Culture and Environment in the Early French Caribbean

Ideas, practices, and human priorities: culture in the unstable environment of the early Caribbean colonies.

Early French colonization in the Caribbean from the 1620s to circa 1730 brought great demographic, economic, and agricultural changes, with settlers introducing crops, animals, and new forms of labor into ecosystems that imposed their own limitations. In these settlements, ideas and practices concerning the environment, ranging from the preparation of food and drink to medical treatments, drew on both European and non-European knowledge. Yet social, gender, and linguistic barriers were among the restrictions to what colonial populations knew about Caribbean ecosystems. Descriptions and illustrations of animals and plants could fascinate Europeans, despite giving only partial insight into the Caribbean environment. Colonial practices such as feasting distinguished culture from wilderness, and people from one another; in an environment in which cultivation signified culture, the plantations were ultimately an unstable model in ecological and social terms.

Drawing on a wide range of source material, including manuscript treatises and correspondence, natural histories, engravings, and missionary texts, Michael Harrigan explores how people interacted within their environment during early French colonization in the Caribbean. Examining the ways in which colonial culture and the environment were intertwined, this book explores how relationships between colonial populations were reflected in their environment and in the landscape itself. It shows that distinctly human preoccupations determined cultural forms, which were in turn shaped by the contingencies of early settlement. Knowledge of Caribbean ecosystems, Harrigan contends, could constitute a powerful body of techniques while being fragmented and driven by approaches to the environment focused on human priorities.