Biomass, Capitalism, and Hegemony

Benoit Daviron

How did Europeans achieve global dominance and continue to satisfy their ever-growing needs? How do we explain the effects this has on the rest of the world?In his magnum opus, published here in English for the first time as an open access book, world-renowned critical development scholar Benoit Daviron blends Braudelian history and a food systems approach to show how biomass--as the metabolism of societies and as a source of matter and energy--explains key historical phases of Western capitalist hegemony and the transitions between them. By examining various uses of biomass, technical production and extraction methods, forms of labour mobilization, and exchange systems, Daviron provides startling new insights into capitalist development from the 16th century to the present.This book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical approaches to global development, and for anyone interested in how capitalist domination came to be and how the bio-meatabolic imbalances it created might be redressed.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

General IntroductionPart I: Where we see the United Provinces build wealth and power by trading distant biomass, 1580-1705Introduction1. The United Provinces: Territories, resources and economic sectors2. The Baltics and the North Sea: the first peripheries3. Spices and companies: trade with another world-economy, AsiaConclusionPart II: Where we see England pull ahead of France by exploiting its territory and its coloniesbetter, 1700-1846Introduction4. Mercantilism and the art of counting on your own forces5. Mobilizing resources from the national territory6. Distant biomass and social metabolismConclusionPart III: Where Great Britain, now a hegemon, mobilizes the world for its supply of biomass and prompts Europe to imitate her, 1815-1913Introduction7. A portrait of an English hegemon as a biomass importer8. Overcoming "the tyranny of distance": technical and institutional innovations9. The Golden Age of Frontiers10. An intensive animal farming pole in Northwestern Europe11. On Free Labor12. And capital? Key for transport, negligible for agricultural productionConclusionPart IV: Where the rivalry between Germany, the United States, and others gives a key roleto the chemical industry, 1865-1945Introduction13. Germany: on a quest for an industrialization not dependent on long-distance biomass trade14. Imperialist strategies, the weapon of the weak: France and Japan15. The United States: from the legendary frontier to resolution of the long farm crisisConclusionPart V: Where we see agriculture, under America's hegemony, become "modern", "conventional" and food-focused, 1945-1972Introduction16. The American model17. Uneven spread of the American model and the institutionalization of the Global North-South division18. International agricultural trade: limited, food-focused, and administeredConclusionPart VI: American Hegemony, Season 2: The Return of GlobalizationIntroduction19. The second age of American hegemony20. Reorienting the world21. The "oil-based model" of biomass production and consumption pursues its global conquest22. The incomplete globalization of agricultural marketsConclusionGeneral Conclusion