On Wednesday, October 23, American scholar Jason W. Moore (Fernand Braudel Center, Binghampton University) visited the Center for Ecological History at Renmin University of China and presented a lecture on Ecology and the Rise of Capitalism: Nature, Capital, and Empire in the Rise of the West, 1450-1750. 

In his lecture Moore explored the origins of capitalism in the long 16^th century, during the first wave of globalization. Criticizing the ontological dualism of seeing humans and extra-human nature as separate spheres - which has become known as the Cartesian Binary, where capitalism is seen as a process forced from humans onto nature - he argues to acknowledge the capitalism-IN-nature, placing the human in ecology (e.g. landscape transformation) and the ecology in humans (e.g. microbacteria in the body). As he pointed out, capital, power, and nature have to be seen as relational; not as separate spheres, but as dialectical processes. So in historical perspective the rise of capitalism could be identified as one process with two decisive moments: the beginning of endless accumulation of capital, and the beginning of an endless transformation of the earth. In these processes Moore stressed the role of politics, culture, or markets in making environments. With the rise of capitalism as opposed to prior feudalism, everything began to move faster–environmental history began to move faster.

Particularly important for early modern environmental history, so Moore, was the acceleration of landscape change, that was induced by the global expansion of early capitalism. This geographical expansion characterized by the expansion of commodity production and the expansion of new 'technics' of power, technology and ideas (see Lewis Mumford), began to appropriate unpaid work by humans and extra human natures (see Maria Nies). Both processes took place inside and outside of Europe at the same time, here the relationship of commodity frontiers and capitalism, with their influences on the transformation of the earth has to be seen as crucial. Moore is building his argumentation on Prof. Donald Worster's work about the modes of production and reproduction, transferring them from a regional onto a global sphere of influence.

The commodity frontiers, that stand central to Moore's argument show three key features: the advance of commodity production, a pattern of frontier movement and the organization of production in an exploitive way. Before capitalism commerce followed people, people started to follow commodities with the rise of capitalism. In this period not only the introduction of new technology was important, but the use of new technics (Mumford 1934,4), that transformed power, nature, and tools as an organic whole for the use of capitalism. Ultimately capitalism's technological revolution at the time can be summed up as global conquest, commodification, and appropriation, which finally led to the creation of nature as an object.

Questioning the predominant idea of dating the beginning of the modern world during the 18^th century (Anthropocene argument) Moore argues to seek it's origins in the long 16^th century. During this period he identified a world-ecological revolution, setting new standards in the transformation of the earth, and whose impacts still influence the modern human approach to nature. The beginning of capitalism, Moore showed, can be read in the landscape. To underpin this argument, he presented a list of manifold examples of shifting commodity frontiers, ranging from the agricultural revolution of the European low lands, to the movement of slaving “supply zones” to successive sugar revolutions in the West Indies to the relative exhaustion of British forests, and most importantly the Columbian exchange.

Yet another important feature of this world-ecological revolution, as Moore calls it, must be seen in a shift of seeing the reality, induced by the scientific revolution, the geographical revolution and the clock revolution. Together with new ideas, concepts, philosophy, arts and science in a symbolic revolution, this finally led to a new way of seeing “nature” and a new way of seeing global space (modern mapping). Moore concluded his talk explaining, how today's ecological problems such as climate change, financial instability, or exhaustion of productivity all have their origins in this first world-ecological revolution.

Further Reading:

Jason Moore: jasonwmoore.com

本周三（10月23日），美国学者杰森·摩尔应邀参观中国人民大学生态史研究中心并举办讲座“生态学与资本主义的兴起：1450-1750西方崛起中的自然、资本与帝国”。

讲座中，摩尔探讨了资本主义在广义上的16世纪（第一次全球化浪潮中）的起源。在笛卡尔的二分法中，本体二元论将人类与非人类自然视为两个独立部分，将资本主义视为人类进军自然的过程。摩尔批判了这一观点，认为资本主义根植于自然之中，人类存在于生态体系之中（例如，景观演变），同时生态体系亦存在于人类之中（例如，身体内的微生物）。摩尔指出，资本、权利和自然是相互联系，辩证统一的，并非相互独立毫无关联。因此，从历史的观点来看，资本主义伴随着两大历史时刻而兴起：一是资本开始无限积累，一是地貌景观开始不断改变。在这些变化过程中，摩尔十分强调政治、文化、市场对环境的塑造。他认为，与之前的封建主义不同，资本主义兴起之后，事物的变化速度大大加快，环境的改变也更加迅速。

摩尔认为，对于现代环境史早期阶段而言，由早期资本主义全球扩张带来的景观加速变化尤为重要。资本在地域上的扩张有两个特点，一是商品生产的扩张，一是融合了权力、技术和观念的“新技术”（参见 Lewis Mumford）的扩张。资本在地域上扩张，开始无偿侵占人类及非人类自然的劳动成果(参见 Maria Nies)。“商品边界”与资本主义都对地貌景观产生了重大影响，两者之间的相互关系使得欧洲内外同时出现这一情况。基于唐纳德·沃斯特对生产和再生产模式的讨论，摩尔将这种生产和再生产模式从区域性推广到全球范围。

摩尔主要讨论了“商品边界”，并指出其有三大特点：一，商品生产的地域推进；二，边界移动的模式；三，掠夺式的生产组织形式。前资本主义社会中，商业跟随人类；资本主义兴起后，人类追随商业，在这一时期，不仅新技艺的引进十分重要，“新技术”的应用也不可忽视。这一“新技术”将权力、自然以及工具整合为有机整体，为资本主义发展提供动力。由是，资本主义的技术革命可以归为三点：征服全球、商品化、侵占掠夺。

摩尔质疑将现代史的开端定为18世纪这一流行的观点（人类世的论点），认为要从广义的16世纪去寻找其源头。他认为在此时期出现了一次世界生态革命，这次革命使地貌景观产生了新的变化，并将继续影响现代人介入自然的方式。摩尔指出，资本主义的兴起可以从地貌景观的变化中看出。为此，他列举了许多商品边界移动的例子，如欧洲低地的农业革命，“供应圈”的奴役，之后西印度群岛出现的糖业革命,英国的森林衰退，还有最重要的哥伦布大交换。

此外，世界生态革命中很重要的一点是人们对现实的认识产生了变化，即由科技革命带来的地理革命和时间革命。在这个融合了新想法、观念、哲学、艺术及科学的生态革命中，人们获得了一种新的认识“自然”的方式和认识世界的方式（现代地图）。最后，摩尔总结道，当今的生态问题，诸如环境变化、金融波动、生产力衰竭都可以从第一次世界生态革命中找到源头。

更多阅读：

http://www.jasonwmoore.com/