THE EXPANSION OF THE EUROPEAN WORLD-ECONOMY FROM THE PRISM OF FOOD:

THE CASE OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR (1618-1648)

Abstract

The financial crisis of 2008, the Covid 19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine (2022-) highlighted even more the asymmetry between the members of the modern interstate system, especially on the hunger issue, because of the disturbances caused by such calamities in the midst of the international trade in food and also agricultural inputs, marked by highly productive specializations and asymmetric interdependent relations. In this sense, we direct a historical investigation to the genesis of this unequal system of commerce, in reference to the food circuit, in order to comprehend the mechanisms that engender tris structure on the long duration. Our hypothesis is centered in the comprehension that the dispute among the great European powers, during the consolidation phase of the capitalist world-economy, were linked to an intercontinental context with which food was one of its main elements in order to reach better positions within this structure. Throughout the research, using a qualitative-deductive methodology, we demonstrate that the European interstate dispute configured a world-economy, fortified by the end of the
Thirty Years War, in which hunger and opulence where intimately linked to the political and social dimension of the relation between nature and humanity, by the perspective of the heterogeneous division of labor at a global scale.