Soot, Palm Trees, and Zinc: The Port System of the Greater Caribbean, U.S. Empire, and the Geopolitics of Disgust

Abstract This article explores the reactions of white U.S. elite travelers to the greater Caribbean in the Gilded Age and progressive era. Focusing on the tropical port system that was the center of the region’s commodity export trade and simultaneously a center of visitor transit, it explores how visitors’ negative reactions, especially of disgust, fed into the politics of race and empire by attributing the effects of rapid globalization to non-white autonomy in the region.