Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World

Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World

Author: Gregory T. Cushman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1107004136

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This book traces the history of bird guano, demonstrating how this unique commodity helped unite the Pacific Basin with the industrialized world.


Beyond Hawai'i

Beyond Hawai'i

Author: Gregory Rosenthal

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-05-04

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0520967968

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In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawai‘i to work on ships at sea and in na ‘aina ‘e (foreign lands)—on the Arctic Ocean and throughout the Pacific Ocean, and in the equatorial islands and California. Beyond Hawai‘i tells the stories of these forgotten indigenous workers and how their labor shaped the Pacific World, the global economy, and the environment. Whether harvesting sandalwood or bird guano, hunting whales, or mining gold, these migrant workers were essential to the expansion of transnational capitalism and global ecological change. Bridging American, Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai‘i is the first book to argue that indigenous labor—more than the movement of ships and spread of diseases—unified the Pacific World.


The Great Guano Rush

The Great Guano Rush

Author: Jimmy M. Skaggs

Publisher: MacMillan

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9780333614983

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This text describes the little-known history of the earliest example of American overseas expansion. Guano was the 19th century's most important fertilizer and in 1856 Congress, believing that American farmers were being gouged on guano sales by foreign monopolists, authorized US citizens to claim and exploit unowned guano-rich islands around the world. The legacy of this decision is a strange group of American appurtenances, ranging from Haiti to the central Pacific and with a highly diverse subsequent history, from the notorious near-slavery of guano-miners on Navassa Island to the contemporary issue of the Johnston Atoll chemical weapon destruction plant.


Green Imperialism

Green Imperialism

Author: Richard H. Grove

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-03-29

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 9780521565134

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The first book to document the origins and early history of environmentalism, especially its colonial and global aspects.


How to Hide an Empire

How to Hide an Empire

Author: Daniel Immerwahr

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 0374715122

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Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune A Publishers Weekly best book of 2019 | A 2019 NPR Staff Pick A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.


The Geography, Nature and History of the Tropical Pacific and its Islands

The Geography, Nature and History of the Tropical Pacific and its Islands

Author: Walter M. Goldberg

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-12-08

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 3319695320

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This volume provides an accessible scientific introduction to the historical geography of Tropical Pacific Islands, assessing the environmental and cultural changes they have undergone and how they are affected currently by these shifts and alterations. The book emphasizes the roles of plants, animals, people, and the environment in shaping the tropical Pacific through a cross-disciplinary approach involving history, geography, biology, environmental science, and anthropology. With these diverse scientific perspectives, the eight chapters of the book provide a comprehensive overview of Tropical Pacific Islands from their initial colonization by native peoples to their occupation by colonial powers, and the contemporary changes that have affected the natural history and social fabric of these islands. The Tropical Pacific Islands are introduced by a description of their geological formation, development, and geography. From there, the book details the origins of the island's original peoples and the dawn of the political economy of these islands, including the domestication and trade of plants, animals, and other natural resources. Next, readers will learn about the impact of missionaries on Pacific Islands, and the affects of Wold War II and nuclear testing on natural resources and the health of its people. The final chapter discusses the islands in the context of natural resource extraction, population increases, and global climate change. Working together these factors are shown to affect rainfall and limited water resources, as well as the ability to sustain traditional crops, and the capacity of the islands to accomodate its residents.


Consuming Ocean Island

Consuming Ocean Island

Author: Katerina Martina Teaiwa

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2014-12-27

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0253014603

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Consuming Ocean Island tells the story of the land and people of Banaba, a small Pacific island, which, from 1900 to 1980, was heavily mined for phosphate, an essential ingredient in fertilizer. As mining stripped away the island's surface, the land was rendered uninhabitable, and the indigenous Banabans were relocated to Rabi Island in Fiji. Katerina Martina Teaiwa tells the story of this human and ecological calamity by weaving together memories, records, and images from displaced islanders, colonial administrators, and employees of the mining company. Her compelling narrative reminds us of what is at stake whenever the interests of industrial agriculture and indigenous minorities come into conflict. The Banaban experience offers insight into the plight of other island peoples facing forced migration as a result of human impact on the environment.


The Happy Isles of Oceania

The Happy Isles of Oceania

Author: Paul Theroux

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2006-12-08

Total Pages: 731

ISBN-13: 0547525184

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The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly). In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.


The Wizard and the Prophet

The Wizard and the Prophet

Author: Charles C. Mann

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2018-01-23

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0307961702

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From the bestselling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493—an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.


Imagining Development

Imagining Development

Author: Paul Gootenberg

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

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"Gootenberg has mined a large number of periodicals, pamphlets, and nineteenth-century monographs to unearth currents of thought that were more perceptive and developmentalist than conventional wisdom would have expected. He shows their organic connection to their times. The prose is clear, sharp, jocular, and the organization masterful. He interweaves political background with economic doctrine in precisely the right way. This is a model for the history of economic ideas."--Steven Topik, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine "Gootenberg writes gracefully; he turns phrases with style and wit. I can't think of any other historian who has gained such a firm understanding of nineteenth-century Peru. This book will stir up interest not just for Peruvianists but for anybody seriously interested in Latin America's policy options today."--Shane Hunt, Boston University