The cultivar of settler colonialism: Thomas D. Isern, ‘Wheat’, in Jeannie Whayne (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History, Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 269-285 | settler colonial studies blog

The cultivar of settler colonialism: Thomas D. Isern, ‘Wheat’, in Jeannie Whayne (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History, Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 269-285

29Mar24

Description: Wheat is a cultivar with agency in world history. Gluten as well as other nutritional and agronomic virtues commended early wheats to humankind. Out of its Neolithic origins, wheat achieved a unity with human agriculturalists; was disseminated across Europe, Asia, and North Africa; spread globally as a participant in settler colonialism; established identifiable wheat belts; and was implicated in environmental catastrophes on the order the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains of North America. Established wheat belts such as the Great Plains developed coherent commodity cultures by which production practices were related to the environment. A direct historical relationship tied the wheat culture of the Great Plains to that of the Russian steppe. In the late twentieth century, wheat culture rose to new prominence in Asian nations as a result of the Green Revolution.

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