Work

Food Security, Nitrates Capitalism, and the Haber–Bosch Revolution

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This article reinterprets the early history of the Haber–Bosch process of ammonia synthesis through the transnational development of synthetic nitrogen production at Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Billingham-on-Tees, County Durham. It argues that the nitrates revolution in the early twentieth century was not simply a technological breakthrough but a contested project linking industrial strategy, state power, and food security. Tracing the British government’s wartime construction and subsequent privatization of the Billingham plant, it shows how economic orthodoxy constrained efforts to sustain state-led industrial co-ordination, even as private firms pursued cartelized forms of governance. It situates the British and German chemical industries within a shared political economy, and reframes fertilizer production as central to the emergence of modern food politics and the international political economy, anticipating later debates over sovereignty, inequality, and environmental limits. Recovering these histories reveals food security as a foundational problem of industrial modernity, with nitrates capitalism shaped by decisions about the governance of national resources, scientific expertise, and global markets.

Source: Past & Present

DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtag023

Author: Patricia Clavin

Institution: University of Oxford

Language: English

Topic: Historical Economic and Social Studies

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Zero hunger

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,402