Planting an Empire explores the social and economic history of the Chesapeake region, revealing a story of two similar but distinct colonies in early America. L

This is an innovative study of how British Colonial rule and society in Malayan towns and plantations transformed immigrants into British subjects.

Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century,

‘At the centre of the world-economy, one always finds an exceptional state, strong, aggressive and privileged, dynamic, simultaneously feared and admired.’

In 1837, while charting the Amazonian country of Guiana for Great Britain, German naturalist Robert Schomburgk discovered an astounding "vegetable wonder"--a hu