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IHS Discussion: Loosening the Grid: Ideas for Mapping Human Experience

Anne Kelly Knowles (University of Maine) and Levi Westerveld (Norwegian Coastal Authority & Arctic Permafrost Atlas) co-present “Loosening the Grid: Ideas for Mapping Human Experience,” the keynote address for the Institute for Historical Studies’ research theme of 2023-2024, “Experiencing Place: Interrogating Spatial Dimensions of the Human Past.”

GIS has become the tool of choice for making maps of many kinds, yet its underlying architecture and design defaults are poorly suited to mapping the qualities and uncertainties of experience. Knowles and Westerveld will explain how Holocaust survivor testimonies pushed them to find alternatives to coordinate geography and how their current work builds on their first experiments with topological mapping.

Presented by:

Anne Kelly Knowles
McBride Professor of History, University of Maine; and
Co-founder, Holocaust Geographies Collaborative
https://umaine.edu/history/people/dr-anne-kelly-knowles/
https://holocaustgeographies.org/

Levi Westerveld
Environmental Consultant; Senior Engineer & Geographer, Kystverket – Norwegian Coastal Authority; and Editor, Arctic Permafrost Atlas
https://www.leviwesterveld.com/

IHS Discussion: Overallocated and Unsettled: Critical Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Colorado River

In the fall of 1922, representatives of the seven states in the Colorado River basin gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to sign the Colorado River Compact, an agreement to apportion water rights among the basin states. One hundred years later, the legacies of the Compact are still palpably felt across the region, linking some of the most contested debates of contemporary life in the US West: water, legal rights, aridity, and irrigation. Commemorations of the centennial of this agreement have focused almost exclusively on the problematic water distribution between the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin States in an era of climate change.

What these conversations often miss, however, is the settler colonial context in which the compact emerged. This edited volume critically historicizes the Compact’s commemoration, placing the longer history of the 1922 Compact within the context of settler colonial dispossession and governance of the river as a whole. In doing so we ask, what are the other ways this agreement might have unfolded? Whose rights – and histories of living with the Colorado River – were prioritized, and whose were denied? Where might we go from here? What does Colorado River governance look like moving forward, with tribes as primary stakeholders? How can the river itself, and how we think about it, be unsettled?

Featured Speakers:

Andrew Curley, Diné, and member of the Navajo Nation
Assistant Professor of Geography, Development & Environment
The University of Arizona

Teresa Montoya, Diné, and member of the Navajo Nation
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
The University of Chicago

Traci Brynne Voyles
Professor & Department Head of History
North Carolina State University

Moderator:

Erika M. Bsumek
Professor and Eugene C. Barker Centennial Chair in American History, and
UT System Regents Distinguished Teaching Professor
The University of Texas at Austin

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The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Notes from the Field

Notes from the Field is a series with a long history at NEP. In this latest iteration, the series has three broad areas of focus. First, Notes from the Field is designed to take readers into unexpected corners of the world’s great archives and to explore the experience of working there. We aim to describe some of the spaces and places in which historians work every day. Second, we’re interested in fascinating stories that might not become the central focus of a book or an article but which nonetheless reveal intriguing corners of the past. And third the series discusses the often unexpected experiences of doing fieldwork in which each day can bring new challenges, joys or discoveries. Together these stories form our new Notes from the Field. Below we collect some of the wonderful early iterations of this series, seven pieces that illuminate different archives and the experience of working as historians. Together these stories create a tapestry of historical practice.

banner image for notes from the field: Bulgaria's Tolstoyan vegetarians

Mary Neuburger writes about her research on Tolstoyan-inspired vegetarianism in Bulgaria:

“By 1907, Bulgarian Tolstoyans had broken ground on their own agricultural commune in Yasna Polyana…The ties to Tolstoy were so strong that many claim that he was headed to Bulgaria in his final days—when he famously left his family estate and headed south. Alas, he died along the way. But if anything, the Tolstoyan movement gained in strength after his death, especially in the aftermath of World War I. The massive human casualties of the war brought an even greater urgency to the Bulgarian (and global) Tolstoyan project… I was most interested in the vegetarian strand of the commune’s intellectual and organizational work… This story is best told in a global context, and meat was one of the most hotly debated food sources in history—in the past as today. Is eating meat a human instinct or a learned behavior? Is it the gold standard of fortification, or will it kill us? Even if it is good for the human body, what about the ethics of killing animals, the implications of modern methods, or the environmental impacts of meat-eating?”

