An investigation into government forestry policies in Puerto Rico and how these have impacted on the condition of the country's forests.

This groundbreaking volume addresses the enslavement and experiences of Black Africans in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean, particularly La Española (or Hispaniola) and Puerto Rico, two of the earliest colonies. Spanning nearly four hundred years and rooted in extensive archival research, Transatlantic Bondage sheds light on a number of relatively underexamined topics in these locales, including the development and application of slavery laws, disobedience and its consequences, migration, gender, family, lifestyle, and community building among the free Black population and white allies. In bringing together new and recent work by leading scholars, including two essays translated into English here for the first time, the book is also a call for further study of slavery in the Spanish Caribbean and its impact on the region.

Drawing upon economic history, cultural studies, intellectual history and the history of science and medicine, this collection of case studies examines the transatlantic transfer and transformation of goods and ideas, with particular emphasis on their reception in Europe.

Silencing Race provides a historical analysis of the construction of silences surrounding issues of racial inequality, violence, and discrimination in Puerto Rico. Examining the ongoing racialization of Puerto Rican workers, it explores the 'class-making' of race.

"This work, of considerable value in terms of the constitutional history of Puerto Rico, discusses the historical background of U.S. territorial policy prior to 1898. The second part deals with events subsequent to that date."

The process of nation-building in Latin America transformed the relations between the state, the economy, and nature. Between 1760 and 1940, the economies of most countries in the Spanish Caribbean came to depend heavily on the export of plant products, such as coffee, tobacco, and sugar. After the mid-nineteenth century, this model of export-led economic growth also became a central tenet of liberal projects of nation-building. As international competition grew and commodity prices fell over this period, Latin American growers strove to remain competitive by increasing agricultural production. By the turn of the twentieth century, their pursuit of export-led growth had generated severe environmental problems, including soil exhaustion, erosion, and epidemic outbreaks of crop diseases and pests. This book traces the history of the intersections between nature, economy, and nation in the Spanish Caribbean through a history of the agricultural and botanical sciences. Growers and governments in Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, and Costa Rica turned to scientists to help them establish practical and ideological control over nature. They hoped to use science to alleviate the pressing environmental and economic stresses, without having to give up their commitment to export-led growth. Starting from an overview of the relationship among science, nature, and development throughout the export boom of 1760 to 1930, Stuart McCook examines such topics as the relationship between scientific plant surveys and nation-building, the development of a "creole science" to address the problems of tropical agriculture, the ecological rationalization of the sugar industry, and the growth of technocratic ideologies of science and progress. He concludes with a look at how the Great Depression of the 1930s changed the paradigms of economic and political development and the role of science and nature in these paradigms.