Oil Palm

A Global History

By: Jonathan E. Robins

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Paperback | 28 June 2021

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Paperback
432 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
15.8 x 23.5 x 4.5

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Oil palms are ubiquitous-grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in scores of packaged products, from lipstick and soap to margarine and cookies. And as Jonathan E. Robins shows, sweeping social transformations carried the plant around the planet. First brought to the global stage in the holds of slave ships, palm oil became a quintessential commodity in the Industrial Revolution. Imperialists hungry for cheap fat subjugated Africa's oil palm landscapes and the people who worked them. In the twentieth century, the World Bank promulgated oil palm agriculture as a panacea to rural development in Southeast Asia and across the tropics. As plantation companies tore into rainforests, evicting farmers in the name of progress, the oil palm continued its rise to dominance, sparking new controversies over trade, land and labor rights, human health, and the environment.

By telling the story of the oil palm across multiple centuries and continents, Robins demonstrates how the fruits of an African palm tree became a key commodity in the story of global capitalism, beginning in the eras of slavery and imperialism, persisting through decolonization, and stretching to the present day.

Industry Reviews

Oil Palm raises important new questions and avenues for environmental historians. . . . [and] offers a firm foundation for the future intertwining of commodity and ecology in environmental history. . . . As a work of commodity, colonial, or world history, the book excels."--H-Environment

Engaging. . . These chapters are packed with fascinating detail."--H-Africa

Robins, whose research is so exciting that for a few weeks after reading his book I could hardly talk about anything else, documents the 'remarkable reversal' by which a crop native to Africa became one mainly produced in South-East Asia."--London Review of Books

Through . . . Robins's excellent storytelling and supplementary materials, we learn about oil palm's role in almost all major events in modern world history. . . . There is plenty in this book to discover, even for someone who may consider themselves a scholar of the commodity."--Agricultural History Review

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