Read the full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: from feasts to feats (or feet) on the coals

Mary Neuburger writes about recovering Bulgarian food history through travelers’ accounts:

“The veritable sea of travelers’ accounts are among the sources that inform my current book project, a cultural history of food and drink in the Eastern Balkans, with a focus on Bulgaria from the 1860s -1989. Bulgarian foodways were clearly imprinted by the Empires that ruled or influenced the region, from the Ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, to the Soviet. Some of these travelers were Bulgarians, mapping their own homeland and defining their own nation as they went, with the culture of food and drink as important components. But many more were foreigners who consumed and assessed food and drink as sources of pleasure and anxiety. They mapped patterns of restraint and gluttony, as well as the connections of food with identity, healing, and magic. They often used practices of food and drink—production, preparation, and etiquette—as a way of forming or confirming their own opinions about locals as savage and barbaric or alternatively as vigorous and sensible. Such accounts include mouth-watering descriptions of home-cooked meals and local inn or restaurant fare from the days of treks on oxen-drawn carts.”

Read the full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: retracing sixteenth-century steps in Seville

Mark Sheaves writes about research, travel, and research-through-traveling in Seville, Spain:

“It was a boiling hot day and I decided to take a break from my work. Offering a lazy “ciao” to the security guard on the way out, I walked into the wall of heat that surrounded this beautiful Andalus city in the summer. Strolling around the magnificent cathedral that integrates Moorish and Catholic elements, scurrying between the shadows provided by palm trees, I headed up one of the gaudy shopping streets that act as tributaries from the city’s historic center. Undistracted by the pulsating music and new flowery patterned shirts on display, my mind remained fixed on the sixteenth-century English merchant and botanist John Frampton, who had lived in the city nearly five centuries previously and was the subject of my research.”

Read the full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: the murder of Boris Nemtsov

Andrew Straw writes about his reaction to the assassination of Russian politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015:

“When I came upon the news of Nemtsov’s murder two Friday nights ago, I immediately handed the iPad to my wife, and her jaw dropped. That Saturday morning, there was a pervasive shock — on Russian social media and in the state-run and independent media — because everyone knew Nemtsov. His political career in the 1990s included a post as Deputy Prime Minister in 1998 under Boris Yeltsin, and, before that, as Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod where he led agricultural and economic reforms. However, his liberalism often clashed with the former communist party members who made up much of the Russian government. More importantly, as corruption blossomed in the new Russian economy, he relentlessly attacked the perpetrators. His political career imploded because his idealism and activism had no place in the status quo Vladimir Putin created between society, the oligarchs and the state after 2000.”

Read to full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: Northern Japan after the Tsunami

David Conrad writes about visiting the port city of Kesennuma, in northeastern Japan after it was hit by a deadly tsunami:

“Nothing I had heard could have prepared me for what I saw there. While many buildings I recognized were still standing, and some had already been rebuilt, large swaths of the town were simply gone. One of Kesennuma’s two rail stations had been destroyed, and I did not have a car, so I traveled there by bus. It dropped off in the middle of several cracked foundations. Only by memory could I tell that I was a stone’s throw from the site of a restaurant I used to frequent. A friend picked me up at the bus stop, and on our way to his home in my old neighborhood we passed a fishing vessel tipped on its side. The ocean was several meters away on the righthand side of the road, and the ship was on the left.”

