructure have
no direct contact with the natural environment where the extractive labor
takes place. They are in no position to judge for themselves the state of the
resource; instead they have to depend on secondary indicators, and on what
the workers tell them. Those who profit from the exploitation of both nature
and the extractive workers are therefore in a poor position to judge the
sustainability of the enterprise. The workers themselves may be well aware
that the whales are getting scarce, the seals are no longer coming ashore, or
the trees are getting farther and farther from the river. But given their
circumstances, their only option is to sail farther, go up new rivers, work
longer hours, and kill the last dodo for dinner.
The extractive economy I have discussed here did not have clear edges,
and many occupations resemble extractive work to a greater or lesser
degree. The cowboys of the American west, or the gauchos of the Argentine
pampas, were extractivists only in an indirect sense, but their diets, social
organization, and environmental effects were much like those of miners and
loggers. Some extractive industries were more mobile than others, and it
was not unusual for frontier camps full of men to gradually become more
like a normal community with conjugal families and households. While it
will take some time to work out a full comparative typology of different
kinds of extractive economies, it is not too soon to point out the degree to
which the extractive way of life became an object of the popular
imagination. This helps to account for the persistence of elements of the
extractivist culture among descendant communities that have long since
turned to other occupations.

Notes
1 Waste from slaughterhouses, the lees left over from brewing, and by-
products from dairies, grist mills, and a host of other industries were fed to
pigs.

2 One significant exception was Argentina, which produced wheat and

salted beef at prices competitive with North America, largely through the
same methods of appropriating virgin farmland from aborigines.

3 Of course, the extractive workforce also needed clothes and tools, which
required another entire commodity chain of raw material production,
processing, and transport, involving still more labor forces, and widespread
ecological consequences. Rough cotton cloth and other coarse fibers were
consumed in huge quantities by extractivists, but I have not yet traced the
complex connections.
References
Acheson, J. M. 2003. Capturing the commons: Devising institutions to
manage the Maine lobster industry. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of
New England.
Belich, J. 1996. Making peoples: A history of the New Zealanders.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Burg, B. 1983. Sodomy and the pirate tradition. New York: New York
University Press.
Crosby, A. 1973. The Columbian exchange: Biological and cultural
consequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.
Falconer, W 1815. A new universal dictionary of the marine. London: T.
Cadell.
Grose, Captain, et al. 1811. A dictionary of puckish slang, university wit,
and pickpocket eloquence.
www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04/dcvgr10.txt
Jackson, J. B. C. 1997. Reefs since Columbus. Coral Reefs 16:S23–S32.
Linebaugh, P, and M. Rediker. 2000. The many-headed hydra. Boston:
Beacon.
Marx, R. 1973. Port Royal rediscovered. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
Margo, J. 1947. The food supply problem of the California gold mines,
1848–1855. MA thesis, Stanford University.
McCusker, J., and R. Menard. 1991. The economy of British America,
1607–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Meillassoux, C. 1981. Maidens, meal and money. Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press.
Nelson, A. 2001. The Tudor navy: The ships, men, and organization, 1485–
1603. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Naval Institute.
Philbrick, N. 2000. In the heart of the sea. New York: Penguin.
Rediker, M. B. 1987. Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Merchant
seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700–1750.
 Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Roth, J. P. 1998. The logistics of the Roman army at war (264 BC–AD 235).
Leiden: Brill.
Sauer, C. 1992. The early Spanish main. Berkeley: University of California
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Simmonds, P. 2001 (1859). The curiosities of food. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten
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Tannahill, R. 1988. Food in history. New York: Three Rivers.
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Wilson, P. 1973. Crab antics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
10

Yellow Jack and Geopolitics: Environment,

Epidemics, and the Struggles for Empire in
the American Tropics, 1640–1830
J. R. MCNEILL

LINKING THE ECOLOGICAL and the political is anything but original.

Chinese emperors for more than two millennia demonstrated that they
enjoyed the mandate of heaven by their successful management of the
environment. Excessive flood or drought called their authority into
question. Likewise, many African kings and chiefs derived part of their
legitimacy from perceived skill in rainmaking. Emperor Louis Napoleon in
1857 addressed the French parliament with the great Alpine floods of 1856
as well as the uprisings of 1848 on his mind: “By my honor, I promise that
rivers, like revolution, will return to their beds and remain unable to rise
during my reign” (Bess 2003:57). Linkages between the ecological and
political realms of course were not merely magical and imaginary. They
existed and exist on the most basic material levels.
In this chapter I attempt to join ecological and epidemiological history to
one of the most venerable of historical interests, international and military
competition, in the context of European imperial struggles, and American
anti-imperial struggles, in the lowland tropics of Atlantic America. The
essay focuses on the geopolitical impacts of yellow fever, and in so doing
explores a world now mercifully vanished. Today yellow fever is almost a
trivial disease, perhaps accounting for about twenty thousand or thirty
thousand deaths per year according to the World Health Organization
(although the officially recorded figure is usually around five thousand). By
comparison, malaria kills 2–3 million people per year today. But before the
twentieth-century medical interventions that led to mosquito control and
vaccination, yellow fever was a fearsome scourge in the tropical Atlantic
world. It was above all else the ecological and social revolutions of the
sugar plantation that opened yellow fever’s reign of terror in the Americas.
Here I will argue that the sugar revolution created new environmental
conditions extremely propitious for the propagation of yellow fever, and
that in so doing, it created a new set of governing conditions for geopolitics
in the American tropics. A lot of Latin America stayed Latin because of
these new conditions, despite predatory ambitions of the British, Dutch, and
occasionally French. Moreover, much of tropical America acquired
independence after the 1770s because of canny exploitation of these
conditions by people born and raised in the American tropics and hence
often resistant to yellow fever. Those little Amazons, the female mosquitoes
Aedes aegypti, vectors of yellow fever, underpinned the geopolitical order
of the American tropics from 1660 to 1780. After 1780 they undermined it.
But for mosquitoes and viruses to exert such influence over the course of
history, governments, militaries, and people had to conduct their affairs in
certain very specific ways: nature makes its own history, but it does not
make it just as it pleases.

Sugar, Slaves, and Sieges

With decisive help from Eurasian diseases (Cook 1998; Alchon 2003),
Spain acquired a loose but lucrative empire in the Americas after 1492. By
1600 the lowland tropical segments of that empire were depopulated
backwaters, but great riches flowed from silver mined in the Andes and
highland Mexico. To get silver to Spain, it had to pass through choke points
in the tropical lowlands and the Caribbean Sea, such as the isthmus of
Panama or the port of Veracruz, and, invariably, the port of Havana. That
fact, and the hope that great wealth might lie elsewhere in the American
tropics, inspired England, France, and Holland to contest these Spanish
dominions. They acquired several Caribbean islands and a few stretches of
coastline by 1655, usually via conquest and settlement involving, initially,
only a few hundred people per adventure. This was the age of buccaneers,
when even modest efforts with minimal support from European states could
change the political map of the Caribbean. That age ended when three
things came to the Atlantic American tropics: sugar, slaves, and sieges.
Sugar made its first major impact in the Americas in northeastern Brazil.
When the Portuguese expelled the Dutch (who controlled part of Brazil
1630–1654), the Dutch (and Luso-Brazilian Sephardic Jews) brought sugar
and the latest in sugar-refining technology to the Caribbean, beginning in
Barbados in the 1640s. A social revolution followed, as the plantation
complex, to use Philip Curtin’s (1991) phrase, spread throughout suitable
lowland regions. Eventually, after an experiment with indentured labor from
Europe failed, planters turned to mass importation of slaves from West
Africa. This soon created politically unreliable majorities on many islands
and coastlands, changing the nature of war and politics. The comparative
scarcity of whites and their appropriate fear of arming blacks led to a
pattern of warfare by European expeditionary forces. To protect their
colonies, all European empires upgraded their fortifications. Spanish silver
and everyone’s sugar made it possible to afford such investments in the
seventeenth century, and made many colonies and ports too valuable not to
fortify. Spain in particular relied on masonry and local militias, more than
upon naval power, for imperial defense. Thus the Vauban revolution in
fortification (named for the French military engineer, Sebastien le Prestre de
Vauban [1633–1707]) came to the Americas, and with it, the pattern of
prolonged siege warfare.
Siege warfare in the Atlantic American tropics proceeded under
conditions very different from those prevailing within Europe, along its
Habsburg-Ottoman frontier, or at the scattered European outposts elsewhere
around the world. A Vauban fortress in Europe was intended to be able to
hold out for six weeks, by which time, the theory went, relief columns
might march to the rescue (Duffy 1979; Parker 1996). In the far-flung
Portuguese, Dutch, and British strongholds in the Indian Ocean, relief could
never arrive in time, and so besiegers often succeeded. But in the tropical
Atlantic, siege warfare after 1655 favored the defenders.
In 1655 the English took Spanish Jamaica, part of Oliver Cromwell’s
“Western Design,” intended to weaken Spain. This conquest involved a
force of some seven thousand men, far more than had taken part in any
previous campaign in the Caribbean. The days of buccaneers were passing,
although another seventy years would elapse before they were finally
extinguished. The era of expeditionary forces, of systematic and large-scale
warfare around the Atlantic, was beginning. It took Cromwell’s legions a
day to take the main Spanish settlement on Jamaica, and a week to control
the entire island (although guerrilla resistance flickered on). But after this
easy conquest, very few successful invasions took place in tropical
America, despite repeated war and upward of fifty attempts (Buchet 1991;
Butel and Lavallé 1996; Zapatero 1964). The main reason for this lies in
another unsuspected consequence of the arrival of sugar: yellow fever.

Aedes aegypti and Yellow Fever

Native to tropical West Africa, yellow fever is a viral infection, of the genus
flavivirus that also includes dengue fever, West Nile virus, and Japanese
encephalitis, among others (Strode 1951; Vainio and Cutts 1998; Monath
1999; Cooper and Kiple 1993; Barrett and Monath 2003; da Costa
Vasconcelos 2003). It, like all other in its genus, is an arbovirus, meaning it
is communicated by mosquitoes or ticks. Its symptoms can be mild or
serious, and in fortunate cases consist of high fever, muscular pains, and
headache that last for three or four days but then disappear. In serious cases,
these symptoms abate, then recur, joined by jaundice and internal
hemorrhage. In the latter stages of lethal cases, the victim vomits up
partially coagulated blood, roughly the color and consistency of coffee
grounds, which symptom gave the disease one of its several nicknames: the
black vomit. When this happens, death is near. The gruesome symptoms of
yellow fever have the happy effect of making historical diagnosis less
problematic than in most other cases. Whereas from seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century descriptions it is normally impossible to tell a case (or
an epidemic) of malaria from one of typhus, the black vomit is a distinctive
signature.
Yellow fever kills people through organ failure, normally the liver, and
by circulatory collapse. Typically the immune system forms antibodies
within a week, but that does not always help. Indeed “it is unclear whether
immune mechanisms during the acute stage of the disease contribute to
pathogenesis” (Monath 1999:1262). In vulnerable human populations in
times past, case mortality may have been as high as 85 percent, although
today the range seems to be much lower, never more than 30–50 percent
(Mandell, Bennett, and Dolin 2000: vol. 2, 1716). Perhaps in the past
reporting was so poor than many who had the disease but recovered went
unnoticed; perhaps nowadays the virus no longer gets the chance to run
amok among highly susceptible populations. Additionally, it may be that
the virus has evolved so as to be less virulent in recent centuries, although
the evidence from analysis of the virus’s genome implies it has been
genetically very stable: the American yellow fever virus is extremely close
to the West African one, and the symptoms of the disease are identical
everywhere. That suggests the virus has remained genetically stable since
its transmission from Africa to the Americas. It also confirms the West
African origin of the virus, which had formerly been a controversial
question. Dengue, a sister virus, has in contrast evolved rapidly in the past
two hundred years (Tsai 2000; Tabachnik 1998:413).
Young adults are the most at risk to yellow fever—which suggests that an
overvigorous immune system response may indeed sometimes contribute to
the lethality of yellow fever. Once one has the virus, even today there is
nothing much doctors can do, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries what they tried, such as bleeding patients, likely hurt more than it
helped. Children normally experience it only mildly, a common pattern
among infectious diseases, and their prospects for survival are excellent. In
survivors, it produces lifelong immunity. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century observers sometimes claimed the disease struck men more seriously
than women, but this was probably a matter of exposure rather than
pathology. The modern medical literature makes no mention of any
differential risk among males and females. A very effective vaccination has
been available since 1936.
The yellow fever virus has long been endemic in tropical African forests,
and is now endemic in tropical American ones as well, circulating among
monkeys and species of mosquito that are not much attracted to human
blood. Today, as in the past, it is primarily a disease of tree-dwelling
monkeys, lethal to howler monkeys but not to most other monkey species.
Its mosquito vectors, which carry it from monkey to monkey, live in the
forest canopy, and rarely take a human blood meal. It strikes individuals
who venture into tropical forests, especially loggers who cut down trees and
stir up mosquitoes. Usually these are isolated cases (sometimes called
“sylvan yellow fever”) and do not trigger epidemics because too few people
are within range of infected mosquitoes, and the forest mosquitoes prefer
monkey blood anyway. Yellow fever becomes epidemic among humans
when it circulates among urban populations via the vector A. aegypti, which
does find human blood appealing. (Happily this has happened only once in
the Americas since 1954.) Urban, epidemic yellow fever is the same disease
as sylvan yellow fever, caused by the same virus, but communicated by a
different mosquito and circulating among a larger human population.
Yellow fever’s geographic range and distribution is determined mainly by
characteristics of the vector, A. aegypti. The virus spends most of its life in
the salivary glands of mosquitoes; human bloodstreams and livers are
merely the principal means by which the virus gets from mosquito to
mosquito. Recent research shows that human bodies are not the only means:
A. aegypti mothers can transmit the virus directly to their daughters
(“vertical transmission”), although this is apparently very rare (Vainio and
Cutts 1998:30; Monath 1999:1263). The A. aegypti, of African origin, is a
domestic mosquito that lives close to humans and breeds mainly in water
containers, and according to some reports, preferably clay-bottomed ones
(Ramenofsky 1993:325, citing Carter 1931). Unlike many mosquitoes, it
needs clean, unpolluted water for its eggs to become larvae, pupae, and then
to become fledgling mosquitoes. Once mature and aloft, it likes to stay
close to the ground, and bites people mainly on the ankles and calves,
generally at dusk or dawn. Unlike its buzzing brethren, it is a silent
mosquito. It can suck up two or three times its weight in human blood (only
in desperation will it bite other mammals) in ninety seconds. It is attracted
to motion, to heat, and to exhalations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, and
lactic acid (Christopher 1960; Clements 2004). A hardworking body low to
the ground, say a sugarcane cutter or a digging soldier, was catnip for a
female A. aegypti (Black 2003:51). The mosquito rarely travels more than
300 meters from its birthplace, except on ships (or airplanes). It needs
temperatures above 10°C to survive, above 17°C to feed, and above 24°C to
prosper. It also needs liquid every few days. Hence yellow fever is and
always has been a disease of the humid tropics and especially of preferred
habitats of the A. aegypti, although it used to make seasonal forays to
temperate ports around the Atlantic basin, occasionally as far north as
Quebec, in summer months when infected mosquitoes stowed away on
board sailing ships.
 Epidemic yellow fever has other, more stringent, requirements. The virus
must establish a cycle that allows indefinite transfer from mosquito to
human host to mosquito. This requires a lot of mosquitoes, the more so
because (nowadays at any rate) only about 60 percent of A. aegypti are able
to transmit the virus (Cohen and Crane-Kramer 2003:88). Without plentiful
vectors, the virus will not move from person to person rapidly enough:
people have the disease only seven to ten days, after which time they are
either immune or dead, in either case no longer capable of hosting the virus.
Victims’ blood is infective for only three to six days. The transmission
cycle also needs a favorable ratio of nonimmune to immune people
available for mosquitoes to bite. To perpetuate the cycle, an infected A.
aegypti must behave a bit like Count Dracula: it must find virgin blood and
find it fast. The mosquito lives a few weeks at most. Immune people are
virus-killers: the cycle of transmission is broken when mosquitoes inject the
virus only into immunized bloodstreams. So a yellow fever epidemic
requires suitable vectors in sufficient quantity and susceptible hosts in both
sufficient quantity and proportion. From the virus’s point of view, its
opportunities are sadly limited by the fragility of this cycle. Indeed, despite
the warmth and rainfall, conditions in the Atlantic American tropics before
1640 left a lot to be desired: not enough clay-bottomed water vessels, not
enough (if any) A. aegypti, not enough human bloodstreams, and among
those bloodstreams, not enough who spent their childhoods in places where
cold temperatures precluded exposure and therefore immunity to the virus.
But after 1640 sugar and geopolitics set the table very nicely for the
yellow fever virus. Sugar wrought an ecological revolution on dozens of
islands and numerous patches of adjacent continental lowlands. Soon,
armies of slaves hacked down and burned off millions of hectares of forest
in order to plant cane (Funes Monzote 2004). Their efforts led to multiple
ecological changes (Watts 1987:219–223, 399–405, 434–443). Soil erosion
accelerated. Wildlife vanished. More important from the human point of
view, as plantations replaced forest, conditions came to favor the
transmission of yellow fever. Falling trees brought canopy-dwelling
mosquitoes down to ground level, where their chances of biting a person
improved. This meant sylvan yellow fever, if it existed on the sugar islands
at all, could more easily ignite an epidemic. Deforestation meant fewer
birds, and fewer birds meant fewer predators for all mosquitoes. However,
for mosquito population dynamics breeding conditions matter more than
predation, so by far the most crucial ecological development was what
replaced the felled forests: the sugar plantations themselves.
Plantations made excellent A. aegypti incubators. Sugar production in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries involved initial refining on the spot
(Ligon 1657; Moreno Fraginals 1978). Part of the process required putting
partially crystallized sugar in clay pots for a few months. The pots had
holes in them to let the molasses drain out, leaving semirefined sugar. A
small plantation needed hundreds of clay pots. A big one used tens of
thousands of them. They were empty except for three or four months after
the harvest. Presumably they often broke, as they were of clay and roughly
handled by people who had no interest in their preservation. Clay pots and
fragments of clay pots caught the rain and made ideal homesteads for A.
aegypti, contributing mightily to mosquito numbers (Goodyear 1978). In
any case, whether clay contributed to mosquito nutrition or not, clay pots
contributed mightily to mosquito numbers. With the spread of sugar
eventually many ports (and forts) were ringed by plantations producing tons
of sugar and clouds of A. aegypti. The mosquito may have successfully
colonized the Atlantic American tropics before 1640, but after 1640
appropriate breeding grounds were far easier to find.
So was good food. A. aegypti prospered after 1640 because human blood
and sugarcane juice got easier and easier to find. Sugar meant slaves, and
population growth. Caribbean population had crashed after 1492, and by
1640 was perhaps two hundred thousand. By 1800 it had surpassed 2
million, improving mosquito nutrition handsomely. Beyond blood, A.
aegypti can also eat sucrose. It likes sweet fluids, the sweeter the better. It
can live off honey or sugar alone, although that diet is insufficient for the
female of the species to sustain ovulation. So while individual mosquitoes
could live well tapping the abundant cane juice on Caribbean plantations,
sustainable A. aegypti populations required human blood meals as well.
After 1640 there was more and more sugar, more and more human blood,
and more and more water vessels in the Atlantic American tropics. For that
matter, there were more and more slave ships arriving from West Africa,
bringing as stowaways more and more mosquitoes. Things were looking up
for A. aegypti in the Americas.
Conditions for the yellow fever virus improved too, with one catch that
geopolitics soon addressed. More mosquitoes, more human bloodstreams,
and more ships from Africa favored the establishment of the yellow fever
virus in the neotropics. Indeed, the first clear epidemic of yellow fever in
the Americas came in 1647, striking Barbados—then the main sugar island
—first, and over the ensuing months and years, Guadeloupe, St. Kitts,
Cuba, Yucatán, and the east coasts of Central America generally. It killed
perhaps 20–30 percent of local populations. But after this outbreak, yellow
fever disappeared for almost forty years (Kiple 1993; cf. Guerra 1993, who
believes earlier epidemics were yellow fever). Presumably, it worked its
way through the susceptible hosts, leaving behind a higher proportion of
immunes. It could not flourish again without a sufficient proportion of
nonimmunes. This, for the yellow fever virus, was problematic.
The virus’s problem was compounded by the resistance of West Africans.
Yellow fever confers immunity on all survivors. Almost all slaves arriving
in the Caribbean from Africa had grown up in endemic yellow fever zones,
and hence were immunes and virus stoppers. Beyond that, West Africans
and people of West African descent may carry an inherited partial immunity
to yellow fever whether or not they carry conferred immunity (Vainio and
Cutts 1998:30; Kiple 1985:163). So while the population growth of the
sugar zones helped the mosquitoes find food, it did not provoke many
epidemics because so many of the people bitten by mosquitoes were West
Africans (or, possibly, because so many were of West African descent).
Raging epidemics required an influx of inexperienced immune systems.
This is what expeditionary warfare provided.

Differential Immunity and Expeditionary Warfare

Participants and observers in the interimperial wars of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries normally regarded yellow fever epidemics as acts of
God. Modern military historians tend to see them as random events. But
differential immunity made yellow fever decidedly and systematically
partisan.
Yellow fever went easy on entire populations that included numerous
individuals with either conferred or (if it existed) inherited immunity. In this
way, a large contingent of Africans or, perhaps somewhat less effectively, of
Caribbean-born whites, could serve as a shield for individuals highly
vulnerable themselves to yellow fever, by interrupting the transmission
cycle (this is known as “herd immunity” to epidemiologists). The
conditions strongly favored local populations over invaders and immigrants,
strongly favored populations with West Africans as opposed to those
without them, and even favored populations with children as opposed to
those made up exclusively of adults. Yellow fever was most dangerous to
unadulterated populations of young adult Europeans: precisely the
composition of expeditionary forces.1
After the one-week conquest of Jamaica in May 1655, the English troops
fell victim to disease. By November, 47 percent were dead, and half the
remainder were ill (Buchet 1991:1129). Henceforth British garrisons in
Jamaica died off at a rate of about 20 percent annually in peacetime, almost
entirely from diseases (malaria and others as well as yellow fever). This
was about seven times the peacetime death rate of British garrisons in
Canada. But in 1655 English soldiers conquered the island before disease
conquered them. After 1655, the reverse was the rule.
Beginning in the 1680s, in the context of the struggles between England
and Louis XIV’s France, expeditions to the West Indies became more
frequent and thus so did yellow fever outbreaks. Before 1713, Spain often
fought on the same side as Britain, but after the accession of a Bourbon
king in Madrid, Spain normally allied with Bourbon France against Britain.
Most West Indies expeditions were British, but some were French,
especially before Louis XIV scaled back his navy in the 1690s. Almost all
were failures. After the successes, victors usually evacuated quickly,
suffering from epidemics, and at the next peace treaty conquered ports were
restored to their previous masters.
In 1689, at the outset of the War of the League of Augsburg (1689–1697),
an English expedition against Guadeloupe failed, losing half its men to
diseases. In 1692, Commodore Wrenn’s force lost more than half its
number to yellow fever. In 1693, another expedition lost 50 percent of its
soldiers and sailors in failing to take Martinique. In 1695 a combined
English and Spanish force lost 61 percent of the soldiers it disembarked in a
doomed effort to dislodge the French from settlements that would at the
next peace treaty be recognized as St.-Domingue. In 1697 a French
expedition under Baron de Pointis failed to take Cartagena from Spain,
losing 24 percent of its men to disease (Buchet 1991:730, 783–784). These
figures refer only to deaths: In all of these expeditions yet more men were
unfit for service because of disease. A deadly pattern had begun to assert
itself. That it continued was due to a combination of ignorance and
callousness on the part of those charged with crafting grand strategy.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713) was a Spanish success
in the American tropics. France and Britain mounted nineteen cruises or
expeditions; serious disease mortality hampered or destroyed at least
fourteen of them, possibly as many as eighteen. Of only one is there clear
evidence that fewer than 10 percent of the troops died from disease. The
War of Jenkins’ Ear and the War of the Austrian Succession (together
1739–1748) presented much the same picture. In a famous expedition in
1739–1742 Admiral Edward Vernon took Portobelo and Chagres, ill-
defended ports each of which surrendered within two days of sighting
Vernon’s fleet. He arrived in November, well before the rains that normally
presaged a population explosion of A. aegypti. He had the largest force ever
seen in these seas, nearly twenty-five thousand, counting sailors and
soldiers. In April 1741 he tried to take Cartagena but lost 41 percent of all
men under his command, 70 percent of all disembarked soldiers, and 77
percent of those hailing from Britain (thirty-six hundred colonial troops
fared slightly better). Only about 650 died in combat. Fleeing Cartagena,
Vernon attempted to take Santiago de Cuba as a consolation prize, and lost
50 percent of his surviving troops to yellow fever. In all Vernon lost about
three-fourths of the men under his command in 1740–1742; fewer than one
thousand of these died in combat (Harding 1991:3–4; Buchet 1991:515–
526).2
The Seven Years’ War, the War of the American Revolution, and the
Napoleonic Wars included numerous further episodes along these lines. I
will mention only two, one for its anecdotal quality and the other because it
is an important exception to the grisly rule. The anecdote comes from a
British expedition against Fort San Juan in Nicaragua in 1780. Fevers,
including yellow fever but probably not confined to it, killed 77 percent of
its men and forced the abandonment of an initially successful campaign.
One of the few survivors was twenty-one-year-old Horatio Nelson, future
hero of Trafalgar: among his other strengths, it seems, was his immune
system (Dancer 1781).3
The exception came in 1762, when Admiral George Pocock, Lord
Albermarle, and fourteen thousand men besieged Havana. Havana was the
key to Spain’s strategic position in the Americas, the port from which ships
bound for Spain departed the Indies, as well as the most important naval
shipbuilding center in the Spanish Empire. It was well fortified and
generally regarded in Spain as impregnable.4 Spanish authorities anticipated
an attempt on Havana, and in the summer of 1761 reinforced it with about
one thousand men—of whom 138 promptly died of yellow fever. But the
thousand reinforcements were too few to sustain an epidemic, and by late
1761 Havana’s defenders and population—then about thirty-five thousand
people—enjoyed good health. They were busily strengthening the city’s
fortifications, intent on slowing the besiegers’ progress and exposing them
to the dangers of the local disease environment (Parcero Torre 1998:48, 60–
62). But when the British landed, on 7 June 1762, they were masters of the
city in nine weeks. The Spanish governor, Juan de Prado, after a
bombardment that tore a hole in the city’s walls, surrendered just as yellow
fever took hold among the besiegers.5 Shortly after the conquest, Pocock
had lost 41 percent of his men, 34 percent of them to yellow fever (only 7–8
percent died in combat or of other causes), and another 37 percent were ill.
Only 21 percent were fit to bear arms. On 18 October the expeditionary
force reported that 305 men had died in combat, 255 from wounds, and
4,708 from sickness.6 More still would die before Britain evacuated Havana
in mid-1763. The British army lost more men to yellow fever in thirteen
months at Havana than in all the campaigns of the Seven Years’ War in
North America put together. Lord Albermarle had to abandon plans to move
from Havana to a conquest of Louisiana because of a shortage of able-
bodied men. Although they at first intended to remain, and spent money
rebuilding Havana’s fortifications, they gave it back to Spain at the Peace of
Paris in 1763 and evacuated in July of that year.7 Samuel Johnson wrote:
“May my country be never cursed with such another conquest!” (Johnson
1977:374). Yellow fever kept Cuba Spanish even though Havana fell before
the virus could work its mischief.
The power of yellow fever was such that defenders, if comprised of local
troops with hardened immune systems, generally had only to hold out for
three to six weeks to be assured of victory. Their chances improved if the
siege took place during the rainier parts of the year (May—November in the
Caribbean), when A. aegypti strength peaked. Expeditionary fleets tried
their best to avoid the hurricane season July–October) in the American
tropics. Strategists in Europe well knew (at least from the 1690s) that
prospects for success receded if one failed to get the troops to the scene
between December and May. But organizing and victualling a force
according to schedule was no easy business in an age of private contracting
and uncertain stocks of food and ships. Finding men willing to take the
king’s shilling proved especially challenging if prospective recruits thought
their destination might be the Caribbean. Hence many expeditions arrived
later than planned, and suffered the consequences. At any time of year, one
had to be quick. As Admiral Charles Knowles wrote in 1747, “Whatever is
to be effected in the West Indies must be done as expeditiously as possible,
or the climate soon wages a more destructive War, than the Enemy.”8
Amphibious expeditions and siege warfare worked in the Indian Ocean,
where there was malaria but no yellow fever. In the Caribbean, with rare
exception, they did not.

Revolutions, Canals, and Fevers

The geopolitical significance of yellow fever in the Americas changed
toward the end of the eighteenth century. The restiveness of slave
populations acquired more political forms and more often led to organized
violence. An illustrative example of this came in Surinam in the 1770s.
There Dutch planters had lived sumptuously if unhealthily amid a slave
majority, but by 1772 maroon communities had grown powerful enough to
threaten Surinam’s plantation society. The Dutch government sent about
1,650 men from Europe in two contingents to do battle with the maroons.
They succeeded in driving the maroons deeper into the forests and away
from the plantations, but only about two hundred soldiers lived to return to
Europe (Price and Price 1988:xxvi, lxxxvi).9 A Scot who served with the
Dutch in Surinam observed that by the end “not 20 were to be found in
perfect health.” He also detected the impact of differential disease
immunity, noting that: “amongst the Officers and Private men who had
formerly been in the West Indies, none died at all, while amongst the whole
number of near 1200 together I Can Recollect one Single marine who
Escaped from Sickness” (Stedman 1988:607). Once people of West African
origin began to make war on their own behalf in the American tropics, their
relative immunity to yellow fever (and to falciparum malaria), if shrewdly
exploited, magnified their power. That power soon shook the foundation of
the imperial order in the American tropics. The maroons of Surinam lived
to fight another day but were too few to take over their country.
 In Haiti, both the scale and the agenda were larger. In the French colony
of St.-Domingue by 1790 there were about half a million slaves, forty
thousand French, and thirty thousand free people “of color.” Taking
advantage of and inspiration from events in France, slaves and former
slaves engineered a revolution against French planters, beginning in 1791,
which the French, then the British, then the French again attempted to undo.
In 1792 slaves prevented a small French force from reestablishing control.
In 1794 British redcoats occupied the major ports. They found themselves,
together with their Spanish allies, at war with Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–
1803) and his ill-equipped Haitian army. In the course of their stay in St.-
Domingue, British forces lost about fifty thousand men, the majority falling
to yellow fever. Britain lost about sixty-five to seventy thousand in all West
Indian campaigns, 1793–1796, mainly to diseases, of which yellow fever
was the greatest menace (Duffy 1987:334). After the British gave up, the
French tried to reclaim Haiti. In 1802 Napoleon sent his brother-in-law and
fifty-eight thousand soldiers to subdue Toussaint. Initially they met with
military success as Toussaint prudently refused to commit large forces in a
decisive battle. Over the next eighteen months, some fifty thousand
Frenchmen died in Haiti, the French surrendered, and the survivors
departed. Toussaint was no fool: he knew that if he did not give battle
yellow fever would destroy the French, as it had done the British. His
lieutenant and successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, knew it too: he told his
followers to take courage, that “The French will not be able to remain long
in San Domingo. They will do well at first, but soon they will fall ill and die
like flies” (James 1989:314).10 And this is exactly what happened.
Toussaint and Dessalines would have been poor commanders indeed not to
shape their strategy to exploit the overwhelming power of their insect and
viral allies. Napoleon’s defeat in Haiti led him to sell Louisiana to the
United States in 1803. France finally recognized Haitian independence in
1825.
In the cases of Surinam and Haiti, the military impact of differential
immunity was especially strong, because one of the combatant forces in
each case consisted mainly of West Africans. But American-born whites,
called creoles in the Spanish empire, also enjoyed military advantages
derived from the antibodies in their bloodstreams. Like Toussaint, they
learned how to exploit it without understanding it.
 When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, most of Spanish America took
the opportunity to declare independence. Vicious civil wars followed in
many settings. After the Spanish, with British help, ejected Napoleon from
Iberia the restored Spanish monarchy sought to reclaim its American
empire, and to this end shipped out over forty thousand soldiers. Very few
ever returned. The largest contingent, some ten thousand men under
General Pablo Morillo, went to the former viceroyalty of New Granada,
today’s Colombia and Venezuela, in 1815. They successfully besieged
Cartagena in a fifteen-week campaign, but their luck ended there. By 1817
a third of Morillo’s men were dead from disease. Reigning ideas held that
yellow fever (and malaria) came from “miasmas” arising from swamps, but
Morillo was ahead of his time. He wrote to the minister of war, “The mere
bite of a mosquito often deprives a man of his life,” an observation that
anticipated the discovery of the etiology of yellow fever by eighty years
(Rodriguez Villa 1908–1910:442–443).11 Of all the men who served Spain
in Venezuela and Colombia, between 90 and 96 percent died there, mainly
from disease (Albi 1990:403–405). Yellow fever and malaria also afflicted
soldiers fighting for independence, but not nearly as seriously. Simon
Bolivar, while lamenting the “infinite” illness that beset his troops, noted
that royalist troops suffered even more from disease, on account of their
“nature” and their positions. What he observed, but did not recognize, was
that the soldiers’ place of origin, rather than their nature, determined their
level of susceptibility. But the result was the same: Spain could not
maintain an army in New Granada, because soldiers died far faster than
replacements could be found. Morillo recruited local men, but they deserted
en masse, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes to avoid the
epidemics that beset the Spanish troops. With its army melting away, Spain
could not resist the revolution.
While it is true that the Spanish American revolutions succeeded in
Buenos Aires and elsewhere in the absence of serious epidemics, the events
in New Granada affected all of Spanish America. The Crown unwisely
chose to concentrate its military efforts there, and thereby exposed the
greater part of its forces to tropical fevers. This meant fewer troops could be
spared for Chile, Peru, and elsewhere. And it further meant that recruiting
new soldiers in Spain would be even more difficult. Contingents bound for
New Granada had to be told they were headed to Buenos Aires lest they
mutiny. According to one British account, rebellious Buenos Aires was ripe
for reconquest in 1819–1820. But Spain could not get an army to the scene
in order to take advantage of the situation. An army of fourteen thousand
assembled in Cadiz in 1820 threw its weight behind a revolution rather than
go to fight in America. Its officers had the salutary experience of observing
some of the few survivors of Morillo’s Colombian campaigns (who
apparently sparked a yellow fever epidemic in Cadiz) shortly before they
joined the revolution of 1820 (Woodward 1968).
On several other occasions in the nineteenth century yellow fever
affected military campaigns in the greater Caribbean, and settlement
patterns as well. Perhaps its most significant impact was in preventing a
French Panama Canal. In 1879 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat
who had organized the Suez Canal project a decade before, formed a
company to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama. After his
bankruptcy in 1889, a successor company carried on the work. Between
1881 and 1903 de Lesseps and his followers recruited tens of thousands of
laborers to Panama, half of them from Jamaica, many of the rest from
elsewhere in the Americas, but a few thousand luckless souls from Europe.
Among the Frenchmen who went to dig in Panama, 67 percent died there.
An inspector general, Jules Dingler, declared on arrival in 1883 that only
dissipated drunks died of yellow fever. Within months his son and daughter
died of the disease, then his wife. Dingler himself returned to France in
1884. The annual death rate for all men on the canal project was about 6–7
percent, and in all twenty-two thousand died failing to finish a canal. In the
hospitals the French built, more than three-quarters of all patients suffered
from yellow fever or malaria. To prevent ants and other crawling insects
from feasting on hospital patients, French doctors tried to ensure that each
hospital bed’s legs were inserted into pots of water, creating ideal breeding
habitat for the silent angels of death, A. aegypti. The French finally gave up,
leaving the Panama Canal to the Americans. With the help of newly
acquired knowledge of the transmission cycle of yellow fever, and with
energetic mosquito control, the United States in 1914 succeeded where
France had failed, ensuring American control of the canal for some eighty
years to come (Le Prince and Orenstein 1916; Gorgas and Hendrick 1924).

Conclusion
A grass from New Guinea (sugarcane) and a mosquito and a virus from
Africa, after the mid-seventeenth century wrought an ecological
transformation that for 130 years stabilized the geopolitics of the Caribbean
basin. They helped keep the Spanish Empire intact after 1655, and
prevented first France and then Britain from acquiring a choke hold on
Spanish silver and a near monopoly position on American sugar. Either one
—more silver or more sugar—might have made Louis XIV more successful
in his bid for European hegemony, or Georgian Britain still more successful
in its subsequent expansion. After the 1770s, differential disease immunity
assisted insurgent populations of the American tropics as they sought to end
European empires in the New World. In the environmental and
epidemiological changes these empires wrought they sowed the (slow-
germinating) seeds of their own destruction. A century later, after 1898, a
new empire arose in the Caribbean, made possible (or at least inexpensive)
by further environmental and epidemiological change: the mosquito control
and yellow fever prevention undertaken by the U.S. Army.

Notes
This chapter is a revised version of an article published in Review 27(4):
343–364 (2004).
1 To be more exact, the most vulnerable were populations of young adults
who had grown up, and whose ancestors for millennia had grown up,
outside of yellow fever zones and possibly dengue fever zones. Apparently
there is some “cross-protection” for survivors of one or another of the
flaviviruses (Vainio and Cutts 1998:30; Tsai 2000:272–275). There is some
evidence that southern Chinese, who have no experience of yellow fever
but have survived dengue fever, are also resistant to yellow fever. People
from India, when translated to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century,
seem to have shown greater resistance to yellow fever. Yellow fever has
never been recorded anywhere in Asia or the South Pacific, for which there
is no explanation. Perhaps it is connected to the prevalence of dengue: just
as in the Caribbean populations who came from dengue zones seem to have
shown a stronger resistance to yellow fever, so possibly dengue survivors
carry sufficient cross-protection against yellow fever that the disease could
not establish itself in Asia.

2 De Zulueta (1992) takes the view that yellow fever did not decide the
battle, which was won by Spanish tenacity and lost by British blundering.
He argues that yellow fever became truly serious among British troops only
after they had failed in an attempt to take one of Cartagena’s forts by storm.
True enough, but they attempted it rashly, without proper preparation,
because of Vernon’s dread of the building epidemic. The mortality among
the colonials continued after Cartagena. Gallay (1996:105) says less than 10
percent of the colonials returned home. Among the survivors under
Vernon’s command was a Virginian named Lawrence Washington, whose
plantation—Mt. Vernon—he named for his admiral before he passed it on
to his more famous half-brother George.

3 Public Record Office (P.R.O.), ADM 101/102/9 “Diary of Surgeon

Leonard Gillespie on HMS Majestic at Martinique 1794–1795,” also relates
the disease experience of the San Juan expedition.

4 Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid), ms 10, 421, “Processo dada al

Gobernador de la Habana Juan de Prado” (1765). In the 192 folios
recording this trial the view was repeatedly expressed that Havana, if
competently defended, would withstand all attacks, e.g. fol. 140:
“invencible seguridad de la Plaza.”

5 Forty-four letters from de Prado are in Seville’s Archivo General de

Indias, Sección Ultramar, legajo 169. His siege diary appears in de la
Pezuela (1863:vol. 3, 27–51).

6 P.R.O., CO 117/1, f. 155, “General Return of Officers, Sergeants,

Drummers, and Rank and File. . .from the 7th June to eighteenth October
1762.”

7 PR.O., CO 117/1, f. 275, “Estimate of the Expenses of the Fortifications

at the Havana.”

8 British Library, Additional Mss. 23,678, fol. 17 (1747).

9 Figures vary. Stedman himself (1988:607) thought that only a hundred

of twelve hundred survived. The Dutch forces numbered closer to 1,650
than 1,200 (Hoogbergen 1990:104).

10 See James (1989:299) for Toussaint’s statement: “the rainy season will
rid us of our foes.” James provides no sources for these quotations. Laurent-
Ropa (1993:323) gives fifty-four thousand as the total number of French
troops lost in Haiti, with eight thousand survivors. A contingent of Swiss
mercenaries some eight hundred strong lost all but eleven men; Swiss
mercenaries never consented to go overseas again (Anex-Cabanis
1991:187).

