Tokens of Oppression: Coinage at a Nineteenth-Century Galapagos Sugar Plantation

Author(s): Ross W. Jamieson

Year: 2017

Summary

In the 1870s Manuel J. Cobos founded the El Progreso plantation agricultural operation on the Island of San Cristóbal in the Galapagos. It is known that he used "scrip," or company-issued cash, to force workers to only spend their wages at the company store. Archaeological recovery of hard rubber tokens from several plantation contexts brings up many questions of economics and labour relations surrounding this remote location which was also tied to the global economy through steam power, commodity agriculture, and ideas of modernity.

Cite this Record

Tokens of Oppression: Coinage at a Nineteenth-Century Galapagos Sugar Plantation. Ross W. Jamieson. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 430867)

Keywords

Geographic Keywords
South America

Spatial Coverage

min long: -93.691; min lat: -56.945 ; max long: -31.113; max lat: 18.48 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16638