Lecture: “Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection” by Edward D. Melillo

When: April 4, 2016 @ 4:00 pm

Where: University of Washington Communications #226

Professor Edward D. Melillo will talk about his new book, Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection (Yale University Press, 2015). This groundbreaking history explores the many unrecognized, enduring linkages between the state of California and the country of CHile. The book begins in 1786, when a French expedition brought the potato from Chile to California, and it concludes with Chilean president Michelle Bachelet’s diplomatic visit to the Golden State in 2008. During the intervening centuries, new crops, foods, fertilizers, mining technologies, laborers, and ideas from Chile radically altered California’s development. In turn, Californian systems of servitude, exotic species, educational programs, and capitalist development strategies dramatically shaped Chilean history.

Edward D. Melillo is Associate Professor of history and environmental studies at Amherst College. He teaches courses on global environmental history, the history of the Pacific World, and commodities in world historical perspective.