11 According to Elvin (2004:262), the Bai people of Yunnan

(southwestern China) understood that there was a link between anopheles
mosquitoes and malaria during the Ming dynasty, and some Chinese learned
of it too. Iliffe (1995:58) says Ethiopians from very early (it is unclear just
what this means) associated malaria with mosquito bites. The scientific
recognition of the role of mosquitoes as transmitters of infection came only
at the end of the nineteenth century.

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 II
ECOLOGY AND UNEQUAL EXCHANGE:
UNRAVELING ENVIRONMENTAL
INJUSTICE IN THE MODERN WORLD
11

Marxism, Social Metabolism, and

International Trade
JOAN MARTINEZ-ALIER

IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, there was resistance from

social scientists and economists (Max Weber, F. A. von Hayek) against
authors (Wilhelm Ostwald, Otto Neurath) who emphasized the flow of
energy in the economy. This debate between the money-focused view and
the ecological view of the economy is now more relevant than ever. It has
produced the schools of ecological economics and industrial ecology, which
look at the economy in terms of “social metabolism.” Even Marx (inspired
by Moleschott and Liebig) used the word “metabolism,” but Marxist
historians conducted no systematic calculations of energy and material
flows. This chapter introduces the agricultural energetics of S. A.
Podolinsky, rejected by Engels in 1882 but adopted by Vladimir Vernadsky
in 1924. It also presents the framework for calculations of material flows
that was proposed by Patrick Geddes in 1884 as an argument against
neoclassical economics, and that provides a basis for modern theories of
ecologically unequal exchange.
In the 1970s, the systematic study of human society and economy from a
physical point of view (i.e. in terms of flows of materials and energy) began
to be practiced by several research groups. Some authors wrote histories of
the use of energy in human economies (Cipolla 1974 [1962]; Sieferle 1982;
Debeir, Deléage, and Hémery 1986; Hall, Cleveland, and Kaufman 1986).
Other authors also looked at the use of materials and water, and at the
human influence on the carbon cycle and other biogeochemical cycles
(McNeill 2000). The notion of energy return on energy input (EROI) to the
economy was applied in the 1970s by Charles Hall and other ecologists.
Authors working on “industrial metabolism” (Ayres 1989) or “social
metabolism” (Fischer-Kowalski 1998; Haberl 2001) have looked at modern
economies in terms of flows of energy and materials. In this chapter, I shall
show how this view of the economy has intellectual roots in some
nineteenth-century natural scientists (Martinez-Alier 1987), whereas
economists, on the contrary, refused to adopt a sociometabolic view. Only
much later, in the late twentieth century, some natural scientists and also
some dissident economists such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Kenneth
Boulding, K. W Kapp, and Herman Daly began to view the economy as a
subsystem embedded in a biophysical system that can be described in terms
of flows of materials and energy. This perspective has given rise to the
schools of ecological economics and industrial ecology.
Marxist scholars working on economic and social history have generally
not been concerned with material and energy flows. However, Marx and
Engels had shown a profound interest in the metabolic relation between the
human economy and the natural environment, particularly as regards
capitalist agriculture. This was expressed in Marx’s use, after 1857–1858,
of the notion of “metabolism” (Stoffwechsel) between human society and
Nature. The Marxist concept of “metabolism” became widely known with
Alfred Schmidt’s (1978) work. Schmidt acknowledged Moleschott’s and
Liebig’s influences, and also Marx’s substantive use of the term in his
discussion of the cycling of plant nutrients (Schmidt 1978:86–89; Martinez-
Alier 1987:220–226). Marx became so keen on the concept of metabolism
that, in a letter to his wife on June 21, 1856, he wrote that what made him
feel like a man was his love for her, not his love for Moleschott’s
metabolism or for the proletariat.
Marx and Engels were one generation younger than the agricultural
chemists Liebig (1803–1873) and Boussingault (1802–1887), who from
1840 onward published their findings on the cycles of plant nutrients
(phosphorous, nitrogen, potassium), influenced by the debates on the threat
of decreasing agricultural yields and by the wholesale imports of guano
from Peru, an essential bulk commodity. About 11 million tons of guano
were exported from Peru in four decades (Gootenberg 1993). The analyses
of the composition of imported guano, and also of other manures and
fertilizers, such as bones, already known to farmers, laid the foundations for
agricultural chemistry Liebig’s name was associated, according to his own
wishes, with a new and expansive sector of the economy, the fertilizer
industry. Liebig can also be seen as one of the founders of ecology before
the name itself was invented (Kormondy 1965). Politically he developed an
argument against large-scale export agriculture because it would not allow
the plant nutrients to return to the soil. He was in favor of small-scale
agriculture and dispersed settlements. Marx quoted this opinion favorably
on several occasions.
Marx found Liebig supremely relevant because he discussed the natural
conditions of agricultural fertility and promoted the development of the
productive forces through the fertilizer industry. This was useful for the
polemics against Malthus, and for the theory of land rent. Foster (2000),
who rediscovered Marx’s “metabolism,” analyzed in great depth Marx’s
debt to Liebig, though he wrongly dismissed Moleschott’s influence, failing
to quote Moleschott’s books of 1851 and 1852 on the “circle of life” and the
physiology of metabolism in plants and animals.
Marx was a historian and an economist, but also a student of agriculture
and agricultural chemistry, adopting the notion of “metabolism” between
human society and Nature. The material flows between humans and Nature
were mobilized by human labor, except perhaps in hunting-and-gathering
societies. The development of tools was essential for this metabolism. As
Marx did not consider the flow of energy in agriculture and in industry, he
could not trace a fundamental distinction (as Lotka was to do in 1911)
between endosomatic and exosomatic use of energy. This difference
between biometabolism and technometabolism is crucial for human
ecology. The human species has genetic instructions regarding endosomatic
energy use, but not for exosomatic energy use, which can only be explained
by history, politics, economics, culture, and technology.
Marx wrote to Engels on February 13, 1866, that Liebig’s agricultural
chemistry was more important for the discussion on decreasing returns than
all the economists put together. Marx dismissed the notion of decreasing
returns in agriculture, praising Liebig’s chemistry and its promise of
artificial fertilizers, and arguing that it did not make sense to assume, for
example in Britain, that the produce of the land would increase in a
diminishing ratio to the increase of the laborers employed, because in
reality there was both an increase in production and an absolute decrease in
the number of laborers (Marx 1969 [1867]:ch. 13). Marx was not worried
about crises of subsistence. He attacked Malthus for suggesting that to
improve the situation of the poor was counterproductive, since the result
would be that they would have more children. There were many debates
around 1900 on “how many people could the Earth feed” (Pfaundler 1902;
Cohen 1995). Some Marxists (Lenin 1913) attacked not only Malthus but
also the neo-Malthusians of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century, who were often political radicals and feminists like Paul Robin and
Emma Goldman (Gordon 1976; Ronsin 1980; Masjuan 2000).

Podolinsky’s Agricultural Energetics

The link between material metabolism (Stoffwechsel, literally the exchanges
of materials) and the flow of energy at the level of cells and organisms was
made in the 1840s. It was then acknowledged that agriculture implied
changes in the flow of energy and not only in the cycling of plant nutrients.
Mayer (1845), in fact, used the concept of Stoffwechsel for energy flow.
Metabolism was recognized as comprising not only materials but also
energy (Haberl 2001). The difference, of course, is that materials can be
cycled, while energy can not. Recognition of the unilinear flow of energy
was developed after 1850 and the establishment of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics.
As is evident from their correspondence (Marx and Engels 1976), Marx
and Engels were interested in energy. For instance, Engels wrote to Marx on
July 14, 1858, commenting on Joule’s work in 1840 on the conservation of
energy as something that was well known to them. Marx was keen on new
sources of energy. One example will suffice: it was already discussed at this
time whether hydrogen could be a net source of energy, depending on the
energy requirement for electrolysis. Marx wrote to Engels on April 2, 1866,
that a certain M. Rebour had found the means of separating the oxygen
from hydrogen in water at very little expense. However, in his published
work, Marx did not refer to the flow of energy as metabolism.
 As Engels became aware of Clausius’s concept of entropy, he wrote to
Marx (March 21, 1869):

In Germany the conversion of the natural forces, for instance,

heat into mechanical energy, etc. has given rise to a very absurd
theory—that the world is becoming steadily colder ... and that,
in the end, a moment will come when all life will be
impossible.... I am simply waiting for the moment when the
clerics seize upon this theory.

Indeed, not only the clerics but also W Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
brandished the Second Law in his religious tirades about the “heat death,”
although he could have no inkling of the source of solar energy in nuclear
fusion. One may sympathize with Engels’s dislike for the use to which the
Second Law was put. Josef Popper-Lynkeus (1838–1921), who with Ernst
Mach exerted a major influence on the analytical, antimetaphysical
philosophy of the Vienna Circle, complained in 1876 about W Thomson’s
“theological handling of Carnot’s law” (Martinez-Alier 1987:197).
However, Engels’s dislike of the Second Law was not only motivated by its
religious abuse. He believed, in fact, that ways would be found to reuse the
heat radiated into space.
Another interesting point is Engels’s negative reaction in 1882 (in letters
to Marx) regarding Podolinsky’s work. Podolinsky had studied the entropy
law and the economic process, and he tried to convince Marx that this could
be brought into the Marxist analysis. Politically he was not a Marxist, but a
Ukrainian federalist narodnik. He complained about Marx’s dominating
behavior at the congress of the International of 1872, praising the anarchist
James Guillaume. However, he saw his own work on agricultural energetics
as a contribution to Marxism. In a letter to Marx dated April 8, 1880, he
wrote: “With particular impatience I wait for your opinion on my attempt to
bring surplus labour and the current physical theories into harmony”
(Podolinsky’s correspondence at the Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam). In an article published in Russian in 1880 and in German in
1883, and in shorter French and Italian versions in 1880 and 1881,
Podolinsky (1880a) began by explaining the laws of energetics, quoting
from Clausius that although the energy of the universe was constant, there
was a tendency toward the dissipation of energy or, in Clausius’s
terminology, there was a tendency for entropy to increase. He did not
discuss the difference between open, closed, and isolated systems, but
stated explicitly, as the starting point of his analysis, that the earth was
receiving enormous quantities of energy from the sun, and would do so for
a very long time. All physical and biological phenomena were expressions
of the transformations of energy. He did not enter into the controversies
regarding the creation of the universe and its “heat-death,” nor did he
discuss the relations between thermodynamics and the theory of evolution.
In March 1880 he published an article criticizing social Darwinism
(Podolinsky 1880b). He certainly realized that the availability of energy
was a crucial consideration for demography, defining the feasibility of an
increase in population. However, he argued that the distribution of
production was explained by the relations between social classes: “In the
countries where capitalism triumphs, a great part of work goes towards the
production of luxury goods, that is to say, towards a gratuitous dissipation
of energy instead of towards increasing the availability of energy”
(Podolinsky 1880b).
Podolinsky explained that plants assimilated energy, and animals fed on
plants and degraded energy. This formed the Kreislauf des Lebens:

We have in front of us two parallel processes which together

form the so-called circle of life. Plants have the property of
accumulating solar energy, but the animals, when they feed on
vegetable substances, transform a part of this saved energy and
dissipate this energy into space. If the quantity of energy
accumulated by plants is greater than that dispersed by animals,
then stocks of energy appear, for instance in the period when
mineral coal was formed, during which vegetable life was
preponderant over animal life. If, on the contrary, animal life
were preponderant, the provision of energy would be quickly
dispersed and animal life would have to go back to the limits
determined by vegetable wealth. So, a certain equilibrium would
have to be built between the accumulation and the dissipation of
energy. (Podolinsky 1883:420, my translation)
 Not only plants, but also human labor had the capacity to retard the
dissipation of energy. Human labor achieved this through agriculture,
although the work of a tailor, a shoemaker, or a carpenter would also
qualify, in his view, as productive work, since they afforded “protection
against the dissipation of energy into space.” The energy available for
humankind came mainly from the sun, and Podolinsky provided figures for
the solar constant. He explained how coal and oil, wind energy, and water
power were transformations of solar energy. He mentioned tides as another
possible source of energy. He then turned to his analysis of agricultural
energetics, remarking that only a tiny proportion of the sun’s energy was
assimilated by plants.
Human work, together with the work of animals controlled by humans,
could increase the availability of energy through agricultural activity.
Podolinsky showed this in France. Table 11.1 summarizes his data (cf.
Martinez-Alier 1987:48, for information on sources).
Podolinsky compared wheat agriculture and sown pastures with natural
pastures and forests, concluding that production was higher when there was
an input of human and animal work. Thus, comparing wheat agriculture to
natural pastures, each kcal put in contributed to an increase of 22 kcal of
production. Compared to forests, the energy productivity of human and
domestic animal work was even higher. Notice that Podolinsky was
counting human and animal work, that is, not the food intake but the work
done. He did not include solar radiation in the input of energy, because he
was writing as an ecological economist. Solar radiation is indeed a free gift
of Nature (so far without an owner, so that there is no payment of rent).
 Table 11.1. Average annual production and energy input (through the
work of humans and domestic animals) per hectare in France in 1870,
according to Podolinsky

The conclusion was that work could increase the “accumulation of

energy on earth.” Although he mentioned guano, and although he must have
been keenly aware of the war then raging for Peruvian or Chilean saltpeter
(another early bulk commodity), he did not subtract from the output, or
include in the input, the energy contents and cost of fertilizer. Nor did he
consider the energy spent by steam engines in threshing. His methodology
is nevertheless basically the same as that used later for establishing the
energy balance of particular crops, or for small-scale societies, or for the
entire agricultural sector of particular countries (Cottrell 1955; Rappaport
1967; Odum 1971; Pimentel et al. 1973; Pimentel and Pimentel 1979;
Leach 1975; Fluck and Baird 1980).
Podolinsky then went on to explain the capacity of the human organism
to conduct work. Otherwise “it would be difficult to explain the
accumulation of energy on the surface of the earth under the influence of
labour” (Podolinsky 1880b). Quoting from Hirn and Helmholtz, he
correctly concluded that “man has the capacity to transform one-fifth of the
energy gained from food into muscular work,” giving to this ratio the name
of “economic coefficient” and remarking that man was a more efficient
transformer of energy than a steam engine. He then used a steam-engine
metaphor to express a general theoretical principle on the natural conditions
of human existence, from an energy point of view He wrote that humanity
was a “perfect machine” in Sadi Carnot’s sense: “Humanity is a machine
that not only turns heat and other physical forces into work, but succeeds
also in carrying out the inverse cycle, that is, it turns work into heat and
other physical forces which are necessary to satisfy our needs, and, so to
speak, with its own work turned into heat is able to heat its own boiler”
(Podolinsky 1880b).
For humanity to ensure its elementary conditions of existence, argued
Podolinsky, each calorie of human work must yield (i.e. produce or provide
access to) several calories of food energy. Taking into account that not
everybody is able to work (e.g. children, old people) and that there are other
energy needs than food energy, the necessary minimum productivity would
be in the order of ten or more. If that minimum is not achieved, “scarcity
appears and, many times, a reduction of population” (Podolinsky 1880b).
Podolinsky thus established the basis for a view of the economy in terms of
energy metabolism, looking at the energy return to energy input as a
foundation for the reproduction of the social system. He thought that he had
reconciled the Physiocrats with the labor theory of value, although the
eighteenth-century Physiocrats had not been able to see the economy in
terms of energy flow.
Podolinsky emphasized the difference between using the flow of solar
energy and the stock of energy in coal. The task of labor was to increase the
accumulation of solar energy on Earth, rather than the simple
transformation into work of energy already accumulated on Earth,
considering that work done with coal was inevitably accompanied by a
great dissipation of heat-energy into space. The energy productivity of a
coal miner was much larger than that of a traditional farmer, but this energy
surplus from coal was ephemeral. Moreover, Podolinsky added in a
footnote, there was a theory that linked climatic changes to concentrations
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as Sterry Hunt had explained at a
meeting of the British Society for the Advancement of Science in the
autumn of 1878. The emphasis here is not on capital accumulation in the
sense of an increased stock of means of production, and even less in
financial terms, but on increasing the availability of energy. This is an early
example of “non-equivalent descriptions” of the same economic reality in
terms of both economic and energy magnitudes (Giampietro 2003).
Podolinsky was not pessimistic about the prospects for the economy,
however. He was optimistic about the direct use of solar energy for
industrial purposes, referring to the “solar engine of M. Mouchot” (cf.
Mouchot 1879 [1869]). He also envisaged that one day solar energy would
be used directly for chemical syntheses of nutritive substances, bypassing
agriculture. Thus, he argued, a proper discussion of the demographic
question should take into account the relation between the quantity of
energy available on the earth and the quantity of people who live on it, a
perspective more relevant than the Malthusian prognosis. As he had written
to Marx on March 30, 1880, he also hoped to develop applications of his
energy accounts to different modes of production.
Podolinsky’s work is important, not only in the Marxist context, but in its
own right, apart from his encounters with Marx and Engels. Podolinsky is
more relevant for ecological economics than Marx and Engels, because he
conducted a concrete study (perhaps the first one) of “social metabolism” in
terms of energy. Although he had a short life and was severely ill for his last
ten years, he left a strong trace in Ukrainian federalist politics as a friend of
Mikhail Drahomanov (1841–1895) and also in the narodnik movement
against the Russian autocracy. He was trained as a medical doctor and
physiologist. His work on energy and the economy was praised by
Vernadsky in a section of La Géochimie (1924). Several authors (e.g. Felix
Auerbach, John Joly) had explained life as a process that reversed or slowed
down the dissipation of energy. Vernadsky (1924:334–335) added that
Podolinsky had studied the energetics of life and tried to apply his findings
to the study of the economy.
The notion of a link between the use of energy and human society, in the
form of “social energetics,” became well established and debated in Europe
around 1900. Some Marxist authors like A. Bogdanov (1873–1928) and N.
I. Bukharin (1888–1938) adopted this outlook, and their work has been
viewed as an anticipation of von Bertalanffy’s (1968) systems theory, which
grew out of the links between thermodynamics and biology (Susiluoto
1982). However, there is no line of ecological Marxist history based on
quantitative studies of material and energy flows.

Otto Neurath’s Naturalrechnung

In my 1987 book with Klaus Schlüpmann, the links between Marxism and a
biophysical approach to the economy were discussed mainly by looking at
Podolinsky’s agricultural energetics and Engels’s negative reaction to it. We
also called attention to the ecological aspects of Otto Neurath’s position in
the Socialist Calculation debate of 1919 and the following years. Otto
Neurath (1882–1945) was a logical empiricist philosopher of the Vienna
Circle, but also an economist or economic historian, and a Marxist in at
least two senses. First, in the Socialist Calculation debate he defended a
democratically planned economy based on physical accounting in energy
and material terms (Naturalrechnung). In this respect, he was influenced by
Josef Popper-Lynkeus’s and Karl Ballod-Atlanticus’s quantitative “utopias.”
He introduced the idea of incommensurable values in the economy
(Martinez-Alier 1987; O’Neill 1993, 2002, 2004; Martinez-Alier, Munda,
and O’Neill 1998; Uebel 2005). Second, in the context of the Vienna
Circle’s project of compiling an encyclopedia of unified science, Neurath in
the 1930s and 1940s defended a dialectical view of history (although he did
not like the word “dialectics”) as the integration of findings from different
sciences regarding concrete processes and events. The findings of one
science regarding a particular process or event, he argued, should not be
contradicted by the findings of another science also represented in the
encyclopedia, leaving things at that. Resolution of the contradiction should
be attempted. To use Edward Wilson’s word from our own time,
“consilience” should be the rule of the encyclopedia.
To grasp the political relevance of Otto Neurath’s work, one must
understand that Hayek’s (1979 [1952]) strong critique of “social
engineering” was directed not only against thinkers of the past such as C. H.
Saint-Simon, but also against authors who had a sociometabolic vision of
the economy. As John O‘Neill has put it, Hayek’s criticism was directed at
the whole tradition, now called ecological economics, which attempts to
understand the ways in which economic institutions and relations are
embedded within the physical world and have real physical preconditions,
and which is consequently critical of economic choices founded upon
purely monetary valuation (O’Neill 2002, 2004). While Patrick Geddes,
Wilhelm Ostwald, Lancelot Hogben, Frederick Soddy, and Lewis Mumford
were all rudely dismissed by Hayek because they viewed the economy in
sociometabolic terms, Neurath’s Naturalrechnung as a tool for democratic
planning was Hayek’s main target.
One is also reminded of Max Weber’s critical comments on Neurath in
Economy and Society, and even more of his critique of Wilhelm Ostwald in
1909. Ostwald, who was a well-known chemist, interpreted human history
in terms of the use of energy, influencing many authors, among them Henry
Adams (1838–1918), who believed that there was a “law of acceleration” of
the use of energy: “The coal output of the world, speaking roughly, doubled
every ten years between 1840 and 1900, in the form of utilized power, for
the ton of coal yielded three or four times as much power in 1900 as in
1840.” One hundred years later, research shows the close relation between
economic growth and the use of energy in the economy, or rather “physical
work output as distinguished from energy (exergy)” (Ayres and Warr 2003).
The links between energy and economy are more relevant than ever as we
anticipate the patterns of economic growth of India, China, and other
countries, their effects on the prices of oil and gas, the increased human use
of biomass as fuels to the detriment of other species, and the increased use
of coal and its implications for the greenhouse effect.
Ostwald had proposed two simple laws, which might act in opposite
directions. First, the growth of the economy implied the use of more energy,
and the substitution of other forms of energy for human energy. Second,
there was a trend toward higher efficiency in the transformation of energy
in particular technologies and processes. Max Weber (1909) wrote an ironic
review of Ostwald’s views, where he defended the separation between
sciences, insisting that chemists should not write on the economy. This
review was praised by Hayek (1979 [1952]:171) in the 1940s. Weber’s
basic point (cf. Martinez-Alier 1987:ch. 12) was that economic decisions by
entrepreneurs on new technologies or new products were based on costs and
prices. Even if a production process was less efficient in energy terms, it
would nevertheless be adopted because it was cheaper. Energy accounting
was irrelevant for the economy. Weber did not question energy prices as we
do now, when the greenhouse effect and the intergenerational allocation of
exhaustible resources are taken into account.
Marx’s doubts on the benefits of economic growth, clearly expressed in
his ecological critique of capitalist agriculture, were not forgotten within the
Marxist tradition, but the technological optimists, who believed in the
development of the productive forces, predominated. One of the most
influential technological optimists of the twentieth century was the Marxist
historian of science J. D. Bernal. In the 1950s he was totally in favor of the
“civil” use of nuclear energy, which Lewis Mumford was strongly
critizicing at the time (Thomas et al. 1956:1147). Mumford, described by
Ramachandra Guha as the “forgotten American environmentalist” (i.e.
compared to G. P. Marsh, John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold,
Rachel Carson, etc.), was heir to Patrick Geddes, William Morris, and John
Ruskin, rather than a part of the Marxist tradition.

Ecologically Unequal Exchange

Mumford’s mentor, Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), a biologist and urban
planner, did not discuss Marx, but attacked neoclassical economists such as
Walras because they did not count flows of energy, materials, and waste
(Martinez-Alier 1987:ch. 6). Geddes (1885) constructed a sort of input-
output table inspired by the Tableau Economique of the Physiocrat François
Quesnay. The first column would contain the sources of energy as well as
the materials used, not for their potential energy, but for their other
properties. Energy and materials, in this model, are transformed into
products through three stages: extraction, manufacture, and transport and
exchange. Estimates should be made of the losses through dissipation and
disintegration at each stage. The quantity of the final product (or “net”
product, in Physiocratic terms) seems small in proportion to the gross
quantity of potential product, but the losses at each stage are not accounted
for in economic terms. The final product, in this perspective, is not “added
value” at all, but the value remaining from the energy and materials that
were available at the beginning.
Geddes’s scheme is relevant to the attempts today to develop a theory of
ecologically unequal exchange between metropolitan centers and their
global peripheries. In neoclassical economics, provided that markets are
competitive and ruled by supply and demand, there cannot be unequal
exchange. This could only arise from monopoly or monopsony conditions,
or because of noninternalized externalities or excessive discounting of the
future. In an ecological-economics theory of unequal exchange, one could
say that the more of the original exergy (available energy or “productive
potential” in the raw materials) that has been dissipated in producing the
final products or services, the higher the prices of these products or services
will have to be (Hornborg 1998; Naredo and Valero 1999; Naredo 2001).
This was indeed implied by Geddes with different words. Thus, Hornborg
concludes, “market prices are the ... mechanism by which world system
centres extract exergy from ... their peripheries” (Hornborg 1998:131–132).
 At the beginning of European colonization, the goods imported to Europe
were mainly what Immanuel Wallerstein has called “preciosities” like silver
and pepper. The means of transport at the time were such that bulky trade
was not possible. Such goods, characterized by high exchange value per
kilogram, are still traded, of course. The effects on the ecology and human
livelihood in the exporting countries might be terrible, but such trade is
nevertheless marginal for the social metabolism of the importing countries.
Consider, for instance, the heavy local ecological impacts of exports of
ivory or tiger skins, compared to the irrelevance of such trade for the
importing countries’ metabolism. “Preciosities” like gold may be crucial for
the relations of some social groups, but the impacts of gold extraction
through opencast mining, using much water and cyanide, will be felt in
distant localities, not in the importing countries.
Sugar was initially a “preciosity.” It later became a bulk commodity that
played a great role, as Sidney Mintz (1985) has shown, in the
biometabolism of the English working class. Other bulk commodities, like
guano and Chilean saltpeter between 1840 and 1914, and certainly wood,
oil, and gas today, became decisive in the sociometabolism of the importing
countries. In this sense, Europe is now more colonial than ever. Gasoline
stations in central Europe might have signs reading “Kolonialwaren.” In
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the countries of what today is
the European Union largely depended on their own coal and biomass as
energy sources, but now the European Union is a large net importer of oil
and gas. Taking the weight of all materials together (energy carriers,
minerals, metals, biomass), the European Union imports about four times
more than it exports. Meanwhile, Latin America appears to be exporting six
times more than it imports (Giljum and Eisenmenger 2004). Moreover,
exports from the South often carry heavier “ecological rucksacks” than its
imports. This is shown by research on the energy and carbon intensity of
Brazilian trade, that is, the energy dissipated and carbon dioxide produced
by each dollar of exports and imports (Machado, Schaeffer, and Worrell
2001), and by research on the “environmental pollution terms of trade” for
several metals (Muradian, O’Connor, and Martinez-Alier 2002). Pengue
(2005) has similarly calculated the loss of nutrients, soil erosion, and
“virtual water” as hidden exports in the soybean trade of Argentina.
 The United States, having reached the peak of the internal Hubbert curve
in the 1970s, now imports more than half the oil that it consumes. These
imports are over 10 mbd, that is 500 million tons per year, or 2 tons per
person per year. In comparison, research on material flow accounting shows
that in the poorest countries, the total tonnage of materials mobilized
internally and through trade per person per year (including biomass and all
other materials) is of the order of 3 tons.
Pérez-Rincón (2006) has found that Colombia exports about 70 million
tons per year compared to 10 million tons of imports. He shows that
Prebisch’s (1949) approach was based on the notion of a global system that
defines a historical division between periphery countries specialized in
exporting primary goods and center countries that export industrial goods.
This specialization tends to entrench the role of peripheral regions as
suppliers of resources extracted to satisfy the requirements of the center.
The theory of the deterioration of terms of trade in developing countries
was formulated in parallel by Prebisch (1949) and Singer (1950). The
center-periphery division does not only have monetary implications for the
terms of trade, but also physical implications: southern regions typically
provide materials and energy so that the north can maintain and develop its
socioeconomic metabolism. Such sociometabolic aspects were not yet
considered by Prebisch. An “ecological Prebisch” would propose new
economic instruments such as “natural capital depletion taxes.” A
discussion is also needed on the claims for repayment of an “ecological
debt.” Not all developing countries are net physical exporters: India and
China are probably net importers of energy and materials, mainly because
of oil imports. Internally, however, some areas in India and China provide
bulk materials such as coal and other minerals.
Whatever the historically changing positions of different countries and
regions, the metabolic processes that maintain the centers of the world-
system are guaranteed by ecologically unequal exchange, deteriorating
terms of trade for natural resources, and sometimes by military power. The
deterioration of terms of trade means that an increasing quantity of primary
exports is needed to obtain a given amount of imported goods. This
phenomenon gave rise to the concept of economically unequal exchange
and to Prebisch’s doctrines, which were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.
Marxists added that exports from poor countries were often more intensive
in underpaid human labor than imports, so that there was an unequal
exchange in terms of embodied labor (Emmanuel 1972). In this chapter, the
environmental aspects have been added to the discussion on unequal
exchange by looking at net physical flows and the environmental impacts of
trade.
A sociometabolic perspective shows that capital accumulation does not
take place on its own, and is not only based on the exploitation of labor and
technical change. Industrial capitalism advances into commodity frontiers
because it uses more and more materials and energy, produces more and
more waste, and thus undermines not only its own conditions of production
but the conditions of existence of peripheral peoples, who complain
accordingly. Such ecological conflicts are becoming increasingly visible
(Martinez-Alier 2002).

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12

Natural Values and the Physical

Inevitability of Uneven Development under
Capitalism
STEPHEN G. BUNKER

EXPLANATIONS OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT under capitalism

routinely invoke different rates of capital accumulation and differential
productivity of labor across economic sectors and geographical regions,
ignoring that uneven development also responds to immutable physical
laws. Production involves the transformation of matter and energy, which
can neither be created nor destroyed and whose transformation always
creates entropy, or the loss of potential energy to kinetic energy or heat
(Bunker 1985; Martinez-Alier 1987; Hornborg 2001). Social production, in
which labor redirects the transformation of matter and energy, requires
extraction, in which labor appropriates naturally produced material and
energetic forms. The productivity of labor can only be increased by
simultaneously increasing the appropriation and transformation of energy
stored in material forms produced in nature, that is, without human
intervention or direction.

Extraction, Production, and Uneven Development

In simple economies, extraction and production often occur in close
proximity; individuals and groups typically engage in both activities. As
social production expands under capitalism, both the amount and the variety
of material and energetic forms consumed in its concentrated industrial loci
increase. Natural production, however, does not increase or diversify at the
same rate as social production. Indeed, many particular material forms are
naturally produced only within particular ecosystems in specific locations,
and extraction usually leads to a depletion or reduction of natural products
in these specific locations (Jalee 1969; Caldwell 1977; Bunker 1985, 1992;
Bunker and Ciccantell 2003).
Economies of scale reduce the unit costs of production through the use of
more powerful and efficient technologies. The new technologies are costly
to implement, and must operate at or near full capacity to return the
investments they require. Their maintenance and repair may require special
machines and labor skills. All of these conditions tend increasingly to
agglomerate production in concentrated spaces as technology becomes
more efficient and costlier. The new technologies can only achieve their
intended results, though, by transforming more matter and energy into more
commodities. In addition to needing greater volumes of raw materials, these
more powerful technologies tend to require raw materials with more
precisely specified physical and chemical characteristics and hence only
available in a reduced number of specific locations.
Productive expansion can only occur, therefore, through the proliferation
of extractive economies in geologically and climatologically distinct
ecosystems dispersed at greater distances across broader space (cf. Lenin
1965 (1916); Luxemburg 1968; Bunker and Ciccantell 2005). In this sense
the expansion of industrial production entails, as a physical necessity, the
widening spatial and temporal separation of extraction and production.
Historically, the instruments of trade and of war, and particularly the
means of transport they required, together with the growing power and
consumption of classes that organized and dominated trade and violence,
vastly expanded the need for raw materials. The search for raw materials, in
turn, drove the expansion of early states and empires and extended trading
networks (Ekholm and Friedman 1982:97; Diakonoff 1969:28, 1982:78;
McNeill 1963:71–74; Adams 1977:165–174; Drennan 1984; Chaudhuri
1985:203–204). Nonetheless, with the notable exceptions of timber for
ships, metals for arms, and stones for building, most of the matter socially
transformed was extracted close at hand. It was not until the conquest of the
New World that extracted matter in large quantities was transported
between widely distant regions, as gold and silver, cacao, animal oils, and
spices fueled the surge of commerce in bulkier, less precious commodities,
such as fish, wheat, and wood, that enabled Holland to rise to trade
dominance by becoming the most efficient carrier in the sixteenth-century
world. Commerce in low-value/high-volume goods surged again as Britain
developed a coal-based industry in the seventeenth century that by the
eighteenth century had spawned the Industrial Revolution and the
internalization of production that it made possible (Arrighi 1994).
The emergence and evolution of the capitalist mode of production set in
motion the social processes that made the progressive spatial separation of
extraction and production physically inevitable. Central among these
processes was the shift from organic to inorganic and from vegetable to
metal as the most voluminously used forms of energy and matter in social
production. This shift provided both the means and the motives for
accelerating economies of scale in extraction, in transport, and in
production. Increasingly powerful technologies of smelting and casting
made possible larger and stronger constructions than possible with woods,
and greater speeds and forces and straighter lines of sail than possible with
wind. Where vegetable fibers required separate space for each plant unit as
it grew, so that increased production occupied more horizontal ground,
minerals accumulated and were stored vertically (Mumford 1961; Hugill
1994). Mineral extraction was thus far more amenable to technical
economies of scale, though mining becomes more expensive as a deepening
mine engenders progressively more difficult conditions for labor, including
the need to pump water out and air in. Lifting weight vertically is obviously
more costly than moving it horizontally. On the other hand, the growing
demand for metals that the new economies of scale made possible, and the
utility of metals for constructing technical fixes for the problems that deep
mining encountered, generated innovations such as the steam engine. Many
of these could be applied directly to transport and production as well as to
extraction, and so drove simultaneously further economies of scale,
increased levels of production and consumption, and even greater volumes
of extraction and transport.
The transition to metals, accelerated by the ease of national access to
coal, started in Britain as early as the seventeenth century, but it was not
until the nineteenth century that the technologies developed and the capital
accumulated in industrial production fed back into the rapid advances in
fossil-fuel driven transport in steel-constructed vessels and frames on steel-
constructed infrastructure. These developments so reduced transport costs
that a wide range of material and energetic forms once too bulky for
profitable exchange could now move, in large quantities, across great
distances. This, in turn, allowed for tremendous increases in the mass of
matter and energy transformed by industry. It also intensified its inherent
tendencies to spatial concentration.
An important difference leading to uneven development is that the
dynamics of scale function inversely in extractive and productive
economies. The forces of production develop progressively in industrial
systems because the unit costs of commodity production tend to fall as the
scale of production increases. In extractive systems, unit costs tend to rise
as the scale of extraction increases. Extraction usually starts by
appropriating the most accessible sources. Greater amounts of any
extractive commodity can be obtained only by exploiting increasingly
distant or difficult sources. Though technological innovation may reduce
costs of some extractive processes in the short run, unit costs of extraction
continue to rise in the long run. Therefore, when extractive systems respond
to increased external demand or internal pressures to increase profits, they
tend to impoverish themselves, (1) by depleting easily accessible non-self-
renewing resources or (2) by exploiting the most proximate self-renewing
resources beyond their capacities for regeneration, thereby (3) requiring
more labor and capital per unit extracted and so (4) forcing the unit cost of
the extracted resources to rise so high that the development of synthetic or
cultivated alternatives in other regions becomes cost effective. Alternately,
technologies or products using other raw materials from other regions may
become competitive in the productive economy.
The rising unit costs of extraction make extractive economies highly
unstable: if high demand and expanded scale increase unit costs of
extraction by depleting the most accessible resources, entrepreneurs will
either search for more accessible sources in other regions or attempt to
domesticate or to synthesize agricultural or industrial substitutes and to
transform the extractive economy into a productive one. Capitalism
generates the research and technical capacities required for plant
domestication and transfer and for synthetic substitutions of vegetable
matter. Brockway (1979) has shown how the development of the botanical
and related sciences in nineteenth-century Britain responded to rising unit
costs in Latin American extractive economies. British capital and the
British state promoted the domestication, genetic adaptation, and transfer of
cultigens extracted there to Asian and African colonies where the British
controlled the land and labor necessary to transform them into plantation
crops. Successful transformation to a plantation system brought rubber and
chinchona into a mode of production in which increased scale progressively
reduced unit costs to levels at which extractive systems could no longer
compete. These plantation systems were eventually impoverished by
industrial production of synthetic substitutes. Modern searches for oil
substitutes—whether nuclear, solar, or agricultural—respond similarly to
rising capital and labor costs as the most accessible oil sources are depleted.

Special Cases: The Developmental Paths of

Particular Extractive Economies
Some extractive economies have replicated the integration of extraction and
production which characterized precapitalist and early capitalist economies.
The potential for such development depends in part on the spatial location
of the resource, in part on its natural, or physical characteristics, and in part
on the degree of capital concentration and intensification in the economic
sector that uses or consumes the resource (North 1961). Because of the
general tendency for capital to concentrate and intensify in all productive
sectors over time, and for materials to be used in more and more costly
machines, these possibilities for productive economies to emerge from
extraction diminish as capitalism evolves (Mandel 1975). Capital
accumulation and technological advances in productive economies also
work directly to restrict such possibilities; as transport technologies
improve and lower the costs for bulk movements of matter, the marginal
price advantage that preliminary processing to reduce bulk provides to the
extractive region is pushed back toward pure extraction (cf. de Silva
1982:78). Even the exceptional cases of production emerging from
extraction illustrate these principles.
The development of a ship-building industry in colonial New England
resulted from the coincidence of that region’s relative advantages in two
extractive industries—fishing and lumbering—with the burgeoning
triangular trade between the West Indies, Britain, and North America (Clark
1916; Shepherd and Walton 1972; both cited in Chase-Dunn 1980). Chase-
Dunn points out that the development of the shipping industry occurred
during a period of rapid expansion in the entire world economy and of
intense political struggle in the more advanced industrial centers in Europe.
Later, the development of steamships—a new technology requiring a
greater concentration of capital and articulation with a longer, more
complex chain of labor and material transformations—returned the
advantage in ship-building to Britain (Bunker and Cicantell 2005). In the
meantime, though, productive economies had emerged, and sufficient
industrial capital had been accumulated for productive growth to continue
in America. The linked industries that developed—sugar refineries,
distilleries, lumber and flour mills, tin plate and bottling plants—were not
so capital intensive as to be beyond the reach of rapidly accumulating local
capitals (Emmanuel 1972; de Silva 1982:76; Meinig 1986; Parker 1991).
Mandel (1975:50–52) characterizes this period, especially from 1848 to the
1860s, as a time in which capital accumulation in Great Britain, France, and
Belgium had not yet proceeded sufficiently to establish factories in other
parts of the world and transport was still too costly to allow the bulk
shipment of cheap goods. He concludes that “those economies which were
themselves pressing toward a capitalist mode of production were on the
whole left unlimited scope for primitive accumulation of indigenous
national capital.” This was clearly as much the case for nascent North
American industries as it was for the Italian, Russian, Japanese, and
Spanish economies that Mandel describes in these passages. De Silva
(1982) suggests that a burgeoning domestic market for manufactured goods
complemented primitive accumulation in North America. Chase-Dunn
(1980) argues that during this period of North American industrial
development, European immigrants brought with them a steady influx of
technical knowledge and skills from the most dynamic industrial economies
and that commonalities of language and culture facilitated access to the
scientific and technical knowledge generated by European development.
Parker (1991) shows how the American Midwest’s political economy
evolved in the interaction between these immigrant groups’ different
technical and cultural attributes and the challenges and opportunities
presented by the natural environment.
 Once productive industrialization commences, and as it expands through
multisectoral linkages, access to natural products can provide it with a
series of savings that make local industries more competitive and allow for
higher wages. These high wages, in turn, amplify the local market and
provide expansive opportunities to realize surplus value though growing
industrial production.
The rush of men seeking gold in California during this same period had
similar effects there. Numerous small capitals and technical skills were
carried there, as most of these prospectors had to pay their own way. The
resulting demand for implements, services, shelter, and so forth set up a
huge network of lateral linkages, which the agricultural and forestry
potential of the region helped to maintain. Paul (1963:15–16), who
estimates that the gold rush took the non-Indian population of California
from 14,000 in 1848 to 380,000 in 1860, calculates that even at the height
of the boom, less than half of the men were actually working in the mines.
He quotes an early miner who spoke of “the crowds of lawyers, small
tradesmen, mechanics, and others who swarm in every little camp, even of
the most humble description, soliciting the patronage of the public.” Paul
goes on to suggest that the miner might well have included the “wondrous”
numbers of hotels, restaurants, brothels, and “hurdy-gurdy” houses.
Farming and forestry developed rapidly to provide the raw materials that
this population, and the mining infrastructure itself, required. Later, high
wages and the depletion of placer deposits and easily accessible lodes
fostered more mechanical, capital-intensive means of mining. These
required elaborate sluices and metal pipes; more sophisticated means of
industrial production began to emerge to meet this demand.
Agriculture and forestry have survived the decline of gold mining and
continue to complement the industrial economies of the American West
Coast. Extractive economies, however, are far less articulated with
production in the former mining areas of the southwest and northwest,
which did not offer California’s favorable combinations of good soils,
irrigable valleys, and easy communication.
The development of industrial production along different parts of the
Canada–U.S. border out of earlier extractive economies reflected not only
the extraordinarily favorable natural transport facilities of these regions, but
also the fact that locally dominant classes were able to accumulate the
capital and to develop the technologies necessary to control the
transformation of the materials extracted—ore, coal, and timber. The
technologies and markets for manganese and bauxite, in contrast, are not
nearly as accessible to populations in the Brazilian Amazon, nor has the
productive transformation of tin, copper, or antimony been accessible to the
Andean and African populations that have mined it. The steady rise in the
scale of industrial and transport technology, and in the organic composition
of capital, progressively reduces the opportunities to develop production out
of extraction.
It is also possible that the national state may intervene to redirect profits
from extraction into production (Becker 1985; Stephens and Stephens 1985;
Coronil 1997), but usually this involves taxing the extractive region’s
economy in favor of a widely distant productive region, as occurs in Brazil
(Bunker 1985) and South Africa (Wolpe 1980; Legassick 1977). This
essentially amounts to a double extraction, first as raw materials, second as
revenue, from the extractive regional economy, and simply aggravates its
impoverishment (Bunker 2000).
There are, however, especially in Europe and America, cases of
successful transition from extraction to production. Until the resources
extracted are depleted, the extractive economy located near a productive
center may enjoy many of the latter’s inherent locational advantages. It
tends to be less exploitative of labor as a result and therefore tends more to
capital-intensive technologies and environmental safeguards. The off-shore
oil wells near Santa Barbara, California, in recent years, and the
Sacramento Valley farmers’ effective resistance to the environmentally
destructive hydraulic mining practiced by large corporations in the 1880s
(Kelley 1956, 1959) provide examples of how the development of
productive economies can limit the deleterious effects of extractive
economies.
If farmers lack the political power and linkages necessary to confront
extractive capitalists, however, the destruction of their environmental base
can make them dependent on extractive wages, as happened in Peru’s Cerro
de Pasco mine (Flores Galindo 1974) and in Appalachian Kentucky
(Gaventa 1980).
 Cases of production emerging from extraction, whether in the central
economy or in the semiperipheral economies associated with dependent
development (Evans 1979) finally mean that matter and energy from other
extractive economies now flow toward an emerging center of production.
Uneven development continues, though its loci shift.

