Ben Rymer (University of Oxford)

“Military hospitals in New Granada, 1810-24”

In the eighteenth century, European states took an increasing interest in the health of their soldiers in a way that prefigured later expansion of state involvement in medicine. In the Spanish Empire, the growth of colonial garrisons over the course of the century led to the establishment of state-run military hospitals, especially in the Caribbean.  This paper seeks to analyse the culmination of the development of military medicine in in Spanish Empire by investigating military hospitals in the Viceroyalty of New Granada during the wars of independence, drawing on archival sources in Spain and Colombia. These wars saw an unprecedented military presence in the viceroyalty, leading to a renewed effort to create and perpetuate military hospitals. The effort was supported by the hospital orders, who hoped to rid themselves of the burden of caring for sick soldiers, and by administrators and doctors who saw a chance to reinvigorate military medicine, and more broadly improve medical provision in the viceroyalty. However, the expense of military medicine brought the royalist army into conflict with the civilian population, and contributed to its diminishing popularity. Ultimately, Spain’s loss of Nueva Granada after the battle of Boyacá (1819) undid all its investments, although the new Republic of Colombia was able to appropriate some of the new medical infrastructure. This paper will shed light on the history of medicine in South America, as well as state building, and the rising militarisation of Spanish American politics and society.

Hohee Cho (University of Oxford)

“A Multispecies History of Coconuts in the Lever's Pacific Plantations”

In the estates of Lever’s Pacific Plantations Limited (LPPL) in the Solomon Islands, there were foreign bees, beetles, goats, cows, parasites, flies, moths, birds, and iguanas. There were also exotic grass, bracken, clovers, and alien humans. All of them were there for coconuts. This talk is a multispecies history of the coconut plantations owned by LPPL. LPPL owned the biggest coconut plantations in the Solomon Islands in the first half of the twentieth century. Growing coconut palms in the Pacific, however, posed a great challenge: a continuous battle with pests. To solve the problem, LPPL estates adopted biological control measures, which were popular in the period. This means that while intended for monoculture, coconut plantations introduced diverse life forms not native to the land for pest control. By analysing the series of biological controls adopted by LPPL, this paper will map an ecological system of coconut plantations run by LPPL.