Read the full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: Trinity college, Cambridge, and the accidents of research

Joan Neuberger writes about a dinner at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, that shaped her research on Russian filmmaking:

“And yes, the Trinity dining hall looks just like the one at Hogwarts, with long tables and benches for students running the length of the hall and a more formal High Table along the width. It does, however, have only an ordinary, though impossibly high, ceiling made of wooden beams rather than one that reflects the weather, and while there are plenty of candles, they don’t float in the air. And then there’s Henry VIII. A large copy of Hans Holbein’s famous portrait of Henry, who founded Trinity, watches over diners, as imperious as ever, from above High Table at the end of the hall. What’s the connection between the accidents of research, a Soviet film about a bloody tyrant of the past –- a film that was commissioned by Joseph Stalin, bloody tyrant of the then-present — and Trinity High Table?”

Read the full piece here.

banner image for notes from the field: the pope in Manila

Kristie Flannery writes about how her archival research in Manila was interrupted by Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines:

“It is not surprising that the government of the third largest Catholic country in the world would declare the days of the Pope’s visit “Special non-working days” in the national capital. All non-essential government activities (including the national archives) are closed, all school and university classes have been canceled, and many businesses will not open their doors. The enforced holiday is supposed to clear usually congested roads of cars and jeepneys so the Pope and pilgrims move more easily from A to B.”

Read the full piece here.

Picturing My Family: A World War II Odyssey

“Picturing My Family” is a new series at Not Even Past. As a Public History magazine, we aim to make History more accessible by publishing research features and other articles. But, of course, History doesn’t reach us solely through words. It lives on in images, too. A good photograph transmits as much information as a line of text, and it does so in an extraordinarily evocative way. Dispensing with description, photography brings us face-to-face with the past. Visual cues can stimulate our sensory imagination and present us with surprising new details, encouraging us to ask questions, dig deeper, and think like historians.

Our concept is simple. We invite Not Even Past readers to:

• Send us a photograph of a family member or ancestor. The photograph doesn’t have to be old; it could be from any period. The subject can be one of your grandparents, a cousin, a distant relative – anyone whom you count as part of your family.

• Tell us in less than 250 words what the image shows and why it’s meaningful for you and your family. If you wish, you can set the photo in a historical context, too. But that isn’t necessary.

If you are interested in submitting something for this series, please click here.

In this installment of “Picturing My Family,” current NEP Associate Editor Atar David tells how his maternal grandfather spent the war waiting for the Nazis, who, luckily, never showed up.

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Waiting for a Fox

Like many soldiers, my maternal grandfather – Sholem Melamed – spent the war years waiting for something to happen. More precisely, he was waiting for a fox.

Born in 1925 in Kinneret, a Jewish agricultural settlement close to the Sea of Galilee in northern Mandatory Palestine, Sholem was only 14 when war broke out in Europe. He waited for two years, and when he finally reached the drafting age of sixteen, he left his agriculture high school and joined the elite forces of the Yishuv (the Jewish community) – the Palmach. During that time, the Axis forces led a military campaign in North Africa. After conquering Tunisia, they began moving east toward Mandatory Palestine, led by then-general and future field marshal Erwin Rommel. The Nazi commander of the Afrika Korps, nicknamed by his soldiers “the desert fox,” threatened the Jews of Palestine.

Atar's grandfather at 16. — *My grandfather, age 16. From the family collection.*

Although the British Mandate was responsible for the well-being of local communities, the leadership of the Yishuv decided to send the young paramilitary Palmach to stop Rommel should he get to the southern border. Together with his company, Sholem was sent to the desert. They spent their time practicing face-to-face combat and learning to camouflage in an arid topography. As seen in the photo, they had few guns and hoped to stop the well-armed Axis army with wooden clubs. When Rommel was defeated in El Alamein in November 1942, the Jewish warriors celebrated. Knowing my grandfather, his satisfaction with the Nazi defeat was second only to his relief. He didn’t have to test whether a wooden club could stop a German panzer tank.

Atar's grandfather, to the right, practicing face-to-face combat. — *My grandfather, to the right, practicing face-to-face combat. From the family collection*

Years after the war ended, Sholem and friends from the Palmach would meet to tell stories of their glorious non-battle with Rommel. I was a little boy, and the elderly folk, who looked like titans to me, taught me how to walk backward on a tightened rope, climb trees, crawl fast, and walk quietly. One day, they took me to an old olive tree and made me a nice wooden club of my own. Just in case a fox suddenly shows up.

