The Order of Destruction: Monoculture in Colonial Caribbean Literature, c. 1640-1800 (Transdisciplinary Souths)

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Synopsis
This book studies sugarcane monoculture, the dominant form of cultivation in the colonial Caribbean, in the later 1600s and 1700s up to the Haitian Revolution. Researching travel literature, plantation manuals, Georgic poetry, letters, and political proclamations, this book interprets texts by Richard Ligon, Henry Drax, James Grainger, Janet Schaw, and Toussaint Louverture.As the first extended investigation into its topic, this book reads colonial Caribbean monoculture as the conjunction of racial capitalism and agrarian capitalism in the tropics. Its eco-Marxist perspective highlights the dual exploitation of the soil and of enslaved agricultural producers under the plantation regime, thereby extending Marxist analysis to the early colonial Caribbean. By focusing on textual form (in literary and non-literary texts alike), this study discloses the bearing of monoculture on contemporary writers’ thoughts. In the process, it emphasizes the significance of a literary tradition that, despite its ideological importance, is frequently neglected in (postcolonial) literary studies and the environmental humanities.Located at a crossroads of disciplines and perspectives, this study will be of interest to literary/cultural critics and historians working in the early Americas and in Atlantic studies, to students and scholars of agriculture, colonialism, and (racial) capitalism, to Marxists and postcolonial critics, and to those working in the environmental humanities and in Global South studies.
Copyright:
2024

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
224 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781040039632
Related ISBNs:
9781003465935, 9781032781280, 9781032514161, 9781040039601
Publisher:
Taylor & Francis
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Heinrich Wilke. The right of Heinrich Wilke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Outdoors and Nature, Social Studies, Language Arts, Politics and Government
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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