Download or read book Environmental History and the American South written by Paul Sutter and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reader gathers fifteen of the most important essays written in the field of southern environmental history over the past decade. Ideal for course use, the volume provides a convenient entrée into the recent literature on the region as it indicates the variety of directions in which the field is growing. As coeditor Paul S. Sutter writes in his introduction, “recent trends in environmental historiography--a renewed emphasis on agricultural landscapes and their hybridity, attention to the social and racial histories of environmental thought and practice, and connections between health and the environment among them--have made the South newly attractive terrain. This volume suggests, then, that southern environmental history has not only arrived but also that it may prove an important space for the growth of the larger environmental history enterprise.” The writings, which range in setting from the Texas plains to the Carolina Lowcountry, address a multiplicity of topics, such as husbandry practices in the Chesapeake colonies and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. The contributors’ varied disciplinary perspectives--including agricultural history, geography, the history of science, the history of technology, military history, colonial American history, urban and regional planning history, and ethnohistory--also point to the field’s vitality. Conveying the breadth, diversity, and liveliness of this maturing area of study, Environmental History and the American South affirms the critical importance of human-environmental interactions to the history and culture of the region. Contributors: Virginia DeJohn Anderson William Boyd Lisa Brady Joshua Blu Buhs Judith Carney James Taylor Carson Craig E. Colten S. Max Edelson Jack Temple Kirby Ralph H. Lutts Eileen Maura McGurty Ted Steinberg Mart Stewart Claire Strom Paul Sutter Harry Watson Albert G. Way
Download or read book Atlantic Environments and the American South written by Thomas Blake Earle and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is clear overlap in interests and influences for the fields of Atlantic, environmental, and southern history, but scholarship in them has often advanced on parallel tracks. This anthology places itself at the intersection, pushing for a new confluence. Editors Thomas Blake Earle and D. Andrew Johnson provide a lucid introduction to this collection of essays that brings these disciplines together. With this volume, historians explore crucial insights into a self-consciously Atlantic environmental history of the American South, touching on such topics as ideas about slavery, gender, climate, “colonial ecological revolution,” manipulation of the landscape, infrastructure, resources, and exploitation. By centering this project on a region, the American South—defined as the southeastern reaches of North America and the Caribbean— the authors interrogate how European colonizers, Native Americans, and Africans interacted in and with the (sub)tropics, a place foreign to Europeans. Challenging the concepts of “Atlantic” and “southern” and their intersection with “environments” is a discipline-defining strategy at the leading edge of emerging scholarship. Taken collectively, this book should encourage more readers to reimagine this region, its time periods, climate(s), and ecocultural networks.
Download or read book This Land This South written by Albert E. Cowdrey and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the story of the long interaction between humans, land, and climate in the American South. It is a tale of exploitation and erosion, of destruction, disease, and defeat, but also of the persistent search for knowledge and wisdom. It is a story whose villains were also its victims and sometimes its heroes. Ancient forces created the southern landscape, but, as Albert E. Cowdrey shows, humankind from the time of earliest habitation has been at work reshaping it. The southern Indians, far from being the "natural ecologists" of myth, radically transformed their environment by hunting and burning. Such patterns were greatly accelerated by the arrival of Europeans, who viewed the land as a commodity to be exploited for immediate economic benefit. Cowdrey documents not only the long decline but the painfully slow struggle to repair the damage of human folly. The eighteenth century saw widespread though ineffectual efforts to protect game and conserve the soil. In the nineteenth century the first hesitant steps were taken toward scientific flood control, forestry, wildlife protection, and improved medicine. In this century, the New Deal, the explosion in scientific knowledge, and the national environmental movement have spurred more rapid improvements. But the efforts to harness the South's great rivers, to save its wild species, and to avert serious environmental pollution have often had equivocal results. Originally published in 1983 and needed now more than ever, This Land, This South was the first book to explore the cumulative impact of humans on the southern landscape and its effect on them. In graceful and at times lyrical prose, Albert Cowdrey brings together a vast array of information. Now revised and updated, this important book should be read by every person concerned with the past, present, or future of the South.
