The evolution of soil management practices in early Jamaican sugar planting

The wealth of Jamaica in the late 1700s was based upon a sugar planting system. Although contemporaries carefully and fully described this system, they neglected to comment upon its evolution. This paper discusses the evolution of the system's soil management practices during its formative period and compares these techniques to those of related agricultural systems of other places. The interpretation of this information assumes that the evolution of agricultural practices on early Jamaica was consistent with models developed within general evolutionary theory. Several key practices, which originated in Britain, were selectively transferred to Jamaica both directly and indirectly through Barbados, the first British sugar colony in the Caribbean. Those practices which survived in Jamaican agriculture were often modified to adapt them to the island's distinctive physical, social and economic environment.     

Secular history in twelfth-century Italy: Caffaro of Genoa

Caffaro of Genoa is distinguished among medieval writers of history in being the earliest urban chronicler and the earliest secular historian in western Europe. However, his works and career remain relatively unknown to a remarkable number of contemporary medievalists in the English-speaking world. Caffaro was the originator of the Genoese Annals and remained their sole author for more than half a century. In addition he wrote at least two other historical works of great value. Throughout his long life he played a prominent role in the affairs of his city. He served repeatedly as a consul, ambassador, and diplomat for the Genoese Republic, and he was as well a crusader and a successful military commander. In his writing and in his career Caffaro consistently displays that uniquely secular and urban temperament we too readily associate only with the historians of Antiquity and the Renaissance.