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Networks of American Experts in the Caribbean: The Harvard Botanic Station in Cuba (1898–1930)

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Harvard University’s contribution to producing knowledge on the tropics, in contexts of hegemonic imperial expansion and subsequent decolonisation and economic globalisation. It shows how networks of knowledge and US experts worked in the Caribbean in the early twentieth century in tune with global processes of imperial expansion and the development of capitalism. The sugar entrepreneur Edwin F. Atkins and the Harvard botanists George L. Goodale, Oakes Ames and Thomas Barbour founded the Harvard Botanical Garden and Sugar Cane Experimental Station in Cuba in 1899. Atkins financed the work of the Harvard botanists who developed a cane variety resistant to disease. The Harvard botanists turned the Garden into a tropical laboratory wherein they planted trees from across the world.

This work was made possible by my stay at the Harvard University as Wilbur Marvin Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies in 2015–2016 and Project HAR2015-66152-R (MINECO). I would particularly like to thank Brian D. Farrell, Jorge Dominguez, Alejandro de la Fuente, June C. Erlick, Marysa Navarro, Jonathan Losos, Ned Strong, Erin Goodman, Edwin Ortiz, María T. Vázquez, Thenesoya V. Martin de la Nuez, James N. Levit, Liz Mineo and Marial Iglesias. I must also thank Harvard library and archives staff for their invaluable help, especially Lynn M. Shirey, as well as staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Jardin Botánico de Cienfuegos. I would also thank Deborah Fitzgerald, who made excellent suggestions and comments on my research. I must thank Chet Atkins, who introduced me to some unfamiliar passages of the Atkins family.

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Notes

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  1. Instituto de Historia, CSIC-Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Leida Fernandez-Prieto

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  1. College of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

    David Pretel

  2. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

    Lino Camprubí

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Fernandez-Prieto, L. (2018). Networks of American Experts in the Caribbean: The Harvard Botanic Station in Cuba (1898–1930). In: Pretel, D., Camprubí, L. (eds) Technology and Globalisation. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75450-5_7

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