This article investigates the powerful normative role of plantation-oriented agricultural practices in what was arguably the premier indigenous crop revolution of the colonial era: the West African cocoa boom. It traces the links between the extraordinary growth of cocoa production in the region -- above all in the Gold Coast -- and the longer experience of cocoa estates in other parts of the world, in particular the Caribbean, which served as a key reference point for the expanding global cocoa frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In spite of the manifest competitive success of African farmers' extensive agricultural practices during this period, most outside observers retained a strong partiality towards intensive production techniques under centralized European management. This article emphasizes the role played by the transcontinental exchange of ideas in sustaining the cultural authority of such cultivation techniques long after their commercial viability came into question.
...More
Book
Swindell, Ken;
Jeng, Alieu;
(2006)
Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834--1934
(/isis/citation/CBB001422392/)
Book
Kathinka Sinha Kerkhoff;
(2014)
Colonising Plants in Bihar (1760-1950): Tobacco Betwixt Indigo and Sugarcane
(/isis/citation/CBB736218379/)
Book
Sharma, Jayeeta;
(2011)
Empire's Garden: Assam and the Making of India
(/isis/citation/CBB001421813/)
Article
Ortega, José Guadalupe;
(2014)
Machines, Modernity, and Sugar: The Greater Caribbean in a Global Context, 1812--50
(/isis/citation/CBB001421520/)
Thesis
Maria do Mar de Mello Gago da Silva;
(2018)
Robusta Empire: Coffee, Scientists and the Making of Colonial Angola (1898-1961)
(/isis/citation/CBB712303405/)
Book
Anja Timmermann;
(2014)
Indigo. Die Analyse eine ökonomischen Wissensbestandes im 18. Jahrhundert
(/isis/citation/CBB633173780/)
Book
Sarah Besky;
(2020)
Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea
(/isis/citation/CBB480361893/)
Book
Michitake Aso;
(2018)
Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897–1975
(/isis/citation/CBB827064585/)
Book
Hoyle, R W;
(2013)
The Farmer in England, 1650--1980
(/isis/citation/CBB001422268/)
Book
Piero Brunello;
(2022)
Lo zolfo e l'acquasanta. Parroci agronomi in Veneto e in Friuli nel periodo austriaco (1814-1866)
(/isis/citation/CBB777683702/)
Book
Law, Robin;
Suzanne, Schwarz;
Silke, Strickrodt;
(2013)
Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001422242/)
Book
James L. Huston;
(2015)
The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America
(/isis/citation/CBB109444908/)
Article
Hoogte, Arjo Roersch van der;
Pieters, Toine;
(2014)
Science in the Service of Colonial Agro-Industrialism: The Case of Cinchona Cultivation in the Dutch and British East Indies, 1852--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001421062/)
Book
Lucas Richert;
Jim Mills;
(2021)
Cannabis: Global Histories
(/isis/citation/CBB469806689/)
Book
Matthew Casey;
(2017)
Empire's Guestworkers: Haitian Migrants in Cuba during the Age of US Occupation
(/isis/citation/CBB940663421/)
Article
Simons, Peter;
(2015)
Aviation's Heartland: The Flying Farmers and Postwar Flight
(/isis/citation/CBB001422240/)
Book
Swanson, Drew A.;
(2014)
A Golden Weed: Tobacco and Environment in the Piedmont South
(/isis/citation/CBB001422341/)
Article
Prodöhl, Ines;
(2013)
Versatile and Cheap: A Global History of Soy in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001421542/)
Book
Slongwhite, Dale Finley;
Economos, Jeannie;
(2014)
Fed up: The High Costs of Cheap Food
(/isis/citation/CBB001422400/)
Article
Van Lanen, Amanda;
(2014)
“Where Dollars Grow on Trees”: The Promise and Reality of Irrigated Farming in Central Washington, 1890--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001421793/)
Be the first to comment!