Productive Expansion, Extractive Decline, and the

Problem of Value
Within any ecosystem and for any species, there are rates of harvest that, if
performed without destroying or too greatly reducing other species, would
allow indefinitely sustained yield. The expansive logic of capitalist
production, however, usually precludes such careful calculation of harvest
rates. Instead, extraction rates respond to opportunities for profit set by
production-driven demand. Pressures to maximize profits from extraction,
therefore, typically lead to extraction rates that cannot be sustained, so the
extraction of both nonrenewable and renewable resources tends to
impoverish their regional economies.
The combination of (1) factors that lead to the eventual impoverishment
or collapse of extractive economies in specific regions or subregions with
(2) factors that prevent extractive economies based on remote resources
from sharing with other enterprise the locational advantages of population
centers and a socially built environment creates cycles in which costly
infrastructure and human settlements are periodically abandoned or suffer
severe reduction in economic utility. Economic and social development
based on extractive economies thus tends to be discontinuous in time and
space. Production systems build a social and physical environment shared
by multiple enterprises. These enterprises suffer the effects of technological
and demand changes at different times and rates, so a production system as
a whole tends to be more stable and continuous than an extractive one.
Production systems’ locational advantages of shared labor pools and
infrastructure are much more likely to allow adaptation to changing
technologies and markets. The fact that most of the infrastructure developed
for extractive export economies is specific to the requirements of resource
removal and transport exacerbates their loss of utility as the extracted
resource is exhausted or substituted (Barham and Coomes 1994).
 Predominantly extractive economies disrupt human communities and the
natural environment in ways that destroy values and limit productivity in
both. Because extraction forces out or prevents the social and political
articulation of extractive labor with other organizational or economic forms,
local populations have no effective means to oppose or resist entrepreneurs
or dependent national states whose quest for rapid profits is realized
through the destruction of local productive systems—natural and social.
Thus, extractive economies tend toward eventual stagnation, broken by new
extractive cycles if new demands emerge for other material resources
available in the region (Bunker 1985, 2003; Karl 1997; Coronil 1997).
The flow of matter and energy from extractive economies and its heat-
releasing conversion in socially manipulated transformation adds organic
and inorganic matter that disrupts the natural energetic cycles in the
productive economies’ environments. Capitalist expansion accelerates this
process. This disruption imposes costs on the productive society as a whole
rather than directly on private capital, but it does raise the costs of
production and reproduction. Solutions to these disruptions require
intensified human intervention in the maintenance of the built environment.
This intervention consumes further amounts of matter and energy, and so
contributes to the acceleration of extraction. Ironically, it also provides
opportunities for private profit.
Conventional theories of value, production, and exchange, and the
models of development that draw on those theories, have not adequately
recognized the absolute physical dependence of production on extraction or
the inevitable loss of value in the extractive economy (Martinez-Alier
1987). Nor have they accounted for the ways that the extraction, transport,
and use of natural resources and the social formations that emerge around
these processes affect the subsequent developmental potential of the
environments from which resources are extracted. Instead, most theorists of
development have attempted to extend models derived from systems of
industrial production to nonindustrial systems for which they have only
limited relevance. Socioeconomic models of uneven development and
unequal exchange based exclusively on comparisons of labor productivity
or labor values cannot adequately explain the underdevelopment of
extractive economies, because the exploitation of natural resources uses and
destroys values that cannot be calculated merely in terms of labor or capital.
 Any theory of value based exclusively on labor requires concepts of
abstract labor that are theoretically coherent only within a fully capitalist
economy (see de Janvry 1981:79). Such economies cannot exist in
isolation, or as closed systems, because of their dependence on resource
extraction from naturally occurring transformations of matter and energy.
Theories of value based exclusively on labor neglect the usefulness to
continued social reproduction of energy transformations in the natural
environment (Bunker 1986). They cannot account for the uneven
development and accumulation in the value of the ideas, beliefs, and
information that underlie the divergent human social organization in
productive and extractive economies (Hornborg 2001).

The Limitations of a Labor Theory of Value

Capitalism as a system produces an ideology that focuses on the value of
labor, as this value fundamentally affects both the cost of production and
the potential for consumption. The individual capitalist can legitimate his
control and increase his profits to the extent that prevailing ideologies
relegate natural products to the status of a free gift or a right of property
(Wittfogel 1985 [1929]:40). Marx’s labor theory of value is an appropriate
description of value as it is socially conceived under capitalism. It is
obviously crucial to understand how this social attribution works within the
capitalist system. We must be very careful, however, not to allow a theory
of exchange value produced and maintained by the predominant mode of
production within specific social formations to become a general analytical
standard of value.
Marx was clearly aware of the central importance of nature, but his ideas
on nature remained for the most part abstract, limited to scattered references
rather than systematically developed. Schmidt (1971), Smith (1984), Foster
(2000), Moore (2003) and, much earlier, Wittfogel (1985 [1929]) have
pulled these references together sufficiently to dismiss the still current
notion that Marx was unconcerned with environmental processes (see
Redclift 1984), but we must acknowledge that he wrote without the benefit
of much that has been discovered about ecosystems.
Marx carefully limited his discussion of value, making it clear that both
his labor theory of value and his theory of rent are impossible where
“capital has not yet completely, or even sporadically, brought social labor
under its control” (1967: vol. 3, 783, 787n). My argument is not so much
against Marx’s carefully delimited labor theory of value, as against the
unqualified use that theorists of underdevelopment have made of it in
contexts other than that for which it was intended. A brief review of Marx’s
writings on value shows why his theory does not work for analyses of
extractive exports to an industrially dominated world market.
Marx included “natural forces” or “natural powers” (see Wittfogel 1985
[1929]) in his concept of use-value, although at times he called them also
means of production, depending on the way they enter the production
process. Neither formulation, however, adequately accounts for the social
and environmental costs of extractive export economies, because Marx did
not elaborate a comprehensive theory of how use-values are produced.
Rather, he consistently subordinated use-value to the labor values
incorporated in commodities. “A thing can have use-value, without having
value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such
are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, etc.” (1967: vol. 1, 40) even though
“the increased productiveness of the labour used . . . arises from the greater
natural productiveness of labour bound up with the application of a force of
nature” (1967: vol. 3, 645). The notion that use-value is not value and that
only human labor incorporated in commodities creates value appears also in
his discussion of natural forces and resources as means of production:

The means of production never transfer more value to the

product than they themselves lose during the labour-process by
the destruction of their own value. If such an instrument has no
value to lose, in other words, if it is not the product of human
labour, it transfers no value to the commodity. In this class are
included all means of production supplied by Nature without
human assistance, such as land, wind, water, metals in situ, and
timber in virgin forests. (1967: vol. 1, 204)

The implication of these passages should be clear: the attribution of value

exclusively to labor is definitional, and therefore arbitrary. Furthermore, the
definition is useful only from the perspective of capitalism as a system into
which raw materials are incorporated through the mechanism of rent, which
is merely a social relation of appropriation, and does not specify the
processes that actually produce the use-values appropriated by private
ownership.
Capitalism is the only mode of production based completely on the
production and circulation of exchange values, therefore value in Marx’s
terms can only occur in capitalist modes of production. Natural resources
can be monopolized. This monopoly creates the basis of rent. Rent assigns
prices to natural resources, but the resources themselves have no value.
Their prices siphon off surplus profits, but they remain outside the essential
labor-capital relation to which Marx applies his theory of value. As a result,
the argument that only labor creates value is tautological within Marx’s
particular set of definitional assumptions.
These assumptions work well to describe the relation of labor to capital
within a system conceived as closed, and whose laws of motion depend
completely on the production and circulation of commodities. It is
impossible, however, to use this particular, and arbitrary, definition of value
to calculate the inequality of exchange that a raw-material exporting region
suffers. Resource extraction imposes demonstrable environmental losses;
these losses demonstrably limit the future productivity of human labor,
whether it is incorporated in use-values or commodities exchanged for
profit. To calculate the effects of these losses, we must be able to attribute
some value to them, quite independent of labor. To understand their value,
we must know how they are produced. Hence the notion of value produced
in nature is an essential complement to the concept of values produced by
labor.
Marx was generally aware of this problem, but his formulation of value
does not solve it. He recognized that labor productivity depended on the
“power of nature,” and that extraction diminished this power. He
distinguished extractive economies as a special problem in his general labor
theory of value, (see, e.g. 1967: vol. 1, 40, 104, 181) and tried to deal with
them in his theory of rent. Nwoke (1984:47) describes Marx’s theory of rent
as a necessary qualification of the law of value in extractive economies:

In essence, the law of value is, according to Marx, subject to

two modifications in the extractive sphere. First, the
 impossibility of generalizing the productivity of labor, which in
this sphere depends on the power of nature, therefore leads to
the limitation of competition.... Second, landed property’s rent
will set limits to competition in the extractive sphere.

The values extracted from nature, however, cannot be subsumed within

the concept of rent, because rent refers only to the monetary form of their
appropriation into capitalist production and cannot describe the process by
which they are produced. Furthermore, rent, as Marx described it, depends
on property relations and institutions characteristic of capitalism, and much
extraction occurs in regions where these relations and institutions have not
emerged, and indeed often cannot emerge because of the constant disruption
of social organization in extractive economies (Bunker 1985).
Rent theory is only appropriate to analyze the relation of extraction to
production where both occur together in capitalist social formations. Pure
extractive economies are the extreme case of human appropriation of
natural values, but many apparently productive processes include elements
of extraction. Different agricultural and pastoral economies, for example,
present a gradient of the proportions of human labor and natural values
incorporated into the final product, ranging from the minimal modifications
of the natural environment in ecologically complex swidden systems to the
energy-intensive manipulations and simplifications of bounded ecosystems
in large-scale monocropping systems. Forestry exhibits similar gradations.
Factories need air, space, and water even in highly capitalist economies.
Much of social production continues to entail complex and variable
combinations of natural and labor values. Rent theory explains the portion
appropriated by owners in capitalist modes of production, but even there
leaves out the question of how natural values are produced.
In short, Marx’s labor theory of value is an elegant definitional device
that works well within the problem Marx set himself, that is analysis of the
capitalist mode of production of exchange values as a closed system. The
assumption that the system is closed, that is, that all values are produced
within the capitalist mode of production, is a heuristic device that diverges
from historical reality (Marx 1967: vol. 3, 782–788) and from the physical
fact that much of the matter and energy whose expanded and accelerated
consumption is necessary for capitalism’s “laws of motion” come from
noncapitalist extractive economies.
The diversity and interdependence of material and energetic forms force
us to recognize that there is no possible unidimensional calculus of value.
The long-term maintenance of human life depends on energy
transformation processes of which we are not yet aware. We cannot yet
measure all of the complex energy exchanges in the biotic chains that make
up the ecosystems in which we participate. Nor can the value of human
organization and knowledge that emerge from our earlier uses of matter and
energy be directly measured. Even without a unidimensional calculus of
value, however, we can analyze the very different potentials for social
organizational, infrastructural, and economic development in the societies
that concentrate energy from outside and the societies that lose energy to
them. We can then also explain how the dominance of productive systems
accelerates extraction and ecological destruction.

Extraction, Value, and Unequal Exchange

Consideration of naturally as well as socially produced values can solve
some of the problems in theories of unequal exchange. These theories have
distorted Marx’s more careful analyses. Emmanuel (1972) invokes wage
differentials; Mandel (1975) stresses the differential productivity of labor;
de Janvry and Kramer (1979) criticize both; but in one way or another all
focus on inequalities of labor incorporated in exchange values even when
they discuss raw materials exports.
The fundamental values in timber, minerals, oil, fish, and so forth are
predominantly in the good itself, rather than in the incorporated labor.
Additional value is created when these materials are transformed by labor.
The important point, however, is that this additional value is generally
realized in the industrial center, rather than in the extractive periphery.
Thus, there are multiple inequalities in international exchange. One results
from the differential wages of labor. Another emerges from the transfer of
the natural value in the raw, unlabored resources from periphery to center.
Another resides in the full realization of exchange value in the center, rather
than in peripheral sources of material commodities. The ultimate inequality
is in the thermodynamic requirement of a reduction of natural and social
productivity in the extractive economy in order to sustain the growth of
social productivity in the industrial economy. The use of labor as a standard
of value for unequal exchange ignores the multiple inequalities inherent in
the subordination of extractive economies to productive economies when
value in nature is appropriated in one region and labor value is incorporated
in another.
We must consider the effects of the exploitation of labor and the
exploitation of entire ecosystems as separate but complementary
phenomena, both of which affect the development of particular regions. We
can therefore reject Amin’s (1977) arguments that unequal exchange
occurred only after center wages started to rise above subsistence levels as
the result of imperialist strategies that opened world markets and world
sources of raw materials for capitalist exploitation. The appropriation of
values in nature from the periphery initiated unequal exchange between
regions and ecosystems long before the rise of wages and the expansion of
consumer demand in the core. Examination of the ecological effects of the
ivory trade (Soremekun 1977) and of the demographic effects of the slave
trade on large parts of Africa (Rodney 1972) demonstrates the impact of
exploitation between “geographic” areas, as well as between classes, on the
evolution of unequal exchange.
Most of the theorists of unequal exchange have not understood how
carefully Marx pointed out that the quantity and quality of “natural forces”
affect the productivity of social labor. Instead of trying to extend or
systematize Marx’s incomplete discussion, they have ignored the limitations
he himself recognized, and have attempted to use an unqualified labor
theory of value to explain how commerce between capitalist and
noncapitalist social formations leads to the underdevelopment of the latter.
The central flaw in labor-based theories of unequal exchange is that they
must finally assume reciprocal, but unbalanced, flows of comparable
exchange values. Exchange values cannot be compared between extractive
and productive economies, because they are neither produced nor
appropriated in the same way. In the capitalist economy, exchange value is
produced in the relation between capitalist and labor. In Marx’s definition
all exchange value is borne by use-values; because all production is
assumed to be commoditized, the use-values are produced in order to
realize exchange values. In the extractive economy organized to export
natural products, the production of the use-value itself occurs in nature, not
through labor. Labor is organized to appropriate this use-value from nature.
Exchange value is produced by extractive labor only in the removal and
transport of the use-value. Transport does not add to use-value, it simply
changes the locus in which this value is realized, which means that it is lost
in one place and gained in the other (cf. Harvey 1982; Smith 1984:81–83).
The fundamental separation of the production and realization of use-values
and exchange values in extractive economies is therefore a different process
and a different relation than their fundamental articulation in productive
economies. The attempt to transpose Marx’s theory to the problem of the
despoliation of those parts of the periphery that provide the core with raw
materials shackles and distorts the analysis of uneven development and
legitimates capitalism’s continued undervaluation and waste of peripheral
ecosystems.

Conclusion
The world economy functions through exchange, and the capitalist system
based on the production of exchange values affects the noncapitalist
economies with which it is articulated through exchange. A theory of value
grounded in the assumption that labor is directed to the production of
exchange values works well for a systematic analysis of capitalism as a
closed system, but it cannot work for either natural or social systems in
which all or a major part of production is not directly aimed at exchange, or
clearly, in a system in which production is not intentionally directed. To
understand the world economy and its future, we need to explain
systematically not just the production of exchange values, but also the
production of use-values. This requires perceiving nature not as object,
subject, or plastic source of raw materials and natural forces, but as process
and system of production that follows its own laws and forces society to do
the same, even though social intentionality and directed cooperation create
society’s distinct productive dynamic.
To understand the world economy as a whole and uneven development
within it, we must generate models of natural production that allow us to
trace the multiple interacting effects of natural and social systems. In other
words, we must accord to the production of use-values a theoretical
elaboration equal to that which Marx and others have developed for the
production of exchange values. Only then can we understand the full
complexity, interaction, and interdependence of both kinds of value. It bears
repeating, however, that such an endeavor can never yield the
unidimensional standard of value that is assumed in the labor-based theories
of unequal exchange. In both social and natural systems, the production of
value involves complex interactive processes that escape accounting of
directly comparable measures. Fundamentally different dynamics in natural
and social productive and in social extractive processes, rather than merely
different amounts of energy—human or nonhuman—embodied in particular
objects or commodities, underlie uneven development. The differential
wages of labor and prices of resources within a particular social formation
emerge from these processes and affect their subsequent developments,
interactions, rates, and intensities, but cannot fully account for the
unbalanced interactions between them.
A labor theory of value and models of unequal exchange of labor
between regions are inadequate to explain the loss of value and consequent
underdevelopment in extractive economies, but an insistence on natural
value does not mean we can ignore the role of labor. It is precisely because
the use-values of extracted goods are produced in nature, but are considered
to be the property of extractive entrepreneurs (see Wittfogel 1985
[1929]:40) that the small portion of extractive labor that contributes to their
value and to their utility can be exploited without regard to labor’s
reproduction. During brief extractive booms, labor not directly involved in
the process is usually “in the way” (see Gaventa 1980). The rapid
geographical shifts of extractive location, the investment of surplus capital
in transport and exchange infrastructure, and the logic of exploiting
available resources quickly as demand rises, all militate against the
establishment of linkages to local productive communities, even though
their absence does raise labor maintenance costs. Labor is expendable in the
short-run, profit-maximizing logic of extractive export economies. The
continued disruption of populations, however, accelerates the eventual
collapse of each particular extractive cycle by contributing to rising labor
costs, and constitutes a major component of the labor shortages or
maldistributions that cause progressive impoverishment across sequential
extractive cycles (Bunker 1985).
Extraction and production originally occurred together in social
formations bounded by a single regional ecosystem. In such conditions
human needs usually distributed extractive activity across a wide range of
species and minerals; relatively little matter and energy were extracted from
each of a large number of forms, so biotic chains could reproduce
themselves stably. Since the profit-maximizing logic of extraction for
exchange value across regional ecosystems was introduced, however, price
differentials between extractive commodities, and the differential return to
extractive labor, stimulate concentrated exploitation of a limited number of
resources at rates that disrupt both the regeneration of these resources and
the interactions within biotic chains of coevolved species and associated
geological and hydrological regimes. Industrial modes of production
depend on this self-depleting form of extractive activity, and therefore
inevitably undermine the resource bases on which they depend. Industrial
modes of production have evolved the social organizational and the
infrastructural capacity to change their own technologies and thereby to
find substitutes for essential resources as they are depleted. This process is
necessarily finite, however, as each new technology requires other resources
from what are, ultimately, either limited stocks or vulnerable ecosystems.
Social production, natural production, and the extraction that mediates
between them are inextricably linked, but once the exchange of
commodities breaks out of the boundaries of single ecosystems and allows
social production to draw on energy and matter produced in multiple
ecosystems, the logic and dynamic of the three processes become
increasingly distinct. Despite the crucial element of human intentionality,
however, social production remains bound by natural production processes.
It cannot create the matter and energy that it transforms, and its
technologies must be devised in ways compatible with the material forms in
which nature transforms and stores energy. The idea that nature can be
socially created is thus a peculiar illusion based on a partial vision. It
emphasizes only the extraordinary growth of the social forces of production
and destruction and ignores the inexorable and reciprocal determinancy of
natural forces of production. The ultimate unity of nature is confirmed in
the intertwining of the effects and dynamics of all three processes, rather
than in models of each separate process that attempt to incorporate the
logics of the other into a single dynamic.

Note
Lengthy discussions and correspondence with Richard N. Adams, Kevin
Archer, Robert Bunker, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Michael Johns, Richard
Norgaard, Linda Seligmann, and Charles H. Wood have been invaluable to
the formulation of these arguments. I am most grateful as well to Richard
Peet for his encouragement and for some very important bibliographical
suggestions. (The editors are grateful to Dena Wortzel, Denis O’Hearn, and
Paul Ciccantell for checking this much abbreviated, final version.)

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13

Footprints in the Cotton Fields: The

Industrial Revolution as Time-Space
Appropriation and Environmental Load
Displacement
ALF HORNBORG

FOR MANY YEARS I have been pursuing an understanding of industrial

capitalism as more of a global zero-sum game than a national cornucopia
(Hornborg 1992, 1998, 2001). In this work I have been using the Second
Law of Thermodynamics (the so-called Entropy Law) as a point of
departure, arguing that the build-up and maintenance of industrial
infrastructure necessarily requires a continuous net input of free or available
energy (technically referred to as “exergy,” and closely related to the
concept of “negative entropy”; cf. Schrödinger 1944; Georgescu-Roegen
1971). Purely analytically, it is possible to conclude that industrial
infrastructure—whether a factory, an industrial city, or the global
“technomass”—must maintain an unequal exchange of free energy with its
hinterland in order to survive and grow. It is also possible to analytically
conclude that, under market conditions, this unequal exchange will be
orchestrated by the terms of trade between industrial and extractive sectors
of the national and global economy, that is, the rate at which industrial
manufactures are exchanged for fuels and raw materials. The concept of
“unequal exchange” in this sense is objectively specified rather than
normative, and can be applied to several other possible metrics of trade,
including material flows (Fischer-Kowalski 1998). Georgescu-Roegen
(1971) argued that not only energy but materials, too, suffer irreversible
dissipation in economic processes, and that the concept of entropy applied
to such processes should be understood in terms of the generation of
increasing energetic and material “disorder” as a by-product of the local
creation of cultural and technological “order” or structure. Prigogine’s
concept of “dissipative structures” has been applied to the asymmetric
flows of entropy and negative entropy between different sectors of global
society (Hornborg 1992; Clark 1997).
Combined with a world-systems perspective (Frank 1966; Wallerstein
1974–1989), such an understanding of industrial capitalism would provide a
theoretical framework for interpreting the socioecological logic by which
environmental problems tend to be unequally distributed between different
sectors of the global population (Martinez-Alier 2002). What Clark
(1997:8–10) calls the “entropic costs” of industrial metropoles should be
clarified as comprising two dimensions: (1) the appropriation of “negative
entropy” (accessible, high-quality energy and materials) from elsewhere,
and (2) the displacement of entropy (energetic and material disorder)
elsewhere. In the present world order, the first could be exemplified by the
struggle of industrial powers to control crucial sources of fossil fuels (Klare
2001), the second by controversies over various kinds of “ecological
distribution conflicts” (Martinez-Alier 2002:258–260), recently perhaps
best illustrated by the “disproportionate” use of sinks for carbon dioxide—
and share of the burden of its climatic consequences—emitted in the
unequally distributed consumption of these fuels (Martinez-Alier
2002:213–233).
An important justification for this kind of perspective is that it can help
explain widening gaps in technological development and economic growth
between different sectors of national and international economies, as the
continuous net input of natural resources into industrial sectors—in yielding
further technological development—will improve their efficiency and
economies of scale so as to increase the asymmetries in exchange in a self-
reinforcing manner (Bunker 1985). Seen in this light, the accumulation of
capital is recursively connected with unequal exchange. Another important
consideration is the extent to which technological development in industrial
sectors, while giving the illusory appearance of liberation from material
constraints (as expressed in neoclassical economic notions of
substitutability of factors of production,1 and recently also in the notion of
“dematerialization”), in fact represents a displacement of environmental
loads to extractive sectors (Muradian and Martinez-Alier 2001). Richard
Wilkinson (1973) has shown that the imperative of substituting for
dwindling resources was an important incentive for early British
industrialization, prompting exploitation not only of, for example, new,
subterranean energy resources within Britain itself, but increasingly also of
natural resources on other continents (cf. Pomeranz 2000). The reliance of
the industrialized North on natural resources from its global periphery has
become increasingly obvious in recent decades (cf. Klare 2001).
Owing largely to its foundation in thermodynamics, this analytical work
has been difficult to translate into quantitative, empirical research. Actually
traded quantities of exergy and negative entropy, as embodied in
commodities, are inherently difficult to estimate. It should nevertheless be
possible to detect such structural asymmetries in trade by converting
statistics on commodity flows into quantities of “embodied land” and
“embodied labor.” Both these factors of production can be sources of
exergy for the accumulation of capital, but have the advantage of being
quantifiable, for example in annual hectare yields and in hours of human
labor. Whether or not the traded commodities are actual physical sources of
exergy for capital (e.g. fuels, labor, food), it should be illuminating to
calculate net transfers of embodied labor and land in relation to exchange
values. The simpler a system of trade relations is, the easier it should be to
make such calculations. I have thus chosen to investigate, from this
perspective, certain aspects of British overseas trade in the mid-nineteenth
century. The years around 1850 are particularly interesting in that it is
possible to obtain a wide range of fairly reliable data for these years, during
what is a comparatively early and expansive period in British
industrialization. These data have the advantage not only of being fairly
simple and easy to synthesize, in comparison with modern trade, but also of
illuminating the very origins of industrial capitalism. It is not unreasonable
to propose, as a hypothesis requiring further methodological refinement,
that global patterns of asymmetric resource exchange established in the
early phases of industrialization have continued to reinforce themselves
through the continuing technological superiority (i.e. the accumulation of
capital) that they engendered in northwestern Europe. Recent statistics
supporting such an interpretation include estimates of so-called ecological
footprints of different nations (Wackernagel and Rees 1996).2
In approaching the statistics on nineteenth-century British trade, I
initially posed the following questions:
1. How many annual hectare yields and hours of human labor were
embodied in the British imports of raw cotton, wheat, and other
commodities?
2. How many annual hectare yields and hours of human labor were
embodied in the British production of textiles, and at which rates were
they exchanged for those embodied in imports?
3. How many domestic (British) annual hectare yields and hours of
human labor were liberated for other purposes by the displacement of
land and labor inputs to other nations?

The answers to these questions are not as readily available in the standard
literature on British economic history as I had anticipated, which suggests
that such questions have been far from prominent, to say the least, in the
voluminous research on the Industrial Revolution. In fact, my impression is
that the conventional economic discourse on industrialization conspires to
keep such questions—and their answers—out of view.
The figures that I have finally arrived at, often through convoluted
deductions from statistics assembled to illuminate very different issues, are
presented in table 13.1. For each calculation I have provided a footnote
explaining how the figures were calculated. Some of these figures may
seem fraught with uncertainty, but in this first approximation I consider the
questions posed and methodology used more important than the minute
details of mathematical accuracy. I would welcome suggestions on how to
improve accuracy in these estimates, whether by consulting other sources or
applying other methods of calculation. The results arrived at, however, are
probably not so far off the mark as to lack significance for a rethinking of
industrialization (capital accumulation) in terms of the appropriation of land
and labor from elsewhere.

Discussion
From these data, a number of observations can be drawn about the global
economies of (natural) space and (human) time that were—and probably
continue to be—recursively linked with technological development, or
capital accumulation. To begin with, we can now provide provisional
answers to the three questions raised at the outset.
1. The 1850 import of 223,623 tons of raw cotton from the American
South represented over 616 million hours of (mostly slave) labor and the
annual yield of over 1.1 million hectares of agricultural land. If projected
onto total imports (254,921 tons), the flow of raw cotton to England in 1850
embodied over 702 million hours of labor and 1.26 million hectare yields. If
British figures on wool production are generalized to apply also to imported
raw wool, wool imports in 1850 (27,170 tons) represented over 26.8 million
hours of labor and 0.75 million hectares. In the same year, imports of wheat
represented over 985 million hours and the productivity of 2.95 million
hectares abroad. Imports of these three commodities alone—cotton, wool,
and wheat—in 1850 represented 1,714 million hours of labor and a year’s
harvest from almost 5 million hectares of land.3
2. The 1850 production of cotton manufactures in Britain (226,879 tons)
represented around 272 million hours of British labor. The production of
woolen manufactures in the same year (66,303 tons) reflects a total of over
549 million hours of British labor4 and the productivity of 2.44 million
British hectares of pasture and hay.5 In order to be able to examine relative
exchange rates of embodied labor and land in exports and imports, I have
calculated the purchasing power of £1,000 around 1850 in terms of raw
cotton, cotton manufactures, raw wool, woolen manufactures, domestic
wheat, imported wheat, and guano (table 13.2).
 Tables 13.1. Estimates of inputs of land and labor in some key
commodities in British overseas trade around 1850. Measures are in
hectares, hours, metric tons, and British currency ca.1850
 Table 13.2. Estimates of the purchasing power of £1,000 around 1850 in
terms of quantities of some key commodities and their embodied inputs of
labor and land

These figures would permit a great number of observations on the

asymmetric exchanges of embodied labor and land that contributed to the
accumulation of industrial capital in nineteenth-century Britain. Let us
suggest a couple of examples:
First, in exchanging, on the world market in 1850, £1,000 worth of cotton
manufactures for £1,000 worth of raw cotton, Britain at first glance may
seem to have gained 123 percent in terms of embodied labor and 210
percent in terms of embodied land. If only domestic use of time and space
are considered, however, the gain in hours is almost 800 percent and in
hectares about sixty times the space utilized. These gains, representing
technological superiority (i.e. capital) accumulated over several decades,
further increased as profits were invested in continued technological
development. (The efficiency of labor thirty years earlier had been 5,172
hours per produced ton of cotton manufactures, which means a 331 percent
increase in real output per hour between 1820 and 1850.)6
Second, in exchanging £1,000 worth of woolen manufactures for £l,000
worth of imported raw wool, Britain in 1850 lost 76 percent in terms of
embodied labor but gained 258 percent in terms of embodied land.
3. Let us also exemplify how these figures can be used to illuminate the
role of industrial export production as a means of environmental load
displacement:
First, to export £1,000 worth of cotton manufactures from Britain implied
much less of a drain on domestic resources than to export £1,000 worth of
woolens—only 17 percent of the embodied labor and virtually none of the
embodied land. To import the raw cotton to generate £1,000 of income from
textile production rather than rely on domestic wool meant saving 20,091
British work-hours7 at the expense of 10,521 work-hours in America and
saving 107.5 British hectares at the expense of 18.9 hectares in America.8
Second, to import £1,000 worth of wheat from Russia and Prussia rather
than growing it at home meant saving 1,773 British work-hours at the
expense of 5,148 foreign work-hours and 5.1 British hectares at the expense
of 15.4 hectares in Russia and Prussia. This does not take into account,
however, the time-space demands of the domestic export industry whose
profits paid for wheat imports. In terms of the ratio of embodied land and
labor to exchange value, neither cotton nor woolen manufactures could
compete with wheat, but here we see how the exigencies of demography
inevitably constrain economic rationality. The growing population of
Britain had first and foremost to be fed, and British wheat production
around 1850 (3,620,000 tons × 1.14 hectares) demanded 4,126,800 hectares
of the best agricultural land in the country. To spend £94 (1.12 × £84.46) on
raw material and 4,092 work-hours in the cotton industry in order to be able
to import 4.5 tons of wheat (the equivalent of only 1,773 work-hours but
crucially also of 5.1 hectares of prime farmland in Britain)—or 63 tons of
guano—is economically rational under conditions of land scarcity, as was
very obviously the case in early-nineteenth-century Britain. In exchanging
cotton manufactures for foreign wheat, rather than grow the wheat at home,
Britain lost over 56 percent in hours of labor but gained almost the entire
land area used to cultivate it.
Third, most centrally, from the perspective sketched at the outset in this
chapter, the displacement of demands on land represented by the
appropriation of the productivity of 1.1 million hectares of cotton fields in
North America, which in terms of revenue ultimately generated
£66,475,547, meant the liberation of the over 6 million hectares9 in Britain
that would have been required to generate the equivalent amount of revenue
from woolen manufactures. This land area exceeds by almost 50 percent the
total area of British wheat cultivation (4,126,800 hectares) in 1850. If we
add to this the imports of wool from overseas, an additional 0.75 million
British hectares were set free, for example, to fuel the labor force.
Finally, this kind of analysis certainly deserves to be expanded to cover
the other major commodities that provided the global framework for British
industrialization. This applies, for instance, to those periods when Britain
relied on imports of iron from Scandinavia, the production of which
required huge volumes of Scandinavian labor and charcoal. Other important
commodities embodying significant amounts of labor and land in the
periphery in the mid-nineteenth century include timber, sugar, tea, coffee,
wine, silk, flax, vegetable oils, dyes, hemp, and tobacco.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to refer back to the “zero-sum game”
perspective on industrial capitalism that I briefly presented at the outset. It
is obvious that only a few of Britain’s imports in the mid-nineteenth century
actually in themselves contributed exergy or negative entropy to its
emerging industrial infrastructure. In terms of energetics, as Britain was
then self-sufficient in (and a net exporter of) fossil fuels, the prime
candidates were wheat and sugar, which provided food energy for a
significant proportion of the labor force (Pomeranz 2000:313–314). In
terms of materials, the prime candidates were iron and timber. The
thermodynamic perspective that I have advocated, however, has little regard
for national boundaries, as long as imports of exergy and exports of entropy
have not developed into national interests, as in the current struggles over
oil (Klare 2001) or deliberations about emission permits (Martinez-Alier
2002). Unequal exchange can be a very local affair. As the world’s first
industrial districts were emerging in eighteenth-century Yorkshire and
Lancashire, the most significant extractive periphery may have been no
farther off than the nearest coalfields, where the severity of working
conditions and environmental degradation may well have equaled that of
the Alabama cotton plantations (Hobsbawm 1968:252–256, 281, diagram
5b). During the course of the nineteenth century, this periphery expanded to
truly global proportions, but the logic remains the same to this day.
Although deeply submerged beneath statistics catering to the concerns of
neoclassical economics, this logic remains founded on the imperative—for
all kinds of complex systems or structures—to maintain a net input of
negative entropy. This can be achieved through a variety of social strategies
complementing and succeeding each other over the course of history. From
this perspective, we have seen how the import of raw materials for the
textile industry, although not in itself representing an energy source, served
to make room for the energy provisioning of the British labor force. Factory
workers and coal miners alike ran on wheat.
The British textile industry for two centuries played a central role in
generating revenue to maintain an expanding technological infrastructure,
originally as a means of coping with a severe shortage of land (Wilkinson
1973). As this expansion continued and spread to continental neighbors and
former colonies, mainstream discourse has conspired to ignore the unequal
exchange of (labor) time and (natural) space on which technological
development has been founded from the start. The complex webs of the
modern world economy no doubt make analyses such as these extremely
difficult, but we can remain quite certain that capital, however much it tries,
will never be able to delink itself from labor and land. The rationale of
machine technology is to (locally) save or liberate time and space, but
crucially at the expense of time and space consumed elsewhere in the social
system. The general hypothesis offered here is that to save time and space
by the application of increasingly “efficient” technologies may often tend to
imply that someone else in the world-system is losing time or space in the
process. The process of globalization that was in full swing in the early
days of industrial capitalism then as now relied on what Harvey (e.g. 1996)
has called “time-space compression.” The point that I wanted to make in
this chapter is that such analyses of the very essence of technological
development need to be founded on a concrete, empirical understanding of
what I would call “time-space appropriation.”

Notes
This chapter is a slightly revised version of an article published in the
journal Ecological Economics in 2006. I am grateful to Elsevier Press for
permission to reprint it in the present volume.
1 In material terms, land, labor and capital are not mutually convertible
into one another. Land can nourish labor, and land and labor can yield
capital, but capital can create neither land nor labor.

2 The genealogy of the notion of “ecological footprints” goes back to

Borgström’s (1965) concept of “ghost acreages” (cf. also Catton 1980).
Pomeranz’s (2000:313–315) calculation of the ghost acreages of some
British imports (sugar, timber, cotton) in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century was brought to my attention after this text had been
written, but rests on the same general interpretation of British history (cf.
Wilkinson 1973).

3 It is of course important to remember that hectares of land vary

enormously in terms of embodied labor as well as natural productivity. I
thank John McNeill for prompting me to add this note.

4 I have added the number ofworking-hours required for production of one

ton of woolen manufactures (6,968) and the number of hours required for
production of 1.33 tons of raw wool (1,314), in order to reckon with 25
percent loss of weight in processing.

5 I have estimated the number of hectares required for production of 1.33

tons of raw wool (36.8), in order to reckon with 25 percent loss of weight in
processing.

6 The reason why no attempt is made here to include capital in these

calculations is that capital is itself understood as embodied labor and land,
that is, the product of past relations of unequal exchange of time and space.
As such, any attempt to justify the rates of exchange discussed here by
reference to British capital would merely serve to mystify the unequal
process of accumulation that the calculations are intended to reveal.

7 24,183–(3.41 × 1,200).

8 It should also be noted that agricultural production of fibers such as

cotton, flax, and hemp is more demanding on the soil, and on labor, than
most other crops (Pomeranz 2000:218–219), which made this
environmental load displacement particularly advantageous from the British
perspective.

9 To generate an additional £66,475,547 from sales of woolen

manufactures in 1850 would have required an additional output of 194,372
tons (× £342), representing 217,696 tons of raw wool demanding 6,030,196
hectares of land.

