TY - BOOK ID - 5265592 TI - Insatiable appetite : the United States and the ecological degradation of the tropical world PY - 2000 SN - 0520220870 9786612356452 1282356453 0520923812 1597346780 9780520923812 0585390088 9780585390086 9780520220874 9781282356450 PB - Berkeley : University of California Press, DB - UniCat KW - Tropical crops KW - Investments, American KW - Environmental degradation KW - Cultures tropicales KW - Investissements américains KW - Environnement KW - Economic aspects KW - History KW - Environmental aspects KW - Aspect économique KW - Histoire KW - Aspect environnemental KW - Dégradation KW - Environmental degradation. KW - Investments, American. KW - Investments, American - Tropics - History - 20th century. KW - Tropical crops. KW - Tropical crops-- Economic aspects-- History-- 20th century. KW - Business & Economics KW - Agricultural Economics KW - Investissements américains KW - Aspect économique KW - Dégradation KW - Degradation, Environmental KW - Destruction, Environmental KW - Deterioration, Environmental KW - Environmental destruction KW - Environmental deterioration KW - American investments KW - Plantation crops KW - Tropical agriculture KW - Natural disasters KW - Environmental quality KW - Agriculture KW - Crops KW - Field crops KW - Tropical plants KW - E-books KW - agriculture. KW - american history. KW - bananas. KW - beef. KW - biodiversity. KW - caribbean. KW - central america. KW - civilization. KW - coffee. KW - commerce. KW - commodities. KW - conservation. KW - cultivation. KW - ecology. KW - environment. KW - environmental history. KW - environmental impact. KW - environmentalism. KW - forest. KW - free trade. KW - land speculation. KW - latin american history. KW - monocrops. KW - nonfiction. KW - pacific. KW - plantations. KW - rubber. KW - south america. KW - southeast asia. KW - sugar. KW - timber. KW - trade. KW - transnational history. KW - tropical crops. KW - tropical lands. KW - tropical ports. KW - tropics. KW - west africa. KW - white mans burden. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:5265592 AB - In the late 1800's American entrepreneurs became participants in the 400-year history of European economic and ecological hegemony in the tropics. Beginning as buyers in the tropical ports of the Atlantic and Pacific, they evolved into land speculators, controlling and managing the areas where tropical crops were grown for carefully fostered consumer markets at home. As corporate agro-industry emerged, the speculators took direct control of the ecological destinies of many tropical lands. Supported by the U.S. government's diplomatic and military protection, they migrated and built private empires in the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. Yankee investors and plantation managers mobilized engineers, agronomists, and loggers to undertake what they called the "Conquest of the Tropics," claiming to bring civilization to benighted peoples and cultivation to unproductive nature. In competitive cooperation with local landed and political elites, they not only cleared natural forests but also displaced multicrop tribal and peasant lands with monocrop export plantations rooted in private property regimes. This book is a rich history of the transformation of the tropics in modern times, pointing ultimately to the declining biodiversity that has resulted from the domestication of widely varied natural systems. Richard P. Tucker graphically illustrates his study with six major crops, each a virtual empire in itself-sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and timber. He concludes that as long as corporate-dominated free trade is ascendant, paying little heed to its long-term ecological consequences, the health of the tropical world is gravely endangered. ER -