The origins of coastal ecological decline and the Great Atlantic Oyster Collapse

Abstract

Changes to Earth systems threaten human and non-human sustainability because these changes undermine critical life support systems such as estuarine and coastal ecosystems (ECEs), which are in systematic ecological decline. This article investigates the root social causes of coastal decline through the case of serial collapses of the Atlantic oyster (C. virginica), starting in New York in 1810. The research triangulates two methods, inductive historical political economy, and a reading of archival newspapers from 1607 to 1900 interpreted through a framework informed by Marxian attention to the flow of capital and the stages of capitalist development. The historical research indicates that the community-oriented classical republicanism of Jefferson, lost to the rise of a liberal republicanism in the period after the Revolutionary War and the early 19th century. This shift initiated the first stages of American capitalism, called “original accumulation,” that caused the first collapse of the native oyster beds. As capitalism matured into the “production” phase, industrial harvesting and development in the ECE destroyed the cultivated beds. In the archives, oysters are consistently framed as a commodity, not a part of a living seashore with needs. Recurring discourses of an “inexhaustible” industry, competition between states, and even “oyster wars” highlight the importance of the oyster as a commodity. In stories about depletion, the narratives are limited to the source of oysters seed to New York, or micro-depletions that complain of a lost favored brand and the search for its replacement. The origins of Atlantic ECE decline are found in the development of Atlantic capitalism.