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14

Uneven Ecological Exchange and

Consumption-Based Environmental
Impacts: A Cross-National Investigation
ANDREW K. JORGENSON AND JAMES RICE

NATURAL RESOURCE CONSUMPTION AND RESULTING

environmental degradation are among the most pressing issues confronting
us today. Paradoxically, nations with larger ecological footprints generally
experience lower domestic levels of particular forms of environmental
degradation within their borders, including deforestation and organic water
pollution intensity (e.g. Jorgenson 2003, 2004a, 2005). Moreover, these
forms of degradation negatively impact the quality of life and general well-
being of domestic human populations. For example, organic water pollution
resulting from monoagricultural export-oriented production in less
developed countries increases infant mortality rates, net of health
expenditures, forms of human capital, and other social factors (e.g. Burns,
Kentor, and Jorgenson 2003;Jorgenson 2004b; Jorgenson and Burns 2004).
The ecological footprint/environmental degradation paradox is not
necessarily the consequence of increased problem-solving capacity due to
greater affluence and development. Rather, many social scientists posit that
these relationships are illustrative of structural conditions and asymmetrical
processes in which more developed countries externalize their
consumption-based environmental impacts through the tapping of natural
resources and produced commodities of less developed countries, reducing
material consumption for the latter while increasing particular types of
environmental destruction within their borders. The general argument
concerns the structure of international trade, particularly the flows of
exports from less developed countries to more developed countries.
However, these assertions lack appropriate empirical evaluation.
This chapter begins to resolve the issues discussed above. Specifically,
we test the following hypothesis: less developed countries with greater
levels of exports sent to higher-consuming, more developed countries
exhibit lower domestic levels of per capita consumption, measured as
ecological footprints. This hypothesis is sensitive to the potential uneven
ecological exchange dynamics promoting disproportionate utilization of
natural resources by developed countries at the expense of less developed
countries. The ecological footprint demand exhibited by less developed
countries, therefore, is not simply the consequence of domestic driving
forces, including relative affluence and population pressures, but also the
structural relations forged through international trade.
To test this hypothesis, we create an index of weighted export flows that
quantifies the relative extent to which exports of countries are sent to
receiving nations with higher levels of economic development. This index
allows for a more explicit examination of potential asymmetrical processes
of international trade between countries. Using ordinary least squares
regression, we incorporate the new weighted index into a series of
quantitative cross-national analyses of the structural causes of per capita
ecological footprints of less developed countries, 2000. We include controls
identified by previous studies to be robust predictors of footprints, including
level of economic development, urbanization, domestic income inequality,
and human capital. We also consider the effects of other export-related
factors and the extent to which domestic economies are service-based.
Results of this study provide robust support for the tested hypothesis, and
underscore the importance of addressing the structural dynamics of
international trade when analyzing material consumption and other
environmental outcomes, particularly the relative flow of exports and
relevant attributes of receiving countries. Prior to the analyses, we review
relevant studies and theorization, and describe the steps taken in calculating
the index of weighted export flows.

Review of Previous Approaches

Consumption and its environmental impacts focuses on the ecological
footprints of nations (e.g. Jorgenson 2003, 2004a, 2005, forthcoming;
Jorgenson and Burns 2004; Jorgenson and Rice 2005; Jorgenson, Rice, and
Crowe 2005; Rosa, York, and Dietz 2004; York, Rosa, and Dietz 2003). The
ecological footprint measures the amount of biologically productive land
required to support the consumption of renewable natural resources and
assimilation of carbon dioxide waste products of a given population (e.g.
Chambers, Simmons, and Wackernagel 2002). More specifically, national
footprints consist of the area of cropland required to produce the crops
consumed, the area of grazing land required to produce the animal products,
the area of forest required to produce the wood and paper, the area of sea
required to produce the marine fish and seafood, the area of land required to
accommodate housing and infrastructure, and the area of forest required to
absorb the carbon dioxide emissions resulting from energy consumption
(Wackernagel et al. 2002).
Footprints are measured in area units where one footprint equals one
hectare. This natural capital accounting framework captures indirect effects
of consumption that are difficult to measure, and the approach does not
require knowing specifically what each consumed resource is used for.
However, footprints do not identify the locations where the consumed
resources originate.
Jorgenson (2003, 2004a, 2005) analyzes the structural causes of per
capita ecological footprints, and finds that a country’s level of per capita
consumption is largely a function of its relative position in the international
stratification system, level of urbanization, domestic income inequality, and
human capital. Through the unpacking of relative international power into
its relevant geopolitical-economic components, Jorgenson (2005)
empirically illustrates that economic power in the form of capital intensity,
military technological power, and overall export dependence are the
structural driving forces of per capita resource consumption.
Social scientists pay considerable theoretical and empirical attention to
the environmental impacts of economic development (e.g. Burns, Kick, and
Davis 2003; Burns, Kentor, and Jorgenson 2003; Chase-Dunn and
Jorgenson 2003; Foster 2002; Jorgenson 2006; Jorgenson and Kick 2003;
Moore 2003; O’Connor 1998; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994; Wallerstein
1999). Relative economic power generally takes the form of capital
intensity (i.e. GDP, or gross domestic product, per capita), which often
refers to the ability of a country to be more competitive in the global
marketplace (Kentor 2000). Countries with higher capital intensity
generally contain articulated consumer markets that consume greater levels
of material resources (Jorgenson 2003,2004a).
To maintain profits, producers must constantly expand production, which
requires additional ecological material inputs (O’Connor 1998). Schnaiberg
and Gould (1994) characterize these processes as the heart of the treadmill
of production. Producers are usually headquartered in developed countries,
and outsource production and resource extraction to export-dependent
countries. The expansion of production and consumption usually takes the
form of global commodity chains in which resources are added or modified
at every chain (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994; Princen, Maniates, and
Conca 2002). Produced commodities are usually transported to and
consumed by developed countries with high capital intensity, and the
majority of profits derived from these goods further increase the economic
development of market economies that house the headquarters of producers
(e.g. Bornschier and Chase-Dunn 1985).
Many researchers argue that less developed countries generally have
lower domestic levels of material consumption and ecological footprints
because they tend to export produced commodities and raw materials to
higher-consuming, more developed countries (e.g. Clapp 2002; Conca
2002; Jorgenson 2003; Jorgenson, Rice and Crowe 2005; Princen 2002).
The latter contain productive economies and articulated markets, while less
developed countries generally consist of more extractive-oriented
economies and disarticulated markets (Bunker 1985). Moreover, less
developed countries with extractive economies are often highly dependent
on a small number of primary exports, most notably agricultural products
and other natural resources (e.g. Burns, Kentor, and Jorgenson 2003;
Jorgenson 2004b). Dependence on agricultural exports lessens the well-
being of human populations in many less developed countries (e.g.
Jorgenson and Burns 2004). Less developed countries with higher levels of
domestic income inequality exhibit relatively lower ecological footprints
(Jorgenson 2004a). This type of outcome is often explained by two
interrelated factors. First, the majority of the population has substantially
lower income levels, and second, the domestic market focuses on the
exportation of raw materials and commodities produced by means of
dependent industrialization (e.g. Beer and Boswell 2002; Jorgenson 2003).
Overall, countries with higher levels of urbanization consume greater
amounts of material resources (Jorgenson 2003; York, Rosa, and Dietz
2003). These areas require more resources to maintain the overall built
infrastructure, and urbanized regions contain intensified articulated
consumer markets relative to more agrarian areas. However, urban
processes in less developed countries differ substantially from more
developed nations. Many urbanized regions in less developed countries are
characterized by outdated manufacturing sectors that are exported from
more developed countries coupled with a shift toward export-oriented
development (Grimes and Kentor 2003; Portes, Dore-Cabral, and Landolt
1997). Furthermore, many less developed countries have experienced
increased roles as nodes in the exportation of natural resources from
regional extractive economies (Bunker 1985).
Thus, the complicated processes of underdevelopment, emerging
dependent industrialization, and economic stagnation limit the domestic
levels of natural resource consumption in less developed countries.
Moreover, this is further exacerbated by their classically dependent,
extractive-oriented domestic characteristics and export-oriented production
of goods for articulated consumer markets in higher-consuming, more
developed countries (e.g. Bunker 1985; Hornborg 2001;Jorgenson 2003,
2004a, 2004b).
Neoclassical economic perspectives suggest that the overall structure of
domestic economies greatly determines their overall environmental
impacts. More specifically, it is assumed that nations with more service-
based economies consume less material resources and emit less waste into
regional ecological systems and the biosphere (e.g. Grossman and Krueger
1995; OECD 1998). However, York, Rosa, and Dietz (2003) find no
evidence indicating that nations with relatively greater service-based
economies consume fewer resources, and likewise, Jorgenson (2006) and
Burns and Jorgenson (2004) find no evidence suggesting that less
developed nations with relatively more service-based economies experience
lower rates of deforestation and methane emissions intensity, net of other
factors.
Some social scientists argue that more affluent nations reduce their
impacts on the environment within their own borders through the
importation of resources and the exportation of wastes, a process commonly
referred to as the “Netherlands Fallacy” (e.g. Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990;
Ehrlich and Holdren 1971; Frey 1998; Jorgenson 2003). Developed
countries possess the international political-economic power and
institutional infrastructure to achieve improvements in domestic
environmental conditions while continuing to impose negative externalities
globally (e.g. Andersson and Lindroth 2001; Chase-Dunn 1998; Chew
2001).
The Netherlands Fallacy suggests that domestic environmental conditions
are not necessarily an accurate reflection of the aggregate environmental
burdens engendered by domestic standards of living and rates of material
consumption. It is argued that any particular country’s environmental
impact, positive or negative, is not simply the consequence of domestic
factors but also its structured relations with other countries. To more fully
conceptualize the complexity of consumption-related dynamics in a
globalizing world, it is increasingly important to examine zero-sum
relations among countries and the socioeconomic and environmental costs
that are differentially incurred as a result (Hornborg 2001, 2003; Jorgenson
2005).
The broadening and deepening of international trade provides a means by
which patterns of production and consumption become domestically
disassociated, particularly in regards to concomitant environmental impacts
(Andersson and Lindroth 2001; Chew 2001; Jorgenson forthcoming;
Rothman 1998:185). Most social-scientific studies of different forms of
environmental degradation analyze the effects of overall levels of exports
(e.g. Burns et al. 1994; Jorgenson 2005; Kick et al. 1996; Rudel 1998),
while other studies address the possible environmental and economic
impacts of dependence on exports to a limited number of trading partners
(e.g. Galtung 1971; Kentor 2000; Kentor and Boswell 2003). However, the
structural processes and outcomes theorized by political-economic scholars
and environmental sociologists focus on the environmental impacts of the
structure of exports, particularly the flow of raw materials and produced
commodities from less developed countries to higher-consuming, more
developed countries.

Construction of Weighted Export Flows

We have created a comprehensive index weighted by attributes of receiving
countries: export flows weighted by per capita GDP (see also Jorgenson and
Rice 2005). The index is calculated for 1990, and quantifies the relative
extent to which exports are sent to more developed countries. Data required
for the construction of the weighted index include relational measures in the
form of export flows and attributional data that quantify characteristics of
receiving countries. Export flows data are taken from the International
Monetary Fund’s 2003 Direction of Trade Statistics CD-ROM database. All
figures are reported in current U.S. dollars. Attributional data required for
the construction of the indices include GDP per capita, which quantifies a
country’s level of economic development. These data are taken from
Maddison (2001), and are in constant 1995 international dollars.
The weighted index is calculated as:

Where:

Di = weighted export flows for country i

pij = proportion of country i’s total exports sent to receiving
country j
aj = attribute of receiving country j [i.e. GDP per capita]

The first step is to convert the flows of exports to receiving countries into
proportional scores. More specifically, exports to each receiving country are
transformed into the proportion of the sending country’s total exports. The
second step involves multiplying each proportion by the corresponding
receiving country’s attribute of interest (per capita GDP). The third step is
to sum the products of the calculations in step two. The sums of these
products quantify the relative level of exports sent to more developed
countries that generally exhibit larger ecological footprints.

Hypothesis and Methods

Our primary goal is to test a hypothesis derived from fundamental
arguments of environmental sociologists and political-economic scholars
concerning uneven ecological exchange between nations. Specifically, we
test the following hypothesis: less developed countries with higher levels of
exports sent to more developed (i.e. higher-consuming) countries exhibit
lower domestic levels of resource consumption, measured as per capita
ecological footprints. To test the hypothesis, we incorporate the new index
of weighted export flows into a series of cross-national analyses of per
capita ecological footprints for less developed countries.
Like other studies that restrict their analyses to less developed countries,
we argue that the domestic social infrastructure and relative position of less
developed countries in the world economy create conditions in which the
social and environmental impacts of political-economic characteristics vary
substantially between developed and less developed countries. For example,
a developed country might send a high proportion of exports to other
developed countries, but its relatively powerful position in the world
economy enables the developed country to import natural resources and
produced commodities from less developed countries. Moreover, developed
countries generally possess domestic infrastructures and technologies that
enable them to reduce some forms of environmental degradation within
their borders (Burns, Kick, and Davis 2003; Kick et al. 1996).
We employ Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and listwise
deletion in all reported analyses. For comparison, the models we use here
are similar to those tested in other recent studies of national-level footprints.
They include measures of economic development, urbanization, domestic
inequality, human capital, domestic economy structure, and other export-
related characteristics.

DEPENDENT VARIABLE
 Combined ecological footprint per capita, 2000, is the comprehensive
measure of the total area required to produce the commodities
consumed and assimilate the wastes generated for a given nation.
These data are taken from Venetoulis, Chazan, and Gaudet (2004).

INDEPENDENT VARIABLES
Weighted Export Flows, 1990 (natural log). These data quantify the
relative extent to which a nation’s exports are sent to more
economically developed countries. We log this variable to correct for
skewness.
Gross Domestic Product per capita (natural log), 1990 is included in
nearly all cross-national studies of ecological footprints, and measures
a country’s level of economic development. These data are obtained
from Maddison (2001), and are measured in 1990 international dollars.
Consistent with most studies, we log these data to correct for
skewness.
Gross Domestic Product per capita change, 1980–1990 controls for
the extent of a country’s average annual rate of economic
development. We calculate average annual percent change scores using
Maddison’s (2001) data.
Urban population, 1990 (residualized) controls for the percentage of a
country’s population residing in urban areas. These data are taken from
the World Bank (2000). To correct for its high collinearity with GDP
per capita, we regress this variable on per capita GDP and use the
residuals as measures of urbanization, which allows for analyses of its
effects, independent of level of economic development.
Exports of goods and services as percentage of total GDP, 1990
(natural log) measures overall levels of exports and controls for the
extent of a country’s integration into the world economy. These data
are obtained from the World Bank (2000). We log this variable to
correct for skewness.
Domestic income inequality, measured as gini coefficients, controls for
the distribution of income within countries. The years of measurement
for gini coefficients vary slightly across countries, but range in the
early 1990s. These data are taken from the World Bank (2001).
 Secondary school enrollment, 1990 (residualized) is an indicator of
human capital, and is defined as the ratio of total secondary school
enrollment, regardless of age, to the population of the age group
corresponding to this level of education. These data are obtained from
the World Bank (2000). Like urban population, we residualize these
data to correct for its high collinearity with GDP per capita.
Services as percentage of total GDP, 1990 controls for the extent to
which a domestic economy is services based. These data are taken
from the World Bank (2000).
Export partner concentration, 1990 quantifies the percentage or
proportion of total exports to the single largest importing country.
These data are obtained from the World Bank (1996).

Table 14.1. Descriptive statistics and correlations for all variables

included in the analyses

Countries Included in the Analyses

We focus the analyses on less developed countries categorized by the World
Bank (2000). Specifically, we include countries not categorized as high-
income by the World Bank’s income quartile classification. To maximize
the use of available data, we allow sample sizes to vary among tested
models. Saudi Arabia and South Korea were found to be outliers and
excluded from the reported analyses. Table 14.1 provides descriptive
statistics and correlations for all variables included in the analyses.

Results and Discussion

Results of the multivariate regression analyses are provided in table 14.2.
Our most noteworthy finding is that weighted export flows have a
significant negative effect on per capita ecological footprints of less
developed countries. The effect is almost identical in magnitude and
statistically significant across all models, which provides strong support for
the tested hypothesis. This finding, coupled with the often identified
paradoxical relationships between the footprints of nations and levels of
domestic environmental degradation, provides evidence of the
externalization of consumption-based environmental costs by more-affluent
nations (Frey 1998; Hornborg 2001; Jorgenson 2003; Jorgenson and Burns
2004; Princen, Maniates, and Conca 2002).
Table 14.2. Standardized coefficients for analyses of ecological footprints
per capita, 2000, in LDCs
 Turning to the other predictor variables, we find that level of economic
development positively affects per capita footprints, while the effect of rate
of development is nonsignificant across all tested models. The former
finding is consistent with recent cross-national studies of footprints (e.g.
Jorgenson 2003, 2004a, 2005; York, Rosa, and Dietz 2003). Level of
urbanization positively affects per capita footprints in models 1 through 3,
but becomes nonsignificant and close to null when including services and
export partner concentration as additional controls. We speculate that the
nonsignificant effect in the two most fully controlled models is partly an
artifact of the reduced sample size and the use of traditional linear
regression techniques, rather than indirect effects models that treat
urbanization as a mediating variable, partly a function of economic
development and other social factors (e.g. Jorgenson 2003; Kentor 2001).
However, the effect of urbanization is not the central focus of the current
study.
Domestic income inequality proves to be a nonsignificant predictor of
footprints of less developed countries when controlling for the structure of
export flows, which contradicts the findings of other recent studies (e.g.
Jorgenson 2003, 2004a). Like York, Rosa, and Dietz (2003), we find no
evidence indicating that nations with more service-based economies
consume lower levels of material resources. The effect of level of exports is
nonsignificant across all tested models, and export partner concentration
also proves to be a nonsignificant predictor of ecological footprints. Thus,
the cumulative structure of export flows and the attributes of receiving
countries are of more relevance than the overall level of exports or diversity
of trading partners.

Conclusion
This study provides a new approach to the analysis of international trade,
material consumption, and concomitant environmental degradation.
Foremost, we created an index that measures the relative extent to which
exports of less developed countries are sent to higher-consuming, more
developed countries. Using this new index, we tested and confirmed the
hypothesis that less developed countries with higher levels of exports sent
to more developed countries exhibit lower domestic levels of resource
consumption, measured as per capita ecological footprints. This finding is
illustrative of the theorized structural conditions in which higher-consuming
countries externalize their consumption-based environmental costs through
the tapping of raw materials and produced commodities from less
developed countries, which tempers material consumption levels, thereby
restricting the ecological footprints of the latter countries (e.g. Jorgenson
2005).
Consistent with other recent studies of national footprints, level of
economic development and urbanization positively affect per capita
footprints of less developed countries while the effect of size of service
sector is nonsignificant (e.g. Jorgenson 2003, 2004a; York, Rosa, and Dietz
2003). The latter finding critically challenges neoclassical economic
arguments concerning the environmental impacts of domestic economic
conditions (e.g. Grossman and Krueger 1995). The overall level of exports
and relative diversity in trading partners prove to be nonsignificant
predictors of per capita footprints. Coupled with our most noteworthy
finding concerning the effect of weighted export flows, these results suggest
that the overall structure of exports is of more relevance to understanding
variation in the ecological footprints of nations and perhaps the attendant
forms of environmental degradation. More specifically, export flows and
the attributes of receiving countries are central considerations when
analyzing the variety of consumption-based environmental impacts of
international trade.
Proponents of comparative advantage theory and other neoliberal
perspectives (e.g. Magee 1980; Ricardo 1951 [1821]) might argue that the
findings of this study, particularly the negative effect of weighted export
flows on the per capita footprints of less developed countries, illustrate the
overall environmental “benefits” of trade (i.e. “trade specialization”).
However, cross-national studies provide evidence that nations with lower
footprints experience higher domestic levels of particular forms of
environmental degradation and serious health problems, including elevated
infant mortality rates (e.g. Jorgenson 2003; Jorgenson and Burns 2004).
Undoubtedly, the health and well-being of populations are largely a
function of access to adequate shelter and consumption of minimal levels of
food (Jenkins and Scanlan 2001; Jorgenson 2005), both of which are
included in the composite footprints analyzed in the present study.
Thus, the per capita footprints of nations could be treated as a partial
indicator of human quality of life (see Prescott-Allen 2001). Moreover, a
large proportion of the less developed countries included in the current
study exhibit footprints below their biocapacity per capita (Venetoulis,
Chazan, and Gaudet 2004; Wackernagel et al. 2002). Indeed, their relatively
low levels of globally sustainable consumption and high levels of domestic
environmental degradation are characteristics of underdevelopment
stemming from asymmetrical exchanges between developed and less-
developed countries (e.g. Chase-Dunn 1998; Emmanuel 1972; Hornborg
2001; Jorgenson 2005; McMichael 2004).
For less developed countries to share in the development outcomes
exhibited by richer, more powerful countries they first must secure access to
greater levels of material consumption within the confines of the
biologically productive limits of the global environment. Asymmetrical
processes of ecological exchange, however, highlight the challenges in
doing so when the structure of export flows increases the material
consumption opportunities of more economically developed trading
partners at the expense of less developed countries. Arguably, such uneven
consumption dynamics are not only complicit in promoting increasing
global environmental demand but are also linked to the diminishing
opportunities of less developed countries to achieve socioeconomic stability
and domestic ecological protection.

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15

Combining Social Metabolism and Input-

Output Analyses to Account for
Ecologically Unequal Trade
HELGA WEISZ

WORLD-SYSTEMS THEORY regards the expansion of the industrial

capitalist system as intrinsically connected to a spatial separation, on a
global scale, between the early and the later stages of the industrial
production process, and between production and consumption in general.
The first production stages are characterized by the extraction of relatively
large amounts of matter and energy from nature, whereas in the later stages
comparatively small amounts of material and energy serve as a direct input
to produce the final goods. As a consequence, this ongoing process of
increasing international division of labor could lead to a globally uneven
distribution of the costs (in terms of environmental pressure) and the
benefits (in terms of material standard of living) of the use of material and
energy. Regarding carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, such an uneven
distribution of environmental pressures has been termed “carbon leakage.”
More generally it is referred to as “ecologically unequal trade” or
“ecological terms of trade.” The question I address in this chapter is how
ecologically unequal trade can be defined and measured empirically. I argue
that an integration of social metabolism and input-output analyses provides
a conceptually sound approach to account for ecologically unequal trade
between national economies or world regions and demonstrate the
feasibility of this approach by presenting a case study for Denmark. The
concept of social metabolism in combination with input-output economics
holds great promises for an integration of world-system analysis and
ecological economics. Essentially the idea is that these two traditions
together could serve to integrate environmental concerns with concerns
regarding social inequality. In particular this chapter addresses the question
of how the distinction between extractive and productive economies and the
hypotheses of ecologically unequal exchange between different economies
of the world-system can be analyzed empirically.

World-Systems Analysis and Ecologically Unequal

Exchange
The notion of unequal exchange is central to the world-systems perspective
founded by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989). This perspective
pioneered the study of world economies and has sought to understand
uneven development among different world regions. It should be seen as a
direct criticism of “modernization” theories and in particular of their
essential assertion that the developing countries are merely lagging behind
on their path toward modernity, and that their problems are attributable to
their traditionalism and their “historical backwardness” (Shannon 1996).
World-systems approaches owe a lot to dependency theory (Frank 1966,
1978), a body of work that was also inspired by a rejection of
modernization theories. To dependency theorists, the “underdevelopment”
in the nonindustrial periphery is due to its exchange relations with the
affluent core economies, which keep the periphery in a state of dependency
and exploitation to the benefit of the latter (Frank 1966; Bunker 1985).
Essentially, a world-systems perspective conceives of the world economy as
an interstate capitalist system. Following Marx, the driving force of the
capitalist system is considered to be the accumulation of capital by those
who control the means of production (Shannon 1996).
Environmental issues only recently gained recognition within world-
systems analysis, with the notable exception of Bunker’s (1985) pioneering
studies on the Brazilian Amazon. World-systems approaches regard the
expansion of the industrial capitalist system as being intrinsically connected
to a growing spatial separation between the early stages of the industrial
production process (characterized by a relatively large throughput of matter
and energy) and the later stages (characterized by a comparatively small
material and energy throughput). This leads to an increasing international
division of labor that, according to world-systems analysis, in turn leads to
different internal dynamics in extractive and productive economies and thus
to uneven development (see Bunker in this volume). In this view, such a
development tends to be accompanied by an unequal distribution of the
burden of raw materials extraction, and emissions and wastes generated to
the disadvantage of extractive economies, with productive economies
enjoying the benefit of a high material standard of living.
Such a “green” perspective on unequal exchange calls, as Hornborg
(2001) has suggested, for Marx’s labor-focused concept of exploitation to
be supplemented by a biophysical one (i.e. focused on material and energy
flows). At this point, world-systems perspectives and ecological economics
converge. In particular, the concept of social metabolism combined with
input-output economics holds great promise for offering the requisite tools
for an empirical investigation of unequal exchange in terms of materials and
energy.

Social Metabolism and Ecologically Unequal Trade

So far, only a few studies have been published that attempt to investigate
empirically unequal exchange between different world regions in terms of
materials, energy, or land use. In this section I will discuss this empirical
evidence, starting with a brief introduction to the concept of material flow
analysis as one approach to operationalize social metabolism (the others
being energy flow analysis and human appropriation of net primary
production, together denoted as MEFA; see Haberl et al. 2004; Krausmann
et al. 2004). The application of the biological concept of metabolism
(Stoffwechsel) to social systems can be traced back to Marx who, influenced
by Liebig and Moleschott, talks about the “metabolism between man and
nature as mediated by the labor process” (Marx 1990). Such a biophysical
approach to economics arguably did not gain major influence in the decades
to come, despite the fact that the relevance of metabolism for Marxist
theory as a whole is still a matter of debate (Schmidt 1971; Martinez-Alier
1987; Foster 2000; Sieferle 2001).
Social metabolism, along with increasingly sophisticated and
standardized methods to account for its material aspects (denoted as
material flow analysis), started to form an integrated school of thought only
recently (Baccini and Brunner 1991; Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl 1993;
Ayres and Simonis 1994). The analogy with the biological concept of
metabolism derives from the observation that biological systems
(organisms, but also higher level systems such as ecosystems) and
socioeconomic systems (human societies, economies, companies, etc.)
decisively depend on a continuous throughput of energy and materials in
order to maintain their internal structure. Contrary to the biological notion,
the social concept links material and energy flows to social organization,
recognizing that the quantity of economic resource use, the material
composition, and the sources and sinks of the material flows are historically
variable as a function of the socioeconomic production system (Sieferle
1997; Weisz et al. 2001; Haberl and Krausmann 2001; Schandl and Schulz
2002).
Material flow analysis (MFA) relies on a specific physical accounting
approach aiming at the quantification of social metabolism. Although
applicable to various scales, the most elaborate applications refer to the
level of the nation state and above. National (or economy-wide) MFAs are
consistent compilations of the annual overall material throughput of
national economies, expressing all flows in metric tonnes per year (Eurostat
2001). After the seminal work of Robert Ayres and Allen Kneese (Ayres
and Kneese 1969; Ayres 1978), MFA was “reinvented” in the 1990s as a
consequence of the growing importance of the notion of sustainable
development. In recent years, methods for economy-wide material flow
accounting have been harmonized (Eurostat 2001) and a growing number of
material flow studies for both industrial and developing countries have been
published. As a result, for the first time, aggregated data concerning
physical trade volumes of countries in different world regions have become
available.

The Physical Trade Balance Approach

One social metabolism approach that was chosen to analyze unequal trade
in terms of materials is called the “physical trade balance” (PTB) approach
(Eurostat 2001). Foreign trade statistics in almost all countries of the world
report annual trade (i.e. import and export) quantities in both monetary
(national currency units) and physical terms (e.g. mass units, volume units,
or pieces) and distinguish between hundreds or thousands of types of goods.
With some precautions (e.g. unit conversions and cross-checks) these data
can be aggregated into total physical import and export quantities in metric
tonnes. The physical trade balance is defined as physical imports minus
physical exports, thus a positive PTB indicates a trade surplus or net
imports and a negative PTB indicates a physical trade deficit or net export.1
The first physical trade balances were published for the United Kingdom
(Schandl and Schulz 2002) in a long time-series. These data show that net
imports into the UK amounted to 150 million metric tonnes (60 percent of
which were fossil fuels) in the early 1970s. Starting with the exploitation of
the North Sea gas and oil fields by the United Kingdom in 1974, net
imports dropped to a level of 11 million metric tonnes in 2000 (mostly
biomass and ores). The United Kingdom has thus generally been a net
exporter of fossil fuels since 1981, except for a few years in the 1980s,
when an oil platform accident occurred, which diminished U.K. oil
extraction for some years. If we take the physical trade balance as an
indicator allowing us to distinguish between “extractive” and “productive”
economies in Bunker’s (1985) sense, the United Kingdom should be viewed
as a thoroughly productive economy in 1970, when net biomass imports
amounted to 37 million metric tonnes, net imports of ores to 18 million
metric tonnes, and net imports offossil fuels to 100 million metric tonnes.
By 2000, however, the UK could be viewed as an extractive economy in
terms of fossil fuels (net exports amounted to 20 million metric tonnes),
although it had remained a productive economy in terms of biomass (PTB
28 million metric tonnes) and ores (PTB 16 million metric tonnes).
Physical trade balances for the European Union as a whole and for each
of the EU member states have been compiled for the European Statistical
Office, which implemented these accounts as part of its environmental
accounting activities (Eurostat 2002; Weisz et al. forthcoming a). These
studies show that the EU-15 in 2000 was a net importer of 1 billion metric
tonnes of materials, 70 percent of this total being fossil fuels and 20 percent
industrial minerals and ores. Overall, the EU-15 imported almost four times
as many metric tonnes as it exported. Moreover, the domestic extraction of
raw materials in the European Union has increased only slightly since 1970
(15 percent total increase from 1970 to 2000), whereas the amount of
imported materials grew by 43 percent in the same time period. This is an
indication that the EU-15 economies rely increasingly on imported
materials.
All Latin American economies studied so far (Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
and Venezuela) show a physical trade deficit, that is, they are net exporters
of materials (see Eisenmenger 2002; Pérez-Rincón 2006). Muradian and
Martinez-Alier (2001) investigated South-North trade of nineteen materials
for the period between 1968 and 1996 and found significant increases in
imports to the North, in particular for aluminum (factor seven), pig iron,
iron and steel templates, nickel, and petroleum products (factor three to
four). Fischer-Kowalski and Amann (2001) compared four affluent
economies (Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, and the United Kingdom)
with two developing economies (Brazil and Venezuela) and found that all
affluent economies are net importers and all developing economies are net
exporters of materials.
Is this sufficient empirical evidence to support the hypotheses of
ecological unequal trade between developing and industrial economies? I
am hesitant to say so for two reasons. The first reason is that there also
exists empirical evidence against the hypothesis that the affluent economies
exploit the natural resources of the developing countries to their own
benefit. For example, a recently finished study of social metabolism for
Southeast Asia revealed that all investigated countries (Laos, Vietnam, the
Philippines, and Thailand) were net importers of materials (Weisz et al.
forthcoming b; unpublished data from SeaTrans EU-FP5 INCO-DEV
Project “Southeast Asia in Transition”). These economies seemingly do not
exploit their raw materials for the world market.
Even for the EU-15 the empirical evidence is not unambiguous:
Although it is true that in the EU-15 physical imports exceed exports by a
factor of four, we also have to consider that imports grew by only 43
percent from 1970 to 2000, whereas exports have increased by 120 percent,
and the quantities of physical trade between the EU member states (so
called intra-EU trade) grew by 150 percent over this period (Weisz et al.
forthcoming a).
A final example: Norway, one of the most affluent countries in the world
in terms of per capita GDP, depends heavily on the extraction of huge
amounts offossil fuels, which are exploited to be exported to the world
market. Norway’s domestic extraction of raw materials amounts to over 50
metric tonnes per capita and year (80 percent of which are fossil fuels),
which is four times as much as the EU average of 13 metric tonnes per
capita of domestic raw material extraction (Moll, Bringezu, and Schütz
2003; Weisz et al. forthcoming a). Norway can thus safely be considered an
extractive economy, despite the fact that it is the most affluent country in
the world.
The second problem with the existing empirical evidence is a
methodological one, leading us to the central argument of this chapter.
Considering that physical trade balances measure imports and exports with
their weight as they cross the border, which means that the traded goods are
in different stages of processing, we face a bias when simply comparing
imports and exports in metric tonnes.
In the majority of cases, the extraction-production-consumption-disposal
process starts with large amounts of materials that are gradually reduced; at
each stage of the production chain, useful materials are separated out from
useless materials, which are disposed of as wastes or emissions (notably
there are exceptions, where the products gain in weight during processing,
e.g. beer brewery). The differences between the mass of the primary raw
materials and that of the final products are particularly high for ores and
animal products. In the case of metal mining, the raw ores have to be
surfaced and the pure ore has to be isolated. Depending on the grade of the
ores, the difference between the raw and purified ore may be enormous (see
Ayres and Ayres 1998; Giljum 2004). The total amount of materials
extraction (which comprises not only the gross ores but also energy carriers,
chemicals, etc.) that has been required to isolate the purified metal ore may
exceed the amount of the traded metal commodity by orders of magnitude.
The discharge of this primary material turnover represents environmental
loads in the country of extraction without showing up in the weight of the
traded products. Such environmental distribution effects occur relatively
independently of the economic benefits of the transaction. Thus, they are
not represented in monetary statistics on international trade. The same holds
true for the physical trade volumes. How much something weighs at the
point of crossing international borders is represented in the physical trade
balances, but this tells us little about the overall amount of raw materials
required in the country of origin and in part “left behind” there as wastes
and emissions.2 An analysis of ecologically unequal trade should balance
the upstream environmental burdens of both imports and exports. In order
to calculate such an “ecological trade balance” we need three things: First,
an indicator that measures the environmental burden (for example: energy
demand, raw material demand, land requirements, or emissions). Second,
an indicator for the production system of a given economy. Third, a
procedure to attribute these quantities of upstream requirements to either
domestic uses or exports. The same should be done for imports. While the
first and second types of information are provided by social metabolism
studies, the third type of information can most powerfully be generated by
the use of input-output economics.

The Input-Output Approach

More than fifty years ago, Wassily Leontief, the creator of input-output
economics, asked himself a question that is formally equivalent to the
question that I asked above, and developed a method to investigate it
empirically.3 Since the days of Ricardo, economists generally assume that
there cannot be such a thing as unequal trade, because trade would be for
the benefit of all trading partners. In its neoclassical version this assumption
is known as the Heckscher-Ohlin theory, which predicts that each country
exports the commodity that intensively uses its most abundant factor of
production. For instance, the U.S. economy was considered to be the most
capital-intensive in the world (in terms of capital per worker) in 1947, the
year for which Leontief made his first empirical test. The Heckscher-Ohlin
theory consequently predicted that U.S. exports would require more capital
per worker than U.S. imports. Using the 1947 input-output table, Leontief
aggregated factor inputs into two categories, labor and capital, and
computed the capital and labor requirements to produce imports and
exports. He found that, contrary to the Heckscher-Ohlin theory, the U.S.
imports were 30 percent more capital-intensive than U.S. exports (Leontief
1956). This empirical result came to be known as the “Leontief Paradox,”
and it inspired a number of studies aiming at confirming or disproving the
paradox, a discussion that continues today (cf. Wolff 2004).
The details of this debate need not concern us here. What is important is
to see the analogy to our question above. Neoclassical economists,
measuring everything in monetary units, rarely consider factor inputs other
than capital and labor. From a biophysical point of view, however, it is clear
that raw materials, energy, or land use are also important factors for the
production system. Moreover, the economic process is inevitably connected
to the generation of wastes and emissions. Using input-output tables, which
are now compiled and published periodically for many countries in the
world, and Leontief’s famous formula,4 we are able to calculate any factor
input intensities of traded goods, for example raw material intensities, CO2
intensities, energy intensities, waste intensities, and so on. By multiplying
these intensities with the total import and export quantities, we arrive at a
corresponding set of ecological trade balances or, as Martinez-Alier (this
volume) puts it, “ecological terms of trade,” for example CO2, raw material,
energy, or waste terms of trade. In actual fact, this kind of analysis is not
new but has been carried out since the 1960s for many countries, using
predominantly energy and pollution indicators.5
The basis of an input-output model is an input-output table. Such a table
is shown in table 15.1, which represents a highly aggregated version of the
Danish physical input-output table for 1990 (Pedersen 1999). Generally,
input-output tables consist of three quadrants, the first of which (the
interindustry quadrant) is a symmetrical industry-times-industry matrix,
which shows the flows of goods between the producing sectors, that is
agriculture and mining, industries, and services. The second is the output
quadrant showing the supply of goods from each of the producing sectors to
final demand. Finally, the third quadrant (the input quadrant) shows those
inputs to each of the producing sectors that are not supplied by the
production system but are received from external sources.
 Table 15.1. Schema of an aggregated physical input-output table
(example of Denmark 1990, million metric tonnes)

Table 15.1 represents a physical input-output table, which means that all
flows are measured in units of mass.6 The overall consistency of the table is
therefore guaranteed by the mass balance principle and total inputs (overall
and per sector) must equal total outputs. To increase clarity, table 15.1
distinguishes between only a few sectors in each of the quadrants. These are
agriculture and mining, industries, and services in the first quadrant;
domestic final demand and exports in the second quadrant; and domestic
raw materials, imports, and losses in the form of wastes and emissions in
the third quadrant.
Using table 15.1 as an example, we shall now consider the difference
between direct and indirect requirements. In table 15.1 outputs are shown
along the rows from left to right, and inputs along the columns from bottom
to top. For example, the agriculture and mining sector in Denmark in 1990
directly extracted 84 million metric tonnes of raw materials from the
domestic territory, and received 4 million metric tonnes of materials (a
mixture of raw materials and manufactured goods) from imports. In the
same year, the agriculture and mining sectors generated 30 million metric
tonnes of wastes and emissions (which are shown as factor inputs with
negative signs in the third quadrant). In addition, the agriculture and mining
sector received 5 million metric tonnes of commodities from the industrial
sectors (e.g. fertilizers and energy) and 6 million metric tonnes as
intrasectoral deliveries (from companies within the same sector, e.g. animal
fodder). Not surprisingly, the direct outputs of the primary sector
predominantly went to the industrial production sectors, which used them as
materials inputs to produce the bulk of consumer goods for either domestic
final demand (64 million metric tonnes) or exports (13 million metric
tonnes). In other words, what can directly be derived from such a table is
the well-known fact that the first stages of the economic process are
characterized by the extraction and purification of huge amounts of raw
materials, with the corresponding generation of huge amounts of wastes and
emissions. The outcome of this process predominantly serves as input to
other stages of the economic process, in particular industrial production,
and does not go directly to final demand.
If we want to know the amount of material factor inputs (be it raw
material input, imports, or waste generation) associated with the production
of exported commodities, neither the weight of the imports and exports, nor
the direct flows as defined above give us sufficient information. If we want
to know, for example, the materials required to produce the 0.2 million
metric tonnes of exports from the service sector, we not only have to
consider the share of the direct inputs to the service sectors (e.g. the share
of the 3.3 million metric tonnes received from the industrial sector). We
also want to know the amount of material inputs that were needed for the
industrial sector to produce the share of the 3.3 million metric tonnes for the
service sector. Suppose that we have calculated, for instance, the share of
the 53 million metric tonnes, which the industrial sector received from the
agricultural and mining sector, that was needed to produce the share of the
3.3 million metric tonnes for the service sector that in turn were needed to
produce the 0.2 million metric tonnes of exports for the service sector; we
would still not be finished. As we are interested in material factor inputs,
we need to consider the amount of materials that the agriculture and mining
sector extracted or imported in order to produce its output to the industrial
sector in the first place. Also, we have to consider all other inputs to the
service sector (e.g. 0.4 million metric tonnes from agriculture and mining or
2 million metric tonnes from imports) and their respective material
requirements.
 This is a type of problem that seems to continue indefinitely, and actually
does.7 It can be solved mathematically, however, with sufficient accuracy. A
quick and practical solution, using matrix calculation, was proposed by
Wassily Leontief, and is now at the heart of input-output analysis. Using
this model, we can calculate the indirect physical factor inputs needed to
produce one unit of exports for each of the sectors. By multiplying these
intensities with import or export volume, we arrive at the “ecological terms
of trade.”

Ecological Trade Balances for Denmark

Denmark is one of the richest countries in the European Union in terms of
GDP per capita. In 1990, the base year for our calculation, Denmark hardly
produced any industrial minerals, ores, or fossil fuels domestically. These
raw materials were mostly imported. The bulk of the materials extracted
domestically were construction minerals (such as sand and gravel, which
predominantly serve to increase the built infrastructure and are hardly
traded) and biomass (see figure 15.1). Denmark was a net importer of 16
million metric tonnes of materials in 1990, with fossil fuels accounting for
more than half of this amount.

