Editing Mahogany (section)

===History of American mahogany trade===
[[File:Squaring mahogany.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Mahogany loggers in Belize, around 1930]]

In the 17th century, the buccaneer [[Alexandre Exquemelin]] recorded the use of mahogany or Caoba (Cedrela being the Spanish name) on [[Hispaniola]] for making canoes: "The Indians make these canoes without the use of any iron instruments, by only burning the trees at the bottom near the root, and afterwards governing the fire with such industry that nothing is burnt more than what they would have..."<ref>John Esquemeling, ''The Buccanneers of America'', translated from the Dutch 1684, reprinted London (1893), p. 26</ref>

The wood first came to the notice of Europeans with the beginning of Spanish colonisation in the Americas. A cross in the Cathedral at [[Santo Domingo]], bearing the date 1514, is said to be mahogany, and [[Philip II of Spain]] apparently used the wood for the interior joinery of the palace [[El Escorial]], begun in 1584.<ref>Bryan Latham, ''Timber, Its Development and Distribution'', London (1957), p. 155.</ref> However, ''caoba'', as the Taino Natives called the wood, was principally reserved for shipbuilding, and it was declared a royal monopoly at Havana in 1622. Hence very little of the mahogany growing in Spanish controlled territory found its way to Europe.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Anderson |first=Jennifer L. |title=Mahogany: The Cost of Luxury in Early America |date=2012 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge Massachusetts |publication-date=2012 |pages=22 |language=English}}</ref>

After the French established a colony in [[Saint Domingue]] (now [[Haiti]]), some mahogany from that island probably found its way to France, where joiners in the port cities of Saint-Malo, Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux used the wood to a limited extent from about 1700.<ref>Jacqueline Viaux-Locquin, ''Les bois d'ebenisterie dans le mobilier francais'', Paris (1997), pp. 2-10.</ref> On the English-controlled islands, especially [[Jamaica]] and the [[Bahamas]], mahogany was abundant but not exported in any quantity before 1700.{{citation needed|date=October 2023}}