Cyprus, from a Sugar Island to a Cotton Island: Nature, Transition to Capitalism, and Colonialism

In this article, I examine Cyprus as the archetypical ‘capitalist commodity frontier,’ first under the Lusignan, and second under the Venetian rule. I explain the Cypriot sugar (1299-1473) and cotton (1473-1573) booms and busts through the formation of socio-ecological relations central to the rise of world-capitalism. Historically-specific forms of science, technology, governmentality, and aqua-territoriality conditioned novel, cyclical, and cumulative patterns of organizing labor and nature. In turn, these patterns created new set of opportunities (booms) and constraints (busts) for capital accumulation. Initially, they generated ‘cheap natures’ i.e., cheap labor, energy, raw materials, and food, and resulted in increasing labor productivity, profit rates, and capital accumulation. However, they gradually exhausted the supply of cheap natures. This manifested itself in the local resource depletion, soil exhaustion, deforestation, and falling labor productivity and profits. Consequently, the over-accumulated capital was reinvested in new colonial state-building and capitalist environment-making projects, paving the way for the westward migration of sugar and cotton towards the Western Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Americas. In sum, I develop an account of transition to capitalism and formation of Venetian colonialism ‘as environmental history’ i.e., as socio-ecological processes and projects. I argue that socio-ecological relations, processes, and dynamics that emerged in Cyprus were constitutive of the emerging capitalist colonialism and world-capitalism.