The entire issue can be accessed on JSTOR. Open access articles are linked below.
Articles
Come Along! Exploring Agricultural History and the Public History of Biotechnology
By DEBRA A. REID
Agricultural historians conveyed their knowledge to the public in various ways over the first one hundred years of the Agricultural History Society (1919–2019). Some invested their expertise in developing archival and museum collections. That work emphasized mechanical more than biological innovations (biotechnology), even though some also argued that biological innovations far outpaced the mechanical. Agricultural historians saw an opportunity as living historical farms began to flourish during the 1960s. These required authentic plants and animals to realize full educational potential, but propagating living collections required talking across disciplinary divides. The 1967 and 1970 AHS symposia included plant geneticists, horticulturalists, and historians who affirmed the historic context and the agricultural science necessary for a public history of biotechnology. Public interest continues to grow as genetic modification thrives, and museums remain a popular and trusted source for information that helps audiences gain perspectives about current debates.
A “Complicated Humbug”: Slavery, Capitalism, and Accounts in the Cotton South
By IAN BEAMISH
This essay argues that enslavers in the mid-nineteenth-century cotton South were interested in keeping detailed records but had minimal interest in advanced ac- counting methods. Drawing on the record and account books produced by Thomas Affleck in Mississippi in the 1840s and 1850s, it shows that enslavers largely used plantation books to record and track many aspects of cotton slavery rather than using them for advanced accounting. Enslavers held tens of thousands of enslaved people on plantations managed with the use of the Affleck books, making the books’ attempts to translate the tenets of agricultural reform into plantation practice particularly significant. The piece shows that technologies of capitalism, like the account books, worked to unintentionally enforce the violence and capriciousness of informal calculation rather than producing a slavery-based predecessor to managerial business practices like cost accounting. The books, which enslavers prized for their ability to monitor overseers and discipline recordkeeping habits, were one part of a violent, capitalist, and chaotic system of extracting cotton from enslaved people and southern soils, rather than a sign of the centrality of modern business practices.
“Not the Oil of the Country”: Smallholders and British Malaya’s Oil Palm Industry, 1929–1941
By GEOFFREY K. PAKIAM
If the long-term economic fundamentals behind tropical agricultural production generally favor small-scale family-run farms, why have oil palms in Southeast Asia been dominated by large-scale farming arrangements since their introduction? This article explores various reasons for the anomaly through evidence drawn largely from recently unearthed archival material in Johor, Peninsular Malaysia’s southernmost state. Historians have usually stressed post–harvest coordination challenges stemming from a combination of quality requirements, processing cost economies, and crop-specific time sensitivity. On balance, evidence suggests that crop coordination challenges were the chief obstacle to Malayan smallholder involvement in oil palms before the 1950s. Unlike for estates, however, coordination problems for smallholders were more likely underwritten by the draw of competing crops, labor demands, and subsistence cultures. Given these challenges, local dealer participation was critical to fostering workable smallholder oil palm initiatives.
Allies of Industry: The Failure of a Conservative Farm Front, 1920–1940
By DANIEL T. GRESHAM
This article explores the ideology of the leaders of the Farmers’ Independence Council of America (FIC) in order to understand why they created a conservative front group. FIC leaders Stanley Morse, Dan Casement, and Kurt Grunwald admired big business, favored limited government, and wanted to increase farm efficiency. The FIC leaders viewed the farmer romantically as the conservator of American values but also as an easily swayed member of mass society. Their loss of faith in the American farmer inspired them to take an end-justifies-the-means approach to political suasion. They formed the FIC to counter the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which they labeled as communist. After the FIC disbanded in 1936, some of its leaders tried to carry on its goals by forming a secret central committee for the nation’s conservative groups. Stanley Morse initiated the effort by attempting to unite two farm groups with different policy goals—the Associated Farmers of California and the Corn Belt Liberty League—under the broader umbrella of anti- communism. Though this effort failed, FIC leaders eagerly served the interests of big business, even at the risk of being labeled a front group, if it furthered their conservative ideas.
“Food for Peace is a Moral Program”: The Intersection of Agricultural and Human Rights Policy during the Carter Administration
By KRISTIN L. AHLBERG
Pursuing a human rights–based foreign policy had domestic ramifications for Jim- my Carter, both in terms of electoral politics and agricultural markets. Ideologically, food aid and human rights appeared to be on the same side of the foreign policy coin, but the Carter administration’s incorporation of food aid into its broader human rights strategy suggested a potentially adverse outcome for domestic agricultural producers and their champions in Congress. Although Carter did not initiate the human rights dialogue, his administration capitalized on a grassroots movement and deliberately sought to better institutionalize human rights, reevaluating existing military, security, and foreign economic policies in light of this commitment. However, significant changes within the federal bureaucracy, increased interagency coordination, and the process of applying conditions to aid placed the Carter administration in the position of contending with members of Congress who did not fully support Carter’s methodical approach to reform, especially if it threatened to undermine their own interests.
Book Reviews
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Book Reviews
Miller, Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China, by Xiuyu Wang
Costello, Transhumance and the Making of Ireland ’s Uplands, 1550–1900, by Fabian Kümmeler
Parsons, A Not-So-New World: Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America, by Bertie Mandelblatt
Fullagar and McDonnell, eds., Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, by Christopher S. Kindell
Liu, Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India, by Erika Rappaport
Fedman, Seeds of Control: Japan’s Empire of Forestry in Colonial Korea, by Kate McDonald
Robichaud, Animal City: The Domestication of America, by Clare Gordon Bettencourt
Browning and Silver, An Environmental History of the Civil War, by Keith D. McCall
Minard, All Things Harmless, Useful, and Ornamental: Environmental Transformations through Species Acclimatization, from Colonial Australia to the World, by Nancy Cushing
Milov, The Cigarette: A Political History, by Patrick Mulford O’Connor
Nobbs-Thiessen, Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia’s Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present, by Hanne Cottyn
Von Hippel, The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth, by Elena Conis
Rice, Famine in the Remaking: Food System Change and Mass Starvation in Hawaii, Madagascar, and Cambodia, by Benjamin Siegel
Previous Issues
94.4 (Fall 2020)
94.3 (Summer 2020)
94.2 (Spring 2020)
94.1 (Winter 2020)
93.4 (Fall 2019)
93.3 (Summer 2019)
93.2 (Spring 2019)
93.1 (Winter 2019)