There's Sugar in Them There Hills: Bio-prospecting in the 18th-century Caribbean

Author(s): Edith Gonzalez

Year: 2018

Summary

In an effort to discover the next big viable cash crop, the Codrington family of Antigua hired a botanist to implement a strategic introduction of species from the four corners of the British empire to Barbuda as an 18th-century living laboratory. This paper draws on historical documents to explore the dynamic and sometimes conflicting motives for agricultural experimentation - those of food security in times of drought or war versus finding the next "sugar."

Cite this Record

There's Sugar in Them There Hills: Bio-prospecting in the 18th-century Caribbean. Edith Gonzalez. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 444467)

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Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -90.747; min lat: 3.25 ; max long: -48.999; max lat: 27.683 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22492