Rural Economies and Transitions to Capitalism: Germany and England Compared (c.1200–c.1800)

Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on England and Germany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio‐economic developments from c.1200 to c.1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the ‘sub‐peasant classes’, which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which – towards the end of the period – a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of Robert Brenner, it is argued that the period c.1200–c.1400 cannot really be categorized as ‘feudal’ according to Brenner's definition; and ‘agrarian capitalism’ does not adequately describe the socio‐economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in Germany as well as in England; it is predicated both on ideological shifts and on the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c.1800.     

The Chilean Agrarian Transformation: The Pre-Agrarian Reform Period (1955–1965)

Today Chilean agriculture has recovered from years of diminishing returns. The same arduous work carried out by a declining workforce has suddenly attained higher productivity and, therefore, achieved economic growth. This article suggests that Chile has undergone a series of fundamental changes in the last quarter of the twentieth century, which have intensified its capitalist development. It analyses the agrarian structure of the hacienda system during the period immediately before the agrarian reform, looking particularly at the transition to modern capitalism, agricultural growth and the land question. It argues that before the implementation of the agrarian reform, the country had not finished its transition to modern capitalism due to the persistence of the antiquated hacienda system. It further suggests that the land reform process – implemented and consolidated from 1964 to 1980 – permitted the culmination of the long-postponed transition to modern capitalism and gave rise to the ascendancy of an agro-industrial bourgeoisie and an export-oriented agriculture integrated into the world economy.     

Cacao capitalism in coastal Ecuador: Production processes and accumulation in non‐transitionary agrarian capitalism during the long 19th century

Histories of agrarian capitalism have often been constrained by the implications of Robert Brenner's work on the subject. This essay, employing archival and secondary research on Ecuador's long 19th century experiences with cacao capitalism, argues that production processes and localized forms of accumulation, rather than class structure and legal relations, should be included in our definition of the concept. By focusing on how fixed capital in cacao trees and the production of the yearly cacao commodity responded to global demand and local material conditions, I propose amplifying the concept of agrarian capitalism, as well as a rethinking of coastal Ecuador's history of capitalist development. I highlight how both absolute and relative forms of surplus value generation coexisted in coastal Ecuador's cacao haciendas, while demonstrating how financial instruments used for extending the cacao frontier undermined the prospects for long‐term growth.     

Differentiation of the Peasantry Under Feudalism and the Transition to Capitalism: In Defence of Rodney Hilton

The focus of the essay is one specific theme pursued by Rodney Hilton: that of differentiation of the English feudal peasantry and the implications this had for the development of capitalism in England. His contribution on this, along with those of E. A. Kosminsky and of Maurice Dobb, are considered and are contrasted with the view of Robert Brenner. For Brenner peasant differentiation has no causal importance: it is an outcome of transformation and not a driving force in its securing. For Hilton, it is central to transformation: it is not an outcome but a determining variable, a causa causans rather than a causa causata. The Brenner position, it is argued, is incomplete in its ignoring of peasant differentiation in feudal England. It was one of Hilton's accomplishments to explore this in scholarly detail, and with analytical precision. It is suggested that if this is abstracted from an adequate examination of the transition to capitalism in England cannot proceed.     

Rodney Hilton (1916–2002): In Memoriam

This essay is written in memory of Rodney Hilton (1916–2002), who died on 7 June 2002. He was one of the towering historians of medieval England. Along with the Russian scholar, E. A. Kosminsky, of a previous generation of historians, he provided a formidable Marxist treatment of English feudalism, at once empirically rich, through extensive archival research, and theoretically informed. His work, while displaying a particular vision of the nature of feudal society, and embracing certain recurring themes, is broad in its scope and varied in the issues it covers. The essay is offered as a tribute to the particular tradition of Marxist historical scholarship represented by him, and which he did so much to foster. A brief account of his career and writing is given. There is, in the present issue, a companion essay in which his views on peasant differentiation and the transition to capitalism in England are considered at length.     

‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’Part I: The Alchemy of Capital,Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545–1648

In the first of two essays in this Journal, I seek to unify the historical geography of early modern ‘European expansion’ (Iberia and Latin America) with the environmental history of the ‘transition to capitalism’ (northwestern Europe). The expansion of Europe's overseas empires and the transitions to capitalism within Europe were differentiated moments within the geographical expansion of commodity production and exchange – what I call the commodity frontier. This essay is developed in two movements. Beginning with a conceptual and methodological recasting of the historical geography of the rise of capitalism, I offer an analytical narrative that follows the early modern diaspora of silver. This account follows the political ecology of silver production and trade from the Andes to Spain in Braudel's ‘second’ sixteenth century (c. 1545–1648). In highlighting the Ibero‐American moment of this process in the present essay, I contend that the spectacular reorganization of Andean space and the progressive dilapidation of Spain's real economy not only signified the rise and demise of a trans‐Atlantic, Iberian ecological regime, but also generated the historically necessary conditions for the unprecedented concentration of accumulation and commodity production in the capitalist North Atlantic in the centuries that followed.     

发达国家发展低碳经济对我国的借鉴

随着全球气候变化,低碳经济受到世界各国重视。我国对发展"低碳经济"一直持积极态度,并已取得可喜成绩。英、德、日、美等发达国家低碳经济和技术发展给我们的启示是,中国实现低碳经济可持续发展应从加强宣传、完善法律体系、建立市场机制、大力推进能源结构多元化、加强国际合作等方面着手。     

国有林区绿色食品全产业链发展研究

立足黑龙江国有林区全面停伐后加快推进经济转型的现实背景,阐述了林区绿色食品的内涵特征,构建了林区绿色食品全产业链组织架构,分析了国有林区发展绿色食品产业的前景。在充分明确黑龙江国有林区绿色食品产业的发展潜力和发展趋势的基础上,提出促进国有林区绿色食品全产业链发展的建议:制定发展规划,并加大对产业发展的政策扶持;建立东北协同发展联盟,制定品牌提升战略,共同发展国有林区绿色食品产业;构建市场体系,完善林区绿色食品营销网路市场;加快产业集群,扩大林区绿色食品产业规模。     

‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century

‘Amsterdam is standing on Norway’– this was a popular saying in the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century. There was more than one inflection to the phrase. Amsterdam was, in the first instance, built atop a subterranean forest of Norwegian origin. But southern Norway was also a vital resource zone, subordinated to Amsterdam‐based capital. This paper follows the movement of strategic commodity frontiers within early modern Europe from the standpoint of capitalism as world‐ecology, joining in dialectical unity the production of capital and the production of nature. Our geographical focus is trained upon the emergence of the Global North Atlantic, that zone providing the strategic raw materials and food supplies indispensable to the consolidation of capitalism – timber, naval stores, metals, cereals, fish and whales. I argue for a broader geographical perspective on these movements, one capable of revealing the dialectical interplay of frontiers on all sides of the Atlantic. From its command posts in Amsterdam, Dutch capital deployed American silver in the creation of successive frontiers within Europe, transforming Scandinavian and Baltic regions. The frontier character of these transformations was decisive, premised on drawing readily exploitable supplies of land and labour power into the orbit of capital. We see in northern Europe precisely what we see in the Americas – a pattern of commodity‐centred environmental transformation, and thence relative ecological exhaustion, from which the only escape was renewed global conquest and ever‐wider cycles of combined and uneven development.     

汉唐间北方农业技术的南传及在江南地区的本土化发展

中国传统的农业技术体系率先成熟于秦汉时期,是以北方旱作农业为基础所形成的,所以具有一定的地域性特征。汉唐间,伴随中央政权对江南地区的次第开发,传统农业技术的诸多元素也源源进入江南地区,催生了稻作农业技术体系的形成,对江南地区经济与社会发展产生了积极影响;回顾这一历史过程我们亦不难发现,源自于北方地区的传统农业技术不是立竿见影地在江南地区产生普遍影响,而是存在一个不断本土化的过程,至唐代,这一过程大体完成,因此也最终引发了江南经济的真正的繁荣。