CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Portal de Revistas Académicas Universidad de Puerto Rico El conflicto de los saberes . Mona Island and the guano industry, 1877-1885 Michael Campbell Wolfmeyer Catedrático Auxiliar- Departamento de Humanidades UPR-Ponce Resumen El artículo inquiere sobre el desarrollo de la industria del guano en su más importante sitio en Puerto Rico: la isla de Mona. Los primeros años de la producción de guano fueron erráticos. Pero las autoridades españolas y medios puertorriqueños percibieron el potencial y siguieron tratando de desarrollar esta exportación prometedora en términos lucrativos. Los primeros intentos de exportar guano a los Estados Unidos fueron exitosos, pero la industria carecía de la experiencia necesaria para expandir suficientemente la producción. Vino entonces un geólogo canadiense experto en guano de nombre John G. Miller, con su asistente Carlos Miguel Iglesias Mons. No solo fueron capaces de expandir la producción, sino también de usar su pericia en cuestión de exportaciones a diferentes mercados, incluyendo los británicos. Miller e Iglesias llegarían a sentar las bases para la exportación de guano que habría de florecer en Puerto Rico hasta convertirse una década después en el tercer artículo de exportación más importante. Palabras clave: Guano, exportaciones, mercados, Isla de Mona, minería. Abstract This article delves into the development of the guano industry in its most important location in Puerto Rico, Mona Island. The initial years of guano production were erratic; but the Spanish and Puerto Rican governments saw potential and continued to try to develop this possibly lucrative export. Initial attempts to export guano to the United States proved successful, but the industry lacked the expertise to greatly expand production. To solve this dilemma came a Canadian geologist and expert in guano extraction John G. Miller and his assistant Carlos Miguel Iglesias Mons. They were not only able to expand guano production, but also to use their expertise to prepare exports for different markets including those in Great Britain. Miller and Iglesias would lay the foundations for guano exports that would eventually flourish into Puerto Rico’s third most important export a decade later. Key Words: Guano, Exports, Markets, Mona Island, Mining Interest in fertilizer to increase especially Britain, failed to meet rising crop production may be an ancient idea, expectations, science was vested with the but the potential of guano as a plant responsibility to revive the lost potential nutrient really took root in the nineteenth of the soil. To this end, some researchers century. As the fields of Europe, increasingly labored over the factors Ceiba: Año 11 Núm. 1 [Segunda Época] Agosto 2011 - Mayo 2012, (73 – 84) 73 Michael Campbell Wolfmeyer which caused plants to grow and produce. This essay does not intend to enter the Chemistry, a rapidly growing field, was debate over the correctness of Malthus' recruited to further enhance this renewal suppositions, but simply to indicate that of the ground. Alexander von Humboldt the nineteenth century was influenced by is credited, if not for the discovery, for the this thinker. Guano could thus lend power renaissance of the use of guano. to the earth in its struggle to keep up with human reproduction. By the 1840s, agricultural chemists, led by Justus Liebig, had done In the 1840s, other sources of sufficient research to advocate the use of guano were sought in order to make this guano as a field enhancing fertilizer. This fertilizer more available and less initial phase of guano as a fertilizer expensive for farmers. The race for witnessed the direct application of the seabird droppings would result in a feces to the fields, with the scramble that would take prospectors far unsophisticated notion that more is better. and wide upon the globe. The As advocated by Humboldt, the first southwestern coastal islands of Africa source utilized were the Chincha islands were one such source, as were various off the coast of Peru. These islands were Pacific and Caribbean islands. High literal mountains of seabird deposits, or prices, as well as the prospect of getting guano, and thus offered the British, who rich quickly, lured these guanopreneurs quickly obtained a monopoly, an out onto the high seas in search of their opportunity to control the guano fertilizer odoriferous fortune. The so-called guano industry. rush would last until the 1860s, by which time the interest in guano had dissipated as other fertilizer sources received higher Ideological motives also fueled the marks from the agronomists. search for increased food production in England. Thomas Robert Malthus, and the In this first wave of discovery the generation of his followers