1 November 2024 — 12:00 noon — GAR 4.100

Alyssa Peterson (UT)

“A Shaky Life: Jamaica and the 1692 Port Royal Earthquake”

In this second chapter from my dissertation, I explore the connection between new environments and old sources of knowledge in Jamaica, especially surrounding the discussions after the devastating 1692 earthquake that sank Port Royal and shook the entire island. I argue that the environment and descriptions coming from Jamaica did not resemble Europe or European experiences and were therefore difficult for the English to place into their contemporary scientific theories. As a result, the English used them to support emerging theories about warmer climates leading to moral and physical weakness, arguing that the earthquake was God’s punishment for these weaknesses. The English, both in Jamaica and in England, also applied contemporary paradigms to explain the reports, even if what they saw or read was not well known or previously experienced. However, Jamaican colonists began to separate themselves from English observers through their explanations and incorporation of local knowledge to come up with a uniquely Jamaican (and Caribbean) explanation for events that were not always applicable to the wider British Atlantic world.

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Alyssa Peterson is a graduate student in the UT History Department. She is now completing her dissertation on ideas about connections between earthquakes and health in the 18th century British Caribbean.

11 October 2024 — 12:00 noon — GAR 4.100

Christine Folch (Duke University)

“Re/Encountering Yerba Mate: Power, Plant Knowledges and the Americas’ Ilex Fix”

Though perhaps lesser-known than tea or coffee, yerba mate is the third most popular caffeinated infusion in the world and its introduction to Iberian explorers fundamentally shaped the development of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in South America. Made from the leaves and tender shoots of the South American holly Ilex paraguariensis, yerba mate has been consumed in the heart of the continent since time immemorial and immediately captured the attention (culinary and pecuniary) of European colonists. All three bitter drinks came into European orbit at around the same time in the 16^th century. So, why don’t we drink yerba mate in North America?

Moreover, why don’t Texans commonly drink yaupon, yerba mate’s Ilex stimulant cousin that grows abundantly throughout the state and whose contact with European palates pre-dates yerba mate?

By counterpointing yerba mate and yaupon production and consumption as they change over time and place, from precolonial Indigenous beginnings to the present, this talk explores the processes of commodification and their countervailing forces to show how accidents of botany intersect with political economic systems and personal taste. The story is also one of pharmacological priorities and the creation and transmission of plant knowledges and ignorances. Folch uncovers how market structures and the social meanings of goods influence one another to argue, via the case of the Americas’ Ilex beverages, for the contingency and tentativeness of modern capitalism.

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Christine Folch is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Environmental Sciences and Policy at Duke University. She is the author of Hydropolitics: The Itaipu Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America (Princeton University Press, 2019).