Coffee and Rural Proletarianization in Puerto Rico, 1840–1898

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laird W. Bergad

The development of a labor force has become an important focus of recent historical research on 19th-century Puerto Rico. One center of investigation has been slavery and its linkages to sugar culture.1 Until recently historians had consistently stressed the relative insignificance of slave labor in Puerto Rico.2 However, by focusing at the municipal, or even hacienda level, scholars have begun to generate a more analytical view of 19th-century Puerto Rican slavery. It has been shown that slaves were critical for Puerto Rican planters during the period of rapid sugar expansion in the 1820s and 1830s, and continued as an important source of labor until abolition in 1873. Contrary to prior interpretations, the history of slavery in Puerto Rico differed little from that of the other sugar producing islands of the Caribbean

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric R. Scerri

<span>The very nature of chemistry presents us with a tension. A tension between the exhilaration of diversity of substances and forms on the one hand and the safety of fundamental unity on the other. Even just the recent history of chemistry has been al1 about this tension, from the debates about Prout's hypothesis as to whether there is a primary matter in the 19th century to the more recent speculations as to whether computers will enable us to virtually dispense with experimental chemistry.</span>


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (128) ◽  
pp. 401-417
Author(s):  
Paul van Tongeren

Is friendship still possible under nihilistic conditions? Kant and Nietzsche are important stages in the history of the idealization of friendship, which leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that only something like friendship can save us in our nihilistic condition, but on the other hand that precisely friendship has been unmasked and become impossible by these very conditions. It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well to Nietzsche's claim that only "the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith" will be able to cope with nihilism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Rhianna C. Rogers

Puerto Rico has long been understood by archaeologists as a key geographical location for understanding the succession of cultural occupations in the Caribbean (Alegría, 1965; Curet, 2006; Siegel, 2005.) Unfortunately, despite the importance of archaeology in this region, the island has been continuously effected by socio-economic instability, lack of archaeological funding opportunities, few specialized academic programs, and a heavy focus on cultural resource management (CRM) rather than academic research. Though more Puerto Rican-focused archaeologists have joined the academic discussion, publications in this area are still relatively low and heavily focused on CRM and salvage work. Poor funding and resources for non-consulting archaeological projects has relegated Puerto Rico to the “island with the lowest number of publications in the Spanish Caribbean.” (L.A. Current, 2006 pg. 656). This paper will highlight some of the limitations of working in Puerto Rican archaeology. We will use the experiences we gained from our research project at the La Mina archaeological site to shed light on some of the difficulties we encountered as well as (hopefully) encourage an increase in academic and financial support for this understudied region of the Caribbean.


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Arditi

This paper explores the opening of a discursive space within the etiquette literature in the United States during the 19th century and how women used this space as a vehicle of empowerment. It identifies two major strategies of empowerment. First, the use or appropriation of existing discourses that can help redefine the “other” within an hegemonic space. Second, and more importantly, the transformation of that space in shifting the lines by which differentiation is produced to begin with. Admittedly, these strategies are neither unique nor the most important in the history of women's empowerment. But this paper argues that the new discourses formulated by women helped forge a new space within which women ceased being the “other,” and helped give body to a concept of womanhood as defined by a group of women, regardless of how idiosyncratic that group might have been.


Author(s):  
Oluwatoyin Oduntan

The case for narrating the history of slavery and emancipation through the biography of enslaved Africans is strongly supported by the life and experiences of Samuel Ajayi Crowther. Kidnapped into slavery in 1821, recaptured and settled in Sierra Leone in 1822, he became a missionary in 1845, founder of the Niger mission in 1857, and Bishop of the Niger Mission in 1864. His life and career covered the span of the 19th century during which revolutionary forces like jihadist revolutions, the abolition of the slave trade, the rise of a new Westernized elite, and European colonization created the roots of the modern state system in West Africa. He was intricately tied to the Christian Missionary Society (CMS), Britain’s antislavery evangelical movement, resulting in Ajayi becoming the poster face of slavery, its acclaimed product of abolitionism, the preeminent advocate of evangelical emancipation, and the organizer of practical emancipation in West Africa. The leader of a very small group of Africans who worked diligently against the slave trade and domestic slavery, Ajayi also became a victim of the use of that agenda by imperialists. Thus, the contrasts of his life (i.e., slavery/freedom, nationalist/hybrid, preacher/investor, leader/weakling, linguist/literalist, etc.) were celebrated by himself, his patrons, and his evangelical followers on one hand, and denounced by his critics on the other. They underline the disagreements over his legacy, and indeed over the understanding of the institution of slavery, abolition, and emancipation in West Africa.


