Commodities, Environment and Labour

Projects in this cluster look at the consequences of commodity extraction, production, exchange and consumption and the consequences for labour and environment.  The focus is on commodity frontiers, to be defined as processes and sites of the incorporation of resources into the expanding capitalist world economy.  Main questions concern  the consequences of this frontiers expansion for labour relations, natural assets and the environment? How does this affect workers at these frontiers? How do they resist these processes?

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See also the Commodity Frontiers Initiative

Luxury and Labour, a global trajectory of diamond consumption and production, 16th -19th century

Luxury and Labour

Oil Frontiers in the British and Dutch Empires: Land, Labour and Environment in the Making of and Imperial Oil Regime, 1890-1940

Oil Frontiers

Land grabbing and Dutch Empire

State Strategy and Large Scale Land Transfers in Dutch Expansion (16th-18th century)

Land grabbing

Investing in Dutch Brazil

Credit, Debt and the Sugar-Cycle in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World

Dutch Brazil

Seven Frontiers

The Global South in the Age of Early Industrial Capitalism

Seven Frontiers

Atomic chains

Research into the history of the anti-nuclear energy movement (AKB) and its effects on public opinion and political decision making.

Atomic Chains

A Just Energy Transition? Lessons from the Dutch Shift from Coal to Gas

This research project compares the historical transition from coal to natural gas in the Netherlands (1963–1980) with today’s shift toward renewable energy.

Energy transition

Completed Projects

Potosí

Producing silver for the world in the colonial period (16th - 18th Centuries)

Potosí
The Potosí Mountain of Silver and the city of Potosí today

The World of Sugar

Large-scale plantation slavery and forced labour, massive environmental damage and a now uncontrollable obesity pandemic. All this for a product we don't actually need.

The World of Sugar
Book Cover: World of Sugar

Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry

Developing an empirical and qualitative understanding of labour as well as labour force in the Iranian oil industry.

Oil Industry