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Jennifer Anderson, Mahogany: The Cost of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012)

Abraham Moss & Christina Ochoa

 

The non-renewability of mahogany has been one of its defining features as a boom and bust luxury, coupling fabulous rewards with chronic shortages. Plantations have failed to cultivate the trees to match their elusive and ancient wild counterparts. Spread in clusters throughout the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, mahogany trees once dwarfed all but the mighty Sequoia in height and size. Coming to the new world, Europeans began to see their value in shipbuilding. Eventually, the focus shifted to furniture, producing exquisite pieces that would be passed down for generations among wealthy families.

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From the discovery of the wood to its near extinction, Jennifer Anderson’s Mahogany analyzes this commodity within a highly ecological framework, examining how the environmental conditions of mahogany growth impacted both production and consumption. With a focus on the experience of colonial America, Anderson analyzes the lives of furniture makers, ship captains, wood cutters, merchants, and some of the nation’s most prominent founding fathers to see the role mahogany has played in the birth of a nation. Her analysis would not be complete without her examination of the lives of the enslaved who harvested mahogany, and the emancipated who endured the social stigma which remained.

 

Imported from Honduras first as ballast for the more lucrative logwood trade, mahogany needed to be both physically and socially refined to enter and then define the elegance of the elites. As consumption patterns expanded, this foreign wood began to fill the need for a luxury material to adorn the homes of Europe and America’s wealthiest members. Once assimilated into daily life, mahogany took on a “meaningful and value laden concept in their intellectual and emotional lives as well” (61). Increased demand led to a ravenous, extractive, and devastating trade which scoured the Americas for mahogany till the land had been exhausted.

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Slaves felling mahogany.

The extraction of mahogany relied on a small segment of colonial society composed of masters and slaves who journeyed into the rainforests in search of the luxury timber. Though no less oppressive, the occupation of woodcutting slaves afforded autonomy. While this looked different across the colonies, Anderson focuses on specific examples to highlight the tension and negotiations between planters, nation-states, and slaves. In one such example, the Baymen of Honduras struggled between England and Spain for mastery of land and slaves, with slaves often escaping the English side to areas of Spanish occupation in search of religious refuge.

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A Honduran mahogany tree

This conflict was almost invisible to the American consumer; rather they only saw where the wood came from, and the social status that accrued. Jamaican wood, being the “Gold Standard,” would be more lucrative and luxurious than wood from Honduras, due to the nation of origin. When Jamaican wood became woefully depleted, Jamaicans started to import wood and sell it as though it came from their forests. With only a small but seemingly unlimited stock available, quality became the key element of the mahogany trade which elites capitalized on to create a wood that defined the upper crust of American society, seen in their portraits and furniture.

 

The need to find new supplies of mahogany, began to worry contemporaries, leading to numerous unsuccessful attempts to cultivate the tree. Between planters not wanting to divert slave labor to mahogany cultivation, and the decades it takes for mahogany to grow, there was never a viable method of sustainably cultivating mahogany. Anderson contends that mahogany “defied the Enlightenment idea that humans could master the living world,” a claim too grand given her insufficient analysis of enlightenment thought. Of what she does present however, the few successes were far outstripped by the insatiable demand for mahogany, which only grew with its democratization and industrialization.


The industrial era allowed for mahogany to become a more accessible commodity. People who could not afford a piece of mahogany furniture, were able to get furniture meant to “emulate mahogany’s appearance with red-tinted stains, finishes, or paint” (60). As mahogany and its imitators became more popular among the poor, it became synonymous with colonial life. Both in public and private settings, mahogany formed a center-point in the structures of colonial society. Mahogany objects, which were passed down through generations, collected meaning. Beyond signaling class and prestige, they often carried a sentimental value for the colonists. However, its democratization threatened mahogany’s prestige. The wealthy elites sought to compensate for this by

over-consuming mahogany. The standard had changed from simply owning mahogany furniture to owning as much as possible.

 

The true testament to the role mahogany played in the growing colonial culture is its integration into language and art. Mahogany became more widely used in language as well to describe skin color, along with ebony and ivory. Likewise, mahogany was often used as a vehicle for discussion about Nature. Many artists and thinkers found it ironic that trees had to be cut down and forests destroyed to create objects that would signal the natural beauty and abundance of the colonies. European artists would come to colonial America in search of the oft alluded to natural beauty, and sometimes even referenced cut tree stumps when discussing the price of progress.

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The historical value of “Old Mahogany” rose as it became both a symbol of progress and the halcyon founding of the United States. Paintings and furniture became relics and reminders of the glory days of the American revolution. In a moment of “Colonial Revival,” mahogany was used as a centerpiece for illustrating a past that America had strayed from (305).

 

By attaching the meaning of mahogany to the Founding Fathers, generations of Americans were able to turn a blind eye to the slavery and death that came with the mahogany trade. The ever-dwindling supply of mahogany continues to constrain its trade. Mahogany, though democratized, retained the connotations of luxury and wealth which first set it apart. Behind the veneer of prestige lies a history of oppression and deforestation, consequences that endure and become more glaring like mahogany.

Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin by John Singleton Copley, 1773.

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