Nature's Evil

Commodification resulted from the progress in two major commercial disciplines – transformation and transportation. Primary processing turned raw, wet, perishable materials into dry, light, packed commodities. Various kinds of transport moved them overland or overseas, from the source where this material was abundant to the place where it was absent and in demand. It was only by combining these two processes, transformation and transportation, that commodification created value. A moving frontier, commodification crept forward from the domestic use of raw products to wet markets of local commerce and then to long-distance trade in dry goods. Until people learnt how to cure pelts, dry cod, salt herring, freeze meat, they consumed these products on the spot or shared them with neighbours. Until people learnt how to transport these products without their perishing on the way, they did not generate revenue, customs and taxes. In those times of subsistence, materials remained raw, capital refused to multiply, and people were ‘indolent’. New technologies of commodification led to prosperity in the metropoles and violence in the colonies. Through the use of slavery and serfdom, the external and internal colonies of great empires produced raw materials and energy. The creation of goods and the provision of services were reserved for the imperial centres. From flint to gold, from wool to silk, from peat to oil, the rarer, dryer, lighter and more distant the commodity, the bigger the profits it brought and the greater the evil it caused.

Sweet refinement

The century of the Enlightenment was also the century of commerce. Economists and historians understand this crucial connection mostly in the context of production, as primitive accumulation (Marx), the great transformation (Polanyi), or the industrious revolution (de Vries). An alternative tradition comes from the classics of philosophy and political economy, whose authors saw this connection in the context of consumption. Hume argued that ‘the refinement of taste’ was the key to progress; Malthus talked about ‘effectual demand’.

The Enlightenment cultivated the desires, tastes and habits of mass consumption. Exotic products from the East, such as sugar, silk and porcelain, were in demand among the European elite. Prices fell when locally produced versions replaced expensive imports. First, Indian cotton replaced the more costly Chinese silk; then American cotton, woven in England, displaced Indian fabrics. First, sugar came from Asia and was a luxurious treat for the aristocracy; then sweet commerce from the West Indies led to mass consumption; in its turn it was ousted by a cheap European substitute, beet sugar. For early capitalism, the strategic line of commodification was to imitate Eastern luxury by using cheaper materials produced in the West. 9 While cultural scholars talk about Orientalism – the Western idea of domination over the passive, submissive East – economic history saw the opposite trend: European masters imitated Eastern models, using local materials and practising reverse engineering. * Furniture, clothes, gardens and even the architecture of the age of Enlightenment were full of ‘chinoiseries’ – simulacrums of an imagined China which was known only through very rare and expensive imports. Fashionable in England from the 1620s, chinoiserie blended easily with the culture of the baroque, adding playful notes to it. China was associated with silk in the same way that India was associated with cotton. Lacquered handicrafts were in demand, but the original lacquer came from the sap of rare trees which grew only in East Asia. During the course of the eighteenth century, these luxury items – silk panels, lacquered furniture, porcelain tea services – all underwent reverse engineering using European raw materials. In imperial centres, these high-status goods became available to the masses. The bourgeoisie was extravagant and thrifty, reticent and ostentatious, and ever more numerous. It could have had better taste, but its ever-growing demand for affordable luxury drove technological progress and economic growth.