Professor Molly Warsh was interviewed by Srijana Mitra Das of the Times of India about the history of pearls and their modern resonances with issues of resource extraction and labor exploitation.
In the piece, Warsh draws on research from her book American Baroque (UNC Press) to examine the 16th and 17th century Atlantic pearl trade, where enslaved indigenous and African divers were forced to repeatedly dive for oysters off the Venezuelan coast—often suffering ruptured eardrums and other injuries—while billions of mollusks were harvested and discarded. The interview traces how pearls became powerful symbols of imperial expansion, yet also reveals the complexities of empire: European colonizers depended on the environmental knowledge of the very people they enslaved to locate productive oyster reefs. Warsh argues that understanding this history encourages us to be more mindful about the interconnected chains of labor, ecology, and consumption that bring commodities to us today.
Dr. Warsh was also featured in the fourth episode (covering the Portuguese Empire) of the four-part "The Colonizer's Academy” series, a part of Al-Jazeera's "Al-Jazeera Untangles" program.