Overview

"Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American """"tropical biologists"""" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire."

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9781469635606

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Raby's study contributes a crucial and expansive narrative of biological connections and a politically informed evolution of ideas. Like the best histories, her work opens avenues for further research on an important and timely subject.--Environmental History This book is eminently recommendable. Raby has given us needed insight into the history of tropical American science within the context of imperial expansion and the construction of Caribbean hegemony.--H-Net Reviews Skillfully shows the strategic and serendipitous ways field science coincided with political and economic imperial pursuits in the twentieth century. This enlarged context greatly expands how we can look at both the process and knowledge of science as products of social contingencies.--Edge Effects

Skillfully shows the strategic and serendipitous ways field science coincided with political and economic imperial pursuits in the twentieth century. This enlarged context greatly expands how we can look at both the process and knowledge of science as products of social contingencies.--Edge Effects

Skillfully shows the strategic and serendipitous ways field science coincided with political and economic imperial pursuits in the twentieth century. This enlarged context greatly expands how we can look at both the process and knowledge of science as products of social contingencies.--Edge Effects This book is eminently recommendable. Raby has given us needed insight into the history of tropical American science within the context of imperial expansion and the construction of Caribbean hegemony.--H-Net Reviews Raby's study contributes a crucial and expansive narrative of biological connections and a politically informed evolution of ideas. Like the best histories, her work opens avenues for further research on an important and timely subject.--Environmental History Thorough and ground-breaking . . . . Raby marshals a breathtaking amount of evidence.--American Historical Review A remarkably persuasive genealogy of ideas. . . . An important contribution to our understanding of science in the Caribbean, and of the way supposedly universal knowledge is always a local hybrid.--Brill Journals

Author Information

Megan Raby is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

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