Red Earth: Extracting Knowledge and Bauxite in Jamaica, 1950-1980

• In Event: Perspectivas históricas de la políticas educativas y del conocimiento

Abstract

My talk examines how Jamaica became the world’s largest bauxite exporter in the 1960s. I focus on the importance of corporate funded geology during the 1940s to the beginning of the bauxite industry. Knowledge about where bauxite was located and estimates about the quantity and quality of Jamaican bauxite was kept secret from the colonial government and later the Jamaican state until the 1970s. I discuss the importance of this knowledge in the history of bauxite mining in Jamaica. As common pastures and smallholder’s land was purchased by mining companies for both mining and industrial agricultural production, the limited knowledge possessed by the Jamaican state, particularly after independence, curtailed possible intervention and reform. I discuss how this led to the founding of the Jamaican Bauxite Institute in the 1970s as well as the enduring legacy of bauxite extraction in the Jamaican countryside.

Author

• Jordan Howell