Bound in Twine: THE HISTORY AND ECOLOGY OF THE HENEQUEN-WHEAT COMPLEX FOR MEXICO AND THE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN PLAINS, 1880-1950

Bound in Twine THE HISTORY AND ECOLOGY OF THE HENEQUEN-WHEAT COMPLEX FOR MEXICO AND THE AMERICAN AND CANADIAN PLAINS, 1880-1950 Sterling Evans Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 2007. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index, xxiii + 314 pp. $42.00 cloth.

Agricultural history has come a long way since the early days of narrowly focused studies centering mainly on economics. It has moved in the direction of rural social history, and it has become more interdisciplinary as well as more international in its focus. Bound in Twine is a superb example of the trend. It not only examines agricultural history from an international perspective but also considers political, economic, labor, social, and environmental history.

Twine, or henequen and sisal (the more appropriate names for the product, as Evans points out), was a necessity in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century agriculture in the U.S. and Canada. "By 1900," Evans writes, "more than 85 percent of all binder twine in North America was made with Mexican Yucatecan fiber" (p. 32). This enormous demand fueled the growth of the sisal industry in Mexico, and Bound in Twine analyzes the international dependencies among Canada, the U.S., and Mexico created by the growth, manufacturing, and use of binder twine between 1880 and 1950, or what Evans terms the henequen-wheat complex.

Yucatán sisal from Mexico became the twine of choice because it was inexpensive to import, could be tied tightly with a mechanical knotter and did not break, was resistant to insects, and held up in bad weather. Yucatán became the primary producer of the fiber simply because of the geographic conditions that were good for growing the fiber but not much else. To grow the henequén, Yaqui Indians from Mexican Sonora were deported to Yucatán to be used as virtual slave labor.

One illustration of the interdependencies created by the henequen-wheat complex is the "Sisal Situation" of 1915. In that year, a bumper wheat crop in Norm America created a greater need for sisal at the same time as the Mexican Revolution hit Yucatán, resulting in the blockading of its exports. Pressure from Secretary of State Williamjennings Bryan and gunboat diplomacy by President Woodrow Wilson helped ease tensions and reopen Mexican ports, "all for the seemingly simple commodity of binder twine" (p. 120).

Drought and economic depression in North America prompted unsuccessful agricultural reform in Mexico that negatively affected the henequén industry, but the industry's death knell was the arrival on the Great Plains of the combined harvester-threshers, "combines," that did not need twine. Synthetic twines created by the plastics industry further reduced the use of Yucatán twine, and Yucatán went from being one of the richest states in Mexico in the early twentieth century to being one of the poorest by century's end.

With its illumination of the history of this simple farm item, Bound in Twine not only fills a scholarly lacuna but can also serve as a model for other agricultural historians in showing the interconnected and international dimensions of things often taken for granted. I anticipate reading more monographs on the international dimension of agriculture. Should those books be written, Bound in Twine will be the example to which those historians turn. This book deserves a wide audience.

Tim Hoheisel

Minnesota State University, Moorhead

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