From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 / Edition 1

by Reinaldo Funes Monzote

Overview

In this award-winning environmental history of Cuba since the age of Columbus, Reinaldo Funes Monzote emphasizes the two processes that have had the most dramatic impact on the island's landscape: deforestation and sugar cultivation. During the first 300 years of Spanish settlement, sugar plantations arose primarily in areas where forests had been cleared by the royal navy, which maintained an interest in management and conservation for the shipbuilding industry. The sugar planters won a decisive victory in 1815, however, when they were allowed to clear extensive forests, without restriction, for cane fields and sugar production. This book is the first to consider Cuba's vital sugar industry through the lens of environmental history. Funes Monzote demonstrates how the industry that came to define Cuba—and upon which Cuba urgently depended—also devastated the ecology of the island.

The original Spanish-language edition of the book, published in Mexico in 2004, was awarded the UNESCO Book Prize for Caribbean Thought, Environmental Category. For this first English edition, the author has revised the text throughout and provided new material, including a glossary and a conclusion that summarizes important developments up to the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900807858584
Publication date:	03/03/2008
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

About the Author

Reinaldo Funes Monzote is associate professor of history at the University of Havana. Alex Martin is an independent translator living in Maryland.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface
Introduction
1 The Omnipresent Forest and the Beginnings of the Sugar Industry
2 Shipbuilding and the Sugar Industry, 1772-1791
3 The Struggle over Private Ownership of Forests, 1792-1815
4 Sugar and the Absolute Freedom to Clear Forests, 1815-1876
5 Centralization of the Sugar Industry and the Forests, 1876-1898
6 North American Capital and Sugar's Final Assault on the Forest, 1898-1926
Conclusion: From Forests to Sugar: An Insignificant Change?
Appendix 1: Scientific Names of Plants and Animals
Appendix 2: Temperature and Precipitation in the Natural Regions of Cuba
Appendix 3: Units of Measure, with Equivalents
Notes
Glossary
Bibliographic Essay
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This is a magisterial environmental history of Cuba's forests and its sugar industry, written by one of the leading environmental historians of his generation.—Stuart McCook, University of Guelph

This remarkable book by one of Cuba's most accomplished young historians offers English-speaking readers the environmental history of a major plantation society in the Americas. Writing with erudition, but also with an attention to narrative, Funes Monzote demonstrates how, in a colonial context, the search for profits from sugar brought about an irreparable transformation in the ecology of a large, wooded tropical island.—Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan

Editorial Reviews

A very fine book that provides a comprehensive environmental history of the occupation of Cuba since 1492 and its transformation from a mostly forested island to one dominated by sugar cane.—American Historical Review

[A] very extensive examination. . . . Highly recommended.—Choice

An important study of the human-induced evolution of the Cuban landscape since the arrival of Columbus.—Caribbean Review of Books

A magisterial environmental history. . . . [With] comprehensive scope, original argument, and eloquent writing.—World Sugar History Newsletter

Seminal. . . . [A] splendid example of the richness of Latin American environmental history.—Hispanic American Historical Review

[A] fine environmental history.—New West Indian Guide

A major accomplishment. . . . A fascinating, provocative and substantive addition to Latin American environmental history.—Journal of Latin American Studies

An essential contribution to the wider fields of environmental and Latin American history. . . . The author's decision to make the forest the focal point of his analysis is innovative and effective.—Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies

A major contribution to the environmental history of Cuba and the Caribbean. . . . Will . . . serve as a guide to writers on the environmental history of other islands in the Caribbean and around the tropical world.—Journal of American Studies

From the Publisher