Carey's concern with the depletion of soil minerals might seem quaint today, given the present availability of cheap fertilizers at least until fuel prices escalated. At the time, however, declining soil fertility and, even more visibly, declining crop yields were a matter of international concern. European farmers in this period even raided the Napoleonic battlefields (Waterloo, Austerlitz) for bones to spread over their fields (Foster 1999, p. 375; Hillel 1991, p. 131). Alas, the bones were too few. Farmers had to look to far off lands in search of guano, which was supposed to be the answer to their problems. John Bellamy Foster reported:
So desperate was the condition of capitalist agriculture in this period that the mid nineteenth century saw a frantic search for guano throughout the world and in the rise of a period of guano imperialism. The first great overseas colonial expansion of the United States was a direct outgrowth of this crisis of the conditions of production in agriculture. [Foster 1997, p. 286]
Countries even threatened to go to war over access to the limited supplies of guano. American farmers vehemently objected to a British monopoly on this fertilizer. The subject of guano seemed so pressing that Millard Filmore's first state of the union address called attention to the growing importance of guano (Skaggs 1994, p. 14).
Control over guano deposits set off a war between Chile and Bolivia fought a war that left Bolivia landlocked. Not all the guano islands were uninhabited. In some Pacific Islands, people had to be displaced to make way for guano mining (Ponting 1991, p. 218 19). In 1856 Congress passed the Guano Islands Act: "Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States." According to one survey:
Between 1856 and 1903, American entrepreneurs laid claim to ninety four islands, rocks, and keys around the globe under authority of the Guano Islands Act. Of these places, sixty six (mostly in the Caribbean sea and Pacific ocean) were at least temporarily recognized by the U.S. Department of State to be American appurtenances, but fewer than two dozen of them were ever mined. Today, nine erstwhile guano islands continue to be U.S. possessions. [Skaggs 1994, p. 14]
Germany and Britain also annexed guano islands. The United States is gradually abandoning some of its more outlandish claims to far off territories based on these ancient guano deposits, but the country still tenaciously holds on toe some Caribbean guano islands (see Rubin 2001).
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901