2019 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Lena Burgos-Lafuente

The chapter provides a genealogy of the 2016 CILE (Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española), during which the Spanish officialdom celebrated Puerto Rico's linguistic ties to Spain as a 21st-century mercantile ploy. I review the language debates that raged in Puerto Rico in the 1940s, examining Pedro Salinas' 1948 Commencement Speech at the University of Puerto Rico, which would become his famed "Defensa del lenguaje"; revisiting Gov. Luis Muñoz Marín's 1953 speech "La personalidad puertorriqueña en el Estado Libre Asociado"; and ending with a brief coda on Ana Lydia Vega's 1981 short story "Pollito Chicken," to reflect on the positions shared by both Spanish exiles to the Caribbean and local intellectuals regarding language as a self-evident vessel of identity. The main argument is that a rhetoric of defense, crystallized in the 1940s, was redeployed by successive and presumptively opposite segments of the intelligentsia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 143-159
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher

This chapter relates the history of sugar, a thread that links the Silk Roads, Portuguese sailors, Atlantic islands, endangered seals, the African slave trade, and yellow fever, all because of our physiological need for glucose, which we satisfy with sugar. The chapter tells how from its origin in Southeast Asia, sugarcane, later called “Creole cane” and processing technology moved along the Silk Roads to Western Asia, then to Mediterranean islands. To begin with, Portuguese colonists transformed the Atlantic island of Madeira into a large sugar producer using slave labor until ecological and economic collapse forced production to move to São Tomé, using Angolan slave labor. After Portugal discovered Brazil, colonists took sugarcane with them, creating large plantations and initiating the enslavement and trans-Atlantic movement of millions of Africans. As the chapter shows, sugar production moved into the Caribbean and Central America, and African slave ships inadvertently carried yellow fever and yellow fever mosquito to the Americas.


Zootaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4657 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-147
Author(s):  
MARCO CURINI-GALLETTI ◽  
GIACINTA A. STOCCHINO ◽  
JON L. NORENBURG

Nine new species of Duplominona and one new Pseudominona (Platyhelminthes, Proseriata, Monocelididae) are described from the Caribbean coast of Panama and from Puerto Rico.                Duplominona aduncospina n. sp.; D. terdigitata n. sp.; D. pusilla n. sp.; D. bocasana n. sp. (from Panama) and D. dissimilispina n. sp.; D. chicomendesi n. sp.; D. macrocirrus n. sp.; D. diademata n. sp.; D. puertoricana n. sp. (from Puerto Rico) can be distinguished from the numerous congeneric species based on fine details of the sclerotized structures of the copulatory organ. Duplominona aduncospina n. sp. is characterised by a cirrus provided with 3–4 rows of recurve spines, 2–3 μm long. D. terdigitata n. sp. shows a tripartite tail, and needle-shaped cirrus spines, 1.5–9 μm long. Cirrus spines of D. pusilla n. sp. are scale-like, 1.5–3 μm long. D. bocasana n. sp. has triangular spines, 1.5–6 μm long. D. dissimilispina n. sp. has needle-shaped spines, 3.5–15 μm long. D. chicomendesi n. sp. has a small cirrus, with few, strongly curved spines, 2–7.5 μm long. D. macrocirrus n. sp. has a large cirrus, provided with spines 3–9 μm long, with the longest spines placed medially. D. diademata n. sp. has a cirrus with two separate spiny areas, with spines 7–13 μm long. D. puertoricana n. sp. has a very long cirrus, with poorly sclerotised proximal spines, and distal spines to 6 μm long. A taxonomic key of the genus Duplominona is provided. Pseudominona cancan n. sp. from Panama differs from P. dactylifera from Bermuda, the only species known in the genus so far, for its shorter cirrus and fewer, triangular spines 3–5 μm long, and for the position of the vagina, close to mouth. A specimen attributed to P. dactylifera collected in Puerto Rico is described. Distribution of the new species suggests a complete separation of Panamanian and Puerto Rican proseriate fauna, confirming previous reports of restricted ranges and high endemicity of mesopsammic Platyhelminthes. 


Blood ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM H. CROSBY

Abstract 1. The history of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria is reviewed, and attention is called to four case reports published in the 19th century. A bibliography of the disease is appended. 2. The outstanding work of Paul Strübing is reviewed. Strübing identified paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria as a disease entity in 1882 but failed to give it a distinctive name. He described the disease with great accuracy, calling particular attention to the part played by sleep in precipitating the paroxysms. He cited earlier reports of nocturnal hemoglobinuria and by provocative tests differentiated the disease from the other paroxysmal hemoglobinurias. On the basis of his observations he proposed theories regarding the pathogenesis of the disease which have now been shown to be remarkably accurate.


2020 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 142-172
Author(s):  
Aimee Loiselle

AbstractIn 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).


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