92

This historical study examines the role of cost pricing in the spread of rubber plantations, one of the leading sources of deforestation in Southeast Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century, using a corpus of press archives. By linking the concept of the “cheapization” of living organisms with that of commensuration, we show that the widespread use of cost prices in the press was often conducive to certain forms of exploitation of living beings, leading to the destruction of primary forests in the French colonial empire. Our work sheds light on the structural effects of this period on rubber production methods.