Figure 15.1. Material flows for Denmark 1990 (in 1,000 metric tonnes).
Source: Weisz et al. (forthcoming a)
 Adding the amount of materials extracted from the domestic territory
with the amount of imports in metric tonnes gives a total of roughly 150
million metric tonnes of material inputs to the Danish economy in 1990.
The left-hand column in figure 15.2 divides this amount of material inputs
among the producing sectors that directly extract or import these materials
(direct material inputs into production sectors). The highest material inputs
are found in primary sectors like agriculture and mining. In addition, the
construction sector also uses huge amounts of materials extracted directly
from the domestic national territory.
The right-hand column in figure 15.2 illustrates the results of the physical
input-output analysis proposed above. This analysis divides the same
amount of material factor inputs according to indirect inputs of the same
sectors, that is via deliveries from other production sectors (indirect
material requirements of final demand). If we take, for example, the mining
sector, we see that its huge direct material inputs are predominantly
delivered to other producing sectors. The actual material requirements of
the mining sector itself, that is to produce its own final commodities, are
much lower.
The reverse is true for the industrial sector and also for services. These
sectors indirectly use much more material factor inputs than they directly
receive as raw materials and imports to produce their final demand
commodities.
 Figure 15.2. Direct material inputs vs. indirect material requirements per
production sector, Denmark, 1990 (1,000 metric tonnes). Source:
Calculations based on data from Pedersen (1999) and Weisz et al.
(forthcoming a)

Having illustrated the difference between direct and indirect material

factor requirements, we can now proceed with our calculation of the
ecological terms of trade. To this end, we need to separate domestic final
demand from exports. This is shown in figure 15.3. The sum of the indirect
material requirements of domestic final demand and exports, of course,
must add up to the 150 million metric tonnes of material factor inputs.
Although the material requirements for domestic final demand are roughly
twice as high as for exports, it can clearly be seen that most of it is related
to construction activities. Similarly, electricity and services produce
predominantly for the domestic market. Resource-demanding and polluting
sectors such as agriculture, food manufacturing, and chemical industry, on
the other hand, predominantly produce for the world market. In terms of
mass, indirect material requirements for exports amount to more than twice
as much as the exported goods themselves.
 Finally, we compare the weight of Denmark’s imports and exports to the
indirect material requirements of exports and imports to arrive at an
ecological trade balance (see figure 15.4). Clearly, the physical trade
balance approach (shown in the two right-hand columns in figure 15.4)
significantly underestimates the degree to which domestic consumption in
Denmark relies on foreign material resources. The indirect material
requirements for imports far exceed those of the exports. Instead of 16
million metric tonnes of net imports, which were calculated as the direct
physical trade balance, the balance of indirect material requirements shows
more than 100 million metric tonnes of net imports. Most of these net
imports pertain to the electricity and gas sector, showing the great reliance
of Denmark’s economy on imported fossil fuels in 1990.8

Figure 15.3. Indirect material requirements of domestic final demand and of

exports, Denmark, 1990 (1,000 metric tonnes). Source: Calculations based
on data from Pedersen (1999) and Weisz et al. (forthcoming a)

Conclusions
In this chapter I have looked at the notion of ecologically unequal trade
from the perspective of empirical evidence. I started with the assumption of
a world-systems perspective that the expansion of the industrial capitalist
system is intrinsically connected to a spatial separation, on a global scale,
between the early and the later stages of the industrial production process.
The notion of ecologically unequal trade assumes that a globally uneven
distribution of the costs (in terms of environmental pressure) and the
benefits (in terms of material standard of living) of the use of material and
energy, is a consequence of this ongoing international division of labor. A
review of social metabolism studies that analyze direct trade flows or direct
emissions from exporting sectors shows that the results obtained so far do
not unambiguously support the hypotheses of ecologically unequal trade
between rich and poor countries, nor are they methodologically robust.

Figure 15.4. Indirect material requirements and indirect CO2 emissions of

imports and exports, Denmark, 1990 (1,000 metric tonnes). Source:
Calculations based on data from Pedersen (1999) and Weisz et al.
(forthcoming a)

In combining social metabolism and input-output analysis, I showed how

the problem of measuring ecologically unequal trade can be reframed in
terms of balancing the indirect material factor requirements of imports and
exports. This requires that we supplement the neoclassical definition of
factor inputs, which comprises labor and capital only, with a biophysical
concept, including material flows, energy flows, and land use. The type of
analysis I have presented here has the obvious advantage of recognizing the
complex interrelations between the different sectors of the economic
system, an aspect which is often neglected in empirical studies of
ecologically unequal trade.
Applied to the case of Denmark, the input-output approach revealed that
the reliance of the Danish economy on imported raw materials to satisfy its
domestic final consumption in 1990 was more than twice as high as
suggested by the physical trade balance approach. The conclusions I can
draw at this point are that it is indeed essential to consider the complex
interrelations of the economic sectors producing the traded commodities,
and that input-output economics in combination with material and energy
flow analysis offer the appropriate tools. Regarding the hypothesis of
ecologically unequal trade, a definite conclusion would have to rely on a
much broader empirical base. More economies would have to be analyzed,
and more ecological indicators included.
There are limitations as well. They pertain to the assumptions of input-
output economics and are currently being discussed intensively.
Nevertheless, if this kind of biophysical input-output analysis will be more
widely applied to the question of ecologically unequal trade,
methodological improvements can be expected. For a biophysical analysis
of the current global distribution patterns of environmental loads, on one
hand, and standards of living, on the other, the use of an input-output model
of the world economy in combination with biophysical analysis (Duchin,
forthcoming) may ultimately turn out to be the most promising strategy of
empirical investigation.

Notes
I am grateful to Faye Duchin and Peter Fleissner for their support and help
in input-output analysis. Thanks also to Fridolin Krausmann, Klaus
Hubacek, and Sangwon Suh, with whom I discussed these issues
intensively. This work was supported by a grant from the Jubiläumsfonds of
the Austrian National Bank (OeNB), project number 10430.
1 This definition of the physical trade balance as being the reverse of the
definition of the monetary trade balance (exports minus imports) recognizes
that in economies, money and goods move in opposite directions.

2 Schmidt-Bleek (1994) coined the term “ecological rucksacks” to denote

such upstream material requirements of commodities.

3 I thank Faye Duchin for making me aware of the formal equivalence

between the problem of ecological unequal trade and Leontief’s discussion
of the Heckscher-Ohlin theory.

4 The basic formula [(I-A) –1* y = x] of the static input-output quantity

model, which allows us to compute the factor requirements to satisfy a
given bill of final deliveries, be it for domestic or foreign uses.

5 Cf. Cumberland (1966); Ayres and Kneese (1969); Leontief (1970);

Bullard and Herendeen (1975); Griffin (1976); Proops (1977); Proops,
Faber, and Wagenhals (1993); Duchin et al. (1994); Fleissner et al. (1993).

6 Most studies use input-output tables in monetary units extended by a

vector of biophysical inputs. For a recent discussion about the differences of
input-output models based on physical vs. monetary tables, see Weisz and
Duchin (forthcoming).

7 The problem can formally be represented by a power series, that is, an

infinite sum.

8 Please note that if material requirements of imports are calculated using

the same tables as for exports, as is commonly done, the interpretation is
somewhat different. Such calculations do not show the actual requirements
that were needed to produce the imported goods, but rather a biophysical
analogy to opportunity costs.

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16

Physical Trade Flows of Pollution-

Intensive Products: Historical Trends in
Europe and the World
ROLDAN MURADIAN AND STEFAN GILJUM

IN THE DEBATE ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE, the environment, and

sustainable development, a growing number of empirical studies are
devoted to the assessment of the international distribution of environmental
pressures induced by the production of goods requiring intensive use of
natural resources. This chapter contributes to this discussion by analyzing
trends in imports and exports of pollution-intensive products in different
regions throughout the world. Our results suggest that exports of pollution-
intensive products (quantified in units of weight) are increasing across time
in nearly all of the regions considered. However, from 1978 to 1996, the
share of pollution-intensive exports to total exports (measured in monetary
units) decreased in the European Union, United States, and Japan, increased
in South America and Africa, and remained constant in Southeast Asia. We
also found that the European Union was a net importer of products from
polluting sectors during the whole period of analysis. Despite the
limitations of the analysis in terms of reliability and completeness of data,
the current chapter contributes to the assessment of the worldwide
distribution of exports from polluting sectors and, indirectly, to the debate
on the “pollution haven” hypothesis.
Pollution Havens and Physical Trade Flows
During the 1990s, considerable research was devoted to empirically testing
the “pollution haven” (PH) hypothesis. The debate on this issue has been
extensive but inconclusive, in part because this elusive phenomenon is
tackled using different methods and concepts. The most common definition
of the PH hypothesis is that polluting industries tend to migrate toward
poorer countries, looking for weaker or weakly enforced environmental
standards. Hence, according to the PH hypothesis, disparities of national
environmental standards should lead to an unequal distribution of
environmental burdens among different world regions, concentrating the
most resource-or environment-intensive activities in developing countries.
The PH hypothesis is thus closely related to the discussion about the
international distribution of environmental burdens and risks arising from
the current process of globafization. Literature on the PH hypothesis is
extensive, and it is not within the scope of the present chapter to review it
(for thorough reviews see, for example, Neumayer 2001a; Taylor 2004).
Although some analyses agree with—or reach ambiguous conclusions on—
the above-stated hypothesis (Low and Yeats 1992; Xing and Kolstad 2002;
Cole 2004), most empirical studies do not support the proposition that
varying environmental standards condition the international location of
polluting industries (for a review of the evidence and arguments against the
PH hypothesis see Mani and Wheeler 1998; Wheeler 2001, 2002).
To empirically test the relationship between standard-setting and
production patterns is a great challenge in relation to methods and data
availability. Research on this issue has thus instead dealt with testing
“proxy propositions,” which should hold if the PH hypothesis were right.
According to Neumayer (2001b), there are three main proxy propositions:
(a) differences in environmental standards affect international investment
flows; (b) production in, and exports from, developing countries become
increasingly pollution-intensive; and (c) pollution-intensive industries tend
to flee industrialized countries. We could add one more proposition: (d)
transnational corporations have a worse environmental performance in host
countries with low environmental standards than in their countries of origin
(Eskeland and Harrison 2003). Irrespective of the methods or definitions
used, most of the empirical analyses testing these propositions (particularly
“b” and “c”) have adopted monetary variables for characterizing trade flows
or production patterns. Hence, the international relocation of polluting
sectors has generally been assessed using as dependent variables trade or
production data in monetary units. Although the present research does not
provide direct evidence either for or against the PH hypothesis—as no
direct link with environmental standards, migration of industries, or actual
distribution of pollution is demonstrated—it deals with the above-
mentioned proxy proposition “b.” The analysis we have undertaken
specifically tackles the issue of the physical scale of exports. Although
unable to reach conclusions about the actual distribution of environmental
burdens or the relative specialization of production, our results contribute to
the discussion on the international distribution of environment-intensive
exports associated with the process of economic globalization. This
baseline information on physical flows provides useful inputs for future,
more elaborated and comprehensive, empirical research. The main
contribution of the present work is the assessment of trends in the trade of
goods from polluting sectors, using both monetary and physical metrics.
Using trade data in units of weight may shed new light on the subject, for
several reasons:
First, it is less difficult to envisage the relationship between physical
flows (i.e. compared with monetary flows) and environmental burdens or
risks. The environmental implications of both monetary and physical flows
depend on a variety of factors that are certainly complex to estimate, such
as the technology applied and the characteristics of the natural systems that
serve as recipients of waste and emissions. Since the price and the value
added of production vary across time and among countries, to establish the
relationship between monetary flows and environmental burdens implies
adopting additional assumptions, particularly on price and productivity
trends. Instead, assessing the relationship between physical flows and
environmental impacts or risks is facilitated by thermodynamic
considerations (e.g. mass and energy conservation in all production
activities). For example, the relationship between emissions and throughput
(physical flows) is mediated by a technological factor, whereas several
additional factors have to be taken into account in the relationship between
monetary flows and actual emissions.
Second, physical flows give a clearer picture of the overall scale of the
economic activity. Environmental standards normally refer to
environmental performance at the (micro-) level of the production plant.
However, the actual environmental implications of an economic activity in
a given geographical context also depend on the overall scale of economic
activities at the macro-level. Since physical inputs (resources) must
correspond to physical outputs (products and wastes), physical flows are a
better proxy than monetary flows for estimating the environmental
transformations associated with the scale of the economic activity. Such
scale effects have usually been neglected in the PH debate.
Third, real prices for most primary commodities (such as metal ores,
minerals, and agricultural products) have been steadily declining during the
last three decades of the past century (World Bank 2003).1 Particularly in
the case of extractive economies, studies focusing on monetary trade flows
might thus yield misleading results, as declining prices may lessen export
flows in monetary terms, while physical exports actually increase. This
point is crucial when drawing conclusions about the environmental
implications of trade patterns.2
Fourth, in most cases, environmental burdens are greater in the early
stages of the commodity chain. Further along the processing chain, the
material intensity of produced goods tends to decrease, whereas the
economic added value tends to increase (Fischer-Kowalski and Amann
2001). A focus on purely monetary descriptions would result in a distorted
picture of the distribution of environmental burdens along the commodity
chain.
Analyses of international trade flows of pollution-intensive products are
nevertheless unable to reveal information about the actual distribution of
environmental burdens or international migration of industries. Such
limitations hold for value-based assessments as well as for the approach
adopted in this chapter.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that a general trend toward increasingly
environment-intensive exports in developing countries (accompanied by
decreasing physical exports from these sectors in industrialized countries)
would only weakly support the proposition that developing countries have
comparative advantages in environment-intensive sectors. A comprehensive
analysis would need to take into account domestic production and
consumption patterns. The same holds for trade balances in polluting
sectors. Imports larger than exports would mean that a given region relies
on imports for meeting its own levels of consumption. However, no
statement can be made about the actual distribution of environmental
burdens between the importing and exporting region, if figures on domestic
production and emissions are not provided. Imports larger than exports
would nevertheless suggest that imports should be understood as an
important factor when we assess the environmental implications of
domestic consumption patterns in a global perspective.
The present chapter has two main objectives: (1) to describe export
trends of polluting sectors in different regions of the world, and (2) to
describe European trends in the trade of polluting sectors with
industrialized versus developing regions. The following section describes
data sources and analysis, followed by a section presenting the results.
Finally, the last section discusses these results, with particular attention to
the environmental and socioeconomic implications for industrialized and
developing regions.

Data Sources and Analysis

Trends in Exports of Polluting Sectors in Different

Regions of the World
The aim of the analysis presented in this section is to describe trends in the
aggregated exports of products from polluting sectors in different regions of
the world from 1973 to 1996. Data were derived from the International
Trade Statistics Yearbook, a U.N. periodical publication. To our knowledge,
this database provides the most comprehensive trade statistics available,
which presents data in both monetary and physical units (current dollars and
metric tons), following the Standard International Trade Classification
(SITC) system. However, it does not specify destination or origin of traded
products.
In accordance with the World Bank classification (1998), based on emis–
sions per unit of output and abatement costs, the following were considered
as the most polluting sectors: iron and steel; nonferrous metals; industrial
chemicals; petroleum refineries; nonmetallic minerals; and pulp and paper
products.3 In assessing aggregated trade trends, we considered seven world
regions, defined as follows: 1) Europe: Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Austria,
Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Spain,
France, United Kingdom, Italy, Sweden; 2) Japan; 3) United States; 4)
Canada and Australia; 5) South America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela; 6) Africa: Algeria, Central African
Republic, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco,
Senegal, Sudan, Tunisia, Zimbabwe;4 7) Southeast Asia: Indonesia, South
Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand. Data in current dollars were
converted to 1995 dollars using a U.S. GDP (gross domestic product)
deflator taken from the World Bank’s development indicators (1998).

Trade Patterns of Polluting Sectors in the European

Union
The analysis presented in this section aims at describing trade patterns of
polluting sectors in the European Union from 1976 to 2000. Data were
assembled from EUROSTAT statistics on EU trade, published in electronic
form. In this publication, trade statistics are expressed in both monetary
(ECU) and physical (metric tons) units. This data set only includes imports
and exports from and to the European Union, but specifies the origin and
destination. In “polluting sectors” we included the same industrial activities
as in the previous investigation. However, trade categories are not exactly
the same, since the classification of traded products used by EUROSTAT
follows the HS (“Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding
System”) nomenclature. The two classification systems (SITC and HS)
differ in the way they aggregate trade data. Therefore, trade categories
cannot easily be converted from one classification scheme to the other. In
addition, EUROSTAT trade statistics have much more disaggregated
information than the U.N. International Trade Statistics Yearbook. The
countries considered are full members of the EU. It is worth noting that the
composition of the EU has changed during the period of analysis,
contributing to shifts in the composition of its external trade (see below).
Data in ECU units were transformed to current U.S. dollars using an
exchange rate for different years published in the electronic OECD
Statistics Compendium (2002). Later, current dollars were transformed to
1995 dollars.
 Here, the classification of regional trade partners was different from the
classification used for describing global trade patterns, because the
electronic database allowed more comprehensive definitions of regional
categories, due to the ease and speed of data processing. In analyzing the
EUROSTAT data set, we defined the regions as follows: Africa: all African
countries; Southeast Asia: Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Singapore, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong; Industrialized
countries: United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand; Latin
America: all Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries comprising Latin
America.5

Results

Trends in Exports of Polluting Sectors in Different

Regions of the World
Figure 16.1 shows the development of aggregated exports of pollution-
intensive products, in units of weight, in different regions of the world. It
reveals that there is a general trend toward increasing physical exports from
polluting sectors across time, in almost all regions of the world. It also
shows that the physical scale of EU exports of these products is relatively
high in relation to other world regions, mainly due to large exports of
industrial chemicals, petroleum products, and nonferrous metals.
Figure 16.2 shows changes of the value density (value per unit of weight)
of exports of pollution-intensive products over time. It reveals that for
Japan this variable shows a clearly increasing trend. In South America,
Canada, and Australia, the tendency is the opposite (decreasing across
time), while in the rest of the world regions considered it seems that the
value density of these kinds of exports is rather stable (Africa) or does not
follow a clear-cut trend across time (European Union, United States,
Southeast Asia).
Figure 16.3 shows that the European Union, Canada, and Australia have
a common trend toward decreasing share of pollution-intensive products to
total exports, in monetary terms. In the case of Japan, the United States, and
Africa, this variable follows a “U”-shaped curve, while it is stable across
time in Southeast Asia. No clear-cut tendency can be observed for South
America.
Figure 16.1. Polluting sectors. Exports from different world regions. Weight
Figure 16.2. Polluting sectors. Value density of exports
 Figure 16.3. Share of export from polluting sectors to total exports (%).
Monetary values

Figure 16.4. EU trade balance polluting sectors. Exports-imports. Weight

Trade Patterns of Polluting Sectors in the European

Union
Figure 16.4 illustrates changes over time of the physical trade balance in
polluting sectors, between the European Union and other regions of the
world. It reveals that the European Union has had greater imports than
exports in polluting sectors with industrialized countries, Latin America,
and Africa, during the whole period of analysis. In contrast, EU exports and
imports in these sectors have remained fairly balanced with Southeast Asia.
Figure 16.4 also reveals that European imports (in units of weight) of
pollution-intensive products from Latin America have increased
substantially more than European exports of the same kind of products to
this region.
Figure 16.5 shows changes across time of the EU Index of Terms of
Trade with different regions of the world (for the same sectors as above).
This index is defined as the value density of European exports to a given
region divided by the value density of European imports from the same
region. The figure reveals that, during the whole period of analysis, the
European Union has had a positive Index of Terms of Trade with the other
regions considered in the present study. In comparison with other regions,
the index is remarkably high for EU exchange with Latin America. Put in a
simple way, this means that Latin American exports of pollution-intensive
products to the European Union are considerably more weight-intensive
(less value-dense) than European exports of the same kind of products to
Latin America.

Figure 16.5. Polluting sectors. EU index of terms of trade. Value density

(exports)/value density (imports)

Figure 16.6 shows the evolution of the composition of aggregated EU

imports of pollution-intensive products from the developing regions
considered above (Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia). It reveals
that minerals have constituted the bulk of European pollution-intensive
imports from developing regions during the whole period of analysis. It also
shows that the share of oil refinery products, paper, and industrial chemicals
in relation to total imports of pollution-intensive products has increased
during the last decades. However, they still comprise less than 20 percent of
European imports (in units of weight) in these sectors from the above-
mentioned regions.
Figure 16.7 shows that, in contrast, oil refinery products, pulp and paper,
and industrial chemicals exports from the European Union to the
developing regions have significantly increased their share since the late
1980s, and currently constitute the bulk of EU exports from polluting
sectors to these regions.

Discussion
The results presented in figure 16.1 contradict the proposition that the
physical scale of environment-intensive exports follows a different trend in
industrialized and developing countries. Instead, it seems that there is a
general trend toward increasing physical exports of pollution-intensive
products in almost all regions considered in the analysis. In comparison
with all other regions, moreover, the European Union shows a relatively
large physical scale of exports in these sectors during the whole period of
analysis. However, when also taking imports into account, the European
Union has had consistently larger imports than exports in these sectors
across time (see figure 16.4). Therefore, a likely interpretation is that the
European Union is importing most of the pollution-intensive products from
other world regions (including other industrialized countries), processing
them in order to add value, and then reexporting them (see also Schütz,
Bringezu, and Moll 2004). In order to empirically test this potential
explanation, it would be necessary to link physical import and export data
with data on total physical production.
Figure 16.6. Polluting sectors. Composition of EU imports from Latin
America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Weight
 Figure 16.7. Polluting sectors. EU exports to Latin America, Africa, and
Southeast Asia. Weight

Value density is a measure of the weight intensity of exports. Although

this measure does not deal with the value added to exports—which would
be the most pertinent variable to look at—it may help to identify general
trends and to propose working hypotheses on the relationship between the
economic value and the physical content of exports. This relationship is
important to study in order to investigate whether countries specializing in
pollution-intensive and less economically dynamic sectors might be caught
in a kind of specialization trap, structurally generated by downward
pressures on prices, involving both inability to upgrade (add value to)
production and increasing environmental burdens related to a growing
(physical) scale. A combined trend toward decreasing value density,
increasing scale (in physical units) of exports from polluting sectors, and a
mounting share of exports from polluting sectors in relation to total exports
(in monetary terms) would suggest that the region is specializing in
polluting sectors and reaping less and less income per exported unit of
weight (as stated before, however, the final proof of this would require
estimations of value added in exports). If an increase in the physical
intensity of exports from polluting sectors is not accompanied by
substantial technological improvements, an increase in environmental
pressure per exported unit of value is very likely. The combination of an
inability to upgrade exports and growing environmental pressure may have
a considerable impact on future development prospects, as regions facing
these trends can be caught in a low-income/high-environment degradation
trap. Africa seems to exemplify the unfavorable combination of an
increasing share of exports from polluting sectors in relation to total exports
(in monetary terms), increasing physical scale, and stagnating value density
of pollution-intensive exports. In contrast, Japan illustrates the opposite
trend, characterized by a decreasing share of pollution-intensive sectors and
a declining physical scale and rising value density of exports from polluting
sectors (see figures 16.2 and 16.3).
Our results reveal that, during the past decades, Europe has maintained
imports larger than exports in polluting sectors with all the regions
considered, except Southeast Asia (see figure 16.4). Moreover, as can be
seen in figure 16.5, European imports from polluting sectors have generally
been more weight-intensive than European exports from the same sectors.
The former result seems to contradict the general proposition that
industrialized countries are net exporters of pollution-intensive products
(World Bank 1998). The latter result shows that there has been a continuous
physical imbalance in the European trade of environment-intensive
products with other regions of the world. Another study dealing with the
external trade of the European Union also revealed considerable price
differences within the same product groups, for example iron and steel
products (Schütz et al. 2004). However, the implications of this trend for the
actual distribution of environmental burdens generated by European
consumption patterns cannot be addressed in the present analysis. This has
been tackled elsewhere (see for example Muradian, O’Connor, and
Martinez-Alier 2002).
It is worth noting that the physical trade balance between Europe and
Latin America in polluting sectors has become increasingly skewed during
the period of study. From a European perspective, it has changed from
about minus 35 million tons (exports less imports) in 1976 to approximately
minus 70 million tons in 2000 (see figure 16.4). Moreover, during the
whole period of analysis, the Index of Terms of Trade has remained larger
for Latin America than for other regions (see figure 16.5), indicating that
the physical intensity of Latin American exports of pollution-intensive
products to the European Union has increased considerably more than the
physical intensity of Latin American imports of the same kind of products
from the European Union. Although Latin America’s most important trade
partner is not Europe, but the United States, this trend may have significant
development implications, particularly if the relative economic importance
of environment-intensive exports compared to total exports increases over
time. However, our data show no clear trend toward relative trade
specialization in polluting sectors in Latin America (see figure 16.3).
From a strictly economic point of view, specialization in polluting sectors
due to comparative advantages jeopardizes people’s welfare only if
environmental standards are not set at socially efficient levels. In the words
of economists, if environmental standards are inefficiently low, then there is
excessive environmental degradation relative to people’s preferences
(Neumayer 2001b). However, besides the difficulties in empirically
estimating people’s preferences, these efficiency considerations leave aside
distributional issues, value contests, and environmental conflicts. The
Kaldor-Hicks principle for social efficiency does not contemplate actual
(but only possible) compensation between winners and losers due to a given
economic activity.6 If compensation does not occur, conflicts are prone to
arise. In a context of weak institutions, as is the case in many developing
countries, environmental externalities are likely to occur, because no
compensation mechanism is put in place (Murshed 2002). This often leads
to environmental protests and conflicts between different economic agents.
In such cases, mere efficiency considerations are unable to describe,
understand, or resolve social problems related to the distribution of
environmental burdens (Clapp 2002; Strohm 2002).
The difference in composition between European exports and imports of
polluting sectors to/from developing countries is remarkable. Figures 16.6
and 16.7 show that the share of oil refinery products, pulp and paper, and
industrial chemical products is increasing in relation to total pollution-
intensive exports from the European Union to developing countries,
whereas minerals constitute the bulk of EU pollution-intensive imports
from these countries. Due to the large physical flows involved in the trade
of minerals, this kind of exchange explains in part the fact that the EU’s
pollution-intensive imports are larger than its exports. Mineral extraction
and processing are among the economic sectors most often associated with
social conflicts over alternative land uses or the effects of pollution on local
populations (Martinez-Alier 2002). Generally, these conflicts encompass
considerable transaction costs for mining enterprises. Besides
considerations of resource abundance and labor costs, the costs arising from
environmental conflicts may influence decisions over the location of mining
and mineral processing activities at the global level (Hall 2002). Such costs
may be lower in developing countries due to the disempowerment of local
populations and less expensive compensation to affected communities
because of lower income and weaker institutions. Moreover, until the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the mining sector has faced serious
difficulties due to declining prices, which probably has encouraged the
migration of mining to places with lower production costs, which often
means developing countries.
 The results of this study and their interpretation depend on the quality
and reliability of the used data sets. We want to emphasize that we have
considerable doubts about the reliability of the data source we have used for
the first of our two calculations. The U.N. International Trade Statistics
Yearbook is a very aggregated database, the extensiveness of which has
been achieved at the expense of accuracy. Many developing countries, in
particular, have not comprehensively reported data on physical exports. For
many export categories, only monetary data are given. In some cases, we
thus had to exclude some product categories from our analysis, since the
transformation of monetary units into physical units would have required
country-specific information on prices per physical unit. For industrialized
countries, however, reporting seemed to be more complete. This fact biases
results and causes a structural underrepresentation of exports from polluting
sectors in developing countries. Nevertheless, due to the scarcity of
comprehensive trade statistics in physical units, the International Trade
Statistics Yearbook is one of the few world databases currently available
that can be used for comparative studies at the global level. Due to the
previously mentioned caveats, we consider our results presented here as a
first approximation, which should be revised and complemented in the
future using more reliable data sources (for instance, statistics from national
statistical agencies).
As stated before, there are difficulties in establishing relationships
between physical flows and actual environmental impacts or risks. This is
especially true when dealing with aggregated data, as the present work
does. Nevertheless, assessing changes over time in physical exports of
pollution-intensive sectors might shed new insights—different from those
arising from monetary approaches—for building hypotheses on the
international distribution of environmental burdens arising from global
economic integration.7 In using physical flows for analyzing the
international distribution of environment-intensive exports, the current
chapter indirectly contributes to assessing some proxy propositions of the
pollution haven hypothesis. However, results are far from conclusive and
considerable work needs to be devoted to developing this approach further.
First, significant improvement of data quality is needed, in particular for
imports and exports in physical units of countries in Asia, Latin America,
and Africa. Second, the first of our two analyses needs to be extended by
including physical imports. Third, taking domestic production into
consideration would allow assessing to what extent exports from polluting
sectors in industrialized countries are based on domestic production or rely
on imports from other world regions. Fourth, for estimating the concrete
environmental impacts of specialization in pollution-intensive exports in
different regions of the world, it would be necessary to present data in a
more disaggregated way, focusing on particular economic sectors, product
groups, or commodity chains.

Notes
1 Since 2003, however, a reverse of these trends can be observed, mainly
due to the rapidly growing demand for raw materials and energy resources
in industrializing countries in the global South, in particular China and
India.

2 For example, the World Bank (1998) has published data analysis on
trade balances, in monetary terms, for the most polluting sectors. The study
has concluded that developing countries tend to have export-import ratios
less than one (exports lower than imports), whereas the opposite holds for
industrialized countries, which are net exporters in the most polluting
sectors. However, if a similar analysis is performed using physical units, the
opposite results are obtained (Muradian and Martinez-Alier 2001).

3 In order to obtain comparable results, we have only included product

groups listed in the World Bank classification. Therefore, with regard to oil
products, our analysis only considers the product groups of “petroleum oils
and oils from bituminous minerals” and “residual petroleum products”
(SITC Rev. 3 categories 334 and 335), product groups embodying more
emissions than crude oil. The inclusion of crude oil, the largest physical
trade flow worldwide, would have significantly altered our results,
increasing the amounts of physical imports of industrialized and
industrializing world regions and the physical exports of oil producing
countries.

4 We unfortunately could not include South Africa and Nigeria, ranking

first and fourth among African countries in terms of absolute GDP, as these
countries did not report data for the whole period of analysis.
5 Please note that the country group of “South America” in the global
trade analysis only includes selected countries, whereas the country group
of “Latin America” in the European trade analysis comprises all countries
in Central and South America.

6 According to this normative principle of neoclassical economics, an act

(or a rule) would be said to be efficient if the gains to those who consented
to it are sufficient to permit the payment of compensation to those who
suffered losses.

7 See Giljum and Eisenmenger (2004) for a review of the discussion and
empirical evidence on the use of biophysical indicators for addressing the
relationship between trade and the environment.

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17

Environmental Issues at the U.S.-Mexico

Border and the Unequal Territorialization
of Value
JOSIAH HEYMAN

Borders in a World-System Perspective

World-systems thinking draws attention to unequal relationships of
exchange across space, and production and consumption involved in such
relations. The main focus is on endpoints, such as consumption and waste
in the core or degradation in a raw material–producing periphery. In this
chapter, I draw attention to places of transformation in between such
endpoints where unequal exchange is enacted, often involving immediate,
significant steps up or down in value of labor, materials, and energy
(Heyman 1994; Kearney 2004). Such transaction and transformation places
have sustained significant populations and political and economic power in
the historical and archeological record (e.g. mediating the exchange of
luxury goods). Today, they can be found in global air and sea ports, as well
as land borders between unequal polities. Such places are crucial to the
symbolic processes of giving value to people and goods, or redefining their
value; and they are thus characterized by intensive value arbitrage,
including brokering of goods and services among delineated territories of
the world-system, as well as hosting major manufacturing zones that take
advantage of spaces with poorly compensated labor to make goods for
spaces with higher purchasing power. These locations have two sets of
environmental impacts: playing roles in the environmental dynamics of the
world-system as a whole, in particular being key sites for the symbolic
abstraction and orchestration of material and energy flows identified as
crucial in Alf Hornborg’s seminal work (2001); and the immediate impact
of concentrated people and activities in these key sites.
It is on the latter topic that I focus in this chapter. My case study is the
U.S.-Mexico border, home of one of the larger manufacturing complexes in
the contemporary world economy (the maquiladoras, final assembly plants
in Mexico for exports, mainly to the United States). This region likewise
hosts intense commercial transportation and goods brokerage within the
framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The
immense concentration of unequal exchange in this place draws on and
impacts regional biophysical systems. At this seam between the territories
of two nation-states, a peculiar phenomenon occurs: monetary valuations of
people and goods undergo sudden, stepwise changes as they move across
the boundary. Wages, prices, state-bureaucratic action, communal action,
and socially constructed meanings strongly differ according to their
territorial placement within Mexico or the United States, while corporate,
small entrepreneurial, and personal or household activities move across
these spaces, taking advantage of the proximity of disparities in money, law,
and meaning (see Heyman 2004 on value arbitrage through ports of entry
on the U.S.-Mexico border). Unequal territorialized and territory crossing
processes thus form my starting point in analyzing the various
environmental ills of the U.S.-Mexico border region.
The literature on environmental issues at the U.S.-Mexico border is large
and sophisticated (see below), and it would be unfair to dismiss its scholarly
and public worth. But to characterize my approach, it is useful to develop
contrasts with this literature. The latter tends to view the border as a place
where two previously separated societies collide, and that many problems
stem from that initial difference. As such, it is not particularly attentive to
the border as constituted through relationships across space, or the historical
dynamics of those relations. Also, the existing literature tends to see the
solution of environmental issues in greater connection and cooperation
across the border, in keeping with the two colliding nations assumption. But
“connection” has long existed and hopeful attempts at cooperation often
founder on the ironically polarizing effects of connectedness; we need to
pay attention, rather, to what kinds of connections are forged, their qualities
of justice and equality, and their social and environmental outcomes.
 A historical world-systems approach clarifies hard questions of political
economy and ecology that often confound standard analysis by stressing
relational processes beneath surface conflicts and disorders (a useful source
on how to think in this mode is Hopkins 1982). My approach here is
implicitly historical, referring to the dynamics of the late-nineteenth- and
twentieth-century capitalist and state development of the border (see
Fernandez 1977; Lorey 1999), though for the sake of space I do not narrate
the long and complicated story of the region. Also, for the study of this
peculiar and important border the world-systems perspective highlights
relationships between apparently opposite “sides”—spaces, classes,
cultures, levels of wealth and waste, and so forth. Mexico and the United
States are joined in a longstanding unequal relationship that produces,
transforms, and reproduces the inequalities and differentiations that are so
visible at the border. Thus, we do not have two territories juxtaposed one
against the other, but rather a singular process of the territorialization of
value into two spaces, “Mexico” and “United States” (on territorialization
as a process rather than as a given, see Taylor 1985; Agnew and Corbridge
1995; Paasi 1996). Breaking with the “two nations” perspective helps us
understand both polarizing phenomena and ones that cross the territorial
boundary, and thus allows for a more complex analysis of economy, culture,
politics, and environment on each side.

Environmental Disorders of the U.S.-Mexico

Borderlands: A Synopsis
The following summary of the main environmental issues facing the border
region is based on Ingram, Laney, and Gillilan (1995), Liverman et al.
(1999), and Herzog (2000).

Water Supply
Irrigated farms and large binational urban areas make unsustainable
demands on water supplies, including rivers that are overallocated to the
point that they cannot sustain riverine habitats downstream, and
underground aquifers that are drawn down faster than their recharge rates.
At the same time, water is maldistributed, with many households lacking
faucet service and receiving only distant hand-carried or truck-delivered
supplies that are expensive in price and labor time/effort. Lack of access to
piped water is more widespread in Mexican border settlements but occurs in
the United States also.

Sewage
Many households lack adequate means to dispose of sewage, again more
often in Mexico than the United States but occurring in both nations.
Centralized sewage lines do not extend to many settlement areas, while the
alternatives, pit latrines and septic systems, are often inadequate or faulty.
This is due not just to lack of information, but also limited household and
public resources for better systems. Even centralized sewage systems are
often inadequate; many but not all U.S. cities use secondary treatment, but
most Mexican cities provide only primary treatment, and their systems
periodically fail.

Toxic Chemical Wastes

Industrial toxic wastes are sometimes improperly disposed of or spilled
accidentally by maquiladoras, and there are also extensive industrial wastes
from the metal smelting/refining industry. Such chemicals (1) affect
workers directly; (2) dissipate into the air, forming a smog component in
some cases; (3) are disposed of in sewer systems, persistently
contaminating treated water outputs; (4) are disposed of on the ground,
seeping into groundwater aquifers. A related problem is immediately and
persistently toxic pesticides from industrial agriculture. There are also
nonpoint source consumer chemical runoffs from settlement areas.

Air Quality
Several border metropolitan areas, notably Las Cruces–El Paso–Ciudad
Juárez, form air pollution catchment areas subject to smog inversions.
Contributors include internal combustion engines, exacerbated by lines of
traffic waiting to be inspected to cross the border, and industrial processes
giving off volatile organic compounds, heavy metals, crushed rock powder,
and so forth. To diesel particulates are added particulates from dirt streets,
most common in Mexico but not unknown in the United States, and soot
from low-quality combustion processes such as household fires and small-
scale brickyards in Mexico. A recent study by the North American
Commission for Environmental Cooperation shows significant excess
mortality and morbidity among children younger than five in Ciudad
Juárez, Mexico, due to increased truck traffic from growing cross-boundary
commerce under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Romieu et al.
2003). Recently, maquiladora-style electricity plants have lined Baja
California’s northern border, supplying power to California (U.S.), and
taking advantage of stepwise differentials in labor and fuel cost,
environmental regulation, and regulations on plant siting (Ross 2003).

Habitat/Species Decline and Change

Loss of habitat and decline of some plant and animal species has occurred
through direct land disturbance (Bahre 1991) and stream channelization
(e.g. urban and agricultural clearing of river bottom land), as well as the
water draw down (both surface and subsurface) highlighted above.
The five environmental disorders just listed occur within three main
contexts. First, key segments of the border are now heavily urbanized,
including several multimillion-person megalopolises. The question, then, is
what drives urbanization in border regions? Second, border crossings
concentrate huge transportation systems for persons and goods, with
bottlenecks at inspection points. Again, we beg a question: what in border
settings promotes dense webs of transactions and the movement to enact
them? Finally, there are vast productive complexes, both industrial and
agricultural, which besides their own outputs are contributors to the
urbanization and transaction /transportation phenomena listed above. Not
surprisingly, we ask why they disproportionately cluster along the border.
Before we proceed further, it is worth noting that much of the border
region is arid to semiarid, but this is not the unique cause of its
environmental problems. First, a vastly larger region, most of northern
Mexico and the U.S. west, is arid and semiarid, so a general environmental
characterization cannot fully explain the border’s specifics. Second, water
shortage is relative to human demand, so this begs the question why
population and industry concentrate in a region with few propitious sites.
Thus, in framing our examination, we can reject “natural features of the
region” as a privileged starting point, although we must remain attentive to
the causal force of biophysical processes in interaction with human
activities.

