{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,14]],"date-time":"2026-10-14T15:46:25Z","timestamp":1791992785108,"version":"4.4.0"},"reference-count":23,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,8,23]],"date-time":"2023-08-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1692748800000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["cambridge.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Br J Hist Sci"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,9]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title><jats:p>Towards the end of the nineteenth century, British colonists in Jamaica became increasingly exasperated by the damage caused to their sugar plantations by rats. In 1872, a British planter attempted to solve this problem by introducing the small Indian mongoose (<jats:italic>Urva auropunctata<\/jats:italic>). The animals, however, turned on Jamaica's insectivorous birds and reptiles, leading to an explosion in the tick population. This paper situates the mongoose catastrophe as a closing chapter in the history of the nineteenth-century acclimatization movement. While foreign observers saw the introduction of the mongoose as a cautionary tale, caricaturing British Jamaica as overrun by a plague of weasels and ticks, British colonists, administrators and naturalists \u2013 identifying a gradual decline of both populations \u2013 argued that the \u2018balance of nature\u2019 would eventually reassert itself. As this paper argues, through this dubious claim they were attempting to retrospectively rationalize or justify the introductions and their disastrous aftermath. This strategy enabled them to gloss over the lasting ecological damage caused by the mongoose, and allowed its adherents to continue their uncritical support of both the Jamaican plantation economy and animal introductions in the British Empire.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/s0007087423000286","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,8,23]],"date-time":"2023-08-23T07:29:20Z","timestamp":1692775760000},"page":"391-407","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/policypage","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["A plague of weasels and ticks: animal introduction, ecological disaster, and the balance of nature in Jamaica, 1870\u20131900"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"56","author":[{"given":"Matthew","family":"Holmes","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,8,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0007087423000286_ref18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/00222935008654709"},{"key":"S0007087423000286_ref2","first-page":"135","article-title":"Climates of opinion: acclimatization in nineteenth-century France and England","volume":"35","author":"Anderson","year":"1992","journal-title":"Victorian Studies"},{"key":"S0007087423000286_ref10","first-page":"9","volume-title":"All Things Harmless, Useful, and Ornamental: Environmental Transformation through Species Acclimatization, from Colonial Australia to the World","author":"Minard","year":"2021"},{"key":"S0007087423000286_ref11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3197\/096734006778226373"},{"key":"S0007087423000286_ref1","volume-title":"The Columbian 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Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science","name":"copyright","label":"Copyright","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}},{"value":"This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.","name":"license","label":"License","group":{"name":"copyright_and_licensing","label":"Copyright and Licensing"}},{"value":"This content has been made available to all.","name":"free","label":"Free to read"}]}}