Download or read book My Work Is That of Conservation written by Mark D. Hersey and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Washington Carver (ca. 1864-1943) is at once one of the most familiar and misunderstood figures in American history. In My Work Is That of Conservation, Mark D. Hersey reveals the life and work of this fascinating man who is widely--and reductively--known as the African American scientist who developed a wide variety of uses for the peanut. Carver had a truly prolific career dedicated to studying the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world, yet much of his work has been largely forgotten. Hersey rectifies this by tracing the evolution of Carver's agricultural and environmental thought starting with his childhood in Missouri and Kansas and his education at the Iowa Agricultural College. Carver's environmental vision came into focus when he moved to the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, where his sensibilities and training collided with the denuded agrosystems, deep poverty, and institutional racism of the Black Belt. It was there that Carver realized his most profound agricultural thinking, as his efforts to improve the lot of the area's poorest farmers forced him to adjust his conception of scientific agriculture. Hersey shows that in the hands of pioneers like Carver, Progressive Era agronomy was actually considerably "greener" than is often thought today. My Work Is That of Conservation uses Carver's life story to explore aspects of southern environmental history and to place this important scientist within the early conservation movement.
Download or read book An Environmental History of the Civil War written by Judkin Browning and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war's significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks. In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War's outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.
Download or read book Where There Are Mountains written by Donald Edward Davis and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely study of change in a complex environment, Where There Are Mountains explores the relationship between human inhabitants of the southern Appalachians and their environment. Incorporating a wide variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences, the study draws information from several viewpoints and spans more than four hundred years of geological, ecological, anthropological, and historical development in the Appalachian region. The book begins with a description of the indigenous Mississippian culture in 1500 and ends with the destructive effects of industrial logging and dam building during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Donald Edward Davis discusses the degradation of the southern Appalachians on a number of levels, from the general effects of settlement and industry to the extinction of the American chestnut due to blight and logging in the early 1900s. This portrait of environmental destruction is echoed by the human struggle to survive in one of our nation's poorest areas. The farming, livestock raising, dam building, and pearl and logging industries that have gradually destroyed this region have also been the livelihood of the Appalachian people. The author explores the sometimes conflicting needs of humans and nature in the mountains while presenting impressive and comprehensive research on the increasingly threatened environment of the southern Appalachians.
Download or read book A Living Past written by John Soluri and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though still a relatively young field, the study of Latin American environmental history is blossoming, as the contributions to this definitive volume demonstrate. Bringing together thirteen leading experts on the region, A Living Past synthesizes a wide range of scholarship to offer new perspectives on environmental change in Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean since the nineteenth century. Each chapter provides insightful, up-to-date syntheses of current scholarship on critical countries and ecosystems (including Brazil, Mexico, the Caribbean, the tropical Andes, and tropical forests) and such cross-cutting themes as agriculture, conservation, mining, ranching, science, and urbanization. Together, these studies provide valuable historical contexts for making sense of contemporary environmental challenges facing the region.
Download or read book An Environmental History of Latin America written by Shawn William Miller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-27 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narration of the mutually mortal historical contest between humans and nature in Latin America. Covering a period that begins with Amerindian civilizations and concludes in the region's present urban agglomerations, the work offers an original synthesis of the current scholarship on Latin America's environmental history and argues that tropical nature played a central role in shaping the region's historical development. Human attitudes, populations, and appetites, from Aztec cannibalism to more contemporary forms of conspicuous consumption, figure prominently in the story. However, characters such as hookworms, whales, hurricanes, bananas, dirt, butterflies, guano, and fungi make more than cameo appearances. Recent scholarship has overturned many of our egocentric assumptions about humanity's role in history. Seeing Latin America's environmental past from the perspective of many centuries illustrates that human civilizations, ancient and modern, have been simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable than previously thought.
Download or read book To Love the Wind and the Rain written by Dianne D. Glave and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2005-12-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the relationship between African Americans and the environment focuses on three major themes: African Americans in the rural environment, African Americans in the urban and suburban environments, and African Americans and the notion of environmental justice.
