DOCSLIB.ORG

Health, Race, and the Environment in the British Greater Caribbean

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Health, Race, and the Environment in the British Greater Caribbean Atlantic Bodies: Health, Race, and the Environment in the British Greater Caribbean Katherine Johnston Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Katherine Johnston All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Atlantic Bodies: Health, Race, and the Environment in the British Greater Caribbean Katherine Johnston This dissertation examines the relationship between race and bodily health in the British West Indies and the Carolina/Georgia Lowcountry from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, planters often justified African slavery by claiming that Africans, unlike Europeans, had bodies particularly suited to labor in warm climates. Historians have tended to take these claims as evidence of a growing sense of biological race in plantation societies. Much of this work, though, relies on published sources. This dissertation examines these public sources, including medical manuals, natural histories, and political pamphlets, alongside private sources, particularly the personal correspondence of planters and slaveholders to uncover a different story of race and slavery. These two source types reveal significant discrepancies between planters’ public rhetoric and private beliefs about health, race, and the environment in plantation societies. First, correspondence between the Greater Caribbean and Britain demonstrates that health and disease did not contribute to the development of racial slavery in the Atlantic. Second, these sources show how and why planters manipulated public conceptions of climate and health to justify and maintain a system of racial slavery. Planters insisted on climate-based arguments for slavery in spite of their experiences in the Americas, rather than because of them. Slaveholders contributed to the construction of a biological concept of race by making arguments about health differences between Africans and Europeans that they neither experienced nor believed. Nevertheless, their arguments entered the public record and consciousness, and the resultant development of racial thinking had profound consequences that continue to the present day. This dissertation demonstrates the critical importance of the environment to the history of race. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iii INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE The Experience of Hot Climates ............................................................................33 CHAPTER TWO Laboring Bodies: Climate, Race, and the Georgia Myth, 1732-1750 ...................79 CHAPTER THREE “The fever in every feature”: Healthy Places and Colonial Settlement ...............130 CHAPTER FOUR A “great risque in seasoning”: The Unsettling Nature of Bodily Change ...........179 CHAPTER FIVE A Climatic Debate ................................................................................................219 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................271 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................285 i ABBREVIATIONS APS American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA BL British Library, London Bod. Bodleian Library, Oxford GHS Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, GA HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA ICS Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, London MHS Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA NLJ National Library of Jamaica, Kingston NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh NRS National Record Office of Scotland, Edinburgh TNA The National Archives, Kew, London ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is with great pleasure and gratitude that I write these acknowledgements. I hope they reflect, at least on some level, the tremendous joy I found in having supportive friends and colleagues over the years. So many people have contributed in various ways to the production of this work, and I owe sincere thanks for a mixture of insightful comments, encouragement, financial support, practical assistance, and much-needed reprieves. For funding that allowed me to conduct research in international as well as in domestic archives, I am grateful to the history department at Columbia University and to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Many thanks also to the Harvard Atlantic History Seminar for a research grant, and to the Institute of Historical Research for a pre-dissertation fellowship. I am grateful for research fellowships from several libraries; thanks to the American Philosophical Society, the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, as well as to the truly fantastic librarians and staff at each one. I visited many other libraries on my travels, and want to extend special thanks to Bernadette Worrell and Michael Thomas-Hannibal of the National Library of Jamaica, as well as to Sheila