GLOBAL ENTOMOLOGIES: INSECTS, EMPIRES, AND THE 'SYNTHETIC AGE' IN WORLD HISTORY

A trio of more incongruous events, spanning three centuries, might seem difficult to imagine, yet these episodes share an astonishing feature. They depended on the tremendous productive capacity of domesticated insects. The brittle shellac of Ella Fitzgerald's 78-rpm record, the gossamer thread...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Past & present 2014-05, Vol.223 (223), p.233-270
Main Author: Melillo, Edward D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Entomology
History
Insect colonies
Insect dyes
Insect pests
Insect vectors
Insects
Lac
Raw materials
Sericulture
Shellac
Silkworms
Women
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A trio of more incongruous events, spanning three centuries, might seem difficult to imagine, yet these episodes share an astonishing feature. They depended on the tremendous productive capacity of domesticated insects. The brittle shellac of Ella Fitzgerald's 78-rpm record, the gossamer threads woven into the sultan's silk carpets, and the crimson cochineal used to dye the brigadier-general's jacket entered the circuits of global commerce as secretions from the bodies of tiny arthropods. Women and men in places as far flung as north-eastern India, the Ottoman Bosporus and Mexico painstakingly raised the lac bugs (Kerria lacca), silkworms (Bombyx mori) and cochineal insects (Dactylopius coccus) that exuded the raw materials for these products. Here, Melillo documents a series of long-standing productive relationships between humans and insects.
ISSN:0031-2746
1477-464X
DOI:10.1093/pastj/gtt026