Sholem passed away in 2006. He was a talented storyteller, a surprisingly humorous grownup, and a wonderful grandfather. I miss him dearly.

Atar David is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department at UT Austin and the Associate Editor for Not Even Past. His dissertation research focuses on the circulation of agricultural commodities and agronomic knowledge between the Middle East and the American Southwest from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Together with Raymond Hyser, Atar founded the “Material History Workshop” – a bi-monthly graduate workshop centered around material culture. You can read more about the workshop here: https://notevenpast.org/uts-material-history-workshop/

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Teaching about Colonial Latin America through Objects

Colonial Latin America through Objects examines the material cultures of colonialism in Latin America from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It is a new version of a course first created and taught with tremendous success by my distinguished colleague Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra. It was also one of the first courses I taught after joining UT.

My aim was to create a student-centered research course, revolving around students’ own engagement with a range of colonial objects that are available in the physical and digital collections at The University of Texas at Austin. The course invites students to explore the relationships people established with material objects and how they used them. In the process, students learn how life in Latin America changed following the Spanish colonial project. We focus on objects that reveal the dynamics of cultural interaction between Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans and their changes over time. We consider the things people wrote, wore, ate, where people lived, and what they used to exchange with one another as a way to understand their standing in society and the larger power and economic structures that shaped their experience and sensibilities under a colonial order. In this way, it takes material culture as a window to understand colonialism.

The class is constructed around four cycles of independent investigation, which students can do individually or in groups of up to four people. The cycles are organized around a specific category of objects:

Scriptures and modes of writing
Landscapes and maps
Clothing and items around the body
The economic value of things.

Source: Relaciones Geográficas, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections

These cycles, in turn, break into a set of repeating elements. Each of these cycles follows a common structure, with sessions devoted to:

A lecture introducing the main subject of the cycle,
The discussion of readings,
A collection visit, in which students identify a primary object they would like to work with,
Independent research on each group’s object, along with meetings with the instructor,
Presentations to the class of preliminary findings,
Peer review of the drafts of the papers.

The expectation is that the lecture and reading sessions prompt student questions and open avenues for analysis as students interrogate the objects they selected during the collection visit. My goal was to foster a collaborative environment in which each group’s research is enhanced through socialization and peer review.

UT Austin, with its rich collections of colonial Latin American history and fabulous team of curators, is the perfect setting for this kind of class. In the Fall of 2022, we visited the Benson Latin American Collection twice, the first time analyzing printed and manuscript written documents and the second time exploring Indigenous maps of the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias. We also visited the Blanton Museum, which was then hosting its Painted Cloth exhibit.

Finally, we ventured through some of the digital collections, like The New Spain: An Exhibition, Primeros Libros de las Américas, or Benson’s digitized imprints and images. Students had a chance to step out of the classroom and engage with some of UT’s finest curators and archivists, like Adrian Johnson and Ryan Lynch from the Benson, Rosario Granados from the Blanton Museum, and Albert Palacios from the Benson and the School of Information Sciences. Students got to think through the meaning of objects and collections with their custodians.

Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante [Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor]. — *Anonymous, “Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante [Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor],” Blanton Museum of Art Collections, accessed September 12*.

Students wrote essays on topics like the role of Malintzin—a Nahuatl woman who served as interpreter of Hernán Cortés—in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala, the silences about the narration of the conquest in an early Hernán Cortés letter, the notion of Indigenous bodies in an early modern Spanish medical treatise, the depiction of colonial spaces in Indigenous maps, the presence of Indigenous donors in Catholic art, or the depiction of race and guild in Peruvian casta paintings. In one of the four modules, students structured their research in a creative format, other than a traditional essay. Students created websites, videos, and even two radio episodes that aired in Guadalajara, Mexico.

