Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation
280 pages, 6 x 9
75 B&W illustrations - 2 tables
Hardcover
Release Date:15 Dec 2015
ISBN:9780817318918
Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation
An Archaeology of Colonial Nevis, West Indies
University of Alabama Press
Offers a rare exploration of the substantial environmental impact of capitalist sugar agriculture, colonial settlement, and the Atlantic slave trade on the Caribbean island of Nevis
In this deeply researched and multifaceted study, Marco G. Meniketti demonstrates how the landscape of the small Caribbean island of Nevis preserves and reveals artifacts and evidence of the highly complex and interrelated seventeenth- to nineteenth-century “Atlantic Economy,” comprising early capitalist sugar production, the African slave trade, and European settlement.
Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation is based on twelve seasons of meticulous archaeological field work and documentary research. Although Nevis was once a bustling hub of the British colonial project, the emigration of emancipated slaves and abandonment by European planters left large swathes of Nevis vacant. Reclaimed by forests and undisturbed by later waves of economic development, the island—dotted with fascinating ruins, debris from the sugar industry, windmills, chimneys, and multistoried great house—provided Meniketti with an ideal subject for archaeological inquiry.
Through intensive archaeological and landscape surveys of multiple key plantation sites, Meniketti traces the development of Nevis from its initial European settlement in 1627 to its central role as a British mercantile hub and a laboratory and prototype of capitalist sugar cultivation. His nuanced analysis explains the backdrop of European political and economic rivalries, of which the colonial agro-industrial enterprises were the physical manifestations, and makes telling comparisons with Dutch and French archaeological sites. The work also compares and contrasts the adoption of capitalist modes of sugar production and socialization at wealthy and middling plantation sites.
Supported with a wealth of photos, tables, and maps, Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation offers a vital case study of one island whose environment and archaeological record illuminates the complex webs of Atlantic history.
In this deeply researched and multifaceted study, Marco G. Meniketti demonstrates how the landscape of the small Caribbean island of Nevis preserves and reveals artifacts and evidence of the highly complex and interrelated seventeenth- to nineteenth-century “Atlantic Economy,” comprising early capitalist sugar production, the African slave trade, and European settlement.
Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation is based on twelve seasons of meticulous archaeological field work and documentary research. Although Nevis was once a bustling hub of the British colonial project, the emigration of emancipated slaves and abandonment by European planters left large swathes of Nevis vacant. Reclaimed by forests and undisturbed by later waves of economic development, the island—dotted with fascinating ruins, debris from the sugar industry, windmills, chimneys, and multistoried great house—provided Meniketti with an ideal subject for archaeological inquiry.
Through intensive archaeological and landscape surveys of multiple key plantation sites, Meniketti traces the development of Nevis from its initial European settlement in 1627 to its central role as a British mercantile hub and a laboratory and prototype of capitalist sugar cultivation. His nuanced analysis explains the backdrop of European political and economic rivalries, of which the colonial agro-industrial enterprises were the physical manifestations, and makes telling comparisons with Dutch and French archaeological sites. The work also compares and contrasts the adoption of capitalist modes of sugar production and socialization at wealthy and middling plantation sites.
Supported with a wealth of photos, tables, and maps, Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation offers a vital case study of one island whose environment and archaeological record illuminates the complex webs of Atlantic history.
Sugar Cane Capitalism and Environmental Transformation is a long-overdue and highly welcomed addition to the existing body of literature on Caribbean historical archaeology. The work provides the specific case study of Nevis within the context of the region, integrating well the existing body of literature in British initiatives in the Eastern Caribbean plantocracy. The book is also one of the very few to address the environmental impact of cane agriculture on the landscape. Meniketti’s study makes a highly significant and original contribution, as it marks an important shift in current approaches to the historical archaeology of plantations in the Caribbean region.’
—Georgia L. Fox, author of The Archaeology of Smoking and Tobacco
There is a fair amount of scholarship dealing with the colonial Caribbean as a laboratory of capitalistic enterprise, but Meniketti’s study uniquely connects these views to the archaeological record of an individual island. This book will assume an important benchmark for comparative studies done elsewhere.’
—Gerald F. Schroedl, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Marco G. Meniketti is an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and the director of the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Caribbean Studies.
Related Titles
Islands at the Crossroads
Migration, Seafaring, and Interaction in the Caribbean
Edited by L. Antonio Curet and Mark W. Hauser
Historical Archaeologies of the Caribbean
Contextualizing Sites through Colonialism, Capitalism, and Globalism
Edited by Todd M. Ahlman and Gerald F. Schroedl
