Rice Empires: Japanese Rice, the USDA, and the Interimperial Development of the Gulf Coast Rice Industry, 1880–1924

This paper weaves agricultural, diplomatic and inter-imperial histories together to understand the influence of Japanese rice on the development of the Gulf Coast rice industry and the expansion of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean at the turn of the twentieth century. The Japanese imperial government supported the export of rice seeds, capital and farmers to the United States to bankroll the U.S. rice industry in the hopes of creating diplomatic goodwill for their own imperial projects in East Asia. The U.S. Department of Agriculture introduced Japanese-supplied rice seeds to the Gulf Coast as a state development project to revive the southern rice industry, which was the fulcrum of “progressive” reform efforts to solve the “regional backwardness” of the South through the application of modern scientific farming practices and importing foreign plants to diversify crops. Japanese rice produced unprecedented yields for Gulf Coast farmers. The U.S. used this rice surplus to wrest control over the economy and food supply of Cuba and Puerto Rico.This paper re-centers the agency of both Japanese state and non-state actors in developing the agricultural projects of the U.S. Empire and upends the nationalist and civilizationist discourses surrounding the creation of the Gulf Coast rice industry.