I really enjoyed the course and the students seemed to get a lot out of it. In their evaluations, students remarked they found it challenging but rewarding to consider how people engaged with objects in a very different period, formulating questions and designing research strategies. They enjoyed being pushed out of the classroom and immersed in a collaborative environment where they learned from each other and developed their own projects.

Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching focus on the interactions between Indigenous peoples and European empires in the early modern Atlantic world, combining material culture, agrarian history, and the history of books and maps. His first book, Costumbres en disputa. Los muiscas y el imperio español en Ubaque, siglo XVI (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2015) reframed the history of the encomienda—one of the most contentious institutions of the Spanish empire—through an ethnographic look at everyday interactions between Muiscas and Europeans. His current book project, tentatively titled Empire’s Fabric: The Making and Unmaking of New Granada, examines the making of a centralized political entity (a “kingdom”) among the ethnically and geographically diverse landscapes of the northern Andes.

Banner image comes from Anonymous, “Nuestra Señora de Belén con un donante [Our Lady of Bethlehem with a Donor],” Blanton Museum of Art Collections, accessed September 12, 2023, http://utw10658.utweb.utexas.edu/items/show/3243.

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Fear and Lust in the Desert, or How Lies, Deception, and Trickery Made California a Date Palm Monopoly

From the editors: The Digest: Food in History is a new series from Not Even Past that focuses on the exciting field of food history . Across these pieces, contributors will explore the intimate intersections between food, people, ecologies, and history. The Digest: Food in History will publish a range of research connected to food production, distribution, and consumption and use this to reflect on wider historical questions.

In the first installment of The Digest, Atar David, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of History and the Associate Editor for Not Even Past, reflects on some lesser known and more controversial aspects involved in the creation Southern California’s date production monopoly. The article invites readers to rethink their food conventions and question the relationship between food and power.

Southern California produces almost half of the date fruits consumed in the US today. But that was not always the case. Date fruits became popular among American consumers during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but since no one in the US grew dates for commercial purposes, supply depended on imports from the Middle East, especially from the Arab Gulf. The first attempts to cultivate dates on a commercial scale in Arizona and California began at the turn of the twentieth century. However, America still ran on imported dates until the 1920s, when the region around the Salton Sea became the leading date-producing center in the country. By the 1930s, California production was robust enough to reduce the need for imports and provide most local consumption.

How did Southern California become the leading date-producing region in the country? One possible explanation has to do with the local climates. The region’s long and dry summers are notoriously harsh and, for years, posed a challenge to settlers. But these climatic predicaments are advantageous for date palms (Phoenix Dactylifera L.), whose fruits can only ripen during extensive heat. Common narratives of California’s date sector often stress how federal officials import date palm offshoots (more on that to come) from the Middle East and perfected cultivation, packing, and distribution methods until they finally achieved victory over nature’s setbacks. According to this narrative, perseverance and ingenuity made California a date production center.

*Date Palm Grove in the Coachella Valley, February 1937. Source: Library of Congress*

My research, which examines the global circulation of date palm commodities from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, paints a more complex version of this story. As a part of my work, I got to know the federal agents involved in establishing the California date cultivation sector. Since they operated during the Progressive Era and were motivated by visions of improvement, I call them Date Boosters.

After reading correspondents, their memories, and their official reports, I realized that scientific curiosity and dreams of greening the desert were not date boosters’ only motivation. Instead, they were driven by a desire to establish and then maintain their monopoly over date cultivation. To do so, they sometimes lied, deceived, and ostracized other growers and fellow federal agents. As it turns out, their at-times shady actions were as meaningful to California’s ascendent to a national (and later global) date production center as the local climates. Examining some of the shadier aspects of their operation reveals the messy politics behind California’s successful date cultivation operation and the often-unspoken realities of the politics of food production.

