Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands’ tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque “tropical” paradises. They hired photographers and artists to create carefully crafted representations, which then circulated internationally via postcards and illustrated guides and lectures. Illustrated with more than one hundred images, including many in color, An Eye for the Tropics is a nuanced evaluation of the aesthetics of the “tropicalizing images” and their effects on Jamaica and the Bahamas. Thompson describes how representations created to project an image to the outside world altered everyday life on the islands. Hoteliers imported tropical plants to make the islands look more like the images. Many prominent tourist-oriented spaces, including hotels and famous beaches, became off-limits to the islands’ black populations, who were encouraged to act like the disciplined, loyal colonial subjects depicted in the pictures. Analyzing the work of specific photographers and artists who created tropical representations of Jamaica and the Bahamas between the 1880s and the 1930s, Thompson shows how their images differ from the English picturesque landscape tradition. Turning to the present, she examines how tropicalizing images are deconstructed in works by contemporary artists—including Christopher Cozier, David Bailey, and Irénée Shaw—at the same time that they remain a staple of postcolonial governments’ vigorous efforts to attract tourists.

Beautifully illustrated throughout with color plates, photographs, and drawings, this volume is a comprehensive introduction to the natural history of the tropics worldwide. 59 color photos. 21 maps.

The tropics is an area of enormous opportunity and potential. The countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are largely developing in nature. There is huge interest in the types of business investments made in Southeast Asia, Central Africa, and the Amazonian tropical belts. These tropical regions continue to face opportunities and challenges in attracting foreign direct investments as well as the need to complement and/or compete with larger economies external to the tropics. This book provides an empirical assessment of the key sociocultural, economic, environmental, and political factors that influence the business dynamics of organizations operating within the tropics. It will address but is not limited to topics such as attracting businesses to the tropics, facilitating smooth, stable conditions for business operations and sustainability, national institutions, and regulations that shape the way business is done, and the increasing deployment of new technologies and entrepreneurial innovations which are defining the global tropics as a distinct business region. It will offer readers a key focus for developing a deeper understanding of the factors and frameworks that influence and shape business activity in the area. While the primary audience for the book consists of academics and students from the fields of economics (environmental economics, developmental economics), business, international trade, tourism, and area studies, it will also provide a practical resource for government policy analysts wanting to fully appreciate some of the key economic and business issues facing the region.

Gardening in the Tropicsoffers invaluable advice on how to establish a luxuriant tropical garden. This authoritative guide lists more than 500 varieties of tropical plants. In addition, it provides up-to-date information on pests, diseases and other technical subjects. This definitive book will certainly meet the needs of all gardeners in the Malayan region and in other parts of the wet tropics. Informed content from distinguished Professors on Malayan botany. A complete guide to gardening in the tropics from planning and designing a garden to soil treatment and pest control. Well organized, user-friendly one stop source for plant information and reference Invaluable photographs for selecting appropriate plants for your tropical garden. Richard Eric Holttum(1885 - 1990) became interested in plants from an early age. After his studies at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded the University Prize in Botany, he came to the Straits Settlements and was appointed Assistant Director of the Gardens Department. He subsequently became Director of the Botanic Gardens and remained so until 1949. In that year, he was appointed Professor of Botany at the new University of Singapore, retiring in 1954. While he was in Singapore and later, when he went back to England after retirements, Professor Holttum devoted detailed study to orchids, bamboos and ferns, and wrote several authoritative treatises on them. In 1951 he was awarded the degree of Sc. D. by the University of Cambridge in recognition of his published works on Malayan botany. Ivan Enochread Botany and Agricultural Botany at the University College of Wales, Aberyswyth. In 1950 he was appointed to the Department of Botany at the University of Malaya in Singapore under Professor Holttum. In 1960 Professor Enoch took up an appointment at the Faculty of Agriculture in Kuala Lumpur teaching Agricultural Botany. For several years he was invited to act as one of the judges at the annual M.A.H.A. show and also joined the Selangor Gardening Society, of which he was a committee member for some time. He now lives in West Yokrshire and continues his work on seeds.

The first edition of my book "Climate and Circulation of the Tropics" was reasonably up to date to the middle of 1985. In a second printing in 1988 it was possible to complete a few literature references and to correct some misprints. However, vigorous research has taken place over the past five years in various areas of tropical climate dynamics, especially in the atmosphere-ocean mechanisms of climate anomalies, climate prediction, ocean circulation, and paleoclimates. Promising progress has also been made in the application of general circulation modelling to tropical climate problems. In the present second edition, named "Climate Dynamics of the Tropics", I have attempted to incorporate much of the recent work to late 1990. Chapters 8 and 9 have been essentially re-written, and major additions have been made to Chapters 4 and 12 in particular. I would like to acknowledge the continued support by the U.S. National Science Foundation over the past five years. B. Parthasarathy, Poona, and H. Lessmann, San Salvador, sent me updates of data series not easily accessible. I have benefitted from discussions with numerous colleagues in the United States and overseas. In the preparation of this second edition, Marilyn Wolff patiently transferred my illegible hand-written drafts onto word processor. Dierk Polzin and Dan Skemp assisted me with the creation of the page masters and the subject index and Christopher Collimore with the author index.

A moving exploration of what it means to be an American born and reared abroad