Sedgwick, archivist at the Farquharson of Invercauld estate in Braemar. For providing me with access to family papers in Scotland, I thank Simon Blackett of Invercauld Estate, Archie Orr Ewing of Cardross House, and Jamie Stormonth-Darling of Lednathie. I also wish to thank the tireless staff at Columbia University’s Butler Library, particularly Mayra Melendez and Catherine Parker, for their friendly faces even as the mountains of books I checked out grew ever taller. In the history department, my thanks go to Sharee Nash for ensuring my well-being. Readers and audience members at various venues provided thoughtful feedback on different pieces of this dissertation. For the opportunity to present my work, I am thankful to the iii McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Boston Environmental History Seminar, the Humanities Research Centre at the University of Warwick, and particularly to the members of the Breakfast Club. I have been fortunate to have several excellent teachers and role models along the way. For their guidance and encouragement, I thank Eileen Findlay, Alison Games, Karen Kupperman, Natasha Lightfoot, and especially Kate Haulman and Katharine Norris. Thanks also to Pamela Smith and Philip Stern for thoughtful conversations and helpful insights. Most of all, I am grateful to Christopher Brown for his sage advice and unflagging support. Chris, thank you for challenging and encouraging me all the way through this process and beyond. Your counsel, as well as your faith in me, has meant a great deal. For supporting my itinerant lifestyle during years of research, I am grateful to Dick Norris, Rogers Smith and Mary Summers, Chris and Laura Dennis, Liz and Dave Newton, and Becky and Charles Amis. All were gracious hosts, and made my time in Boston, Oxford, and Philadelphia both comfortable and sociable. Sincere thanks also to Simon Sleight and Hayley Maher for their generosity and friendship, and for infusing London visits with cheer. I am fortunate to have supportive family in England, and my thanks in particular go to Gillian and Adrian Dawson for taking me cycling in Dorset and walking in Dartmoor. Above all, I thank Julia, Julian, and Sancha Markson for making me feel so welcome in London, and for providing me with a home for so many summers. Closer to (my current) home, I am most grateful to those friends who have sustained me through this process in various ways. My thanks to Zara Anishanslin, Kyoungjin Bae, Nicole Longpre, Weiwei Luo, Lisa Maguire, Melissa Morris, Jordan Smith, and Peter Walker. Maria John has been a long-term ally and friend all the way through. Thank you, Maria, for vastly iv improving my time in New York. For even longer, Mary E. Mendoza has offered unwavering support every step of the way, and I offer my deepest thanks, both for her brilliant insights and for the adventures that sustained me away from work. Finally, I thank my sister Victoria and my parents, Wendy and David Johnston. Victoria provided much-needed breaks in the form of hikes in Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Maine, and Colorado, as well as a keen eye and helpful instruction in legal terminology. As for my parents, I cannot thank them enough. They have been more supportive than I could ever have hoped, in so many ways. No matter what challenges I threw their way over the years, they have always been in my corner, and they always will be. My most profound thanks to them both. v Introduction The lush green hills of St. Vincent, sloping away from the sea on a bright April day in 1791, provided a stark contrast to the bleak windswept hills of Scotland. As a ship made its way into the Caribbean island port, most of its Scottish passengers would have noticed the difference between the landscape they had left behind and the vibrant environment of their new home. Unlike the gentle inclines of the Highlands, where sheep dotted a terrain of exposed rock and grass, St. Vincent’s peaks rose sharply out of the ocean. Thick forests covered some of the slopes, and rows of coffee plants grew along the sides of others. Instead of the misty winter and occasional thin sunlight the travelers had left, the air in St. Vincent was heavy with heat and the steam of spring rains. Greenery stretched for miles in the warmth,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • After the Treaties: a Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739-1842