Offshoot Monopoly

Date boosters had already started dreaming about an all-American date sector by the early 1890s. At that time, no one cultivated dates for commercial purposes in the US, and the only date palms around were the offspring of palms brought to the country by Spanish missionaries during the seventeenth century. Boosters imported seeds from Mexico and various places around the Middle East and planted them in the Southwest, hoping they would produce adequate (read: marketable) fruits. Soon, however, they discovered a problem that growers in the Middle East, who had cultivated date palms for thousands of years, were well aware of.

Seedlings (plants grown from seeds) often differ from their predecessors, resulting in fruits of various sizes, shapes, and tastes. Commercial agriculture, which is built on uniformity, predictability, and standardization, cannot rely on seedlings. Luckily for the boosters, date palms are also capable of vegetative (sometimes called asexual) propagation. Mature palms sprout tiny offshoots from their base. These suckers are genetically identical to the mother tree and can thus be cut and replanted, serving as the perfect building blocks for every new grove.

Date Palms along the Nile circa 1850. — *Date Palms along the Nile, photographed by Félix Teynard circa 1850. Source: Library of Congress*

At roughly the same time, the Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson, established the Section of Seed and Plant Introduction (SSPI). This USDA sub-division sent federal agents to various locations around the globe to collect new plants suitable for commercial cultivation in America. Some plant explorers, like Walter Swingle and David Fairchild, were also date boosters, fervently supporting the new date sector. For example, Walter Swingle and David Fairchild traveled to Egypt, North Africa, Oman, and Iraq to look for the best date types. They cut (or, rather, oversaw the cutting of) offshoots and carefully shipped them to agricultural experiment stations across Arizona and California. Overall, plant explorers imported several thousand offshoots during the early 1900s.

However, only a few of these made their way to local cultivators. This was not because of a lack of demand. With the expansion of offshoot importations, farmers around California and Arizona grasped their economic potential and contacted boosters, asking for a piece of the cake. During the early 1900s, dozens of farmers reached out to the agricultural experiment station at the University of Arizona, begging for some offshoots. But boosters refused to share their precious biological repository and preferred to keep offshoots for their experiments. Robert Forbes, the head of the station and a leading date booster, refused all farmers’ requests, offering prospective farmers to take the uncertain path of seedling cultivation. Boosters, who realized the economic importance of imported offshoot, began entrenching their monopoly over the young industry, deciding de facto who got to grow dates and who did not.

Trimming date palm offshoots before shipping them to the US, Algeria, June 1900. Source: Walter Swingle, The Date Palm and its Utilization in the Southwestern States (1904). Available at the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Date boosters also used their political power to prevent prospective farmers from privately importing offshoots. They feared that unregulated importation would risk the purity of their slowly growing biological repository by introducing subpar types to the Southwest. Even worse, some feared that private importers would lay their hands on some prime types, fostering an over-importation boom that would shake up the entire juvenile sector. In short, date boosters had an effective monopoly over offshoots importation and no desire to share power with anyone deciding to challenge it.

Some nevertheless tried. Bernard Johnson, a farmer from Walters, CA, dreamed of importing and selling offshoots by himself. In May 1902, he contacted Forbes, asking for his advice. Forbes tried to dissuade Johnson, arguing that offshoot importation was expensive, way beyond the layperson’s abilities. “Most of us,” he wrote, “will have to wait until Uncle Sam is ready to help us out.”[1] Johnson abandoned his plan for a while, only to renew it two years later while working for the newly established governmental date orchard in Mecca, CA. But traveling to the Middle East would take at least three months, and Johnson’s supervisors frowned upon his intention to leave the Mecca Garden for such a long period. They contacted Forbes, asking him to convince Johnson not to go. They also threatened Johnson that if he decided to leave, the federal government would sell the deed on his small ten-acre property to the local land development company. Following these threats, Johnson decided to leave the Mecca Garden for good, writing to Forbes, “I am very sorry indeed that I entered the employ of the Department of Agriculture.”[2] Even after he left, Johnson’s supervisors showed no mercy, cutting his plot from the nearby government well, forcing him to spend roughly $750 on digging a new well and setting new irrigation lines. All because he dared to challenge date boosters’ monopoly.

