Project description
Rethinking scarcity in 18th century Atlantic
In the late 18th century, food scarcity threatened survival across the Atlantic world. From the sugar plains of Saint-Domingue to the riverbanks of the Amazon, colonial administrators, naturalists, and local communities scrambled to prevent shortages of staple crops like cassava and wheat. But how was scarcity understood in such ecologically diverse settings? Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Scarknow project will recover the layered knowledge (indigenous, enslaved, scientific, and entrepreneurial) used to tackle scarcity in French and Portuguese colonies. By weaving together political economy, environmental history, and overlooked local practices, Scarknow frames scarcity as a driver of innovation, resistance, and knowledge-sharing in an entangled Atlantic world.
Objective
How to address food scarcity? Scarknow explores the various forms of knowledge mobilised to address scarcity in the Portuguese and French Atlantic in second half of the 18th century. It focuses on two tropical, yet geographically distinct case studies: the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and the northwestern part of the Amazon estuary in Brazil. The question of scarcity was central in 18th-century debates on political economy, a newly founded discipline which had the goal of outlining strategies to produce and increase wealth through the harnessing and transformation of natural resources. Administrators, governors, savants, clergymen, and naturalists all worked to prevent food and crop shortages through grain trade policies and by encouraging the identification of alternative resources in European colonies overseas. But how was the concept of scarcity constructed in ecologies as diverse as Amazonian riverbanks and islands, or the Saint Domingue sugar plantation plains? What kind of knowledge(s) were mobilised to address shortages of dominant crops such as cassava and wheat in non-European geographies? And how were environmental concerns tackled in forms of colonial extractivism and local agricultural practices? This project aims to recover the knowledge and practices—environmental, gendered, hybrid, mechanical and entrepreneurial—developed to address scarcity, along with the actors, European and not, involved in these efforts. It goes beyond a “national Atlantic model”, rather posing transversal questions which underline those hybrid and entangled environmental and knowledge-making dimensions overshadowed by national narratives of empire. The project goes beyond the state of the art by framing the history of scarcity as an Atlantic and environmental history. In doing so, it emphasises the role of indigenous and enslaved communities in cultivation and bread-making, as well as in outlining responses to environmental challenges within colonial economies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology
- agricultural sciences agriculture, forestry, and fisheries agriculture grains and oilseeds cereals
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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75270 Paris
France
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