Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton

Book excerpt: Plantations are a key institution of the modern era. From an environmental perspective, they are also one of the most consequential modes of production. This volume assembles articles on commodities as diverse ase coffee, cotton, rubber and apples, providing overviews on plantation systems from Latin America to New Zealand while at the same time exploring the multitude of dimensions that the environmental history of plantations incorporates. The global history of plantation systems highlights the enormous resilience of modern monocultures but also the price that humans and environments were paying. "