Download or read book American Environmental History written by Dan Allosso and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expanded, new and improved American Environmental History textbook for everyone! After years of teaching Environmental History at a major East Coast University without a textbook, Dr. Dan Allosso decided to take matters into his own hands. The result, American Environmental History, is a concise, comprehensive survey covering the material from Dan's undergraduate course. What do people say about the class and the text? "This was my first semester and this course has created an incredible first impression. If all of the courses are this good, I am going to really enjoy my time here. The course has completely changed the way I look at the world." (Student in 2014 class) "One of the few classes I'm really sad is ending, the subject matter is fascinating and Dan is a great guide to it. His approach should be required of all students as it teaches an appreciation for a newer and better way of living." (Student in 2014 class) "Allosso's lectures are fantastic. The best I have ever had. So impressed. The material is always extremely interesting and well-presented." (Student in 2015 class) "It is just a perfect course that I think should be mandatory if we want to save our planet and live responsibly." (Student in 2015 class) "A rare gem for an IB ESS teacher or any social studies teacher looking for an 11th or 12th grade supplementary text that aims to provide an historical context for the environmental reality in America today. Highly recommended." (District Curriculum Coordinator, 2016) "I was so impressed with this material that I am using it as a supplement for a course I teach at my college." (History and Environmental Studies Professor, 2017) Beginning in prehistory and concluding in the present, American Environmental History explores the ways the environment has affected the choices that became our history, and how our choices have affected the environment. The dynamic relationship between people and the world around them is missing from mainstream history. Putting the environment back into history helps us make sense of the past and the present, which will help guide us toward a better future. More information and Dan's blog are available at environmentalhistory.us
Download or read book Nature and the Orient written by Richard H. Grove and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 1036 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discussing diverse aspects of the environmental history of South and Southeast Asia, from a variety of perspectives, it brings together leading experts from the fields of history, history of science, archaeology, geography and environmental studies, and covers a time span from 50,000 BC to the present. Spanning a geographical region from Peshawar on the North-West Frontier to the Maluku Islands in eastern Indonesia, this book tells the story of the highly complex relationship between people and their environment. Among a multitude of subjects it reports on the latest findings in settlement archaeology, the history of deforestation, climate change, the history of fishing, hunting and shikar, colonial science and forest management, indigenous plant knowledge, the history of famine, the impact of coalmining and the tragic story of India's tragic story of India's tribal communities.
Download or read book War Upon the Land written by Lisa M. Brady and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first book-length environmental history of the American Civil War, Lisa M. Brady argues that ideas about nature and the environment were central to the development and success of Union military strategy. From the start of the war, both sides had to contend with forces of nature, even as they battled one another. Northern soldiers encountered unfamiliar landscapes in the South that suggested, to them, an uncivilized society's failure to control nature. Under the leadership of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Philip Sheridan, the Union army increasingly targeted southern environments as the war dragged on. Whether digging canals, shooting livestock, or dramatically attempting to divert the Mississippi River, the Union aimed to assert mastery over nature by attacking the most potent aspect of southern identity and power--agriculture. Brady focuses on the siege of Vicksburg, the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign, marches through Georgia and the Carolinas, and events along the Mississippi River to examine this strategy and its devastating physical and psychological impact. Before the war, many Americans believed in the idea that nature must be conquered and subdued. Brady shows how this perception changed during the war, leading to a wider acceptance of wilderness. Connecting environmental trauma with the onset of American preservation, Brady pays particular attention to how these new ideas of wilderness can be seen in the creation of national battlefield memorial parks as unaltered spaces. Deftly combining environmental and military history with cultural studies, War upon the Land elucidates an intriguing, largely unexplored side of the nation's greatest conflict.
Download or read book Remaking Wormsloe Plantation written by Drew A. Swanson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we preserve certain landscapes while developing others without restraint? Drew A. Swanson’s in-depth look at Wormsloe plantation, located on the salt marshes outside of Savannah, Georgia, explores that question while revealing the broad historical forces that have shaped the lowcountry South. Wormsloe is one of the most historic and ecologically significant stretches of the Georgia coast. It has remained in the hands of one family from 1736, when Georgia’s Trustees granted it to Noble Jones, through the 1970s, when much of Wormsloe was ceded to Georgia for the creation of a state historic site. It has served as a guard post against aggression from Spanish Florida; a node in an emerging cotton economy connected to far-flung places like Lancashire and India; a retreat for pleasure and leisure; and a carefully maintained historic site and green space. Like many lowcountry places, Wormsloe is inextricably tied to regional, national, and global environments and is the product of transatlantic exchanges. Swanson argues that while visitors to Wormsloe value what they perceive to be an “authentic,” undisturbed place, this landscape is actually the product of aggressive management over generations. He also finds that Wormsloe is an ideal place to get at hidden stories, such as African American environmental and agricultural knowledge, conceptions of health and disease, the relationship between manual labor and views of nature, and the ties between historic preservation and natural resource conservation. Remaking Wormsloe Plantation connects this distinct Georgia place to the broader world, adding depth and nuance to the understanding of our own conceptions of nature and history.
