"No lovlier sight": Tracing the Post-Emancipation Lime Industry on Montserrat and Dominica

Summary

In the second half of the 19th-century, Montserrat citrus limes were world famous, appearing regularly in British advertisements and utilized in the global perfume and beverage markets. But the ways in which this industry impacted the lives of Montserrat’s formerly enslaved laborers has yet to be clearly understood. Preliminary research for a landscape survey of Montserrat, utilizing a comparative approach with Dominica, is presented. As in the case of Montserrat, lime agriculture on Dominica gradually increased, and by 1875, this crop became the dominant industry and many estates were yielding exceptional profits. This study seeks to understand how wage-based systems of labor came to transform island economies after emancipation and how this shift manifested itself both physically and socially for the islands’ inhabitants. Tracing the trajectory of the lime industry engages historically with methods of transferrable technology, sustainable agriculture, and networks of agency and identity vis-a-vis these post-emancipation island populations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017   •
• Afterlives of Slavery on the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Plantation

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 524