Ostracizing Texans

California’s hot climate is ideal for date cultivation, and it is no wonder that the American date palm sector prospered there. Why did places with similar climates – like parts of Texas, Nevada, or New Mexico – never become major date production centers? One possible explanation has to do with California agriculture more generally. From the mid-nineteenth century, the temperate climate in the Central Valley drew investors and made the Golden State a global agricultural hub. When date palms joined the party, many investors were looking for a way to capitalize on the country’s prospering gardens and were willing to invest in new projects. But there is more to that story. Much like Bernard Johnson’s case, date boosters blocked any attempts to challenge their monopoly, even if it meant actively going against other government agents.

In 1904, Harvey Stiles, a state horticultural inspector from Corpus Christi, Texas, traveled to the St. Louis World Fair, where he probably visited the new exhibit on date palms, courtesy of our old friend Forbes. Upon his return to Texas, he witnessed “date trees at fully half a dozen points, from Bee [he probably refers to Bee County, A.D.] down the coast to Corpus Christi and Brownsville and up the river valley, all looking well.”[3] Stiles began studying these trees and their adaptability to the south Texas climate, documenting local date cultivation along the Rio Grande and traveling to Mexico to secure pollen that would later serve him to pollinate local palms manually. Stiles then began canvassing for establishing “a plant laboratory, or whatever name it may carry” to develop a date palm industry in Texas. He dreamed of dethroning California and Arizona and cementing the Lone Star state as the new American date capital.

The Rio Grande Valley circa 1915. — *The Rio Grande Valley, one of the potential sites for date cultivation in Texas, circa 1915. Source: Library of Congress*

But boosters were not ready to share their resources and knowledge with other people. Walter Swingle, who was recently described as a central figure in developing date cultivation in Texas, [4] saw the potential in Western Texas’ climate, writing that “the lower Rio Grande… is a fair prospect of growing third-class dates in bulk to be sold in competition with the Persian Gulf dates now imported into this country in enormous quantities.”[5] At the same time, Swingle was more reluctant to include Texans in the date bonanza, arguing that only experienced people (read, his associates) should monitor prospective cultivation. Needless to say, Stiles was not the experienced person Swingle had in mind.

Alternatively, Swingle suggested appointing a USDA arboriculturist named Silas Mason to survey the true potential of southern Texas. “It is important,” Swingle concluded, “That this work [of promoting date-related science and production in Texas, A.D.] be done by us and that these plants are not handled by Stiles who can pervert the facts to suit his pursuit.” [6] While the federal government went on to experimenting with date cultivation in Laredo and building a pest-free date farm in Weslaco and Winter-Haven, Stiles was left out, selling seedlings from his private nursery.[7] Texas, who shone momentarily as the next big thing in date cultivation, never became a leading producer. Just ask anyone who has ever eaten a date grown in Texas.

Southern California became the country’s leading date-producing region thanks to its favorable climate and because the people who laid the industry’s foundations made sure to eliminate all competition from the get-go. That does not mean we should castigate or diminish their significant contribution to American agriculture. Instead, we should acknowledge the messy, awkward, and exciting histories of date cultivation and use them to reveal the political intrigues that shape food production. Date palms thus provide an excellent perspective into the history of fear and loath in the desert and an excellent gateway to larger questions of production and power.

[1] Forbes to Johnson, 5.31.1902, University of Arizona Special Collections, AZ 406, Box 11, Folder 6.

[2] Johnson to Forbes, 11.16.1904, University of Arizona Special Collections, AZ 406, Box 11, Folder 6.

[3] “Stiles to Wilson,” 5.14.1906, Date Palm Collection (MS 047) Box 2, File 40, Special Collections & University Archives, University of California, Riverside.

[4] Dennis Johnson and Jane MacKnight, “Date Palm Growing in South Texas,” PalmArbor, 2022.

[5] “Swingle to Galloway”, 10.19.1906, Date Palm Collection (MS 047) Box 2, File 40, Special Collections & University Archives, University of California, Riverside.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Johnson and MacKnight, “Date Palm Growing in South Texas,” 11–20.

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