Insect Pests and the Gospel of Modern Agriculture: Economic Entomology in the Global South, ca. 1880-1940

My current project explores a paradigmatic case in the connected histories of knowledge, capitalism and the environment between ca. 1880 and 1940. During this period, the propagation of insect pests beyond imperial and state borders challenged the cost-effective exploitation of tropical raw materials. As a response, pest control methods were at the core of the ‘War on Nature’, spreading standardised management of global plantations. A branch of the scientific study of insects, economic entomology, was thus intensively applied to improve land use, becoming a prominent field in global scientific research. My project focuses on the role of American and European experts expanding the economic frontier and profit aspirations through commodification processes in Latin America, East Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands. It analyses the decades between ca. 1880 and 1940 as a turning point when new scientific practices and financial logistics in plantations spread, creating the conditions that later allowed DDT’s boom and the Green Revolution that followed. In my presentation, I will examine the interplay between the commodification of Peruvian cotton, economic liberalism, and American and German entomologists. Since the 1920s, the National Agrarian Society in Peru, led by oligarch planters specializing in cotton and sugarcane, propagated a new gospel of agricultural modernization. U.S. insecticides and aerial dusting became symbols of this agricultural vanguard. Notably, Pedro Beltran, a prominent Peruvian figure and owner of the largest cotton hacienda who later served as Minister of Finance, played a pivotal role in promoting these innovations, shaping a new techno-scientific approach to land management. As demonstrated in this case, economic entomology was not merely a scientific discipline; it emerged as a powerful tool that fundamentally transformed the political and agricultural landscape of Peru, shifting it from a predominantly peasant nation to a commodity-oriented countryside.

Tomás Bartoletti is Senior Lecturer and SNSF-Ambizione Principal Investigator at the Chair for History of the Modern World of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. He earned his PhD from the University of Buenos Aires and read Latin American Literature and Linguistics at the University of Buenos Aires and History of Science and Technology at the University of Quilmes (Argentina). Tomás has held research positions as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (2021-2023) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the ETH Zürich (2019-2021). He has been also Researcher in the Gotha Research Centre (2019), the University of Erfurt (2017-2018) and the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2014-2016). He has published articles in journals, like Comparative Studies in Society and History, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Global Intellectual History, and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. An exhibition coming out of his research, Naming Natures ( naming-natures.ch ), is planned to take place in December 2024 at the Natural History Museum of Neuchatel. Currently, he is associate editor of Environmental Humanities and the Commodities Frontiers Journal.

Details on how to join this session will be sent to all registered attendees 24 hours in advance.  Booking will therefore close the day before the scheduled date.