Processes Underlying Environmental Disorders

These environmental issues occur away from the border in both nations,
and often in just as bad or worse states. Their causes—water demand in arid
regions, traffic, industrial pollution, and so forth—are by no means unique,
then, and we should bear in mind that all such cases partake of the same
broad causes (e.g. capitalist, large-scale urbanization in regions able to
supply water only for short time horizons and in unsustainable ways). I am
thus not claiming that the border is uniquely an environmental hellhole,
which much superficial writing about the region implies. Rather, I start with
widely shared social processes engendering environmental disequilibria,
and seek to understand how they emerged at the border in a severe way.
Let us begin with major border labor users, maquiladoras and
mechanized irrigation agriculture. Maquiladoras concentrate along the
Mexican side of the border, although they have diffused to the Mexican
interior and Central America. These factories bring parts and subassemblies
from worldwide suppliers, finish and assemble them in a low-wage locale
(e.g. border Mexico), and reexport them to places (e.g. the United States)
where the selling price and volume is comparatively high, based on much
higher incomes. A rule of thumb on the border is that a working-class
Mexican American makes in one hour what she or he can make in one day
across the boundary in Mexico. In other words, maquiladoras realize value
through criss-crossing the territorialized difference in wage levels, going
from moderate wage-value parts to low-value final assembly to high-value
selling price, realizing the step up from parts to whole. The border also
allows U.S. managers and engineers to live in the United States, where they
are more culturally and socially comfortable, while still directly accessing
the poor standards of living (and thus low wages) of Mexican border
residents.
A similar case can be made for the location on the U.S. side of the border
of irrigated agriculture and nonferrous metal smelting and refining. The
location of these production processes is mainly determined by forces other
than the price of labor: for agriculture, alluvial soils in desert river valleys,
and access to engineered water supplies; for smelters and refineries, central
location in a network of mines and mills, since ore is heavy and costly to
transport, centralization that allows constant and high-volume supply for
capital-intensive plants. Smelters and refineries also have high demands for
surface or groundwater for cooling and electrolytic baths. However, the
agricultural districts and smelters/refineries in the United States near the
border have an incremental advantage over other sites: access to relatively
less expensive Mexican workers, both as migrants (often farmworkers) and
as U.S.-resident workers in places with saturated and depressed labor
markets. (Such labor-based locational effects do not account for border
Mexican smelting and irrigated agriculture, since Mexico’s highest pay
rates actually occur near the United States, but proximity to U.S. markets
and infrastructure does affect location.)
We will explore below the environmental effects of concentration of
poorly paid employees. Let us focus here on direct pollution from these
production processes. Weak territorialization of collective action in Mexico
(both public participation and state-bureaucratic regulation) gives locational
advantage to producers shifting dirty processes south across the border
rather than expending capital on cleaner processes or shutting down such
production altogether. Propaganda critical of the maquiladoras and free
trade has seized on this “exporting of pollution” and the lack of
enforcement of environmental laws in Mexico to make it seem a massive
and uniform feature of border industry. Fortunately, Donovan Corliss
(2000) provides a finer-grained empirical study. He found a number of
Tijuana maquiladoras that moved from the United States to Mexico partly
to avoid environmental regulation and the public “right to know” about
toxic releases. For example, furniture plants moved from Los Angeles to
Tijuana to avoid restrictions on their use of volatile organic finishes, which
contribute significantly to urban smog; likewise, the so-called battery
recycling industry (more like battery junkyards/metal smelters) moved to
Mexico, where there is little control over their handling of lead and
cadmium. On the other hand, many maquiladoras use standard production
processes whether in the United States or Mexico. In these cases,
presumably located at the border because of wage costs rather than
pollution exporting, any additional toxic increment over industry best
practices was caused by the company and the plant manager. There was
little pressure in Mexico to be careful and up-to-date, so that only specific,
conscientious individuals and corporations ran relatively “clean” plants.
Part of this, in turn, was rooted in personal attitudes but part in
consumer/activist environmental pressure (weaker in Mexico than the
United States, for reasons that we will see later).
Now, let us turn from production complexes to urbanization, involving
the environmental effects of households, and in particular, the border as a
setting for territorial-crossing consumption. There is, first, a highly unequal
social wage between the Mexican and the U.S. territory. By social wage, I
mean not only the prevailing wages paid directly by employers, but also the
resident’s claim on the collective, redistributed social surplus, through
public health infrastructure, schools, medical services, retirement, and so
forth. Both societies are unequal, however, and there are prosperous as well
as poor (in purchasing power and claim on collective distributions)
households in both nations. Second, in complexly patterned ways, the
territory of Mexico and the United States mean different things to different
audiences. Among other things, Mexico to U.S. residents tends to mean
both poverty and leisure (pleasure and release), and a certain kind of exotic,
tropical otherness. The United States to Mexican residents means power,
honesty, and efficiency, as well as attractive wealth and modernity, but also
a corrosive, immoral, and antifamilial, permissive individualism (no one
source addresses the full terrain of meanings, but Vila 2000 provides a
start). In both analyses, social wage and differential meanings, the point is
not just that the two terrains are divided but that individuals and households
actively maneuver through them, seeking particular sets of resources and
meanings and causing peculiar dynamics in border urbanism.
For example, U.S.-side border cities attract residents in two ways. On one
hand, prosperous residents with secure jobs and social wage claims obtain a
yet higher standard of living because they can obtain goods, labor services,
and meanings from the low-value Mexican side of the border. El Paso, for
example, is noted for cheap domestic services and small-scale construction
labor. There is also a large commercial sex industry in Mexican border
cities, a profusion of bars and restaurants near some ports of entry (and,
more quietly, dealers in cocaine, heroin, and marijuana), pharmacies selling
medications/drugs inexpensively and without prescription, and innumerable
shops selling mass-produced “crafts” and “art” from Mexico. This in turn
supports Mexican-side urbanization, from maids to barkeeps to street
vendors.
 On the other hand, U.S. border cities also attract a steady flow of in-
migration, legal and illegal, from Mexico. This is in spite of U.S.-side
border cities having chronically saturated labor markets and high
unemployment. However, the U.S. side offers households moving from
Mexico a much higher typical wage when there is work, and a better, if still
quite poor, social wage, whether in the form of police protection, schools,
or access to the county hospital emergency room. The irony is that people
leave the most prosperous and economically active region of lower-value
Mexico for the most depressed region of the higher-value United States;
they go from being well employed but miserably paid to being
underemployed and somewhat less miserably paid.
Mexican border cities also are shaped by these cross-border transactions.
I have already mentioned U.S. household and small business employment
of Mexican laborers and purchases of cheap Mexican goods and services,
which combine with maquiladoras to bring about steady migratory increase
(and retention of natural growth increase) in urban population. There is a
smuggling economy, whose impact is discussed below. There are, typical of
any border, commercial/ customs brokerage and binational business
facilitation sectors (bankers, lawyers, accountants, etc.). There is the
transportation infrastructure of the border crossing. Finally, there is the
value-transacting role of the U.S. border city in the household economy and
social status moves of Mexican-side residents, which merits a bit of
elaboration.
U.S. border cities have disproportionately large commercial sectors,
including both retailers of cheap goods and expensive malls, boutiques,
auto dealerships, and so on. Laredo, Texas, for example, has the highest
department store square footage per person of any city in the United States,
despite a low-wage local economy, because it attracts a high volume of
shoppers from Nuevo Laredo, Coahuila, and in the nearby interior, the huge
Mexican city of Monterrey. Not only does this create many low-wage, no-
benefits store jobs in the United States, but it also adds to the meaning-
value of “proximity to the United States” for Mexicans in border cities. Not
only are many goods in the United States better in quality or price because
of limitations in Mexico’s business structure and domestic production, but
also the United States conveys an increment in status in the view of some
Mexicans. In turn, constant transacting of jobs, services, goods, and
meanings back and forth across the border favors the extreme urbanization
of this region.
To demonstrate how border urbanization shapes environmental issues, let
us look at colonias (in Mexico, colonias populares), informally developed
residential areas with cheap lots, lacking preprovided infrastructure (water
supply, sewage, piped gas, electricity, paved streets, police and fire
protection, schools, clinics, etc.), and having self-constructed houses. As
Peter Ward (1999) argues, informal settlements in both nations result from
rapid expansion of regional employment combined with underfunding of
public infrastructure, planning, and housing. For the United States, he
identifies flawed private markets in housing and land that do not provide
standard subdivisions and mortgages to low-income homebuyers, relegating
them to self-built housing on plots provided by land speculators. In Mexico,
colonials populares lack basic services like water, paved streets, and
sewage, thereby impacting the local environment, because of the extreme
inequalities in that nation’s development, in which (1) market mechanisms,
like home mortgages and subdivisions, while present, are underdeveloped
because of the limited size of and economic fragility of the middle class and
upper working class, and (2) collective redistribution is extremely limited
because the middle and upper classes pay few taxes and support few
services, opting instead for private household solutions (water storage tanks
on roofs, for example, rather than adequate water mains with sufficient
pressure and cleanliness; see Ingram, Laney, and Gillilan 1995). However,
colonias populares are by no means unique to the border, and some of their
environmental impacts (e.g. particulates from unpaved streets), derive from
a general pattern of rapid urbanization, in which basic infrastructure cannot
keep up with demand. In all these issues, unequal territorialization of value
is a cause, several steps removed.
In the case of U.S. colonias, however, household response to unequal
territorialization of value is quite direct. Colonias attract a wide variety of
settlers, some of them migrants from Mexico, others internal migrants
within the United States (from inner city barrio rentals to city fringe
homeownership, for example). However, whether directly immigrant or not,
colonia dwellers use a distinctly Mexican self-provisioning household
strategy for creating decent housing in the United States, given lack of
market power to enter subdivisions and use mortgage lenders. They are
occupied largely by people whose value (in the eyes of the larger society,
monetarily and meaningfully) is still that of Mexico, that is, extremely low
in U.S. terms: farm laborers, casual construction workers, domestics, small
repairmen, truck drivers, and so on. Yet they are making a territorial move
into or inside the United States, on the basis of the much greater value to be
had even for poor people inside this nation—a logic of border crossing
explained above. They are people with little power in either of the grand
territories of value, acting on the needs and logics that have always made
sense to the powerless, that of opportunistic household provisioning. (By
“opportunistic,” I am highlighting the literal meaning of seizing
opportunities; I am not asserting that they think on a short time line, which
would be incorrect in many cases of colonia residents who build homes for
themselves and their children over long time horizons.) Even if we cast
aside the common U.S. stereotypes of “dirty” colonias (who in fact
probably produce less waste except untreated sewage than prosperous urban
households), it is important to link the environmental problems that do
plague colonia residents, including public health problems and
disproportionately high expenses for basic services like water, with the
overall pattern of combined and uneven development on the border.
Finally, state and counter-state activities concentrate along borders.
Laws, regulations, police, the military, and other enforcement and service
agencies are obvious forms of territorialization. Joseph Nevins (2002) and I
(Heyman 1998, 1999) have argued that cross-border trade and so-called
globalization are accompanied not by weakening of the territorial U.S. state,
but its strengthening, both ideologically and practically. The reasons are
complex, but relate significantly to the territorialization of value and
meaning. For example, U.S. immigration policy (legal admittance of
permanent and temporary labor migrants) and U.S. immigration law
enforcement (keeping migrants out incompletely) allows some seepage of
low-value Mexican workers into the high-value and demand U.S. labor
market, while generally maintaining the separation of low- and high-wage
territories that might collapse if there were a truly open border with free
movement of labor. Elsewhere, I have rejected omniscient, capitalist-
functionalist models of border law enforcement (e.g. a valve that permits
precisely the correct flow of labor into the U.S.) because this lacks a role
for ideology and politics in shaping border policy (see Heyman 1998). But
even within a more sophisticated economic-political-ideological model, the
U.S. state does enforce the territorialization of value.
Leo Chavez (1997) and Tamar Diana Wilson (2000) draw on the
provocative, if excessively neat argument of Michael Burawoy (1976) to
propose that U.S. immigration law enforcement attempts to keep the
reproduction of households in Mexico, where the social wage is quite low,
while allowing the direct laborers to enter the United States, where the
wage level is relatively higher and the value of products and services is yet
much higher. This does not require an omniscient state, since household
reproduction is readily perceived in politics through demands on public
hospitals, school systems, bus systems, police services, and so forth. These
politics draw on unequal territorial meanings, by which immigrants are
welcomed as hard workers but their families are perceived as the
embodiment of poverty, dirt, and danger. Further territorializations of
meaning include seeing zones outside the nation-state as sources of danger
and impurity, and envisioning borders as a crucial place for national
security operations. This adds up, as Nevins has insisted, to an increasing
territorial concept of the nation-state both in popular consciousness and
police-bureaucratic practice.
How does this affect the environment? The indirect effects, in terms of
reinforcing territorial value differences in labor and collective
redistributions, cannot be neglected. The role of the U.S. state apparatus as
symbol and propaganda machine in polarizing meanings between the two
countries is also important, and will be addressed in the following section.
But here I want to concentrate on the direct environmental effects of
concentrated state operations, and also their counterpart in smuggling, the
transactions that take advantage of state-enforced differences of value at
borders. The U.S.-Mexico border region encloses a huge “cat and mouse”
game, with enormous resources deployed on each side. On the U.S. side, a
large concentration of well-paid jobs is made up of the military and various
police agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA),
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and the various branches of
Homeland Security (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service
and the Customs Bureau). These employees add to the urbanization of the
border, of course. Also, the police-military agencies of the state are nearly
impervious to environmental scrutiny and restriction (e.g. cutting extensive
road systems through slow-recovery arid biomes). After all, so-called
national security, a sovereign interest, is involved.
On the other side, state law enforcement provides smugglers a lucrative
source of profits in transacting values across unequal terrains. For example,
in the early 1990s, U.S. immigration law enforcement changed in such a
way that it became much more difficult for undocumented Mexican
migrants to cross without the aid of a smuggler. Prices for a trip into the
United States rose five- to tenfold (from roughly $300 to $1,500–3,000) and
the percentage of trips using a smuggler rose sharply. People avoid
mentioning it, but drug- and person-smuggling money is a main prop of the
border economy. This again contributes to the rapid urbanization of the
border, and in remoter areas to trail cutting with widespread littering of the
desert.

Environmental Politics at the Border: An Unequal-

Relational Perspective
So far, we have examined how the territorialization of values, meanings,
and state power creates a dynamic, booming, but also environmentally
stressful set of urban centers along the borderline. We now turn to how this
territorialization of resources, meanings, and collective action shapes the
social construction of “environmental” issues and the various political
responses in two nations. Pablo Vila and John Peterson (2003) document,
for example, how U.S.-side residents focus on poverty, lax regulation, and
backwardness as a cause of Mexican pollution, and Mexican-side residents
focus on the unfairness of the United States coming to make money in their
country but leaving behind social and environmental damage. O. Alberto
Pombo (2000), addressing water and sewage, notes that the priorities of
poor Tijuana residents (piped water) deviate considerably from the expert
goals (high quality toilets/sewage mains). And Ingram, Laney, and Gillilan
(1995), though not taking an explicit social-construction perspective,
describe a series of cross-border misunderstandings and tensions over water
and sewage.
I accept the idea of social construction of environmental issues, rather
than the naïve and mechanical assumption of direct rational response to
objective reality. The question is whether underlying processes at borders
characteristically shape such constructions. One candidate is the interplay
between territorialized state capacity and individual/household and
corporate perceptions of possible action. More concretely, the two
governments at the border have vastly different abilities to put in place
public, environmental infrastructure. They also have differing abilities to
regulate corporate polluters, but both nations are weak in that regard. In the
United States, clean water supplies and decent-quality, secondary sewage
treatment are the norm, because of well-capitalized public utilities. Most
householders take for granted such services, paying regularly for utilities,
and do not see their existence as a matter of making priorities and choices.
When such services are not delivered, as in the case of U.S.-side colonias,
this shows the limits of U.S. state capacity vis-à-vis a very marginalized
population and the informal real estate market that serves it.
Meanwhile, on the Mexican side, a less adequately funded state
(exacerbated by Mexico’s centralized budget system that starves state and
local governments of funds) means two things. First, many solutions take
place at the household level, and are highly unequal. Rich families, for
example, invest in high-capacity clean water storage systems to cope with
sporadic water supply. Since solutions are immediate and personal, rather
than infrastructural and collective, this detracts from systematic
management of problems. Second, the decision to use scarce government
resources in one or another infrastructure is always political, being
incomplete both geographically (e.g. coverage of a middle-class
neighborhood but not a poor one) and by type of service (e.g. piped water
before sewer mains). How households and broader social groups arrange
infrastructure affects not only the physical systems but also the social
meanings of “clean environment” in each nation and among the classes
within them.
In turn, differential ways of addressing infrastructure must be viewed in
terms of long-term processes of unequal exchange. It is hardly a surprise
that the fiscal capacities of Mexican border municipalities and most utility
ratepayers in them is lower than in the United States. This makes it more
difficult to organize nonpoliticized, expert-managed, routine collective
handling of waste (human and industrial) in Mexico. Yet it is not the case
that population and industry is much smaller on the Mexican side than the
U.S. side, in apparent correspondence with the lower resources (though it is
somewhat consistent with lower consumption and waste per person); rather,
in this case of unequal exchange–driven development, there are more
people and industry on the poorer side than on the richer side. Hence the
clashing social constructions of Mexican and U.S. residents are both
correct; Mexico does not routinely handle its waste as well as the United
States, which often harms Mexicans but sometimes spills over to the U.S.
side, while simultaneously the United States does profit from Mexico and is
indirectly responsible for many of the environmental problems in this
region.
Now, as Vila points out, the social construction of environmental issues
on the border often leads to polarization. Let us take a shared environmental
problem, such as raw or primary-treated sewage releases from Mexico
flowing into the United States (see Ingram, Laney, and Gillilan 1995). This
is a genuine problem, which gives rise to a lot of arrogant hue and cry
among Americans who take sewage treatment for granted, and who also
tend to hold stereotypes that all problems of dirt and poverty come from
Mexico. In turn, Mexicans, overwhelmed by needs that surpass their
collective fiscal capacities, feel bullied by the United States into taking
action on the sewage problem, which may not be the first demand of most
households (Pombo 2000) although objectively it harms them. After
negotiation between the two nations, the United States funds most of the
cost of the new infrastructure while a smaller, perhaps symbolic amount is
paid by Mexico. U.S. officials and activists perceive budgets that could be
used at home going instead to another nation, that is, perceive Mexico as
not doing its share or taking its responsibility, while Mexican officials and
publics find themselves bullied into choices they might not otherwise take
by a superpower that is profiteering off the region as a whole. The long-
term cause of polarization is the unequal distribution of public and
household fiscal resources by political territories within one single space of
capital accumulation and urban agglomeration.
The characteristic diagnosis of border environmental politics is that
boundaries and rigid bureaucratic rules surrounding them get in the way of
cross-border popular (or activist) cooperation to address environmental
problems (see Ingram, Laney, and Gillilan 1995; Liverman et al. 1999; and
Staudt and Coronado 2002). This literature has a certain logic. The border
arbitrarily bisects biophysical processes and flows, such as watersheds and
aquifers. Optimal solutions demand some form of cooperation or
coordination. Likewise, empathetic activists and thoughtful local officials
often care deeply about shared health and environmental challenges, and try
to work across borders to address them. Indeed, a novel binational agency,
the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission, was created under
NAFTA to institutionalize such initiatives. Briefly, this organization (with a
bilingual and mixed national staff) instigates, advises, and ultimately
recommends proposals that ameliorate some environmental problems of
border urbanism, such as water supply, water treatment, and solid waste
treatment. However, it struggles with unequal funding and different models
of political participation and decision-making in the two territories. And it
is certainly the case that unimaginative bureaucrats and politicians in each
nation, defending budgets and turf, often frustrate environmental reforms.
But such a view implies that border society on both sides would naturally
tend to come to agreement if it were not for the bad guys in distant state and
national capitals. Yet this is far from the case. Border societies have their
own tendencies toward polarization (Vila 2000, Grimson and Vila 2002).
One reason for this is that unequal exchange across differentially valued
territorial domains results in visible inequalities and disparities in capacities
for and modes of collective action (mostly, state capacity) and in
households’ and social groups’ demands on and strategies within such
territories. Hence, cross-border empathy and collective social action will
not be sustained by isolated problem-solving programs, but rather an
enduring answer lies in an effective struggle for greater collective equality
within and between the two separated territories (see Staudt and Coronado
2002).

Conclusion
I began by reciting the various environmental disorders characteristic of the
U.S.-Mexico border. In looking for their roots, we found them not in some
singularity of the border environment, but rather in how a random
patchwork of largely arid local environments responded to the extreme
industrialization, commercial flux, U.S. state activity, and urbanization
brought on by the presence of the border itself. To understand this
development, we examined how the border as a line between two value
terrains favored unequal, stepwise exchange. We noted furthermore that
such value inequality interlocks with differential territorialization of
meanings and unequal capacity for collective public action. This accounts
not only for the rapid development of the border region and for its
peculiarities, such as the side with more people and more economic activity
(Mexico) having fewer resources for collective problem-solving, but also
for the polarizing social construction of environmental issues.
In all of this, we have unconsciously but significantly departed from
standard geographic assumptions of public environmentalism. Such
perspectives view the problems of the rich and poor nations as separate, and
indeed they tend to view nations (equated with societies) as separate and
coherent units laid over a preexisting “natural” terrain. Border problems in
such a view are ones of incomplete connection and cooperation, and failed
or “bad” development. However, public action using such a frame will
almost certainly encounter surprising frustrations and paradoxes, and will
tend to bypass important causes. The world-system perspective draws our
attention to the processes that combine human and biophysical action in
making and remaking spaces, in this case, bounded territories. Likewise, it
emphasizes the unity of apparently differentiated people and places, and the
causes of environmental disequilibrium in “successful” development. This
analytical sharpness does not relieve our need to act publicly and
collectively, and in practical ways; rather one hopes it will help in such
action, through informing tactics and policies, and teaching (broadly meant)
about environmental issues.

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18

Surrogate Money, Technology, and the

Expansion of Savanna Soybeans in Brazil
WILLIAM H. FISHER

IF WE WANDER THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN hinterlands today we can

still see villages founded by waves of past settlers as they colonized its vast
interior. Towns like Rosário do Oeste in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso
huddle in the shade of spreading Ficus and mango trees. Ghosts of diamond
prospectors and cattle hands seem to peer from the recesses of the one-story
buildings of nicked and fading pastels resting siesta-quiet in the heat of
midday. But just a short distance from this old frontier town the rural
landscape changes radically as we leave the emerald humidity of the basin
to crest a plateau where limpid emptiness appears to descend in all
directions. There is no sign announcing that we have entered Brazil’s latest
incarnation of order and progress, but clearly a boundary has been
breached. What appeared empty now comes into focus as striking
uniformity—treeless fields in every direction. Dust devils swirl merrily
alongside our bus for a short spell before veering off their own way. Further
along on the flat-topped cha-pada, spanking new grain elevators loom.
Clean attractive company logos boldly painted on their sides proclaim their
affiliation with familiar transnational firms Cargill, Bunge, and Archer-
Daniels-Midland. The weighing and storage facilities of Brazil’s Maggi
group intersperse with these. The family-owned firm’s elder son, Blairo, the
largest soybean planter in the world, has ascended to Mato Grosso state
governorship.
Open fields stretch right to the edge of the road, while in the distance
dark screens of trees nudge upward into the line of the horizon. The unwary
treading on the road’s soft shoulders find themselves up to their ankles in a
soft powder, residue of particles flicked loose from exposed red soil. For
some stretches it looked as though snow has fallen along the roadside, but a
closer look reveals the plush long fibers of cotton bolls jarred free by the
bumpy ride on the deteriorated road surface. Here the earth and its bounty,
soil and crops knocked loose by machine-powered cultivation and transport,
suffer rough handling that goes with the speed and volume of the new
economic miracle.
Brazil’s great north includes the Amazon and has long been a consumer
and producer of global commodities. Rubber, spices, furs, vegetable and
animal oils, Brazil nuts, and gold have each created fortunes—sometimes
great fortunes. Immigrants have run great risks to grab a part of the action.
Indigenous peoples have been either shunted aside or put to work while
their overlords claimed the wealth extracted. More recently gargantuan
mineral complexes have extracted iron, aluminum, and bauxite for shipment
overseas. And also recently the great rivers of Brazil’s northern region have
either been dammed (some of the biggest in the world when first built) or
targeted for hydroelectric projects. The energy generated in giant turbines
flows out to large industrial enterprises along the coast or great population
centers to the south. Although export-oriented economic activity spurring
immigration to the region is not new to the Amazon, the expansion of
industrialized agriculture is vaster in scale than any previous intrusion. The
growing agricultural sector is also more of a linchpin for Brazil’s economic
orientation of “export or die,” enunciated by President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso and accepted by his successor, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.
Careful not to allow his attention to deviate from the obstacle course
created by holes in the uneven pavement, our bus driver passes trucks and
more trucks. Their long beds are covered with neatly stretched tarps hiding
the material to feed the burgeoning appetite of the treeless fields for lime,
fertilizer, seeds, and machinery. Other trucks carry the unimaginably vast
output of cotton, soybeans, and cattle on the beginning of a voyage that
might take them around the world to Rotterdam, Russia, or Japan. At
predictable intervals of 60 kilometers we pass towns—Nova Mutum, Sào
Lucas do Rio Verde, Sorriso—that have sprung up since the early 1980s.
Their centers are laid out along broad boulevards named for local
politicians or prominent pioneers. Streets are lined with single-family
houses, commonly surrounded by electric fences. Everything here is large
scale—big and new. Even as unrelenting sunlight cascades over us as we
amble out at a rest stop, we are inside what Hornborg (2001) calls “the
Machine” (map 18.1).
The machine image points to the critical role that tools have always had
in shaping the way humans relate to their environment and to one another.
But it enlarges the scope of this image by putting human ecology within a
larger frame of interactions between societies. The operation of the machine
rests on far-flung connections and calls attention to interrelations between
global trade, environmental degradation, and technology as part of a single
systemic flow of materials and meanings. The fields, the trucks, the grain
silos, the leaning millet cover crop, the eroded soils by the roadside, the
humans of different social classes unself-consciously segregating into small
groups to pass the time, and, yes, even the bright sunlight itself are linked
into a vast cyclical process. The structure of exchanges that perpetuate the
global inequalities continues, in part, because operations of machinery and
know-how are narrowly understood to rely on the cause-and-effect laws
pertaining to physical systems. But Hornborg argues that we must broaden
our understanding to account for the insight that social relations of
inequality comprise a necessary matrix for the operation of the global
relations spawned by the “machine” whose functioning will continue to
perpetuate these very same unequal relations. Different classes of people
and regions will be punished or rewarded both ecologically and
economically by global trade based on profit-making.
 Map 18.1.

Unveiling the sociocultural dimensions of the machine requires that we

conceptualize world trade as an economic and ecological system circulating
flows of values, materials, and energy. The net effect for the periphery is
fewer valued resources and less buying power to purchase resources.
Insofar as there have been other analyses of the ecological effects of the
world-system, Hornborg’s analysis complements others (e.g. Biel 2000;
Moore 2003; Chew 2001). However, his insistence that this kind of system
rests on a certain structure of exchanges makes it necessary to describe
human meanings. The power of capital to lay claim to resources and move
humans into action rests on the prior existence of resources and of suitable
demography and social organization (cf. Wolf 1990). Symbols of value and
price must be mapped onto a circulation of materials and energy so that
processes of natural production and extraction may be harnessed to circuits
of capital accumulation. Once the process begins, ecological and economic
crises, either singly or in concert, may be at the root of the collapse of
human ecological systems. But to point to a collapse in a structure shows us
that certain relations resulting in capital accumulation do not exist at all
times and all places: they must be brought into being and may also
disappear. Historical analysis is, therefore, essential and comprises the
necessary backdrop to understand how appropriate meanings and
motivations can be harnessed to specific regimes of production and
ownership. The number of failures in which heavy investment has not
resulted in successful development in the Brazilian hinterlands and
Amazonian regions underline the point that capital on an agricultural
frontier can only fulfill its potential as self-increasing value if it can foster
relations whereby it is able to “harvest” or appropriate values resulting from
the growth of organisms.
This chapter helps to illuminate this point by describing the particular
structure of exchange relations that sustain the expansive frontier boom in
industrial agriculture. The area I describe is located near the geographical
center of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, whose closed savanna areas
(cerrado) have seen some of the most explosive development of soybeans
over the last twenty years. The municipality of Sorriso, site of ongoing
fieldwork, covers 930, 354 hectares of slightly undulating lands transected
by the Teles Pires River and its tributaries. Based on its newfound clout as
an agricultural powerhouse, it achieved independent municipal status in
1986. During the 2003/2004 growing season an astonishing total of 590,000
ha (or 63 percent) of the area of the municipality was cultivated in soy
(EMPAER 2004). Additional area was devoted to cattle and other
agricultural activities. Consideration of the full impact of mechanized
agriculture in the municipality would also have to factor in the effects of
transport, storage, urbanization, and the constructions of roads. Sorriso
accounts for about 2 percent of national soybean production and is the
largest single municipal producer in Brazil. However, it is but a single
municipality among dozens largely oriented toward the production of
soybeans, most of which would like to emulate Sorriso’s success.
In many respects Sorriso mirrors a wave of colonization of Brazil’s
interior over the past two decades. The rise of soybean cultivation in Brazil
and the increasing dominance of the tropical savannas as areas of
cultivation is astounding: “In this century, in a similar [two decade] time
period, no other internationally traded commodity of any country has had
output expansion equal to that of Brazilian soybeans” (Warnken 1999:9). In
a very short time Brazil has become a major player on the global level.
“Between 1970 and 1989, world soybean production rose from 42 to 107
million metric tonnes, a 65% increase, while Brazil’s output increased from
1.5 to 24 million metric tonnes, an increase of 2,100%” (Warnken 1999:9).
By 2003 output had shot up yet further to 52 million metric tonnes,
although it dropped back to 49.8 million metric tonnes in 2004 when Asian
Soybean Rust destroyed millions of metric tonnes (Benson 2005). In 2005
the soy complex made up about 8 percent of total exports, accounting for
US$ 9.5 billion of the US$ 118 billion total (Maia and Oliveira 2006).
Since 1980 the area of soybeans harvested in the savannas has increased
by about 10 percent annually (Warnken 1999). In 1990s the savanna
(cerrado in Portuguese) produced 25.4 percent of Brazil’s total soybean
crop (Cunha 1994:64). Today over half of Brazil’s production is in savanna
or tropical forest regions and Mato Grosso generates about 29 percent of
Brazil’s soybeans. Average yields in the state are well above Brazil’s
national average, and Brazil surpassed U.S. average yields in 1999 (USDA
2004). The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that, while the United
States will have difficulty finding new places to plant soybeans, Brazil can
expand planting onto both flat uncultivated cerrado (approximately 137
million acres) and pastureland (185 million acres) (Schnepf, Dohlman, and
Bolling 2001:6).
Soybean cultivation in Brazil’s southern, nonsavanna regions has largely
been a result of substitution for other crops such as wheat or coffee
(Warnken 1999). To a more limited extent some substitution has occurred
on the savannas as well (Veiga Filho 2001). However, the notable feature of
planting in the savanna is precisely that much uncultivated cerrado
(savanna) land, supporting many native noncommercial plants, was
replaced by soybean fields (Sousa and Busch 1998:357). The ecological
changes have already transformed millions of hectares of native vegetation.
Legislation signed in 1995 sets limits on how much native vegetation cover
may be cleared. Uncleared land area on a property should be equivalent to
35 percent in Amazonian cerrados and 80 percent in the Amazon forest, but
these limits have largely been ignored in Mato Grosso.
The environmental effect of clearing millions of hectares of native
vegetation represents a significant threat to savanna ecology. The threat is
compounded by the speed and extent to which preexisting ecosystems have
been modified. The industrial system that has taken hold over the past two
decades eliminates existing land-cover, levels the soil surface, and imports
all essential nutrients, chemical treatments of soils, herbicides, and
pesticides from long distances. At the end of the harvest, the entire crop will
be shipped out of the municipality to other parts of Brazil, often for
overseas destinations. The simplification of the municipal ecology through
removal of native vegetation and grading of soils makes crop growth and
sale entirely dependent on movement of material into and out of the area.
Under these conditions transportation has become a central focus through
which contending interests wrestle for a share of the wealth produced in the
region. Complex negotiations are currently underway to develop a
comprehensive plan for Amazonian development that will address the
infrastructural needs of business. Formidable construction projects for
transport arteries have been launched along three big water routes:
Itacoatiara, Paranaguá-Paraná, and Araguaia-Tocantins. In addition, there
are railway facilities either completed or underway in the Brazilian states of
Goiás, Tocantins, and Maranhão. In Mato Grosso, the paving of highway
163 between Cuiabá and the Amazon port of Santarém has become the
focus of negotiations. Most soybeans today wind their way to the coastal
port of Paranaguá, some 2,100 kilometers distant. Historically, such
transport costs ate up a significant portion of farm profits.
The surge in soy exports from Sorriso must be set in the context of
Brazil’s recent rural development and, as importantly, farming on the
savanna must be distinguished from nonsavanna areas. National policies
regarding trade, research, and agricultural credits have all had their effect,
but soy expansion on the closed savannas also has attracted attention for its
contribution to deforestation. Environmentalists have identified
industrialized agriculture and cattle ranching as the major culprits behind
land-cover change (Fearnside 2000; Brown 2005). The expansion of
soybeans into cerrado and, increasingly, tropical forest regions has largely
been seen through one of two optics. On one hand, conservationists are
greatly troubled by continued destruction of wild habitats, including the
cerrado. On the other, corporate media have largely applauded the
dynamism of the agricultural export sector. “The Civilization of the
Croplands” is a typical article lauding the “revolution of Brazilian
agribusiness” (Salgado 2004). Overall, little attention has been paid to the
new kinds of communities spawned by the recent boom, nor on the legacy
that their wake will leave on the Brazilian interior.
 Sorriso’s communities are not unlike others that have anchored the
agricultural expansion in Mato Grosso’s interior. Within each municipality,
hundreds of large farmers, often owning several properties, some of which
are held in the name of family members, control hundreds of thousands of
acres. Precise figures of land ownership and control are notoriously difficult
to come by. Farmers with large areas actually outnumber those owning up
to a few acres. They also outnumber the colonizers settled in projects of the
National Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA). Foremen on large farms and
some other on-farm posts are held by southern Brazilians, while the heavy
labor and land-clearing is provided by northeasterners, primarily from the
state of Maranhão. While logging is still of some importance, especially
while land remained to be cleared, its prominence is declining, as are cattle
ranches. None of these industries is labor intensive, and greater
mechanization tends to make them even less so. Population for the
municipality totals 35,397 inhabitants, according to the 2000 census. Like
statistics of true land ownership, however, population figures are not very
reliable. Unofficial estimates, including those of local officials, put the
number much higher, between sixty and seventy thousand. While officials
have a vested interest in inflating population in their jurisdiction, it is
indisputable that every week sees an influx of buses from Maranhão filled
with young men hungry for work. The BR 163 highway neatly divides the
commercial center and well-to-do residential neighborhoods from the
homes of laborers, maids, and clerks. Early mornings witness an invasion of
bicycles crossing the highway, as poorer Sorrisense make their way to
work.
Economic planning by Brazil’s military regime was encapsulated in its
“National Development Plan” that elaborated goals for different sectors of
the economy. In the case of agriculture, planners consciously sought to
contribute to the internationalization of Brazilian agriculture. It is doubtful
that they could have realized the extent to which their vision has come to
pass today! The proliferation of state enterprises, many initiated under the
aegis of the military regime, served to link the Brazilian economy with
global commodity chains by responding to and even attempting to
anticipate the interests of multinational capital (Aguiar 1986). In the case of
soybeans, the relationship between researchers at federal universities,
research institutes, agribusiness, and even the U.S. government, including
funds channeled through the Alliance for Progress, were essential (cf.
Fundação Cargill 1982). Research was of a very practical and applied kind,
the underlying aim being to develop detailed protocols for scientific
farming based on the knowledge produced by agronomists working with
machinery employed on a large-scale farm enterprise. The Cargill
Foundation was already sponsoring research for soybeans by 1972, well in
advance of the migratory wave of Brazilian southerners northward to the
savannas. Sousa and Busch (1998) have documented the requirements for
moving the temperate soybean plant to the tropical drought-prone climate
and acidic, aluminum-laden soils of the savanna.
The federal government targeted immigrants from Brazil’s south because
their previous technical and administrative experience would allow them to
transform financial resources into “physical capital” of the kind desired by
planners. Above all, this consisted of machinery and infrastructure
combined with knowledge enabling the growth of products demanded by
transnational grain traders. The new class of proprietors is almost
exclusively male and white. From the very beginning indebtedness was an
issue, particularly for the younger immigrants who did not have holdings to
sell in order to acquire land. Some solved this issue by joining together and
pooling resources and labor, others managed to rent forested areas in
exchange for preparing them for cultivation. Government financing was
contingent on a commitment to engage in a specific industrial agricultural
enterprise. Farmers who managed to get established with land became a
class closely attuned to the priorities set by the federal government and its
agricultural research and extension services. Their local privileges
transformed them into a nascent elite with an interest in defending policies
that favored their continued access to the advantages of government
support.
The founders of Sorriso did not envision a settlement dedicated to
soybean production. Over a half-decade passed before the new town began
to fulfill its promise as an agricultural area. This transpired as large
landholders of similar southern background were provided credit, suitable
crop varieties, and the equipment necessary to cultivate them according to
specific technical recipes (cf. Dias and Bortoncello 2003). The background
of rural agriculture imported from Brazil’s southern states had an important
impact but not in terms of the practice of farming itself. Far more essential
was the southern farmer identity, which carried a commitment to the canons
of success and respectability within an agricultural community. Initially,
investors sought to acquire real estate and had notions of establishing a
large cattle farm for which there was plenty of recent precedent in
Amazonian states. They had no assurance that agriculture was viable or
which crops might grow. Agronomists from the Mato Grosso Department of
Rural Research, Assistance, and Extension (EMPAER—and its predecessor,
EMATER) struggled to come up with suitable crops. Through its
POLOCENTRO Project, the federal government assisted colonization
efforts. Most efforts directly benefited large proprietors, as properties over
1,000 hectares absorbed 60 percent of project funds (Cunha 1994:57). The
government also purchased an initial unpalatable rice crop. It was not until
the early 1980s that soybeans were introduced in Sorriso.
During the initial period real estate speculators from the south who had
acquired land returned to the southern states to resell parcels. Given
favorable prices compared to land in the south, many took the risk, joining a
long and illustrious parade of immigrants to Brazil’s north in search of
wealth. The driving motivation of a relatively well-off citizenry from the
agricultural south was not great wealth in the abstract, but enrichment with
the aim of emulating the solid, successful rural elite with large properties
and prominent local recognition. Today one still hears declarations that
“southerners have a vocation for farming” repeated proudly in Sorriso. But
this is not to be taken to mean farming the “southern” way, and large
farmers violently reject the idea that farming wisdom from the south can be
transplanted to the savannas.
It is not wealth alone that elicits admiration and emulation in Sorriso but
wealth gained through industrial farming. Logging and cattle ranching as
well as commerce and building trades are other prominent industries, but
farming is the measure by which status can most effectively be displayed.
Recognition extended to rural entrepreneurs inevitably underlines the extent
of property holdings and area cultivated. For example, the “Agriculturalist
of the Year” recognized by the “Commercial and Industrial Association of
Sorriso” is described in the local newspaper as “planting around 16,000
hectares of soybeans and 5,000 hectares of corn” (Minosso 2004). No such
status indicators are applied to engineers, retailers, or loggers. In
conversation, the number of hectares planted in soybeans or the number of
sacks held in storage is used to indicate the importance of community
members in the local hierarchy. For their part, middle-class professionals
and nonfarmers must seek other outlets for local recognition, and the recent
founding of the Rotary Club and a range of evangelical churches appear to
be satisfying this need.
The practice of large-scale agriculture in Sorriso is at one and the same
time a system of ecology, racial politics, corporate control, and community
structure. Changes in any one of these areas reverberate throughout. An
examination of their interconnections can begin to trace the factors that give
the region its current dynamic. Large-scale farming requires adherence to a
strict system of planning. Farmers’ plans vary slightly, but various
institutions, ranging from banks to accounting firms and multinational
corporations, vet all plans. A budget of expenditures and an outline of
proposed operations form an intrinsic part of the process of applying for
cash credit or purchasing inputs on credit. The level of detail is quite
specific. Application of an herbicide will be specified as to the timing, the
quantity, the size of machinery and field, and determining how many passes
over the field will be made. Thus the process of financing crop production
creates a dependence on information developed by agricultural experiments
by federal universities, federally sponsored centers for agricultural research,
and private research foundations sponsored by firms such as Monsanto,
Pioneer, Cargill, Massey Ferguson, and Maggi. Research is imminently
practical and geared toward developing products and protocols for the
production of export crops on a large scale using commercially available
machinery and chemicals. Target ranges for amounts of inputs and quantity
and quality of outputs are specified. Protocols (cartilhas) developed by
banks, grain traders, and agronomic consultants match amounts of brand
name chemicals to areas of cultivation with a schedule for procedures and
ultimately product delivery and sale.
The mapping of the flow of material and energy onto present and future
is linked to the prices of inputs in the present (which the farmer seeks to
buy) and the future price of the crop (when the farmer will be in a position
to sell). Most farmers must time their purchases to the growing season and
there is an increased use of futures contracts to try and hedge against a
disastrous price drop at harvest. There is a chasm between the public
exaltation of the farmer as a daring swashbuckling entrepreneur and the
frustrated contract farmer who has received fertilizer from Cargill on the
promise that he will deliver a certain quantity of crop by a deadline or suffer
default. The truth is that, except for the very largest farm producers, these
are but different portraits of the same person. And yet, the structure of
community social standing is largely built on the first image. It is unlikely
that immigrants would engage in the risks and uncertainties without the
community standing that comes with their position.
Almost all large farmers also contract agronomists as “technical
assistance” to give them an opinion free of corporate influence, and whom
they can contact when things appear to be going poorly. Corporate
influence is hard to eliminate, however, and the number of consulting firms
that also sell farm manufactures by multinationals has skyrocketed since
1999–2000, when the crisis in exchange rates hit farmers and cattle
ranchers. Large farmers, the so-called rural entrepreneurs, receive a great
deal more instruction and extension services than less well-off farmers.
“They all receive personal attention,” sniffed the secretary of agriculture in
Sorriso with some evident irony. Obtaining technical assistance for
hundreds of small farmers rests largely on the shoulders of the three-person
staff of the family farm–oriented state extension service, who are run to the
point of despair trying to serve their truly needy clients.
The way industrial farming is actually done in Sorriso involves a number
of actors, products, machinery, and relationships between them. Bank
protocols for approved agronomic practice are one facet of the nexus
between agronomic knowledge, technology, and markets that farmers must
incorporate into their own calculus. What the USDA matter-of-factly refers
to as the “federal, university and industry-coordinated framework” within
the United States also operates in Brazil to powerfully shape the flow of
materials and credit, but farmers must contend with growing conditions in
their own fields and rely on local contacts to make the deals for credit, land
leases, sharing of machinery, and other transactions that can spell the
difference between success and failure.
Specific people, institutions, seed varieties, transportation, and
geographical and environmental specificities endow the Sorriso region with
a distinct caste. Within the region political struggles over land, zoning, and
government expenditures prevent the emergence of alternatives to large
farming. Each region has its distinct cost structure for farming, preference
for seed varieties, a network of creditors and debtors, and patron-client ties.
One way to understand the extent to which the localized structure must be
distinguished from the more general national expansion of agriculture is to
trace the kind of information-gathering that different actors and institutions
engage in. Large farmers insist on the need to talk with others in the
municipality about agronomic issues, products, and prices. While the very
biggest extend their contacts to state-wide and even national farm
associations, most talk with their neighbors, often during events sponsored
in the municipal center by agricultural companies putting on product
demonstrations. Crop trial demonstrations, called “field days,” also draw
farmers eager for information and socializing. The town’s main social club,
“Recordando os Pagos” (“Remembering the Pagos”–Pagos being located in
the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul), occupies a choice bit of real estate
within the municipal center. Within the club, the paramount social status of
large farmers is acknowledged in many ways, including the reference in the
name to southern farming communities. Agribusiness corporations sponsor
lavish dinners and entertainment that become a focus of town social life. It
is not unusual that commercial claims of the sponsors made during a
prefestivity presentation are reported in news sections of newspapers while
the style choices of prominent families and their table companions are
reported on the society page.
Some information is collected outside of festive sales occasions.
Companies constantly call farmers’ cell phones to enquire on recent
purchases or to gauge intentions for future ones. Salesmen for
multinationals such as Bayer assiduously ply sales routes in order to meet
sales quotas, and farmers complain about the number of commercial
representatives they must receive. Canons of hospitality as well as
anticipation of unforeseen future eventualities, when specific farm products
or credit might be needed, tend to ensure that salespeople are extended at
least cursory entrance. Seed companies that wish to sell varieties on the
Sorriso market establish local experimental facilities (e.g. South American
Business Information 2003). There is also intensive monitoring of the price
of soybeans on the Chicago commodities market as well as the exchange
rate between the Brazilian real and the U.S. dollar. The constant flow of
communication creates a sense of connectedness—even the most abject
shoeshine boy is likely to know the price of a bushel of soybeans on the
Chicago board of trade. It also creates a great distance from other kinds of
industry; news and politics (even among local opposition parties) are
largely limited to elaborations of the theme of how to manage the progress
and wealth brought by industrial agriculture.
While the export crops grown in Sorriso form part of a global commodity
chain, a local structure of production and exchange undergirds farmers’
practice. Locally, farmers are constrained by the complex of chemicals and
machines they are forced to acquire and the farm products they are forced to
produce as a condition of acquisition. These include a battery of pesticides,
fungicides, herbicides, lime, fertilizer, seeds, and machinery. Once they are
integrated into the system, further resources for farming depend on criteria
determined by financial institutions and multinational companies. For
example, the Bank of Brazil classifies farmers into categories “a,” “b,” and
“c,” requiring that the amount of production, productivity per area, area
planted, types of machinery, year of purchase, and state of conservation,
along with storage and trucks for hauling are quantified into formulas to
calculate the amount of credit to which they are entitled. Farms of smaller
size with fewer machines and lower productivity are eligible for less credit.
While the technical requirements for farming change from year to year,
new knowledge and material is disseminated quickly. A comparison of
variable and fixed costs of soybean cultivation in Sorriso in 2003 and 2005
(Richetti, Staut, and Gomez 2005) shows an increase of $151.65 (from
US$444.75 to US$596.40 per hectare), about $129 of which can be
attributable to rising costs of inputs. The expected increase in production
was a mere two 60 kg sacks. As of this writing in January 2006, a sack of
soybeans fetched around $12.60 and the price of soybeans was down
substantially from the previous year. The decline of the dollar vis-à-vis
Brazilian currency has also hit farmers hard, since their exports become
worth less while they pay more for imported farm inputs. Hence the
squeezing of farm profits make farmers more vulnerable to default. As of
December 2005, only about three-quarters of Bank of Brazil credits targeted
for rural production in Mato Grosso from the previous growing season had
been repaid. Farmers await the outcome of negotiations to extend
repayments and establish terms for loans made during the last two years
(Anonymous 2006).
Given the unstable price of money in terms of exchange rates, the
fluctuating costs of transport and imported products, and the transaction
costs of acquiring money credit, soybeans have themselves become a
medium of exchange. Farmers attempt to buffer themselves from
fluctuating prices while contributing to the preservation of the regional
structure of exchange that underwrites the farm enterprise. At their
discretion, grain traders will use purchase contracts, whereby they advance
inputs such as fertilizer in return for delivery of a specified number of
soybean sacks at harvest time, thus also avoiding money in their transaction
with farmers. Vouchers for soy stored in commercial silos may be tendered
by car and farm machinery dealerships or consulting firms. However much
large soy farmers are lauded as pioneers and entrepreneurs, it is clear that
the reliance on contract farming severely constrains their independent
decision-making regarding on-farm operations. A handful of the largest
farmers have escaped from this box. They are large enough so that they may
diversify their activities and holdings. They may speculate with currency,
make greater use of future markets to cushion themselves from risk of
market volatility, and they become suppliers of farm inputs and buyers of
production from smaller farmers. They represent sources of fresh credit for
strapped farmers, who, of course, also worry about foreclosure and being
gobbled up by bigger landowners. Municipal governments and trade
associations present this select group as the public face of the agricultural
boom, and their names appear in national and international news stories,
projecting a distinctly optimistic coloring to the image of farming.
From the air, satellite photos show soybean cultivation as a juggernaut
advancing inexorably across the savannas into increasingly dense tropical
forest. However, for many a “smaller” farmer within the juggernaut, some
of whose holdings number hundreds of hectares, the fear of being
smothered and cast aside is never far from mind. His very social standing as
a “producer” celebrated within the community may well be his downfall
because producers cannot set the conditions for their own production.

