The Global South in the Age of Early Industrial Capitalism: Commodity Frontiers and Social Transformations (1816-1870)
This project analyzes the historical impact of seven key commodities on global trade and capitalism, revealing their social consequences and trade patterns from the early 19th century.
Projectdetails
Introduction
Our lives would be unthinkable without the production of millions of tons of cotton, sugar, palm oil, or soy. All these commodities are obtained at the lowest possible price with often detrimental consequences for people and nature. The scale of the resulting environmental crises may be something of recent making; its mechanisms can be traced many centuries ago and are crucially part of the history of global capitalism.
Project Overview
This project will go back to the pivotal decades when Europe recovered from the devastating Napoleonic wars, the Industrial Revolution picked up steam, and global trade went through fifty years of rapid growth, a spurt even more spectacular than after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
Research Focus
Against this backdrop, the project’s research team will examine the immense transformative effects of commodity frontiers in the Global South that fed the rise of early industrial capitalism.
Commodities of Interest
We will assess these transformations by taking the seven most exported commodities from the Global South as the unit of analysis:
- Sugar
- Cotton
- Coffee
- Tea
- Precious metals (gold/silver)
- Opium
- Cereals
Methodology
We will map the wide-ranging and diverse social consequences of the massive mobilization of labour and land necessary to produce these commodities using an extensive historical database on global labour relations developed by an international group of scholars.
Archives and Financing
We will further examine how these commodity frontiers were organized and financed by using underutilized archives of prominent locally and globally operating merchant houses.
Contribution to Global Trade
Finally, we will assess the actual contribution of the production of the seven commodities in the Global South to the upsurge of global trade. Data mining from digitized sources such as newspapers will allow us to identify trade patterns that so far escaped historical statistics.
Conclusion
Thus, we will break new ground in understanding how early on in the nineteenth century global trade and production patterns emerged that shaped the world of today.
Financiële details & Tijdlijn
Financiële details
Subsidiebedrag | € 2.500.000 |
Totale projectbegroting | € 2.500.000 |
Tijdlijn
Startdatum | 1-10-2024 |
Einddatum | 30-9-2029 |
Subsidiejaar | 2024 |
Partners & Locaties
Projectpartners
- KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE AKADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN - KNAWpenvoerder
Land(en)
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