Missouri State University’s Dr. Chelsea Davis, assistant professor in the Department of History, has been awarded the 2024 CHA Journal Prize from The Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (JCHA).

In “All that Glitters Is Wine? Viticultural Capitalists and the Creation of Britain’s Colonial Wine Industry,” Davis examines how extractive mining industries in colonial South Africa and Australia also boosted the British empire’s wine industry.

The journal announced in February 2024 that Davis had won its best paper prize, which included a certificate of recognition and a monetary award of $250.

“I was very surprised,” Davis said, “but excited at the news.”

“By winning its best article prize, Dr. Davis has demonstrated the significance of her research and its respect by her peers,” said Dr. Kathleen Kennedy, head of the history department. “This award is further confirmation of the skill and dedication that she brings to her craft.”

Davis specializes in the history of the modern British Empire, especially the nineteenth century. Her research interests include British environmental and labor histories but also Britain’s colonial wine industries in South Africa and Australia.

“Skillful” and “innovative” scholarship

Davis’s winning paper compares the Australian and South African British colonies to examine the history of Britain’s imperial wine industry.

In her paper, Davis explains how white settlers in Australia and South Africa dominated local politics while taking advantage of growing social and economic networks. These settlers subsequently used those networks to import vines, technologies, ideas and people.

“We cannot separate the histories of Britain and its broader empire,” Davis said. “This article reiterates the role of British settlers in capitalist expansion in Britain’s colonies, often at the expense of its nonwhite and indigenous inhabitants.”

Consequently, when it announced Davis as the prize winner, the JCHA committee reserved high praise for her work. The committee described her historical analysis as “sharp” and her research methodology as “skillful” and “innovative.”

Identifying “viticultural capitalists”

Davis said she gravitated toward the British wine industry when her research revealed connections between it and the gold and diamond industries.

“When my research led me to learn that one of the most notorious diamond tycoons and imperialists of the late nineteenth century, Cecil Rhodes, also had a sizeable number of wine and fruit farms, I was interested in learning if any other principal winegrowers in either colony had ties to gold,” she explained.

By examining the experiences of white settlers, Davis developed a broader historical understanding of capitalism and wine production in the British empire.

“This is how I came up with the term ‘viticultural capitalists,’ which I define as a distinct group of large-scale winegrowers and producers responsible for restructuring Britain’s colonial wine industry in the late nineteenth century,” she said.

According to Davis, Australia and South Africa’s Cape Colony were the British Empire’s two main winegrowing regions during the nineteenth century. Her research revealed how both faced a variety of economic and cultural experiences.

“As Britain’s principal winegrowing colonies, but also two demographically different regions, the Cape of Good Hope and Australia shared imperial experiences in environmental extraction and capitalist accumulation, but also differences in racial politics and labor exploitation,” she said.

Bringing research to the classroom

Davis said she incorporates her research findings into her classroom to illustrate settler colonialism, economic expansion and labor exploitation.

“I use this research to teach students about capitalism and the first wave of globalization in the nineteenth century,” Davis said. “This type of work helps students see how economic production [and] industries changed in the nineteenth century to shift towards more globalized marketplace[s].”

The research is important, Davis added, because it exposes the historical legacies behind modern consumerism.

“The commodities we consume, including very popular ones…have ties to a form of settler capitalism which required labor exploitation and political [and] racial privilege,” she said.

Davis hopes to bring more of her research to the classroom with a new global history of alcohol course in 2025.

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