Planting Roots, Controlling Sustenance, and Creating National Identity: The Story of the Uru Plant's Journey from Tahiti to Jamaica

This story map traces the production and consumption of uru (known to Europeans as "breadfruit") in the late 18th century. Uru is a subsistence crop; it is a fruit that becomes similar to bread when baked. British colonizers brought uru from Tahiti to the Caribbean islands to serve as a cheap food for enslaved people. The uru plant represents planting roots through colonization, controlling slave populations through food, and colonialism's role in building national identity.

Note on the background map: This is a 1795 Mercator projection map of the world. It differs from many other maps in that Europe, Asia, and Africa are on the left and the Americas are on the right. This orientation makes it easier to visually represent the journey of uru from Tahiti in French Polynesia to the Caribbean islands because the Pacific Ocean, where most of the voyage occured, is shown entirely. Many other maps show the trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas, and thus show the Atlantic Ocean in its entirety and cut the Pacific Ocean in two. The map illustrates Captain James Cook’s routes through the Pacific from 1768 to 1779.

Environmental Footprint

My initial intent was to use the Carbonalyser plug-in on Firefox to track my carbon emissions from this digital history project. Unfortunately, Firefox keeps crashing on my computer, so I do not have Carbonalyser results for my project. As a substitute, I found the average of my classmates’ emissions for completing a similar project. On average, this project took 8,665 minutes and emitted carbon equivalent to 404 charged smartphones or driving 15 kilometers by car.

Our world is becoming increasingly digitized, and many people assume that going digital means zero environmental impact. We reduce paper by reading article online rather than printing them out, and we save ourselves a drive to the library by searching online databases. Before this project, I had never thought of the impact that internet browsing can have on the environment. I had also never considered how certain types of usage, such as downloading large files, can take up more energy than others. With this new information, I will be more mindful of how I use the internet.

Beyond my personal usage, this has implications for how academia operates. Ethical and responsible academia requires scholars to be mindful of how their research impacts the environment, particularly when we consider how climate change disproportionately impacts already marginalized communities.

Sources
  • Planting Roots, Controlling Sustenance, and Creating National Identity: The Story of the Uru Plant's Journey from Tahiti to Jamaica
    • Images
      • Main image: Carey, Mathew, William Guthrie, and W. Barker. 1811. A chart of the world according to Mercator's projection: shewing the latest discoveries of Capt. Cook. Carey's General Atlas. http://www.davidrumsey.com/insightredirector/insightredirector.asp?cid=8&iia=0&ig=David%20Rumsey%20Collection&isl=0&gwisp=0%7CList_No%7CList%20No%7C1%7C4863.002%7C2&gwia=3&gc=0. Images copyright © 2000 by Cartography Associates, Creative Commons License.
  • What is Uru?
    • Images
      • Panel image: Fruit of Artocarpus Altilis (HART 49 MEIN POHNSAKAR). Photograph. US Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center. US Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Research Service. Accessed November 19, 2019. http://pbarc.ars.usda.gov/pages/research/tpgrmu/artocarpus.shtml . This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture.
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
      • Smith, Vanessa. "Give Us Our Daily Breadfruit: Bread Substitution in the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006): 53-75. doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0046.
  • Starvation in the Caribbean
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Searching for a Solution
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Why Uru?
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.

        Smith, Vanessa. "Give Us Our Daily Breadfruit: Bread Substitution in the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006): 53-75. doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0046.
      • Deloughrey, Elizabeth M. "Globalizing the Routes of Breadfruit and Other Bounties." Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 8, no. 3 (2007): Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2007, Vol.8(3).
  • Planning the Voyage
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Bounty Lands in Tahiti
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Mutiny in the Pacific
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
      • Morrison, James, Vanessa Smith, and Nicholas Thomas. Mutiny and Aftermath : James Morrison's Account of the Mutiny on the Bounty and the Island of Tahiti. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2013.
  • Planning a Second Voyage
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Providence and Assistant Land in Tahiti
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Cape of Good Hope
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • St. Helena
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Uru Comes to Jamaica
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
      • Smith, Vanessa. "Give Us Our Daily Breadfruit: Bread Substitution in the Pacific in the Eighteenth Century." Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006): 53-75. doi:10.1353/sec.2010.0046.
  • A Successful Journey?
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
  • Uru Today
    • Texts
      • Newell, Jennifer. "Breadfruit Connections." In Trading Nature, Trading Nature, Chapter 006. University of Hawaii Press, 2010.
    Licensing Creative Commons License
    Uru StoryMap by Becina Ganther is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
    Based on a work at https://bjganther.github.io/histsci-119/.