Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295748733
Dominica, a place once described as -Nature-s Island,- was rich in biodiversity and seemingly abundant water, but in the eighteenth century a brief, failed attempt by colonial administrators to replace cultivation of varied plant species with sugarcane caused widespread ecological and social disruption. Illustrating how deeply intertwined plantation slavery was with the environmental devastation it caused, Mapping Water in Dominica situates the social lives of eighteenth-century enslaved laborers in the natural history of two Dominican enclaves.
Mark Hauser draws on archaeological and archival history from Dominica to reconstruct the changing ways that enslaved people interacted with water and exposes crucial pieces of Dominica-s colonial history that have been omitted from official documents. The archaeological record-which preserves traces of slave households, waterways, boiling houses, mills, and vessels for storin
