World-Literature and the Other Oil: Palm Oil Fiction from England and West Africa, 1807-2020

This project explores how literature registers the rise and global dispersion of palm oil as one of the most significant commodities shaping the modern world.

Indigenous and spiritually significant to West Africa, the oil palm has been industrially farmed since the early 19th century when it replaced slavery as one of the main drivers of the European colonial project in the region.

Palm oil played a crucial role for the British industrial/imperial project, and is today the world’s most pervasive vegetable derivative and a main contributor to climate breakdown.

While the energy humanities have closely studied the cultural history of crude oil, this project is the first to examine English and West-African literature in light of palm oil’s global history.

Utilizing theoretical frameworks derived from Moretti (1996) and the WReC (2015), the project compares literature from two distinct regions of the world-system – Britain and West Africa – and focuses on texts written between 1807 and the early 2000s.

The project shows that, as palm oil production has reshaped societies and environments globally, it has also left an indelible mark on literary imaginaries, especially in regions directly implicated in or subject to palm oil production.

By reading transregionally between sites of palm oil consumption and production, the project further makes the invisibilised labour of nature discernible, thereby foregrounding the role of the palm oil system in driving the climate emergency.