    University of Southampton Research Repository Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis and, where applicable, any accompanying data are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis and the accompanying data cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content of the thesis and accompanying research data (where applicable) must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holder/s. When referring to this thesis and any accompanying data, full bibliographic details must be given, e.g. Thesis: Author (Year of Submission) "Full thesis title", University of Southampton, name of the University Faculty or School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. University of Southampton Department of History After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739-1842 Michael Sivapragasam A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History June 2018 i ii UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY Doctor of Philosophy After the Treaties: A Social, Economic and Demographic History of Maroon Society in Jamaica, 1739-1842 Michael Sivapragasam This study is built on an investigation of a large number of archival sources, but in particular the Journals and Votes of the House of the Assembly of Jamaica, drawn from resources in Britain and Jamaica. Using data drawn from these primary sources, I assess how the Maroons of Jamaica forged an identity for themselves in the century under slavery following the peace treaties of 1739 and 1740.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Pearl Diving Event Kicks Off 193 Skippers and Sailors Embark on a Voyage
    Min 32º Max 46º FREE www.kuwaittimes.net NO: 16946- Friday, July 29, 2016 Annual pearl diving event kicks off 193 skippers and sailors embark on a voyage KUWAIT: Family members bid farewell to pearl divers as the annual traditional pearl diving event kicks off yesterday morning. — Photos by Yasser Al-Zayyat By Faten Omar, KUNA KUWAIT: The annual traditional pearl diving event, organized by the Kuwait Sea Sports Club (KSSC) in Salmiya, kicked off yesterday morning. The 28th ‘Dasha’ ceremony, which celebrates the start of Kuwait’s annual pearl diving trip, began at Kuwait Sea Sports Club under the auspices of the Kuwaiti leadership and in attendance of the Minister of Information and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Sheikh Salman Sabah Salem Al-Humoud Al-Sabah. (See Pages 4 & 5) Local FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2016 Local Spotlight The drug The Photographer’s Eye merchants In focus: Photojournalist Fouad Al-Shaikh By Muna Al-Fuzai [email protected] he Ministry of Interior foiled an attempt to smug- gle a huge amount of Captagon pills into the Tcountry. The pills were professionally hidden in a container coming from Turkey. The operation was described as the largest seizure of drugs - an estimat- ed 10 million pills of Captagon worth 25 million Kuwaiti dinars! Authorities allowed the container to enter the country and followed it until its final destina- tion in an open area in Jleeb Al-Shuyoukh. They wait- ed for three days, until a 28-year-old Syrian man came to receive it and was caught red-handed. Investigations will reveal the truth, but this should be a lesson, and that the Syrian, who could just be a mes- senger, is guilty too.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded4.0 License
    New West Indian Guide 94 (2020) 39–74 nwig brill.com/nwig A Disagreeable Text The Uncovered First Draft of Bryan Edwards’s Preface to The History of the British West Indies, c. 1792 Devin Leigh Department of History, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA [email protected] Abstract Bryan Edwards’s The History of the British West Indies is a text well known to histori- ans of the Caribbean and the early modern Atlantic World. First published in 1793, the work is widely considered to be a classic of British Caribbean literature. This article introduces an unpublished first draft of Edwards’s preface to that work. Housed in the archives of the West India Committee in Westminster, England, this preface has never been published or fully analyzed by scholars in print. It offers valuable insight into the production of West Indian history at the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, it shows how colonial planters confronted the challenges of their day by attempting to wrest the practice of writing West Indian history from their critics in Great Britain. Unlike these metropolitan writers, Edwards had lived in the West Indian colonies for many years. He positioned his personal experience as being a primary source of his historical legitimacy. Keywords Bryan Edwards – West Indian history – eighteenth century – slavery – abolition Bryan Edwards’s The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies is a text well known to scholars of the Caribbean (Edwards 1793). First published in June of 1793, the text was “among the most widely read and influential accounts of the British Caribbean for generations” (V.
    [Show full text]
  • ROBERT BURNS and PASTORAL This Page Intentionally Left Blank Robert Burns and Pastoral
    ROBERT BURNS AND PASTORAL This page intentionally left blank Robert Burns and Pastoral Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland NIGEL LEASK 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX26DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Nigel Leask 2010 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–957261–8 13579108642 In Memory of Joseph Macleod (1903–84), poet and broadcaster This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements This book has been of long gestation.
