News and short stories

Interview: Gastropod

I was interviewed about Oil Palm: a Global History for Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley’s award-winning Gastropod podcast. The episode titled “The Most Interesting Oil in the World” aired in December 2021.

Conference:”Raw and Refined: Commodities, Processing, and Global Perspectives”

‘The Raw and the Refined: Commodities, Processing, and Power in Global Perspective’ – Keynote Lecture Date2 September 2021, 4.30pm – 5.30pm Keynote Lecture for the 2021 Commodities of Empire Workshop ‘The Raw and the Refined: Commodities, Processing, and Power in Global Perspective’ Visit this link to register for the public keynote presented by Dr. Erika Rappaport titled “Tate and…

Hot industries in cold places

Oil palm is arguably the most important tropical tree crop. A few decades ago, the title would have gone to rubber, a tree that is well-commemorated in Britain’s Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. A decent specimen grows in the Palm House, though the tree is not a palm at all. (For a history of the…

Palm oil and soap marketing

This image didn’t make the cut for Oil Palm: a Global History, but it’s remarkable for three reasons. First, it actually (or at least attempts to) depicts a West African person. Most Palmolive advertising pointed to a fictive Egyptian origin for palm oil, erasing West Africans from the commodity chain (see ad at bottom of…

Incredible hulks

The second in a series of palm oil photos that didn’t make the cut for Oil Palm: a Global History. This is the clearest photo of a hulk I’ve been able to locate. Unfortunately it’s still pretty boring. But these “hulks” played a vital role in turning southeastern Nigeria into the world’s biggest exporter of…

Making palm oil

This is the first in a series of images that didn’t make it in my new book, Oil Palm: a Global History. This photo was taken in the early twentieth century and printed on a postcard sold in the Gold Coast (today, Ghana). The back of the postcard unfortunately says nothing interesting. The photo shows…

Oil Palm: a Global History coming June 2021

My new book on the global history of the oil palm industry has a cover and a release date! Look for it in June 2021, from the University of North Carolina Press. Preorder now to take advantage of a 40% discount off the list price! Tracing the history of the oil palm tree out of…

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