States of Nature: Science, Agriculture, and Environment in the Spanish Caribbean, 1760-1940 (review)

Abstract

Historians seldom consider plants when thinking about technology and culture. Stuart McCook's States of Nature, which traces the rise and evolution of the plant sciences in Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, illustrates the value of integrating both plants and plant scientists into the histories of commodity production and state formation in the Spanish Caribbean. State building and export economies are perennial themes in Latin American historiography, but few scholars have focused on the plant resources that sustained national export economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book successfully integrates perspectives from the history of science, environmental history, and economic history in order to explore the intersections of nature, economy, and nation.