The Order of Destruction

This book studies sugarcane monoculture, the dominant form of cultivation in the colonial Caribbean, in the later 1600s and 1700s up to the Haitian Revolution.

Autorentext

Heinrich Wilke studied English and Philosophy at the University of Tübingen and the University of Connecticut, graduating with an M.A. in English Literatures and Cultures. From 2016 to 2020, he wrote his dissertation about the colonial Caribbean in the research training group, Minor Cosmopolitanisms (funded by the German Research Foundation), at the University of Potsdam and at York University, Toronto. He worked as a research and teaching assistant at the University of Potsdam until the autumn of 2023. The Order of Destruction: Monoculture in Colonial Caribbean Literature, c. 1640-1800 is his first book.

Inhalt

1. Introduction 2. Destruction and Contradiction in Richard Ligon's History 3. Environment and Circular Rationality in Henry Drax's "Instructions" 4. Reproduction, Sameness, and James Grainger's The Sugar-Cane 5. Racism, Consumption, and the Individual in Janet Schaw's Letters 6. Ideology and History in Toussaint Louverture's Labour Proclamations 7. Epilogue: "cette énorme mélopée du monde"