This article briefly considers how the integration of the biophysical world into our analyses of the past can enhance our understanding of the socio-economic inequalities of the modern world. Taking Ulbe Bosma's The Making of Periphery as its central reference point, it argues that the process of “peripheralization” – generally treated as an economic or social phenomenon – can also be usefully approached as an interaction between human and non-human forces. It uses the example of Southeast Asian rubber production to show how the different arrangements of people, plants, soil and water on European estates and indigenous smallholdings gave the latter distinct ecological advantages that boosted their oft-cited economic competitiveness, and that consequently forced plantations to extract even more value from cheap labour. In this sense, the environmental history of Southeast Asian rubber offers further evidence for Bosma's core theses about the heterogeneity of peripheralization processes and the importance of demography and labour relations in shaping them.

中文翻译：

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自然、劳动力和生态外围的形成

本文简要考虑了将生物物理世界整合到我们对过去的分析中如何能够增强我们对现代世界社会经济不平等的理解。服用 Ulbe Bosma 的外围的制作作为其中心参考点，它认为“边缘化”过程——通常被视为一种经济或社会现象——也可以有效地被视为人类和非人类力量之间的相互作用。它以东南亚橡胶生产为例，展示了欧洲庄园和土著小农场的人、植物、土壤和水的不同安排如何赋予后者独特的生态优势，从而提高了他们经常被引用的经济竞争力，从而迫使种植园从廉价劳动力中获取更多价值。从这个意义上说，东南亚橡胶的环境史为博斯马关于外围化过程的异质性以及人口和劳动关系在塑造这些过程中的重要性的核心论点提供了进一步的证据。