The History of Technology in the Americas : The Making and Unmaking of a Hemisphere

Through localized case studies and a transnational historiographic project of decentering Europe and the United States, this book explores various approaches to the history of technology in South, Central and North America, as well as the Caribbean.

Through localized case studies and a transnational historiographic project of decentering Europe and the United States, this book explores various approaches to the history of technology in South, Central and North America, as well as the Caribbean. The three sections, Beyond Agency, Beyond Chronology, and Beyond Borders, project the very wide array of human undertakings that may be illuminated through the rubric of technology. From foodways, computing, and micro-credit banking to tourism, manioc, and arsenic, the authors analyze a vast array of political and cultural meanings customarily hidden in tropes of modernity and development, capturing the role of technology in the conceptual and material construction of the Americas and the Caribbean. The book shows how historical technologies can help articulate episodes of state-making, colonialism, modernization, enslavement, development, Pan- and Inter-Americanism, extractive capitalism, and dictatorial regimes, as well as instances of community-building, democratizing initiatives, and care across the hemisphere. This volume will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, graduates, and researchers in the history of technology, as well as those in political history, environmental history and Latin American studies.