known as Mona Channel, between the islands of Malthusians, predicted that food supply Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, was explored could not keep pace with human as a viable source. Mona Island, the reproduction. In the face of England's largest of the islands in this channel, was increased concentration on manufacturing ignored, as it appeared to hold little they foresaw a bleak future if population potential for guano. Instead, the island of growth was not curbed. Malthus' own Monito was targeted by the guano hunters words from Population: The First Essay as the best possible source of seabird of 1798 stated: deposits. Captain Jacob Stokely of ...the power of population is Baltimore first brought a cargo of the indefinitely greater than the droppings from Monito Island in 1855. power in the earth to produce Subsequent trips the following year would subsistence for man. show the disregard of these guanopreneurs for Spain's rights of Population, when unchecked, ownership.2 In 1856, the Spanish increases in a geometrical ratio. authorities would send the warship Bazán Subsistence increases only in an to put an end to the unauthorized removal arithmetical ratio.1 of guano deposits from Monito Island.3 Ceiba: Año 11 Núm. 1 [Segunda Época] Agosto 2011 – Mayo 2012, (73 - 84) 74 Mona Island and . In the following decade interest in concession into a profitable business guano was on the wane. The Civil War in venture. This would include the obvious the United States removed the urgency of need to better evaluate the guano of their the Mid-Atlantic States to receive more concession, the identification of markets, Caribbean guano. In Europe, other the improvement of regular shipping to factors, most importantly the advocacy of and from Mona Island, and the eventual other fertilizer sources would reduce the utilization of this knowledge to make the demand for bird droppings. The guano mining venture a success. These were no potential of the Mona Channel no longer small tasks, and early indications showed appeared as an important issue in little more promise than the previous international trade. concessionaires, but this partnership would reap benefits which had eluded the By the second half of the 1870s, previous entrepreneurs. Monito Island, there was a revival of the guano industry, although not completely forgotten, would as it entered the second phase which play a secondary role in these years. This witnessed the use of more sophisticated period, 1877-1885, will be the first real fertilizers. With the movement towards success story for guano production out of chemically mixed fertilizers, later called the Mona Passage. superphosphates, guano regained a portion of its earlier importance. Seabird The initial guano deposits enjoyed droppings once again appeared as a the benefit of easy access. This meant that possible means of getting rich quickly for with little technology and large amounts those entrepreneurs who could properly of labor the concession could reap take advantage of the market. benefits. These first deposits required little more than the scraping, drying, and During this second phase of the loading of the fertilizer. Such accessibility guano industry, Mona Island reached a made the possibility of great profits seem period of growth and development. The ever so much closer, since the extraction of guano, due to the changing international market still appeared to have demands, necessitated greater expertise on an insatiable demand for all the Mona Island. Specifically, plans are forthcoming guano.4 Mona Island's prepared and carried out as to the most resources thus appeared poised to jump opportune means by which to extract the into the international market. cave guano. Perhaps its greatest single accomplishment was that this natural Additional factors, which exceeded resource finally combined with its most simple questions of price and tonnage desirable market. These fundamental available, played an important part in the changes enabled the formerly improvised, decisions which saw the feces cross the untechnical development of Mona Island Atlantic Ocean. Spain ultimately would to turn into a professional business better have the final word in the direction and able to increase quantities of guano and quantity of guano which would leave the extract greater profits simultaneously. Mona Channel. There were also the problems of chemical analysis, extraction The company in charge of this expertise, markets, sales contacts, and development, Srs. Porrata Doria y shipping--all essential to a further Contreras, sought to turn the Mona Island understanding of the international Ceiba: Año 11 Núm. 1 [Segunda Época] Agosto 2011 - Mayo 2012, (73 – 84) 75 Michael Campbell Wolfmeyer fertilizer industry