'Sinews of War & Trade' bookclub kicks off soon
In about an hour, in fact.
Hello, this is not our 16th edition - we're skipping the Dispatch this week, as we work on a version of our piece on "Country Platforms" into a Polycrisis / Phenomenal World newsletter in the next couple of days. In the meantime we’ve now published the archive index for previous editions.
But there’s more! In just under an hour, we'll be hosting Laleh Khalili and a discussion of her excellent book, Sinews of War and Trade.
It kicks off at 830am EST (1230GMT). Here is the zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/99122962209
You can use the code POLYCRISIS-30 to get 30% off a hard copy or ebook from the publisher, Verso Books.
Here’s a little from Tim on Sinews in our Discord:
The "Making Land from Sea" section is really Khalili at her best. The argument is something like 1. Building ports is costly and labor intensive 2. So ports are often financed by making land from sea! 3. the dredged material is turned into reclamed land from the sea and sold off to property developers.
She explains how the geography of capital imposed upon the geography of nature in a stirring passage on pg 94:
“The history of dredging and land reclamation in Belgium and the Netherlands, or the expansion of the Singaporean land mass, all show the extent to which these projects of engineering are “central to the conception and maintenance of modern commerce and capitalism. In the Netherlands, where land was reclaimed from the thirteenth century onwards, the balance of existing governing forces (the bisopric, landowners, the municipal government, etc.) dictated to a great extent how reclaimed land was allocated and used, its ability to generate income or taxes, and ultimately how it influenced the shape of social relations. The reclaimed land was crucial to the subsequent process of capital accumulation in Europe triggered by overseas colonisation and the slave trade. The process of land reclamation in northwest Europe shaped authoritative and exploitative relations at home, but also had secondary and tertiary effects abroad. That the Dutch had this experience of making land out of the sea has meant that even today, their expertise in dredging is called upon to make and remake coasts overseas”
Above was exactly how my hometown bombay was made too. The geography of Capital imposed itself on the geography of Nature in Bombay. Same story in other cities i have called home: Chicago (Bill Cronon's classic study of Chicago & its hinterland 'Nature's Metropolis'), Boston (Nancy Seaholes great book Gaining Ground), and NYC.
Until next time!