Conclusion
Soybeans, cattle, and cotton for sale around the world have replaced
millions of hectares of savanna vegetation in Brazil’s hinterlands. The
savannas have been utterly and relentlessly transformed and the new
patterns of production, ecology, and settlement have laid a template for
future development. Transfixed by the bottom line in its current account,
the Brazilian federal government seems largely oblivious to the social and
ecological consequences that will, in turn, condition possible future
development. Despite President Lula’s one-time lip service to the slogan
“another world is possible,” Brazil’s current government has failed to
realize how the system of production and ecology implanted today
undercuts any shift toward greater equality of land distribution, more
democratic local institutions, and more diversified use of rural areas to
attend to multiple uses of the local population, including better nutrition and
the development of various forms of employment.
Today, the explosive growth of soybean cultivation on the frontier rests
on a “technological package” of chemicals, mechanized agriculture,
accounting procedures, massive inequality of land holdings, and an
oligopoly of large grain and oilseed traders. The intensification of their
interdependence is an important part of the dynamic of regional trends. The
current structure of exchange operates as a goad to expansion precisely
because farming is so volatile. Farmers face a rising treadmill of investment
and production costs necessary to achieve continually higher levels of
productivity. Expansion of cultivated areas, even beyond legal limits,
comprises a hedge against lower profit margins, and it is also one of the few
ways that on-farm profits can be reinvested. Alternative farming practices
or industries are not allowed to compete with the tyranny of industrial
soybeans and cotton. Farmers attempt to protect themselves against
fluctuating prices and currencies by drawing local merchants into using
soybean currency. To maintain an export orientation, regional power
brokers must solidify a coherent structure of production that brooks no
alternatives and yet remains viable ecologically. They must navigate
between the Scylla of economic marginalization and the Charybdis of
ecological breakdown. The accumulation of profits by large agribusiness
commodity traders and chemical and seed purveyors rests on the current
spur to expansion based on farmers’ constraint of choice. The existing
structure of exchange channels choices via the inertia of the debt not yet
paid, the crop not yet harvested, and the growing need for new inputs just to
break even. Maintenance of the coherence of the structure of production
devoted to soybeans hinges on the ability of the government and exporters
to shape farmers’ behavior. Not many farmers are involved, but it is the size
of properties rather than the number of farmers that ultimately counts.
Brazil’s agricultural miracle rests on a handful of large farmers. The math is
inexorable: in Sorriso five hundred or so farmers churn out 2 percent of
Brazil’s soybean production, and although average farm sizes are smaller in
southern states, there are millions of poor rural folk who are either forced
from the countryside or languish with little hope. Even those farmers able to
play the game are under the gun, for the community holds no place for a
failed farmer, and the hometown heroes must continue to indebt themselves
to pump out soybeans destined for overseas, or lose what community
standing they currently enjoy.

Note
Thanks to Antônio João Castrillon, Loise Nunes Velasco, George Kamides,
João dal Poz, José dos Reis, Ana Tibaldi Reis, Odila Bortoncello, Renaldo
Loffi, José Augusto Ascoli, and GERA (Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisas do
Pantanal, Amazônia e Cerrado) of the Federal University of Mato Grosso
for making fieldwork in Sorriso possible. Thanks also to Donald Sawyer for
helpful comments during fieldwork as well as to the ever insightful Marcio
Silva.

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19

Scale and Dependency in World-Systems:

Local Societies in Convergent Evolution
JOSEPH A. TAINTER

FEW MATTERS SEEM MORE urgent today than sustainability and

resiliency in social and biophysical systems. One factor in addressing these
issues is the change in scale that occurs when local people become
embedded in larger systems at the national and international levels. Today
we call this process “globalization,” but that term merely denotes the most
recent phase of the world-system development of the past five centuries.
World-system development and globalization have social and
environmental repercussions that may last centuries. They produce
consequences so far dispersed that the connection of cause and effect may
be difficult to perceive.
There is a disjuncture in world-systems between the flow of materials
and the flow of information. While a periphery incorporated into a larger
economy will experience a change in the scale of its economic and political
relations, the information pool remains substantially local. This disjuncture
of scale undermines the sustainability of local populations. Not only do
such people lose autonomy, they may not know that they have done so. As
local autonomy disappears, dependency and environmental deterioration
follow.
 The consequences of this disjuncture became apparent when I read
Sander van der Leeuw’s (1998; van der Leeuw et al. 2000) and Sarah
Green’s (Green et al. 1998) descriptions of historical changes in Epirus in
the northwest of Greece. In both structure and process, and even in several
details, they could have been describing changes with which I was familiar
in my home state of New Mexico (Tainter 1999). How could such distant
places have experienced changes so similar that their descriptions are
almost interchangeable? The answer lies in the disjuncture in scaling of
economic, political, and informational relations in world-systems. This
disjuncture has implications for how the relationship between global and
local processes may be addressed in the future.

Studies in Transformation and Dependency

Epirus
Epirus is one of the most remote parts of Europe (map 19.1). Epirote
villages were formerly isolated and closed, most corporate activities were
consensual, and knowledge was homogeneous. There were few social,
economic, or technical differences among people. As one informant
described communities, “Everyone knows everything about everybody
else” (Green 1995:271). Relations between villages, and between clusters of
villages, were based on proximity, kinship, intermarriage, participation in
festivals, and trade (Green 1995:309). The system of land use had long been
in operation. People knew the area intimately, and their subsistence
practices were suitable to the environment and apparently sustainable (van
der Leeuw 1998:57; van der Leeuw et al. 2000:375).
 Map 19.1. Epirus, northwest Greece (after Green 1995:176)

The introduction of roads after World War II initiated many changes (van
der Leeuw 1998:57–58; van der Leeuw et al. 2000:375–376). The
information pool began to differentiate. Villages acquired headmen, who
now served as intermediaries with the outside world. Wage-earning brought
social and economic differentiation. Cash became increasingly important,
and people were stimulated to acquire material goods. There were now
conflicts between personal and social interests. No longer did everyone
know everything about everybody else.
In the aftermath of the civil war of 1946–1949, upland cereal cultivation
was abandoned. Most vineyards were also abandoned, while those
remaining succumbed to blight. When local gardens were abandoned, the
fields were turned to pasture, and animal husbandry became dominant
(Green 1997b:38; Green et al. 1999:134). Workers emigrated from the
region during the 1960s, moving to industrial locations. From the late 1960s
through the late 1970s many projects were implemented to develop Epirus.
These included drainage, land redistribution to facilitate mechanized
farming, electricity, paved roads, and irrigation (Green et al. 1999:30).
Greece became a full member of the European Union (EU) in 1981, and
thereafter the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy affected the
region. Development and improvement programs aimed at economically
depressed regions brought some people to the plains, while the mountains
and other marginal areas continued to lose population. Today most people
live in towns or villages in the agricultural plains, or along major roads
(Green 1997b:36–39; Green et al. 1998:341–343; Green et al. 1999:30, 50–
53).
The transhumant pastoralist economy had maintained mountain
vegetation as a combination of woodlands and open meadows. Use of wood
for fuel and building, continual cropping by herbivores, and intentional
burning kept trees from invading areas dominated by grass. With the
decline in pastoralism and prohibition of burning (see below), the mountain
vegetation changed rapidly. Many areas have become overgrown with a
scrub vegetation consisting of oak, bramble, and small trees. The locations
of small hill fields are becoming harder to discern. Areas once used for
firewood are beginning to recover. In former pastures there has been rapid
growth of dense, woody vegetation. The higher elevations are, as a result,
now largely closed off to herbivores. Epirotes consider this a degradation of
their landscape (Green et al. 1999:59; van der Leeuw 1998:57–58; van der
Leeuw et al. 2000:375–376).
Today, many young Epirotes emigrate to urban areas for work. Villages
and towns in mountainous regions now have small, aging populations. The
older people live substantially on government pensions (Green et al.
1999:30, 37). Still, these villages are considered home to the dispersed
population. Many who work elsewhere maintain a house in such villages, to
which they go during festivals and holidays, or for retirement. Some of
these returnees cultivate vegetable gardens, using the land in a manner that
Green characterizes as “suburban” (Green et al. 1999:60).
 Greece’s economic status made it a candidate for EU development
projects. One EU program concerns the preservation and development of
“marginal” areas (Green 1997b:104). The EU approach has been to “focus
on protecting, conserving or preserving what was increasingly seen as a
‘natural wilderness’ containing ‘traditional’ village settlements” (Green et
al. 1999:49). The European Union has sought to develop the cultural
heritage of the more remote, mountainous areas by emphasizing
ecotourism, attracting visitors to an area of “unspoiled” natural beauty.
The EU program influenced the Greek national administration. There is
now greater concern to protect the environments of remote areas. Several
national parks have been established in northern Greece, including one in
the Zagori region of Epirus. Villages within the park have been affected by
new regulations. One can no longer graze animals within the national park,
nor can one dig, drill, or build outside village limits. There are further bans
on camping or lighting fires within the forests, on swimming in the rivers,
and on clearing areas for cultivation. Houses must be built of “traditional”
materials, which are no longer freely available. Those who can afford to
build in such materials are former residents who return seasonally to the
villages with savings from urban employment (Green et al. 1998:353,
1999:111, 124).
These new restrictions generate predictable land-use conflicts between
local people and the administrators who implement national policies.
Individuals and groups who apply for grants for ecotourism exacerbate
these disputes, particularly because of current restrictions on using what
were previously common grazing or forest lands, and restrictions on
building and other activities. EU development projects have become
enmeshed in village factionalism, with some residents favoring
conservation and others preferring the development of better facilities and
services for residents (Green et al. 1999:49, 60).
Older Epirotes were unaware that the area possessed natural beauty until
told by outsiders that it does. They also did not see the landscape as an
external, objective entity, but as the place in which they live, and of which
they are a part. Now Epirus is being dialectically construed as the converse
of the urban environment. New concepts are being imposed on Epirus by
those whose experiences can be represented as urban and modern, and thus
authoritative. The EU development projects aim to maintain a place such as
Epirus in a timeless state. The environment is to have its architecture and
cultural practices frozen in an “original” traditional form, while the
landscape is to be kept, or even made, “natural” by removing the same
people and their traditional activities (Green 1997b:62). The people and the
landscape are marketed to those who travel to experience “authentic,”
indigenous places.
The European Union naturally requires that its projects be efficient and
cost-effective, and achieve the intended results. Yet on the local level, EU
projects are not about heritage tourism or protecting the environment.
Epirotes may know from the outset that a project will fail in its EU
objectives, or even be a farce. Projects typically go over budget. A
successful project from the Epirote perspective is one that involves many
people who benefit economically. Embedding projects in social and
economic relations always appears to a bureaucracy such as Brussels as
corruption (Green 1997b:81–82, 89–90).
Headmen intermediate between Epirus and the European Union, and are
sometimes considered to have suspicious motives. Appointments of
personnel bring conflict between “progressive” and “conservative” factions.
In the urban conception, culture happens in villages and during festivals,
while nature is the wilderness outside villages. To the local opponents of
EU projects, the “wilderness” that is to be preserved is seen as grazing
lands, sources of wood, and fields, even if disused and overgrown. The
removal of human activity from the landscape, in turn, diminishes cultural
heritage (Green 1997b:83–84, 91–92; Green et al. 1999:104). Urbanized
former Epirotes now consciously express an Epirote identity, but it is an
identity that arises from the influence of larger economic and political
spheres.
As local self-sufficiency declined, the region has become dependent on
the commercial economy and the government. Becoming embedded in
larger systems has meant a transformation from autonomy and self-
sufficiency to dependency and environmental deterioration.

New Mexico
Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers of New Mexico found Indians living in
settled villages. These were soon joined by Hispano farmers. The last to
arrive is the group known locally as Anglo-Americans. This discussion
emphasizes the Hispanic settlers of New Mexico, and the consequences of
their absorption into the United States.
New Mexico is an arid land of great diversity. It is characterized by high
mountains, narrow river valleys, plateaus, and deserts. Precipitation is
variable and unreliable. The growing season is short, and also highly
variable. Colonial New Mexico was one of the most distant outposts of the
Spanish empire. Supplies came by wagon train, but metal was so scarce that
plows were tipped in wood. Archaeological sites show that some colonists
experimented in making stone tools, at which they were not adept
(Chapman et al. 1977). Houses contained no furniture except that produced
locally. Books and schooling were rare. There was little money and few
firearms. Priests were in short supply, and visitors commented adversely on
the way that ceremonies were performed. As early as 1776, a visiting priest
found the language full of archaicisms and hard to understand (deBuys
1985:122). During the period of Mexican independence, from 1821 to 1846,
New Mexico was referred to as Mexico’s Siberia (deBuys 1985:306).
The economic basis of colonial New Mexico was provided by a system
of granting lands to both Pueblos and Hispanos (map 19.2). Within these
grants, individual households and fields were privately owned. If the grant
contained a suitable river valley, each settler would have a strip of land
extending linearly from the river to the acequia madre, which would be
located at the juncture between the bottomland and the adjoining hills.
These lands were divided among a farmer’s sons, so that in time Hispano
fields became renowned for their narrowness (map 19.3). Beyond the
cultivated lands lay the ejido, or commons, used for grazing or timber
cutting. Depending on terrain, there might be high mountains beyond the
common lands, which would be used as needed. Grant boundaries were
often vague, but before the American period this was rarely a problem.
Two institutions united rural New Mexico: the church and the irrigation
system. Since colonial New Mexico lacked governing institutions at the
local level, ditch associations are still often the only local government.
Villages were organized by kinship and cultural uniformity. Many villages
are isolated, gaining paved ingress only in the 1960s, and telephones and
television in the 1970s. The main mode of communication was, and is, face-
to-face contact through visits. Everyone in a community had personal
knowledge of everybody else (Harper, Cordova, and Oberg 1943; Horvath
1979; Kutsche and Van Ness 1981; Rivera 1998).
With independence, Mexico opened its borders, and American traders
descended on Santa Fe. They brought manufactured goods, the availability
of which soon began to transform New Mexico. To obtain such goods took
surplus production and cash. American traders brought knowledge of the
area back to the United States. When war broke out in 1846 between the
United States and Mexico, New Mexico quickly became part of the United
States.
Hispanic villages’ isolation and poverty shielded them initially from the
full force of the American economy. Without village schools, English
penetrated the countryside slowly. Hispanic lands, however, were
vulnerable. Land grants had to be confirmed in American courts, which
could only be accessed through expensive lawyers. At first villagers were
unaware that their lands might be in jeopardy. Soon lands started to be lost
for failure to pay taxes that the villagers did not know they owed.
Sometimes Hispanos continued to occupy these places, unaware that they
had lost ownership years before. Lawyers who were retained to establish
the claim to a grant could only be paid with part of the same land. Lands
beyond the grants that had been available for anyone’s use became public
domain, and subject to claim by anyone who would settle and farm them
(deBuys 1985:121, 177; Rothman 1989:197–198).
Map 19.2. Land grants of the middle and northern Rio Grande basin (after
Scurlock 1998:111)
 Map 19.3. Farmlands near Cordova, New Mexico, in 1943 (after Harper,
Cordova, and Oberg 1943:71)

As the land base shrank, Hispanos lost the ability to produce sufficient
food. They were pushed off large tracts of pasture. Each year pushed the
villagers toward dependency on markets for much of their food and other
necessities. Cash-crop farming increased. Men left villages for work on the
railroads or in Colorado mines. Many became dependent on contractual
sheep-raising (Harper, Cordova, and Oberg 1943:78–79; de Buys 1985:209;
Rothman 1989:201, 205).
A timber industry soon grew up, cutting either the upland forests that
were now in the public domain, or former ejido lands. Loggers cut the
timber from thousands of hectares, with no thought for regeneration. The
largest timber-cutting operation in the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains
exemplified how quickly New Mexico had become integrated into the
world economy. It was undertaken in response to the building of the
Panama Canal, which began operating in 1914. Shipping through the canal
promised to undercut the freight rates charged by the railroad. The railroad
tried to remain competitive by laying a second set of tracks. At least 16
million railroad ties were needed, and the operations to produce them
logged every suitable stick up to the tree line (deBuys 1985:226–229;
Rothman 1989).
Anglo-Americans saw vast grasslands in New Mexico, and did not
understand how fragile they were. The ranges were soon overstocked, and
when drought came in the late nineteenth century, erosion started that still
continues. The alienation of Hispanic lands and the commercial exploitation
of this fragile area caused extensive degradation. The Rio Puerco Valley,
once known as the breadbasket of New Mexico, had to be largely
abandoned when the Rio Puerco itself became deeply entrenched, making
irrigation impossible and drying the soil. As vegetation was stripped from
soil surfaces, drainages across the Southwest eroded and became
entrenched. Topsoil was washed away, and grasses could not grow as
quickly as they were grazed. The trees remaining in logged forests
produced thousands of seedlings per hectare. As the Forest Service tried to
prevent wildfires, these seedlings grew into overly dense secondary forests
that lack grass understory and are vulnerable to catastrophic fires. The
inability of grasslands to reproduce and the elimination of fire from
ecosystems meant that woodlands extended downward in elevation, into
what had once been grasslands (deBuys 1985:217–226, 231; Rothman
1989).
The Hispanic and Indian cultures, and the natural beauty of the area,
attracted artists and intellectuals. In small, communal villages they believed
that they would find the antidote to urban life. The artists and intellectuals
understood that Hispanic village culture could not be preserved without an
economic basis. By 1930 the average Hispanic farm had but 2.4 hectares
under cultivation (map 19.3). The harvest was usually committed to the
village store. Few families could subsist or pay taxes without wage labor.
The solution was that Hispanos would become artisans and craftsmen. They
would produce “traditional” arts and crafts for a burgeoning tourist market.
An idealized version of traditional architecture became the norm in Santa
Fe and elsewhere. “Traditional” festivals were created for Santa Fe and
Taos.
By the mid 1930s, 60 to 70 percent of northern New Mexicans survived
on government relief. Within a generation, people had gone from self-
sufficiency to dependency. In the Great Depression, only federal programs
prevented widespread starvation. The New Deal envisioned returning large
sections of the grants to their original owners, and restoring the fertility of
eroded lands. Some lands were restored, but farms were so small that it was
impossible for a farmer to feed the family and have some to sell. Too little
was done to increase the land base, improve irrigation systems, or record
titles to ditch systems. World War II ended these efforts (deBuys 1985:210;
Forrest 1989:11, 12, 33, 51, 54, 63–180; Rodriguez 1987:346).
Today many Hispanos either depend on government subsidies, commute
to jobs in cities, or have emigrated. They may return to the village for
weekends and holidays (Kutsche and Van Ness 1981:33). For those who
remain in the villages, or maintain close ties to them, there is perpetual
struggle. Many keep small cattle herds, which must have a permit to graze
on the Forest Service land that Hispanos still consider theirs (deBuys 1985;
Raish 2000). The Forest Service regulates access to all resources on its
lands, including the timbers needed for traditional construction. The natural
beauty and cultural heritage are marketed by urban residents to other urban
residents. The region continues to receive funds for development, but
projects become part of kin relations and local politics. Contracts are
frequently given to relatives, leading to charges of corruption.
There is conflict with a new adversary, environmentalists. This conflict
concerns the environmentalist value of using forested lands little or not at
all, and the Hispanic tradition of using forest resources as necessary.
Environmental interest groups know how to impede agencies such as the
Forest Service. The villagers, who still depend on the forests for such vital
needs as winter firewood, are reduced to asserting heritage, identity, and
traditional rights (Raish 2000).

Summary
Epirus and New Mexico show convergent histories (table 19.1). Formidable
terrain and economic marginality kept villages isolated, closed,
autonomous, and self-sufficient. The pool of information was homogeneous
and, within a village, everyone knew everything about everybody else.
Subsistence practices suited local conditions and appear to have been
sustainable over the long run. Environments were maintained to support the
subsistence system.
New Mexico’s isolation ended with the start of American commercial
penetration in the mid-nineteenth century, and that of Epirus with the end of
Turkish rule and the building of roads in the twentieth century. In both
areas, the influx of manufactured goods caused self-sufficiency to decline,
and cash became important.

Table 19.1. Aspects of convergent evolution in Epirus and New Mexico

1. Remote areas incorporated into world economy.

2. Villages differentiate socially, economically, and in information

pool.

3. Emigration for work.

4. Progressive and conservative factions develop.

5. Traditional subsistence practices decline.

6. Environment loses capacity to support traditional economy due to

decline in human maintenance.

7. People depend on government subsidies.

8. Traditional culture becomes difficult to sustain.

9. Upland forests controlled by national governments.

10. Traditional resource use limited or proscribed.

11. Young adults return to villages for holidays.

 12. External organizations promote preservation of landscapes and
cultural practices.

13. Culture divorced from land use and fossilized as crafts and
performances.

14. Natural beauty and cultural heritage marketed by urban residents

to other urban residents.

15. Landscapes managed to match urban conception of nature.

16. Development projects socially embedded.

17. Increasing expression of ethnic identity.

Life within villages began to differentiate. Men emigrated to find work.

People acquired new information about the larger world, and about
opportunities and ways of doing things. It was no longer possible to know
everything about everybody else. Communities bifurcated into
“progressive” and “conservative” factions. Personal and group interests
increasingly diverged.
As traditional subsistence practices declined, the biophysical
environment lost the capacity to support such practices. Fire stopped being
used to control vegetation. In Epirus, grazing was no longer employed to
keep pastures free of competing vegetation. In New Mexico, commercial
grazing reduced grasses to such a degree that woodlands encroached on
former grasslands. In both places there has been an overgrowth of woody
plants, and increased erosion.
Many people in both areas survive on government subsidies. Traditional
cultural practices have become difficult to maintain in the face of
“modernity” and without an adequate economic base. Upland forests are
controlled by national governments. There is frequent conflict between
villagers and land managers. Traditional resources are now either regulated
or proscribed. Traditional architecture is either encouraged or mandated, yet
there is no longer free access to the raw materials that it requires and many
people cannot afford to buy such materials. In both regions, émigrés return
for holidays and other special occasions, and use ancestral villages in a
manner that can be labeled “suburban.”
Outsiders have become concerned to preserve both the natural beauty and
cultural traditions of both regions. Organizations external to the villages
now promote projects to integrate economic development with preservation.
Typically this means tourism. The natural beauty and cultural heritage of
both areas are now marketed by urban residents to other urban residents.
The landscapes are to be preserved to match an urban conception of nature.
Cultural heritage is preserved and commodified, rather than lived. Divorced
from its connection to land use, heritage is to be expressed as craft products
and performances. Development projects become socially embedded in
each region, which outsiders consider corruption. Both regions are
developing explicit manifestations of ethnic identity that mobilize people
even as they reinforce stereotypes.

Convergent Evolution: Causes and Consequences

Epirus and New Mexico are separated by history, geography, and tradition.
Each was uniquely remote. Yet they display congruence in structure and
process, in form and substance, and even in such minute details as the
encroachment of woodlands on grasslands and the relationship of traditional
architecture to national land management policies.
The parallel transformations in Epirus and New Mexico arose from these
regions, becoming enmeshed in commercial systems, and controlled by
national governments that are themselves embedded within larger systems.
For places like Epirus and New Mexico, the scale of their economic and
political contexts has grown from the locality to the national government,
and to the international community. The scale of information has not kept
pace with these developments. In this regard, Epirotes and New Mexicans
are like people everywhere. Their scale of information is local. The
information that matters is that which pertains to local affairs: kin,
community, politics, economy, infrastructure, government services,
weather, sports, and the like.
In this age of globalization, the inclination to value local information
conflicts with the scale of events and processes that affect localities. There
is, for example, much concern in New Mexico about water. All sources of
water are fully allocated, and New Mexico is obliged to deliver to the
adjacent state of Texas much of what flows through the Rio Grande and the
Pecos River. In 1998 I was invited to address a conference on the future of
the Rio Grande Basin. I challenged the audience to consider the basin’s
future in the context of the distant, unseen factors that affect it (Tainter
1999). What, for example, was the connection between irrigation
agriculture in the basin and the East Asian economic crisis that was then
underway? The connection is through Intel Corporation’s chip
manufacturing plant near Albuquerque, which uses great quantities of
water. The New Mexico state engineer has required Intel to buy and retire
water rights in the basin to offset the amount of water that it uses in
manufacturing. Since urban areas need water, this means retiring farmland.
To the extent that the East Asian economic crisis might cause Intel to
reduce its output of chips, and thus to use less water, it could be possible to
perpetuate irrigation agriculture longer, as well as the cultural traditions that
are linked to it. Today, in updating this analysis, we would wish to explore
the connections among irrigation agriculture, Intel’s manufacturing output,
and the threat of a pandemic caused by the H5N1 (“bird flu”) virus. The
lesson is that unless Epirotes, New Mexicans, and other local people
become knowledgeable about the full range of factors that affect them, they
will continue to be vulnerable to distant processes, and to those who profit
from their ignorance.

Addressing the Disjuncture in Scale

A common exhortation of the environmental movement is to think globally
but act locally. The problem we encounter is that most people do not think
globally. In our history as a species there has never been selective pressure
to do so, while there has been relentless pressure to think locally of kin and
community. Globalization requires that the scale at which people
customarily think must expand. The obvious question is: How do we
change a behavior pattern that is so ingrained, and that until now has
ensured group survival?
One approach to resolving this impasse would be for world-system
theory, either alone or in conjunction with other fields of research, to
develop a body of knowledge of such fundamental importance that it would
be incorporated into educational curricula alongside other mainstream
social sciences. The purpose would be to teach children, starting at a young
age and continuing through all levels of education, to think about systems
and interconnections at all scales. It would be an attempt to make thinking
about the connection of the global to the local so ingrained that, within a
generation or two, it becomes normal and unremarkable. People would be
trained to consider global processes that affect local viability, whether a
new virus, the economy of far-off lands, or distant political upheavals.
Students would be taught to think at all scales, to be curious about things
that are distant in space and time, and to sense connections that are not
obvious. Being taught such thinking early and continuously would, one
hopes, produce generations of adults who think more broadly, and more
systemically, than those of today. As the populace comes to think in this
manner, politicians, business leaders, and managers would learn, and be
expected, to do so as well. Journalists, sensing new needs and opportunities,
would explore the connections I have discussed.
How would world-system theory (or any other area of social science)
comport itself to achieve this goal? I suggest three areas of action.
First, students forced to learn history or geography typically complain
that these fields are not pertinent to their lives. To overcome this, world-
system theory must demonstrate its relevance to local problems of well-
being. Examples of the effects of global processes on local communities,
such as those presented here, would be sought and presented. There are
many to be found (e.g. Murphy and Steward 1956).
Second, world-system theory would resist the temptation to criticize
global political and economic arrangements. It would present itself as the
value-neutral science of scale and interconnection in world affairs. World-
system theory might become part of hierarchy theory (e.g. Allen and Starr
1982; Ahl and Allen 1996), the field that explicitly addresses scale,
interconnection, and context. World-system theory would truly become a
theory of world-systems in the broadest sense.
Third, following the development of case studies showing the value of
understanding the connection of global to local processes, textbooks and
other curriculum materials would need to be developed for all educational
levels.
This proposal is, of course, not a panacea. Not all people would be
inclined to pursue global analysis, although it is still worthwhile that they
be familiar with it. Among those who are so inclined, the understandings
they develop will often not be accurate. Yet all that would be required is for
enough people to implement their training in global thinking to lead the
rest. Intermediaries would emerge who would facilitate the transmission of
global information to local communities. Books, magazines, and television
broadcasts, showing the connection between global and local, would
expand in response to an increased market. As journalists seek information
for their stories, positive feedback would reinforce the expanded scale of
thinking.

Conclusion
World-systems create a disjuncture in scaling between the flow of materials
and the flow of information. Peripheries incorporated into a world-system
typically maintain a local scale of information, even as the factors that
affect them expand to the national and international arenas. Local
communities forfeit autonomy as they lose comprehension of events and
processes that affect them. As illustrated in the cases of Epirus and New
Mexico, quite different places may be drawn down convergent trajectories
in which they lose control of their affairs.
In the age of globalization, this disjuncture in scaling must be remedied.
Globalization requires that people become cognizant of the factors that
affect them at all scales, from local to international. While this cannot be
accomplished easily or immediately, it could perhaps be accomplished in a
generation or two through systems of public education. World-system
theory, and other fields of social research, could facilitate this revolution by
offering a compelling body of cases and theory showing the fundamental
connection of local to global processes.
This proposal is utopian and perhaps unrealistic.Yet today’s globalization
demands that we attempt something like it. The only certainty is that failing
to try such a course will condemn many places to follow Epirus and New
Mexico down a bewildering slide into poverty, dependency, and
environmental deterioration.1

Notes
1 I am pleased to thank Sander van der Leeuw and Carol Raish for
providing reference materials and reviewing drafts on, respectively, Epirus
and New Mexico. I am grateful also to Bonnie Bagley for her comments on
an early draft, and Joyce Van De Water for preparing maps 19.1 through
19.3.

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20

The Ecology and the Economy: What Is

Rational?
IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN

RATIONALITY IS, MORE THAN we admit, in the eye of the beholder. It

has something to do with the optimal means to achieve a goal, any goal,
what Weber called “formal rationality.” And it has something to do with the
relative wisdom of the goal that is given priority, what Weber called
“substantive rationality” (Rationalität materiell). I think it would be useful
to approach the issue in terms of what I see as the three mental operations in
which scholars/scientists necessarily engage when dealing with any topic.
There is the intellectual task of attempting to discern what the phenomenon
is, what were its origins, what are its links with other phenomena, what has
been its trajectory, and what we may anticipate its future trajectory to be. In
the modern world, this intellectual task has been the domain in which
scholars/scientists are considered to be the specialists. It is they who
regularly study the phenomena, develop their explanations, verify them to
the extent that they can, and report their results to the wider community of
scholars/scientists, and sometimes to the general public.

But assuming this is well done, or reasonably well done, we are not through
with our mental operations. We have the necessary task of moral evaluation.
Have the results of the past trajectory of the phenomenon enabled us to
realize ends that we consider to be moral ends? Has the phenomenon been
morally progressive, regressive, or neutral? What alternatives existed in the
past that might have resulted in more substantively rational objectives?
(And if they exist, why weren’t they taken, which is an intellectual
question?) Most important of all, given the existing reality, in which
direction ought we to be heading? Proponents of value-neutral objectivity
have always insisted that this moral evaluation was outside the defined role
of the scholar/scientist. But not all of us have agreed. Gunnar Myrdal
(1958) laid great emphasis in his writings on what he called “value in social
theory” and refused to segregate this moral task from that of intellectual
analysis.1
Finally, even if we have accomplished as much as we feel we can do in
the intellectual and moral evaluation of a phenomenon, there remains, quite
clearly, the political question. In the light of our intellectual analysis, how
would it be possible in the present to move toward the achievement of our
designated moral objectives? What historical choices do we have? What
kind of long-run strategy and short-run tactics will lead us most probably in
the direction we think the world ought to move? Scholars/scientists are
constantly adjured to leave these political judgments to others—politicians,
specialists, citizens. But of course we are all citizens, and we are all in fact
specialists in something (usually something relevant). Leaving these
judgments to others means endorsing de facto what these others do, even if
we think in fact that it is in error.

