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Contents:

Introduction; 1 - The natures of Indian America before Columbus; 2 - The other invaders: deadly diseases and extraordinary animals; 3 - Colonial natures; 4 - Forest and plantation in 19th Century America; 5 - Urban nature and urban reforms; 6 - Markets, Bison and the disappearing bison; 7 - The many uses of conservation; 8 - National parks and the trouble with wilderness; 9 - Something in the air; 10 - Environmental protection and the environmental movement; 11 - Environmental racism and environmental justice; 12 - Backlash against the environmental movement; 13 - Legacies.

Review:

One of the advantages of a maturing study is the way it is able to go back and reinterpret past events. This is important - in the rush for ecological understanding it is vital that the historical element be correctly interpreted. Too often we find that notions of nature and wilderness are predicated upon romantic notions of the past. One of the first texts to actually tackle this was Clayre's Nature and Industrialisation (OUP 1977). Here we were shown how the romantic interpretation of the past evolved into our concern about nature and wilderness areas. This text attempts the same for America only on a grander scale.

This text is one of a series entitled 'American Social and Cultural History'. The aim is to look at the many facets of American history to provide as accurate an overview as possible. i.e. create an interpreted history from the numerous histories of the past. The outcome of such a study is both deceptively simple and very powerful. Starting with an introduction about the nature of environmental history we are led along the various routes whereby the ecological past can be interpreted. The remainder of the book centres around a theme, an overview, a lead article and then a series of documents. Thus the reader is given the ecological context, a key document highlighting central arguments in the topic and then some documents which address the points raised. The documents (and maps in one case) provide us with material not readily available elsewhere. The overall effect is to gain an insight into the topic which, in most cases, requires a radical reappraisal of previously accepted ideals. Chapter one explores the myth of the perfect landscape. We are shown from contemporary documents that America (taken generally to be the US although cases stray outside this area) was far from Eden and that the indigenous peoples had, like Australia, caused a deal of environmental change. If chapter one in concerned with changes inside the area, chapter two is concerned about the changes brought in. Many of the indigenous people had no resistance to European diseases and this exacted a considerable toll from Canada to South America. The implications are considerable, not least because it has reduced our estimate of early populations (now taken to be 40-80 million people in the two continents). Chapter three considers the ideologies brought by the settlers. Nature was wild and unpleasant and had to be tamed (similar to the theses put forward by Adams and Mulligan). Part of this was to create a preferred environment but some was also to improve the commercialisation of the wilderness (chapter four). A brief chapter five shows us that towns were not outside nature but very much a part of it. This element has been neglected in many studies and we are only just beginning to see how urban ecosystems can be part of a wider ecology (especially in terms of impact upon surrounding areas). The work here focusses on cholera but the implications for elsewhere are clear. Chapter six tackles a long-standing myth - that of the removal of bison by white hunters. In a more controversial pairing of keynote article and document we are shown that this picture might not have been completely true and that colonial hunters may only have completed what others had started. Conservation is often seen as the pinnacle of wilderness protection but this is not the only one. As chapter seven shows us, there have been many disagreements between industrial forest users and conservationists. The case we are given is of a small town in Minnesota which has to make a living from tourism from a former timer cutting area. This change of income stream is not always welcomed and we are shown that there is more than one way to keep an area going. This is continued into chapter 8 with a highly controversial essay leading the documents chronicling the American approach to conservation. What is wilderness? How do we find it? Many have suggested that the 'wilderness' of America is an attempt to create a national identity by keeping certain places 'pristine' and 'free' from people. Ironically, this often meant removing the indigenous population first! The teaming of this piece with a pro-conventional conservation piece and some legislation excerpts provides one of the highlights of the text. Chapters 9 and 10 focus on a similar area: the environmental movement. The former looks at how activists created (or didn't) a public outcry against degradation whilst the latter looks at the ways in which politicians have used the environment for voting ends. Chapter 11 shows how environmental problems often have a racial dimension. Here, a toxic area also had, not surprisingly, cheap houses which were bought predominantly by one racial group. Despite the great strides made by the environmental movement it was inevitable that there would be a backlash (explored in chapter 12). Finally, we get a chance to see how the future might be shaped by past events.

Overall, this is a most interesting text. It is a wide-ranging study covering key issues and periods from pre-colonisation to the recent past. The use of key articles and documents provides us with a chance to see 'behind the headlines' of conventional historical analysis. Unlike many histories it does not seek to provide consensus but rather demands that we make our own judgement. This is a very fine example of the recent crop of historical reinterpretations. Although it would be unlikely to be of use at school level it should be considered essential reading in undergraduate courses.