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States
    Historical Origins of the One-Drop Racial Rule in the United States Winthrop D. Jordan1 Edited by Paul Spickard2 Editor’s Note Winthrop Jordan was one of the most honored US historians of the second half of the twentieth century. His subjects were race, gender, sex, slavery, and religion, and he wrote almost exclusively about the early centuries of American history. One of his first published articles, “American Chiaroscuro: The Status and Definition of Mulattoes in the British Colonies” (1962), may be considered an intellectual forerunner of multiracial studies, as it described the high degree of social and sexual mixing that occurred in the early centuries between Africans and Europeans in what later became the United States, and hinted at the subtle racial positionings of mixed people in those years.3 Jordan’s first book, White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812, was published in 1968 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement era. The product of years of painstaking archival research, attentive to the nuances of the thousands of documents that are its sources, and written in sparkling prose, White over Black showed as no previous book had done the subtle psycho-social origins of the American racial caste system.4 It won the National Book Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, the Bancroft Prize, the Parkman Prize, and other honors. It has never been out of print since, and it remains a staple of the graduate school curriculum for American historians and scholars of ethnic studies. In 2005, the eminent public intellectual Gerald Early, at the request of the African American magazine American Legacy, listed what he believed to be the ten most influential books on African American history.
    [Show full text]
  • Postcolonial Female Subjects Rewritten Identities in Andrea Levy’S Small Island and Zadie Smith’S NW
    Master’s Degree in European, American and Postcolonial Languages and Literature Final Thesis Postcolonial Female Subjects Rewritten Identities in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Zadie Smith’s NW Supervisor Ch. Prof. Flavio Gregori Assistant Supervisor Ch. Prof. Shaul Bassi Graduand Buse Umur 876576 Academic Year 2019 / 2020 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all my professors who have inspired me during my education, enlightened my path with their precious knowledge, and encouraged me to write my thesis. Beyond any doubt, I would not be the person I am without their support and enthusiasm to raise me as a sensible individual. The melody of my life would not sound so harmoniously if it were not for my loving, gentle, insightful, brave, and strong friends. Their unconditional love and support have embellished my life. This thesis has come to life particularly thanks to their profound conversations, incredible company, and joyful laughter. It is my most tremendous fortune to have met beautiful souls across the world, for which I will always be grateful. I would also thank my brother for cheering up my life with his sweet and witty spirit and my father for being the most compassionate person he is and supporting my journey in whichever direction I may take. My greatest gratitude is for the strongest, fiercest, and kindest woman with her glittering blue eyes, brightening my life. For teaching me how to live, not survive, how to make my decisions, not conform, and how to laugh even after crying. For being a woman in a hostile and patriarchal environment, building a life for her family, raising her children with humanist values, and believing in us even when we cannot.
    [Show full text]
  • Deborah Gochfield
    DEBORAH JEAN GOCHFELD National Center for Natural Products Research P.O. Box 1848, University of Mississippi University, MS 38677-1848 Phone (662) 915-6769; Home (662) 281-0313 Fax: (662) 915-7062; Email: [email protected] EDUCATION: Ph.D. Zoology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii. Dec. 1997. Dissertation title: Mechanisms of coexistence between corals and coral-feeding butterflyfishes: territoriality, foraging behavior, and prey defense. B.A. Biology, Phi Beta Kappa, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. May 1988. RESEARCH EXPERIENCE: Senior Scientist, National Center for Natural Products Research, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. July 2006-present. Diseases of coral reef organisms. Chemical ecology of marine invertebrates. Phenotypic plasticity in chemical defenses of corals and sponges, particularly as they relate to pathogens and predators. Use of chemical ecology to direct drug discovery efforts from marine resources of Caribbean and Indo-Pacific reefs. Visiting Scientist, Caribbean Coral Reef Ecosystem Program, Smithsonian Marine Science Network. 2008-present. Prevalence and virulence of sponge diseases in the Caribbean. Visiting Scientist, Caribbean Marine Research Center, Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas. 2000-present. Chemical ecology, physiology and microbiology of corals and sponges as related to disease and other environmental stressors. Behavioral ecology of sponge- and coral-feeding fishes. Pheromones as signals for sex change in a marine goby. Antimicrobial and antipredator natural products from cave and reef sponges. Research Scientist, National Center for Natural Products Research and Ocean Biotechnology Center and Repository of the National Institute of Undersea Science and Technology, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS. Sept. 2001-June 2006. Chemical ecology of marine invertebrates. Phenotypic plasticity in chemical defenses of corals, particularly as they relate to coral pathogens and predators.
