Over the past 600 years, commodity frontiers – processes and sites of the incorporation of resources into the expanding capitalist world economy – have absorbed ever more land, ever more labour and ever more natural assets. In this paper, we claim that studying the global history of capitalism through the lens of commodity frontiers and using commodity regimes as an analytical framework is crucial to understanding the origins and nature of capitalism, and thus the modern world. We argue that commodity frontiers identify capitalism as a process rooted in a profound restructuring of the countryside and nature. They connect processes of extraction and exchange with degradation, adaptation and resistance in rural peripheries. To account for the enormous variety of actors and places involved in this history is a critical challenge in the social sciences, and one to which global history can contribute crucial insights.

中文翻译：

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商品前沿与全球农村转型：研究议程

在过去的 600 年里，商品前沿——将资源纳入不断扩大的资本主义世界经济的过程和地点——吸收了越来越多的土地、越来越多的劳动力和越来越多的自然资产。在本文中，我们声称通过商品前沿的视角研究资本主义的全球历史并将商品制度用作分析框架对于理解资本主义的起源和性质以及现代世界至关重要。我们认为，商品前沿将资本主义视为植根于乡村和自然的深刻重构的过程。它们将提取和交换过程与农村周边地区的退化、适应和抵抗联系起来。