Download or read book This Land This South written by Albert E. Cowdrey and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the story of the long interaction between humans, land, and climate in the American South. It is a tale of exploitation and erosion, of destruction, disease, and defeat, but also of the persistent search for knowledge and wisdom. It is a story whose villains were also its victims and sometimes its heroes. Ancient forces created the southern landscape, but, as Albert E. Cowdrey shows, humankind from the time of earliest habitation has been at work reshaping it. The southern Indians, far from being the "natural ecologists" of myth, radically transformed their environment by hunting and burning. Such patterns were greatly accelerated by the arrival of Europeans, who viewed the land as a commodity to be exploited for immediate economic benefit. Cowdrey documents not only the long decline but the painfully slow struggle to repair the damage of human folly. The eighteenth century saw widespread though ineffectual efforts to protect game and conserve the soil. In the nineteenth century the first hesitant steps were taken toward scientific flood control, forestry, wildlife protection, and improved medicine. In this century, the New Deal, the explosion in scientific knowledge, and the national environmental movement have spurred more rapid improvements. But the efforts to harness the South's great rivers, to save its wild species, and to avert serious environmental pollution have often had equivocal results. Originally published in 1983 and needed now more than ever, This Land, This South was the first book to explore the cumulative impact of humans on the southern landscape and its effect on them. In graceful and at times lyrical prose, Albert Cowdrey brings together a vast array of information. Now revised and updated, this important book should be read by every person concerned with the past, present, or future of the South.
Download or read book American Environmental History written by Carolyn Merchant and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By studying the many ways diverse peoples have changed, shaped, and conserved the natural world over time, environmental historians provide insight into humanity's unique relationship with nature and, more importantly, are better able to understand the origins of our current environmental crisis. Beginning with the precolonial land-use practice of Native Americans and concluding with our twenty-first century concerns over our global ecological crisis, American Environmental History addresses contentious issues such as the preservation of the wilderness, the expulsion of native peoples from national parks, and population growth, and considers the formative forces of gender, race, and class. Entries address a range of topics, from the impact of rice cultivation, slavery, and the growth of the automobile suburb to the effects of the Russian sea otter trade, Columbia River salmon fisheries, the environmental justice movement, and globalization. This illustrated reference is an essential companion for students interested in the ongoing transformation of the American landscape and the conflicts over its resources and conservation. It makes rich use of the tools and resources (climatic and geological data, court records, archaeological digs, and the writings of naturalists) that environmental historians rely on to conduct their research. The volume also includes a compendium of significant people, concepts, events, agencies, and legislation, and an extensive bibliography of critical films, books, and Web sites.
Download or read book Scars on the Land written by David Silkenat and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2022-04-08 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom. Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash. Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.
Download or read book Southern United States written by Donald Edward Davis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-03-17 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique survey of the environmental history of the southern United States explores the ecological, social, and economic interaction between humans and the environment in the South over the last 20,000 years. The melting of the Ice Age glaciers heralded the arrival of the Archaic peoples in the South and the lives of the South's peoples have long been shaped and challenged by the environment. Conversely, the human impact on the South's landscape has been dramatic, from the mound building of Native Americans to the construction of cities and the birth of modern industry. Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, Southern United States: An Environmental History explores the historical and ecological dimensions of human interaction with the environment throughout Southern history. Examining diverse issues from the impact of the end of the Ice Age to the consequences of the U.S. space program for Florida's environment, this invaluable guide synthesizes literature from a wide range of authoritative sources to provide a fascinating guide to the South's environment.