    [Show full text]
  • "Free Negroes" - the Development of Early English Jamaica and the Birth of Jamaican Maroon Consciousness, 1655-1670
    Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Theses Department of History 12-16-2015 "Free Negroes" - The Development of Early English Jamaica and the Birth of Jamaican Maroon Consciousness, 1655-1670 Patrick John Nichols Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses Recommended Citation Nichols, Patrick John, ""Free Negroes" - The Development of Early English Jamaica and the Birth of Jamaican Maroon Consciousness, 1655-1670." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2015. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/100 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “FREE NEGROES” – THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY ENGLISH JAMAICA AND THE BIRTH OF JAMAICAN MAROON CONSCIOUSNESS, 1655-1670 by PATRICK JOHN NICHOLS Under the Direction of Harcourt Fuller, PhD ABSTRACT The English conquest of Jamaica in 1655 was a turning point in the history of Atlantic World colonialism. Conquest displaced the Spanish colony and its subjects, some of who fled into the mountainous interior of Jamaica and assumed lives in isolation. This project reconstructs the historical experiences of the “negro” populations of Spanish and English Jamaica, which included its “free black”, “mulattoes”, indigenous peoples, and others, and examines how English cosmopolitanism and distinct interactions laid the groundwork for and informed the syncretic identities and communities that emerged decades later. Upon the framework of English conquest within the West Indies, I explore the experiences of one such settlement alongside the early English colony of Jamaica to understand how a formal relationship materialized between the entities and how its course inflected the distinct socio-political identity and emergent political agency embodied by the Jamaican Maroons.
    [Show full text]
  • The Gazetteer for Scotland Guidebook Series
    The Gazetteer for Scotland Guidebook Series: Stirling Produced from Information Contained Within The Gazetteer for Scotland. Tourist Guide of Stirling Index of Pages Introduction to the settlement of Stirling p.3 Features of interest in Stirling and the surrounding areas p.5 Tourist attractions in Stirling and the surrounding areas p.9 Towns near Stirling p.15 Famous people related to Stirling p.18 Further readings p.26 This tourist guide is produced from The Gazetteer for Scotland http://www.scottish-places.info It contains information centred on the settlement of Stirling, including tourist attractions, features of interest, historical events and famous people associated with the settlement. Reproduction of this content is strictly prohibited without the consent of the authors ©The Editors of The Gazetteer for Scotland, 2011. Maps contain Ordnance Survey data provided by EDINA ©Crown Copyright and Database Right, 2011. Introduction to the city of Stirling 3 Scotland's sixth city which is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of Stirling Council Area, Stirling lies between the River Forth and the prominent 122m Settlement Information (400 feet) high crag on top of which sits Stirling Castle. Situated midway between the east and west coasts of Scotland at the lowest crossing point on the River Forth, Settlement Type: city it was for long a place of great strategic significance. To hold Stirling was to hold Scotland. Population: 32673 (2001) Tourist Rating: In 843 Kenneth Macalpine defeated the Picts near Cambuskenneth; in 1297 William Wallace defeated the National Grid: NS 795 936 English at Stirling Bridge and in June 1314 Robert the Bruce routed the English army of Edward II at Stirling Latitude: 56.12°N Bannockburn.