The rich literature about global environmental change moves uneasily and a
bit fuzzily among these three mental operations, without always
formulating clearly the distinctions. For, while it is true that no scholarly or
scientific activity can ever segregate the intellectual, moral, and political
tasks into different spheres for different persons, it is not true that the three
conjoined tasks are identical. And it is true that, if we are unsure on which
ground we are standing, which mental operation we are pursuing at any
given moment, then we are more prone to error in judgment. So, I would
like to review what I think have been and ought to be the issues before us in
these three mental operations, when the phenomenon in which we are
interested is global environmental change.
 When we confront the intellectual issues, there is little debate that global
environmental change is a constant of the Earth’s history, indeed one that
precedes by far the existence of human beings on the planet. We also agree
that humans have constantly affected in serious ways the ecology of the
planet.2 Human actions have no doubt been motivated by efforts to survive
and flourish, and one way to read the Earth’s history is to see it as the story
of the rise to primacy in the animal world of Homo sapiens. The problem
has been that, in this rise to the top, human actions have had the
consequence of undermining the “conditions of production” in ways that
may ultimately sap the ability of humans and others to survive on this
planet.
While some environmental historians analyze this symbiotic (and in
many ways) hostile relationship of humans and the natural environment
(especially the soil, what grows on it, what is located under it) as a
continuous historical reality, others see a dramatic worsening of this
constant with the advent of capitalism as the defining system of the modern
world, what Marx discussed as the “metabolic rift,” a theme taken up in
some detail in recent years by John Bellamy Foster (2000),3 and discussed
as the “second contradiction of capitalism” by James O’Connor.4
The basic difference between a capitalist system and other kinds of
historical systems is the minimization of effective constraints on the endless
accumulation of capital, which is the defining feature of a capitalist system.
This is why capitalism may be said to have created “a new, historically
unprecedented relationship... between the economic process and nature”
(Deléage 1994:38). Under capitalism, the search for profits necessarily
presses producers to reduce their costs at the two key bioeconomic
moments, that of the extraction of raw materials and that of the elimination
of the waste of the productive process.5 The behavior that maximizes the
profits of any given producer is to pay absolutely nothing for the renewal of
natural resources and next to nothing for waste disposal. This so-called
externalization of costs puts the financial burden on everyone else, which
has historically meant that, for the most part, no one has paid. This
therefore has meant, as J. R. McNeill (2002:11) has put it, that the “most
serious overexploitation” of nature has been at precisely these two points:
“sinks for wastes” and “renewable, biological resources.”
After five hundred years of such serious abuse in our modern world-system,
we live today with an enormous “burden of the past” (Ponting 2002). And
the question that is regularly discussed is whether or not we can somehow
surmount this burden of the past. The usual concept with which we discuss
this analytical question is that of “sustainable development,” defined by the
Brundtland Commission as development that “meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their
own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development
1987:2). There is in the first place the question of whether this is still
ecologically possible. I suppose it probably is, although J. R. McNeill
(2000:357) does throw some doubt on this when he cites Machiavelli, to
open his chapter entitled “Epilogue: So What?,” in which Machiavelli talks
about ailments that in the beginning are “easy to cure and difficult to
understand” and which later are “easy to understand and difficult to cure.”
The real question however is not an ecological question but a political
one. Is sustainable development possible within the framework of a
capitalist system? I have already once expounded my view that, at the
present time, there is “no exit” within our existing historical system
(Wallerstein 1999). On the other hand, I do not believe that our historical
system is going to last that much longer, for I consider it to be in a terminal
structural crisis, a chaotic transition to some other system (or systems), a
transition that will last at most another twenty-five to fifty years. I therefore
believe that it could be possible to overcome the self-destructive patterns of
global environmental change into which the world has fallen and establish
alternative patterns. I emphasize however my firm assessment that the
outcome of this transition is inherently uncertain and unpredictable.6

Since I believe that the world-system is in a process of crisis and transition,

the moral question of the direction in which we wish to go is inescapable on
our agenda. And I observe that most persons engaged in studying global
environmental change feel as well that this is true. But what are the moral
questions? First of all, there is the question of reparations. As we know,
environmental damage may have affected all people, but it has not affected
all people equally. There are important class differentials. Even if damage is
diffuse, one can escape some of its effects with money. Even more
important, there are significant geographic differentials, which correlate
highly with the core-periphery axial division of labor. This is why
Martinez-Alier (2002:ch. 10) can speak of an “ecological debt” resulting
from both the uncompensated negative externalities of raw materials—
exporting countries and the use by wealthy states of the space of poorer
countries for such things as carbon dioxide sinks.
This is of course not some terrible accident. It was built into the structure
of the capitalist system from the beginning. Moore (2003:309) states this
well:

The “local” environmental transformations precipitated by these

[expanding] frontiers [of Europe] were not simply consequences
of European expansion; they were in equal measure constitutive
of such expansion, condition as well as consequence.
Degradation and relative exhaustion in one region after another
were followed by recurrent waves of global expansion aimed at
securing fresh supplies of land and labor, and thence to renewed
and extended cycles of unsustainable development on a world-
scale.

Ramachandra Guha (2002) discusses this same issue when he asks the
question, “How Much Should a Person Consume?” The implication in the
question is that some consume too much, which results in others consuming
too little. Guha bemoans that the issue of imbalanced consumption is too
little discussed. And asking why, he cites Carl Sauer, who attributes it to
Occidental culture, which has the “recklessness of optimism” and fails to
understand “the difference between yield and loot” (Guha 2002:50). But it
is not a question of Occidental culture but rather of capitalist culture. And
the difference between yield and loot is the difference between middle-
range profits and short-range profits. Moralizing does not help us to
respond to the moral questions.
Nor is Garrett Hardin’s “lifeboat ethics” (1998) as a response to the
critical situation either analytically possible or morally ethical. First of all, it
mistakes the fundamental issue. Were we somehow to reduce world
population miraculously by half overnight, this would not eliminate the
crisis, merely postpone the moment of systemic collapse. Furthermore, it is
clearly politically impractical. It would require massive warfare, and quite
probably wreak as much havoc on those who wished to stay in the lifeboat
as those they were trying to expel or exclude from it. As for its morality, it
is but a variant of what R. H. Tawney called “the Tadpole Philosophy”
(1952:109). Tawney is speaking of the ability of some to achieve much
within a capitalist system, as though it were some consolation for social
evils that “exceptional individuals can succeed in evading them,” and that
the noblest use of their talents “were to scramble to shore, undeterred by the
thought of drowning companions.”

Judgement about the past, however, is the least of our moral issues, and
probably the least useful to which to devote our energies. The real question
is the construction of a more morally acceptable mode of global
environmental change. I assume that change is unavoidable, but that there
exist some ways of channeling it, limiting it, making its outcome more
palatable. Here we come to the other question Martinez-Alier (1994:23) has
outlined so clearly:

The ecological critique of mainstream economics is based on the

question of unknown future agents’ preferences and their
inability to come to today’s market, and therefore the
arbitrariness of the values given at present to exhaustible
resources or to future social and environmental costs.... In sum,
the ecological critique points out that because of the temporal
dimension in material life, the economy involves allocations of
waste and diminished resources to future generations.

Here we are not discussing the relationship between the rich and the poor,
the core and the periphery, but the living and their future descendants. The
relationship of the generations, however, is larger than the issue of the
living and their descendants. Grosso modo, there are four generational
claimants to the distribution of resources at any given time: the young, the
adults, the elderly, and the unborn. Much of modern politics, not only the
politics of the environment, is concerned with this distributive question.
Take, for example, the question of health. On the assumption that there
exists a given quantum of resources to devote to health needs, what
percentage should be allocated (by whatever mode of allocation we use) to
children, adults, and the elderly? The unborn enter the picture as well when
we decide how much resources we should devote to long-term and long-
shot investments in medical research whose benefits may only be seen
twenty-five to fifty years from now, if then. Similar questions can be raised
about educational allocations. And obviously, they are central when we
discuss the bioeconomic allocations involved in ecological decisions.
There is no simple or self-evident mode of deciding the proper allocation
among the four generational claimants. In a capitalist system, the
allocations are made primarily by the adults in their own favor, which are in
fact “lifeboat ethics.” It is when we try to find an alternative moral mode of
allocation that we see the difficulties involved in substantive rationality. It is
here too that we see the wisdom in the long philosophical debates in which
premodern historical systems regularly immersed themselves, in a sense to
decide precisely such generational allocations and their morality I have no
ready-made formula to offer. But I do think we are called on to discuss such
questions publicly, openly, often, and politically, and to search collectively
for optimal allocations, while leaving open the possibility of regular
rediscussion and redivision of resources. We at present have no collective
mode of doing this.

So that brings us to the political question. Can we arrive at such a collective

mode of debating and deciding generational allocations? And if so, what
might this mode look like? Note that I have said generational allocations. I
might have said class, race, gender allocations, but I didn’t, for one reason
that seems obvious to me. As long as class, race, and gender generate sharp
inequalities in social life, there is no hope of sensible generational
allocations. So a prerequisite to generational rationality is a major reduction
in class, race, and gender inequalities, such that the inequalities that remain
are at a structurally minimal point.
This will never happen as long as we are located within a capitalist
world-system. Happily, I don’t think we shall be too much longer. I cannot
make this argument here but I have done so elsewhere (Wallerstein 1998).
We are, as I have said, in the middle of a transition, but also a transition
whose outcome is inherently uncertain. That is to say, it is quite possible
that in 2050, when capitalism is no more, we shall be living in a system that
is equally or more hierarchical and inegalitarian than the present one. But it
is also possible that we shall be living in a relatively democratic, relatively
egalitarian historical system. The outcome will be decided by the political
activity of everyone now and in the next twenty-five to fifty years. To be a
political victor will almost surely require a good analytical understanding of
the historical alternatives, as well as a sharp moral commitment to an
alternative vision.

The politics of the world today are triple: There is the conflict among the
major loci of capital accumulation (the United States, Western Europe, and
Japan/East Asia) for primacy in the next fifty years. This struggle for
hegemony is a constant of our present system, and it is now open once
again with the clear decline of the United States. Secondly, there is the
struggle between the North and the South. This is also inherent in the ever
more polarizing reality of the capitalist world-economy And finally there is
the struggle between what I shall call metaphorically the camp of Davos
and the camp of Porto Alegre (Wallerstein 2003). While the first two
struggles are no doubt terribly important and dominate the concerns of most
people who are politically active and continue a long-existing pattern of
political division, it is the third struggle that is new. It is a product of the
fact that the world-system is in structural crisis. The two camps are fighting
not over the realities of the present system but over what will replace it.
Make no mistake. The camp of Davos, even though they don’t say it and
perhaps many or even most of its members don’t realize it, is not fighting to
preserve capitalism but to replace it with something different, in which they
will maintain their privileges and authority.
The World Social Forum (WSF), whose initial meetings were in Porto
Alegre, thinks of itself as a “movement of movements.” Its governing
slogan is “another world is possible.” This is not mere sloganeering. Porto
Alegre represents a new turn in the history of antisystemic movements.
They are not seeking power within the modern world-system. They are
laboring to make sure that, in the bifurcation through which we are going,
the outcome will be that of a more democratic and egalitarian world.
The very structure of the WSF represents a rejection of the basic strategy of
the historic antisystemic movements, the so-called Old Left. The Old Left
was oriented to obtaining state power, state by state. And it believed that its
organizations had to be unified, centralized, and more or less tightly
structured. The WSF brings together movements without any central
structure, and certainly no discipline. They are movements of different
scope—local, national, regional, worldwide—and of different primary
concerns—gender, race, environment, the work place, land reform, and so
forth. These movements are adjured to listen to each other, learn from each
other, and cooperate without denouncing each other for their failures.
Furthermore, the WSF cuts seriously across the North-South divide.
The WSF has been marvelously successful in the first few years of its
existence. It has placed itself in the center of the world stage, and it has
forced the powerful to recognize that it is a force with which to be
reckoned. It has energized movements across the globe, with some new
optimism and creative impulse. However, it is now in danger. The problem
that the WSF faces is that thus far it has been a movement sticking its finger
in the dike, stopping egregious proposals put forth within the framework of
the World Trade Organization (WTO), opposing the arrogant impositions of
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), encouraging local movements in
their immediate struggles against local tyrannies. These are tasks that have
to be done. But they are negative tasks. They stop still worse from
happening.
A world movement, especially a movement of movements, cannot
survive for too long on this negative diet. They need to see alternatives in
action—short-run and middle-run, which therefore may portend a long-term
construction of a different historical system. This will not be easy. For one
thing, the very structure of the WSF limits the ability to engage in collective
decision-making of a positive program. It is as though it had to evolve
slowly from the base. And, while not organizationally impossible, it is
certainly not the most rapid path.
We have been talking about rationality. The WSF is not formally rational
in its structure. But its structure reflects the kind of substantive rationality it
hopes to promote. Global environmental change? It will go on, of course.
Substantively rational decisions about global environmental change? This is
a political question. And environmental movements will get essentially
nowhere in the next twenty-five to fifty years if they cannot find a
symbiotic relationship with all the other kinds of antisystemic movements.
It is not a question of merging into one big pot, but of creating a family of
movements whose underlying affectionate ties will balance out the
inevitable differences of emphases and priorities. It is not a question of
saying that everyone is right in promoting their “local” priorities. It is a
question of earnest discussion about the pluses and minuses of these
priorities.
Finally, a word should be said about the camp of Davos. It is not at all a
unified, homogeneous camp. It is divided between the intelligent minority
who have normally controlled things and the larger groups of persons with
narrower vision and more aggressive tactics. The latter want to smash the
camp of Porto Alegre. The former wish to edulcorate it, coopt it, and adapt
its objectives to their needs. They come to seduce the camp of Porto Alegre.
But in the end, the world they wish to construct will still be deeply
inegalitarian and undemocratic.
The intelligent minority of the powerful can be awfully persuasive,
combining sensible argument with apparently large concessions, and a new
rhetoric. They also of course have money and guns. The camp of Porto
Alegre can work with them to stem the radical right from their most
immediate and most destructive impulses. But the camp of Porto Alegre
cannot really work with what I am calling the intelligent minority of the
powerful in constructing a new system, not if they want this system to be
substantively rational.
So we have to tread a difficult political line. This requires not only moral
commitment but intellectual acuity. The recent history of environmental
movements illustrates all the political pitfalls that we face.

Notes
1 See my discussion of Myrdal’s views (Wallerstein 2001).

2 See the brief, but clear, discussion of historically early ecological

transformations in J. R. McNeill and W H. McNeill (2003:ch. 1–2).

3 Foster (2000:156) cites Marx (Capital, vol. 1, 637–638):

 All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not
only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil. . . .
Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the technique
and degree of combination of the social process of production
by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all
wealth—the soil and the worker.

4 The basic cause of the second contradiction is capitalism’s economically

self-destructive appropriation and use of labor power, urban infrastructure
and space, and external nature or environment—“self-destructive” because
the costs of health and education, urban transport, and home and
commercial rents, as well as the costs of extracting the elements of capital
from nature, will rise when private costs are turned into “social costs.”
(O‘Connor 1988:177)

5 It is not that there are zero constraints. Richard Grove (1995) makes the
case that colonial governments often enacted environmentalist regulations.
(Indeed, he credits them with being the originators of the environmental
movement.) He is no doubt right about their role, but this does not
necessarily negate what I am arguing. States have frequently represented
the middle-range interest of capital accumulation against the typically short-
range view of most individual entrepreneurs.

6 I have expounded all this elsewhere (Wallerstein 1998). See also

Prigogine (1996).

References
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U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
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Hardin, G. 1998. Lifeboat ethics. In The environmental ethics and policy
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Martinez-Alier, J. 1994. Ecological economics and ecosocialism. In Is
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————. 2002. The environmentalism of the poor: A study of ecological
conflicts and valuation. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.
McNeill, J. R. 2000. Something new under the sun: An environmental
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Index

accumulative strategies: disarticulated and ecological conflicts and global expansion and landesque
capital livestock-based. See also capitalism
Achagua tribe
Adams, Henry
Aedes aegypti
Africa, landesque capital in
African coastal trade: before 1850, and Kamba peoples and Mijikenda peoples political
transformation of socioenvironmental effects of
agribusiness, Brazilian: and agronomists: corporate control of: and economic planning and land
ownership landscape changes caused by and machine image and regional politics and soybean
cultivation
agricultural chemistry
agricultural surpluses: Kamba trade in in Venezuelan Llanos
agronomists
air pollution: from European mining in Imperial Rome at U.S.-Mexico border
Alliance for Progress
aluminum
Amazonia, landesque capital in
American Revolution
anchovies
Andes: landesque capital in mining in
aniline dyes
anthropogenic soils: in Amazonia as landesque capital
Argentina
arsenic exposure
Asia, landesque capital in
asymmetric exchange. See unequal exchange
Auerbach, Felix
Augustus Caesar
Austrian Succession, War of
Ayres, Robert
Aztec Empire

bacon
Bairoch, Paul
balance of trade: and ecologically unequal exchange and pollution-intensive products (see
polluting sectors)
Ballod-Atlanticus, Karl
Baltic timber trade
Bantu speakers
barley
battery recycling
Bayliss-Smith, Tim
beads: African trade in in Venezuelan Llanos
beer: branding of as ration item
Bernal, J. D.
big-men
binge economies
biodiversity loss: and economics and European mining and extinction in Imperial Rome
pervasiveness of at U.S.-Mexico border
birds: feathers of as preciosity
biscuits: luxury ship’s
Black Death
black market
Blaut, Jim
Bogdanov, A.
Bolivar, Simon
Border Environmental Cooperation Commission
borders. See also U.S.-Mexico border
Boussingault, Jean Baptiste
branding, product
Braudel, Fernand
Brazilian agribusiness. See agribusiness, Brazilian
Brazil nuts
Brookfield, Harold
Bukharin, N. I.
bulk trade
Bunker, Stephen G.
Burawoy, Michael
burning of land: in China in Epirus. See also slash-and-burn agriculture

cacao
calico
capitalism: and European expansion European transition to and externalization of costs and
extractive industries and generational allocations and labor theory of value and large-scale
mining second contradiction of and social Darwinism terminal crisis of and unequal exchange
and world-systems analysis
Capoche, Luis
caravan trade
carbon dioxide emissions: and ecological debt and ecological footprint uneven distribution of
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique
Cargill Foundation
Carnot, Sadi
carrying capacity: Marxists on vs. landesque capital
cash crops
cassava
Castellanos, Juan de
cattle: in east Africa in Imperial Rome in Venezuelan Llanos
cedars
cerrado, clearing of
Cey, Galeotto
Charles V of Spain
Charles X Gustavus
Chavez, Leo
cheese
Chen Yuanlong
Chicago commodities market
chicle
China. See Lingnan
chinchona
Chinese peoples, migrations of
Chinese Repository, The
chocolate
churches: in colonial New Mexico in Sorriso
city-building
city-hinterland relations
civets
class structure, Roman
Claudius
Clausius, Rudolf
clay
clearance cairn fields
cloth. See textiles
coal: and Industrial Revolution and metals
coca
cocoa
coconut palms
coffee: aboriginal peoples and in Brazil as commodity frontier and deforestation environmental
impact of cultivating as ration item transition to staple from Venezuelan Llanos
Collins, Randall
colonialism: and abandonment of landesque capital and ecologically unequal exchange
colonias
Columella
commercial crops
commodity frontiers: changes in and ecologically unequal exchange sugar and world-system-Earth
system integration
common-field agriculture
complex ecosystems
conscription, labor: in Andes in Venezuelan Llanos
conscription, military: in Roman Empire in Swedish Empire
conservation of energy
consilience
construction materials: sand and gravel stones
consumption, imbalanced
copal
copper: postmedieval mining boom in Scandinavia
core-periphery hierarchies: and ecologically unequal exchange and political boundaries and
uneven development vs. kin-ordered societies
cores
Corliss, Donovan
cotton: African trade in British imports of British manufactures from as commodity frontier and
environmental degradation for extractivists labor requirements in Lingnan as staple words for
types of
cowboys
crab fishing
crew culture
crocodiles
Cromwell, Oliver
Cuba
cultural constructs
cultural heritage: in Epirus in New Mexico
cultural idiosyncrasies
Cuvier, George

Darwin, Charles
Darwinism, social
Davos, camp of
debt, ecological
decurions
deer
deforestation: in Imperial Rome in Kenya in Lingnan for metallurgy and non-timber commodity
frontiers for plantations in Potosi since postglacial times
dematerialization. See also footprint/degradation paradox
Deng Bi’nan
dengue fever
Denmark
dependency: in Epirus in New Mexico theory of
despotism, Oriental
Dessalines, Jean-Jacques
determinism, environmental: and irrigation systems and materialism and siege hypothesis
diet, globalization of: luxuries myths about staples
diffusion of landesque capital
Digo peoples
Dingler, Jules
Diocletian
dissipative structures
diversification, productive
Dodos
donkeys
Drahomanov, Mikhail
drainage canals
drugs, illicit
Duruma peoples

Earth system–world–system integration: and commodity frontiers and deforestation difficulties of

recursivity of
ecological distribution conflicts
ecological economics
ecologically unequal exchange: and core-periphery hierarchies and ecological trade balances and
input-output analysis overview and physical trade balances social construction of and social
metabolism and world-systems analysis. See also polluting sectors
economics: conventional ecological
Economy and Society (Weber)
ecosystems, simple and complex
ecotourism: in Epirus in New Mexico
Edict on Prices
eggs
Egypt
El Cedral
elephants: distribution of extirpation of hunting of. See also ivory trade
embodied labor
embodied land
Emery (Lieutenant)
empires, origins of
encephalitis, Japanese
energetics: agricultural and ecologically unequal exchange and extractive decline modern studies
of and Naturalrechnung social. See also environmental load displacement; unequal exchange
energy: conservation of negative
Engels, Friedrich: on energetics on irrigation on social metabolism
entropy. See also environmental load displacement; unequal exchange
environmental activists: in Brazil in New Mexico at U.S.-Mexico border
environmental change, as constant
environmental justice
environmental load displacement: and deforestation as entropic cost extraction and production and
extractive decline and footprint/degradation paradox in nineteenth-century Britain pervasiveness
of and political ecology and shipping industry and theories of value. See also footprint,
ecological
environmental standards: absence of, in Imperial Rome by colonial governments: and pollution
haven hypothesis and social efficiency on U.S.-Mexico border
epidemics: and expeditionary warfare and revolutions and sanitary conditions typhus in
Venezuelan Llanos. See also malaria; plague; yellow fever
Epirus
equites
Essay on Population (Malthus)
ethics. See moral analysis
ethnic identity. See also cultural heritage
European crisis
European expansion
European Union
exergy. See also unequal exchange
external arenas
extinction. See also wildlife extirpation
extractive economies: of affluent countries and capitalism and city-hinterland relations decline of
distance from production environmental effects gold mining non-diversity of exports overview
and subsistence payments transition to production and uneven development view of nature

famine
feasts: and binge economies in east Africa at El Cedral
feathers: as commodity frontier of herons of macaws
Fenzel, G.
fertilizer: guano as as landesque capital Liebig on Marx on Podolinsky on
feudalism: breakdown of and industrial expansion logging as adjunct to
fictitious commodification of labor
Figueroa, Brito
firewood: in Epirus in Lingnan for metallurgy in Muslim world in New Mexico strategic
importance of
fish: anchovies as commodity frontier herring North America as source of preserved salmon
sardines
Fisher, William
fisheries: and European mining as extractive industry in Lingnan
flax
flooding
flour
fodder: Brazilian exports of for pigs
food shortages: among Mijikenda peoples in Brazil in Imperial Rome in Sweden
footprint, ecological: of different nations and export flows origin of concept quantification of (see
also weighted export flows); vs. environmental degradation
forced labor. See conscription, labor
forestry
forests, enclosure of
fossil fuels: British trade in European Union imports of Norwegian exports of and unequal
exchange. See also coal; petroleum
Foster, John Bellamy
fruit crops
fuel: cost of in Lingnan. See also firewood; fossil fuels
Fuggers
furs: from Brazil as commodity frontier and ecologically unequal exchange (as preciosity) in
Imperial Rome North American trade in
future generations

game animals
garbage. See also sewage systems
Gassón, Rafael
Geddes, Patrick
generational allocations
Géochimie, La (Vernadsky)
geopolitical theory
ghost acreages
Gikuyu peoples
Giljum, Stefan
Giriama peoples
goats
gold: America as source of from Brazil as commodity frontier and ecologically unequal exchange
and extractive economies and productive industrialization
Goldman, Emma
Gourou, Pierre
grain: price of production of subsidies of. See also wheat
Great Learning, The
Green, Sarah
Guahibo tribe
guano
Guerra Federal
Guha, Ramachandra
Guillaume, James
Gustavus Adolphus

habitat loss: in Brazil of elephants of tigers at U.S.-Mexico border

Hadrian
Haiti
Håkansson, Thomas
Hall, Charles
Hanseatic League
Hardin, Garrett
Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS)
hatos (cattle ranches)
Hayek, F. A. von
Heckscher-Ohlin theory
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
hemp production: in Lingnan soil and labor demands of
heron feathers
herring
Heyman, Josiah
highway construction
honestiores
Hornborg, Alf
horses
Hughes, J. Donald
humiliores
Hunt, Sterry
hunting

immigration law, U.S.

import-export ratios
improvement, landesque capital as
Inca Empire
indentured servitude
India: population of trade with Imperial Rome
indigo: in Lingnan in world-system model
industrial ecology
Industrial Revolution: and coal industry and colonialism and unequal exchange
inflation
information, scaling of: disjunctures in in Epirus in New Mexico overview
input-output analysis: for Denmark formula for overview
intermediate zone
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
iron: as commodity frontier east African export of Latin American exports of postmedieval mining
boom Russian exports of and Swedish Empire
irrigation systems: abandonment of chronology of and environmental determinism and Kamba
peoples as landesque capital on U.S.-Mexico border in Venezuelan Llanos
isinglass
ivory trade: in China ecological effects of and ecologically unequal exchange and Kamba peoples
political transformation of and Rabai in world-system model
Jamaica
Jenkins’ Ear, War of
jewels
Johnson, Samuel
Joly, John
Jorgenson, Andrew
Joule, James Prescott
Juvenal

Kaldor-Hicks principle
Kamba peoples: caravan trade of marginalization of social organization of
kaozheng scholarship
Kaya villages
kin-ordered societies: Kamba peoples and resource control
Kneese, Allen
Knowles, Charles
Kreis/auf des Lebens

labor theory of value

labouresque capital
Lactantius
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste
land clearance. See deforestation
landesque capital: defined devaluation of geographical distribution of historiography of
pervasiveness of and political organization reviving
land registers
latifundia
La Tigra
Leach, Edmund
lead exposure
League of Augsburg, War of the
leather
Leontief, Wassily
Lesseps, Ferdinand de
Liebig, Justus von
lifeboat ethics
Ling Daxie
Lingnan: agriculture in deforestation in maps of original forest cover in peoples of
Lingqu Canal
Little Ice Age
livestock: effect on new ecosystems plowing with. See also cattle; goats; oxen; pigs; sheep
Ilaneros
Llanos, Venezuelan: and feather industry geography of prehispanic land use Spanish colonization
of
lobster fishing
logging
Louis Napoleon
Louis XIV
L’Ouverture, Toussaint
Lucius Panius Secundus
Lula da Silva, Luis Ignácio
luxury foods
luxury goods. See preciosities
Lyell, Charles

Maasai peoples
macaws
Mach, Ernst
Machiavelli, Niccolo
machine: global economy as humanity as
Maggi group
mahogany
maize
malaria: in Caribbean early descriptions of early understandings of modern death rate from and
soil erosion
Mali-Songhai Empire
malnutrition: in Andes in Europe in Sweden
Malthus, Thomas: and economic stagnation and environmental history influence on Darwin Marx
on Podolinsky on
manatees
manorial accounts
manure
maquiladoras
Marcus Aurelius
Martinez-Alier, Joan
Marx, Karl: and agricultural energetics and biophysical exploitation on energetics on irrigation
labor theory of value land-capital concept of on metabolic rift owl of Minerva on social
metabolism on soil fertility
material flow analysis (MFA). See also physical trade flows
materialism
ato Grosso: agronomists in corporate influence in economic planning in land ownership in and
Maggi group regional politics in soybean cultivation in
McNeill, John
measles
meats, luxury
mechanized agriculture
medicines: for British sailors Mexican border sales of raw materials for
Meiling Pass
mercury
Mesoamerica, landesque capital in
metabolic rift
metabolism, social
MFA (material flow analysis). See also physical trade flows
mice
Mijikenda peoples: culture of marginalization of
military industry
milk
millet
Ming dynasty
mining: in Brazil in central Europe in Colorado and dependence on extractive wages and
economies of scale in Imperial Rome in New World and productive industrialization. See also
 silver
Mintz, Sidney
missions, Spanish
mita
modernization theories
Moleschott, Jacob
Mongols
monkeys
Moore, Jason
moral analysis: defined and future of world-system
Morey, Nancy
Morey, Robert
Morillo, Pablo
mosquitoes
Mughal Empire
mulberry trees
mules
Mumford, Lewis
Munzer, Thomas
Muradian, Roldan
Muslim world
muslin
Myrdal, Janken

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

Napoleonic Wars
narodnik movement
National Agrarian Reform Institute (INCRA)
nation-states, as units of analysis
natural capital depletion taxes
Naturalrechnung
natural values
naval stores
Nelson, Horatio
Nerva
Neurath, Otto
Nevins, Joseph
New Deal
New Granada
New Mexico
New Spain
nickel
Nitz, Hans-Jürgen
noise pollution
nonmechanized agriculture
North America: food staple exports from landesque capital in timber trade in
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
North-South divide
nuclear energy

oatmeal
O’Connor, James
oils. See also olive oil
Old Left
olive oil: in Imperial Rome as ration item
Oman
O’Neill, John
On the Origin of Species (Darwin)
opium
osteological data: from Rome from Sweden
Ostwald, Wilhelm
Ottoman Empire
outlaws. See also pirates; poachers
oxen
oysters

palm trees. See also coconut palms

palm wine
parrots
pastoralism
Pearl River Delta. See Lingnan
pearls
Peasants’ War, German
pendants
Pendleton, Robert
pepper
per capita consumption. See footprint, ecological
peripheries: defined external arenas as and market prices relative poverty of shifting locations of
sociometabolic significance of
Perspective on Scientific and Technological Origins (Chen)
pest control
Peterson, John
petroleum: British trade in and colonialism and Latin American physical trade balance and
national interests offshore extraction of as strategic resource substitutes for U.S. imports of in
Venezuela
Philip II of Spain
phosphates
PH (pollution haven) hypothesis
physical trade balance (PTB)
physical trade flows: and EU polluting sectors and pollution haven hypothesis and worldwide
polluting sector exports
Physiocrats
pigs: feed for in Imperial Rome. See also bacon; pork
pirates
Pizarro, Francisco
plaggen
plague: in Denmark in Imperial Rome and Scandinavian Union
plantations: ecological effects of and economies of scale social effects of
Pliny the Elder
plowing, livestock
poachers
Pocock, George
Podolinsky, Serhii
political analysis: defined and terminal crisis of capitalism
political ecology. See also ecologically unequal exchange
politics, environmental
polluting sectors: data on trade patterns discussion of trade patterns pollution haven hypothesis and
pollution haven hypothesis social construction of on U.S.-Mexico border
pollution: and ecologically unequal exchange from European mining in Imperial Rome. See also
air pollution; water pollution
pollution haven (PH) hypothesis
Pombo, O. Alberto
Popper-Lynkeus, Josef
population concentrations
population decrease: in Imperial Rome in Lingnan and Swedish wars
population increase: as basis for conscription in Imperial Rome in Lingnan in postmedieval Europe
and rise of European capitalism
porcelain
pork
Porto Alegre, camp of
potash
Potosi
Prado, Juan de
preciosities: Chinese export of and ecologically unequal exchange and external arena in Imperial
Rome luxury foods as transition to staples from Venezuelan Llanos in world-system model
predators
prestige goods. See preciosities
price controls
Prigogine, Ilya
productive economies
proletariat
PTB (physical trade balance)

qanats
Qin dynasty
Qing dynasty
Qu Dajun
Quesnay, François

Rabai peoples
railways
rainfall
raised-field agriculture
Raleigh, Walter
rationality, substantive
rations: luxuries staples
red-light districts. See sex industry
reducciones
reforestation: in east Africa and elephant hunting in Lingnan in Nuremberg in Venezuelan Llanos
relay cities
religious wars
rent theory
reparations
revolts, agrarian
rice: in Brazil in China as commodity frontier
Rice, James
rich trade. See preciosities
Riga wainscot
Ritter, Karl
river transportation
Robin, Paul
rodents
Roman Empire: agricultural surpluses in army rations in economic history of.; environmental
awareness in environmental effects of social structure and Swedish Empire timber trade in
Ross, J.
rubber: from Brazil and deforestation and plantation system
rucksacks, ecological
rum: and aboriginal peoples North America as source of as ration item
rye

Safarid Persia
Sahlins, Marshall
sailors’ rations
Saint-Simon, C. H.
salinization
salmon
salt
salt meat
saltpeter
sandalwood
sand and gravel
sand flats
sardines
sarsaparilla
Sauer, Carl
savannas, clearing of
sawmills
saws
scale, dynamics of
Scandinavian Union
Schiavone, Aldo
Schmidt, Alfred
science: and consilience models of
secret societies
self-protecting societies
semi-periphery
Sen, Amartya
senators, Roman
Septimius Severus
sequential overexploitation. See also extractive economies
serfdom
Seven Years’ War
sewage systems: in Imperial Rome on U.S.-Mexico border
sex industry: and extractive economies in Mexican border towns
sheep: and Bantu peoples in Britain in Imperial Rome in New Mexico
Sheriff, Abdul
shipping industry
ships: and European core-periphery shift European shipbuilding centers rations on stowaway
mosquitoes on and timber trade
siege warfare: in American tropics and intensive agriculture
silicosis
silk
siltation
silver: and capitalist expansion as commodity frontier and ecologically unequal exchange and
extractive economies imports in China imports into China in Japan in Potosi and rise of
capitalism and Spanish Empire
simple ecosystems
SITC (Standard International Trade Classification) system
slash-and-burn agriculture
slaves: in China in Imperial Rome and poachers rations given to for sugar plantations in
Venezuelan Llanos. See also conscription, labor
slave trade: in Africa demographic effects of and shipborne mosquitoes
smallpox
smelting
Smith, Adam
social Darwinism
social efficiency
Socialist Calculation debate
social metabolism
social wage
soft drug culture
soil erosion: and abandoned landesque capital and ecologically unequal exchange from European
mining in Imperial Rome in Kenya from mining in New Mexico and sugar plantations
soil exhaustion: and abandoned landesque capital in Imperial Rome in Kenya and saltpeter
production from wheat cultivation
solar radiation
sorghum
Sorriso: agronomists in corporate influence in economic planning in land ownership in regional
politics in soybean cultivation in
soybeans: cultivation of as medium of exchange prices of
Spanish Succession, War of the
Spencer, Herbert
spices: from Brazil and extractive economies as Roman army rations Roman trade in in world-
system model
Sri Lanka
Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) system
star species
status, social
steel
stones: building with clearing of
Strabo
subsistence payments
substitutability
sugar: and A. aegypti and aboriginal peoples as commodity frontier and deforestation economic
importance of environmental impact of cultivating and plantation complex as ration item
transition to staple
sugar cane
Summers, Lawrence
Sung dynasty
Surinam
sustainable development: defined indices of mulberry tree and fish-pond system
Swahili peoples
Sweden, clearance cairn fields in
Swedish Empire: food production in history of interpretations of war economy of
Swedish Kingdom
sweet potatoes
systems theory

Taagepera, Rein
Tableau Economique (Quesnay)
tadpole philosophy
Tainter, Joseph
Tai peoples
tar
Tawney, R. H.
taxation: in Imperial Rome in Sweden in Venezuelan Llanos. See also tithes
tea: as commodity frontier in Lingnan transition to staple in world-system model
technological advances: and environmental load displacement and unequal exchange
terms of trade, ecological
terraces, agricultural: abandonment of and Kamba peoples as landesque capital as response to
sieges in Venezuelan Llanos
terra preta soils
terroir
textiles: African trade in for extractivists in Imperial Rome and Industrial Revolution in Lingnan as
preciosities soil and labor production costs of. See also cotton
Thermodynamics, Second Law of
third century, crisis of
Thirty Years’ War
Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin)
Thünen, Johann Heinrich von
tigers: in China extirpation of skins of
timber. See wood
time-space compression
tithes
tobacco: and aboriginal peoples as commodity frontier and deforestation environmental impact of
cultivating as preciosity as ration item in Venezuelan Llanos
Toledo, Francisco de
tongues
toxic chemical wastes
trade, unincorporated. See unincorporated trade
trade balances, ecological
Trajan
transdisciplinary analysis
triangular trade
tributary payments
tropical agriculture
Tropical World, The (Gourou)
tsetse flies
turpentine
turtles
typhus

uchi
unequal ecological exchange. See ecologically unequal exchange
unequal exchange: in nineteenth-century Britain quantification of. See also ecologically unequal
exchange; environmental load displacement
unincorporated trade. See also African coastal trade
United Nations International Trade Statistics Yearbook
uranium exposure
urbanization
urban problems
U.S.-Mexico border: processes underlying environmental disorders social construction of
environmental issues summary of environmental disorders in world-system perspective
utopias

value, theories of: and extractive decline labor-based and unequal exchange
value density
values: labor-based natural
van der Leeuw, Sander
Van der Wee, Herman
Vasa family
Vasquez de Cisneros, Alonzo
Vauban, Sebastien le Prestre de
vegetable crops
Venezuelan War of Independence
Vernadsky, Vladimir
Vernon, Edward
Vienna Circle
Vila, Pablo

wages
Walker, Spike
Wallerstein, Immanuel
Wang Chi-wu
Ward, Peter
war economy
War of Independence, Venezuelan
Washington, George
Washington, Lawrence
wastes and emissions: as ecological rucksacks and input-output analysis. See also carbon dioxide
emissions

water, piped
water pollution
Weber, Max
weighted export flows: conclusion formula for hypothesis and methods results and discussion
Weisz, Helga
“we” mode of historical analysis
West, defined
West Nile virus
whaling
wheat: in Andes in Brazil British imports of British production of British trade in as commodity
frontier in Imperial Rome and Industrial Revolution in Lingnan price of transport of. See also
flour
Widgren, Mats
wildlife extirpation: and European mining in Imperial Rome and tigers at U.S.-Mexico border
Wilk, Richard
Williams, Michael
Wilson, Tamar Diana
wine: branding of in Imperial Rome palm as ration item
women: in Imperial Rome and male extractivist workers in Sweden
wood: Belize logging industry as commodity frontier for containers in Imperial Rome long-
distance trade in and metallurgy as preciosity for ships transport of uses of. See also firewood
wool British imports of British manufactures from British production of labor requirements
work hazards
Working on the Edge (Walker)
World Social Forum (WSF)
world-systems: and borders defined and ecologically unequal exchange and machine image and
political ecology and scaling of information and terminal crisis of capitalism
World Trade Organization (WTO)
Worster, Donald
Wrede, Fabian
WSF (World Social Forum)

Yao peoples
Yaruro tribe
yellow fever: epidemiology of and expeditionary warfare historical overview and Panama Canal
and revolutions
Yongjia Panic
Yue kingdom

Zanzibar-Inhambane Regional Mosaic

zero sum games
zonation
About the Contributors

Stephen G. Bunker (1944–2005) was professor of sociology at the

University of Wisconsin, Madison.

William H. Fisher is associate professor of anthropology at the College of

William and Mary, Williamsburg.

Rafael A. Gassón is an archaeologist and coordinator of the postgraduate

anthropology program at the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones
Cientificas, Caracas.

Stefan Giljum is an ecological economist and researcher at the Sustainable

Europe Research Institute, Vienna.

N. Thomas Håkansson is an anthropologist and associate professor of

human ecology at Lund University.

Josiah Heyman is professor of anthropology and chair of the Department

of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas, El Paso.

Alf Hornborg is an anthropologist and professor of human ecology at Lund

University.

J. Donald Hughes is John Evans Distinguished Professor of History at the

University of Denver.

Andrew K. Jorgenson is assistant professor of sociology at Washington

State University, Pullman.
Robert B. Marks is Richard and Billie Deihl Professor of History at
Whittier College.

Joan Martinez-Alier is an ecological economist and professor of economic

history at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

J. R. McNeill is professor of history at Georgetown University,

Washington, D.C.

Jason W. Moore is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography,

University of California, Berkeley.

Roldan Muradian is an ecological economist and research fellow at the

Development Research Institute, Tilburg University.

Janken Myrdal is professor of agricultural history at the Swedish

University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala.

James Rice is assistant professor of sociology at New Mexico State

University, Las Cruces.

Joseph A. Tainter is an anthropologist and research professor at the Global

Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe.

Immanuel Wallerstein is a sociologist and senior research scholar at Yale

University, New Haven.

Helga Weisz is a biologist and associate professor at the Institute for Social
Ecology, Klagenfurt University, Vienna.

Mats Widgren is professor of geography at Stockholm University.

Richard Wilk is professor of anthropology and gender studies, Indiana
University, Bloomington.

Michael Williams recently retired as professor of geography in the School

of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.