Sweet Archipelagos: Sugar, Empires, and the Making of a Transpacific Insect Trail

Abstract: In 1854, a whaling vessel brought two bundles of sugarcane from Tahiti to Maui, marking the beginning of the Lahaina cane's history and the socioecological transformation of the Hawaiian Islands and the Asia-Pacific. This essay tells a history of sugar through the transpacific crossings of three nonhuman species: sugarcane, the sugarcane beetle borer, and the tachinid fly. It situates nonhuman actors within the historical context of plantation agriculture, capitalist imperialism, and biological globalization of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Pacific to reconceptualize entomological categories like "pest" and "parasite." Engaging with actor-network theory, animal studies, and island studies, the essay attempts to offer insights into historical agency, human–nonhuman relations, and large-scale ecological change.