    [Show full text]
  • The Clan Macneil
    THE CLAN MACNEIL CLANN NIALL OF SCOTLAND By THE MACNEIL OF BARRA Chief of the Clan Fellow of the Society of .Antiquarie1 of Scotland With an Introduction by THE DUKE OF ARGYLL Chief of Clan Campbell New York THE CALEDONIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY MCMXXIII Copyright, 1923, by THE CALEDONIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY Entered at Stationers~ Hall, London, England .All rights reser:ved Printed by The Chauncey Holt Compan}'. New York, U. 5. A. From Painting by Dr. E, F. Coriu, Paris K.1s11\1 UL CASTLE} IsLE OF BAH HA PREFACE AVING a Highlander's pride of race, it was perhaps natural that I should have been deeply H interested, as a lad, in the stirring tales and quaint legends of our ancient Clan. With maturity came the desire for dependable records of its history, and I was disappointed at finding only incomplete accounts, here and there in published works, which were at the same time often contradictory. My succession to the Chiefship, besides bringing greetings from clansmen in many lands, also brought forth their expressions of the opinion that a complete history would be most desirable, coupled with the sug­ gestion that, as I had considerable data on hand, I com­ pile it. I felt some diffidence in undertaking to write about my own family, but, believing that under these conditions it would serve a worthy purpose, I commenced this work which was interrupted by the chaos of the Great War and by my own military service. In all cases where the original sources of information exist I have consulted them, so that I believe the book is quite accurate.
    [Show full text]
  • Early History of the Avocado During the Time of the Conquistadores
    South African Avocado Growers’ Association Yearbook 1987. 10:11-12 Proceedings of the First World Avocado Congress Early history of the avocado during the time of the Conquistadores GA ZENTMYER, E SCHIEBER and W POPENOE† Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA, and Antigua, Guatemala. †ln Life: Director Escuela Agricola Panamericana, Tegucigalpa, Honduras. SYNOPSIS Soon after the discovery of the Americas, the Spanish Conquistadores discovered the avocado as an unusual, savoury fruit in northern South America, Central America and Mexico in the early 1500s. From Fernandez de Enciso's first report of this new fruit in Colombia in 1519, many Spanish publications and later, in the 17th century, English ones described and lauded the avocado. From these beginnings over 400 years ago, the avocado, an-indigenous fruit to the Americas, has been introduced into many countries with suitable climates around the world and a sizeable avocado industry has developed. Before the Spanish conquest of the Americas in the 16th century, the avocado was known only to the native inhabitants of Latin America - the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Central America and northern South America. The Spanish Conquistadores discovered numerous different and unusual fruits and vegetables indigenous to the Americas, among which the avocado. They soon published their findings and transported fruit and seeds back to the Old World (primarily to Spain). The first published record of what is now known as the avodado, is in the report of Spanish Conquistador Martin Fernandez de Enciso, who observed this fruit in 1519 as commonly grown near Santa Marta, Colombia.
    [Show full text]
  • Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion, Conspiracy, and the First Great Awakening, 1729-1746
    Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion, Conspiracy, and the First Great Awakening, 1729-1746 by Justin James Pope B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science, May 2000, Eckerd College M.A. in History, May 2005, University of Cincinnati M.Phil. in History, May 2008, The George Washington University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 31, 2014 Dissertation directed by David J. Silverman Professor of History The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Justin Pope has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 10, 2014. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Dangerous Spirit of Liberty: Slave Rebellion, Conspiracy, and the Great Awakening, 1729-1746 Justin Pope Dissertation Research Committee: David J. Silverman, Professor of History, Dissertation Director Denver Brunsman, Assistant Professor of History, Committee Member Greg L. Childs, Assistant Professor of History, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2014 by Justin Pope All rights reserved iii Acknowledgments I feel fortunate to thank the many friends and colleagues, institutions and universities that have helped me produce this dissertation. The considerable research for this project would not have been possible without the assistance of several organizations. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Maryland Historical Society, the Cosmos Club Foundation of Washington, D.C., the Andrew Mellon Fellowship of the Virginia Historical Society, the W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Thompson Travel Grant from the George Washington University History Department, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Research Fellowship all provided critical funding for my archival research.
    [Show full text]