How did indigenous knowledge interact with capitalist expansion on Brazil’s early sugar plantations? The fraught relationship between capitalism and colonialism is illustrated in the attempt to create taxonomic categories for South American species new to Europe. For example, the manatees common to Brazil were loaded with contradictory meanings for settlers, who saw them as food and medicine, but also as mythical creatures such as mermaids and sea-monsters. The many taxonomies of the manatee illustrate the culture of inquiry and the conceptual life of colonial sugar planters encountering the new world.
Hugh Cagle is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Director of the International Studies program at the University of Utah. His work focuses on Latin American history, comparative Portuguese colonialism, and the history of science. His book, Assembling the Tropics (Cambridge University Press, 2018), won the prestigious Leo Gershoy Award from the American Historical Association.
Part of the Kennedy Center's fall 2024 lecture series, "Legacies of Colonialism."