Thesis ID: CBB001560717

Trading in Birds: A History of Science, Economy, and Conservation in United States-Colombia Relations (2007)

unapi

Quintero, Camilo (Author)


University of Wisconsin at Madison
Mitman, Gregg


Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisor: Mitman, Gregg
Physical Details: 257 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation uncovers the history behind the trade of Colombian birds as a means to comprehend the complex scientific, economic and environmental relations between the United States and Colombia since the late nineteenth century. Colombia was one of the major exporters of bird feathers to supply the thriving millinery industry in the United States and Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. The global commodification of birds for the fashion industry, however, altered the environmental balance of different regions and the social conditions of many people in Colombia. Although the commercial trade of birds eventually waned in the first decades of the twentieth century, the extraction of birds as a natural resource continued in Colombia, fueled, not by the millinery industry, but by the ornithological interests of rapidly expanding museums of natural history in the United States. How North American expeditions carried out in Colombia were shaped by larger forces of American cultural and economic imperialism in Latin America in the early twentieth century is an important theme of this dissertation. Although unequal power relations favored North American scientists in the trade of birds for scientific purposes, Colombian scientists also used their connection with the United States to pursue their own agendas. A study of ornithology in Colombia during the first decades of the twentieth century also reveals the ways in which nature and nation became intertwined. Rising nationalism, as well as debates about modernity within Colombia, influenced not only the way Colombians understood their natural world but also how they established the first programs to preserve it. The history of the bird trade between Colombia and the United States reveals the opportunities commodity history can bring to the history of science, shifting the scale of analysis from micro-histories to narratives that integrate approaches drawn from economic, environmental and cultural history into more transnational histories of science.

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Description On the trade of Colombian birds between the United States and Colombia since the late 19th century. Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/08 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3278804.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001560717/

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Authors & Contributors
Grouw, H. Van
Yochelson, Ellis Leon
Bloch, D.
Jackson Pope
Lesser, Thomas A.
Davey, Colin
Concepts
Natural history
Museums
Birds
Environmentalism
Societies; institutions; academies
Trade
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
Early modern
20th century, late
Places
United States
Australia
Philadelphia, PA
London (England)
Scotland
New York City (New York, U.S.)
Institutions
National Museum of Natural History (U.S.)
Smithsonian Institution
Cornell University, Laboratory of Ornithology
Cornell Library of Natural Sounds
American Museum of Natural History
University of California, Berkeley
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