Colours, commodities and the birth of globalization: a history of the natural dyes of the Americas, 1500-2000

Abstract

"This volume explores the global history of natural dyes from the Americas and asks how their production and trade have shaped globalization since early modern times. From their extraction and processing to their overseas trade, it shows how this commodity contributed to the rise of the textile industry and consumption in Europe, the United States and Latin America. In doing so, it sheds new light on the emergence of a global economy. Spanning several centuries, Colours, Commodities and the Birth of Globalization takes the reader from 1500 through the industrial revolutions of Europe and the United States and culminates in the synthetic age of the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Ranging from the indigo trade in the Atlantic to the secrets of the Indian production of cochineal, the chapters in this collection transcend nationally bounded historical narratives and explore transoceanic dynamics, imperial ambitions and the cross-cultural exchange of knowledge and techniques to better understand the birth of globalization" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Introduction : the colours of globalization / Carlos Marichal and David Pretel -- The natural dyes of the Americas : geography, labour and trade (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries) / Carlos Marichal -- The making of colonial blue : Mesoamerican indigo in the Iberian Atlantic, 1560-1620 / Adrianna Catena and Huemac Escalona -- A place under the sun : brazilwood in the Brazilian economy (1500-1875) / José Jobson de Andrade Arruda -- Mexican cochineal and the material history of art (sixteenth to nineteeth centuries) / Georges Roque -- Logwood, masterless men and British interests in Yucatan and Central America / Karl Offen -- From abundance to scarcity : dyewood production and trade in the Colombian Caribbean, 1700-1900 / Jorge Enrique Elías-Caro -- Indigo in eighteenth-century Venezuela : an unfinished history / Frédérique Langue -- Above and beyond Eliza Lucas Pinckney : slave expertise and South Carolina indigo / Andrea Feeser -- Local production, Atlantic trade : the logwood economy in Laguna de Términos during the nineteenth century / Pascale Villegas and Rosa Torras Canangla -- Costa Rican neotropical dyewoods in global context, 1885-1940 / Anthony Goebel Mc Dermott and Ronny J. Viales Hurtado -- Defying substitution : a Caribbean dyewood in the synthetic age / David Pretel -- Epilogue / Dominique Cardon.