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Tapping nature’s bounty: science and sugar maples in the age of improvement

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This piece analyzes the eighteenth-century campaigns to develop a maple sugar industry in North America as a way of undercutting slavery and the sugar-plantation complex of the Caribbean. It is part of a larger collection that examines how trees became woven into the cultural, economic, and political fabric of life in the eighteenth century, and uses the case of the sugar maple to explore the intersections between nature, enlightenment science, and new ambitions for societal reform.
creator Guenther, Michael B. (Faculty/Staff)
Title Tapping natureG??s bounty: science and sugar maples in the age of improvement
supporting host Grinnell College. History
Index Date 2016
Date Issued 16-Nov-2016
Publisher Grinnell College
Genre Essays
Digital Origin born digital
Extent 16 pages
Media Type application/pdf
citation/reference Michael Guenther, "Tapping nature's bounty: science and sugar maples in the age of improvement," in Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660-1830, ed. Laura Auricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, and Giulia Pacini (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation & Oxford University Press, 2012), 135-149.
Language English
Topic Forests and forestry
Topic Antislavery movements
Topic Maple sugar
Topic Sugar maple
Topic Enlightenment
Geographic United States.
Temporal Eighteenth century
Classification E186
Related Item Faculty Scholarship
Related Item Scholarship at Grinnell
Related Item Digital Grinnell
Identifier (hdl) http://hdl.handle.net/11084/17946
Identifier (local) grinnell:17946
Access Condition Copyright to this work is held by the author(s), in accordance with United States copyright law (USC 17). Readers of this work have certain rights as defined by the law, including but not limited to fair use (17 USC 107 et seq.).
Type of Resource text
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