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Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- INTRODUCTION -- CHAPTER 1 Who's Who of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society -- CHAPTER 2 Setting the Stage: The Soviet Friendship Phenomenon, 1917–49 -- CHAPTER 3 Institutionalizing Friendship: The All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries -- CHAPTER 4 The Pro-Soviet Message: Dyson Carter and the CSFS Literature and Photographs -- CHAPTER 5 Polishing the Soviet Image: The CSFS and Progressive Ethnic Groups -- CHAPTER 6 The "Pink Tea Circuit" or "Dreams of Equality"? Women and the CSFS -- CHAPTER 7 Culture as Political Persuasion: Performing Soviet Friendship -- CONCLUSION -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index

Intro -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- 1. A New Species of Elegance -- 2. The Gold Standard of Jamaican Mahogany -- 3. Supplying the Empire with Mahogany -- 4. The Bitters and the Sweets of Trade -- 5. Slavery in the Rain Forest -- 6. Redefining Mahogany in the Early Republic -- 7. Mastering Nature and the Challenge of Mahogany -- 8. Democratizing Mahogany and the Advent of Steam -- 9. An Old Species of Elegance -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

"I have a dream" -- From slavery to segregation -- The Montgomery bus boycott -- Crisis in Little Rock -- Sit-ins and freedom rides -- The Birmingham campaign -- The right to vote -- Black power -- Civil rights today -- Timeline -- Essential facts -- Glossary

"In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation. Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled "huntsmen" who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the nation's past."--Publisher's website

In 1786, Britain and Spain concluded the Convention of London, a treaty renewing permission for Anglo woodcutters to cut timber within a designated area in the Bay of Honduras. In exchange, Britain affirmed once again Spain's sovereignty over this valuable section of the Central American coast. As a revision of several earlier treaties, this new agreement differed in that, while allowing mahogany cutting for the first time, it attempted to strictly define and limit the boundaries within which the woodcutters (or Baymen as they called themselves) could operate, and took decisive steps to restrict their settlement's expansion. While the two nations hailed the Convention as a welcome bilateral solution to a long-standing inter-imperial conflict, many of the Baymen, especially members of the local white oligarchy, reviled the outcome. In a memorial to George III, the treaty's critics in the Bay dismissed it as the misguided product of presumptuous diplomats:[T]he court of Madrid may amuse the court of London, with the number of miles and leagues which have been ceded to […] the British Settlement as long as the court of London is pleased to be amused with it. But […] your Memorialists with infinite respect to the superior Abilities and Knowledge and Wisdom of both Courts, most humbly pretend to be better Wood-cutters and better judges of the Soil, the Situation, and the Trees […] than all the courts of Europe […] They speak, and have always spoken, from their Knowledge and Experience.