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Theodore Steinberg’s Nature Incorporated offers a detailed analysis of the industrialization of New England’s waterways during the nineteenth century. It covers the rise of textile mills along rivers and the resulting shifts in both human society and the natural ecology of rivers. One prominent shift that Steinberg covered throughout the book was the human view of water ownership. The human conception of water use was constantly evolving during the nineteenth century. At the start of the book, water was viewed as a public resource. Many individuals fished in the rivers during the spring months. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, water could be owned and controlled by an individual mill-owner or a large industrial company as long as it was used for the common good. This allowed industry to gain a controlling interest over many of New England’s rivers.
I do think that Manish makes a nice observation about the differing roles of nature in the book by Steinberg as compared to Lisa M. Brady’s War Upon the Land. Much of our last class focused on the discussion of nature as a prominent third actor in the Civil War. In her book, Brady clearly argued that nature was at times as much an enemy of the Union as was the Confederate Army. The nature presented in Steinberg’s work, however, is comparatively much more passive. Throughout the work nature, and water in particular, is a resource fought over by humans. Water does not act on humans, but is instead controlled according to human interests. The actors in Steinberg’s book are humans—the courts, textile industries, and local New England citizens—not nature.
One comment by Steinberg that caught my attention and reminded me of past in-class conversations about the “naturalness” of human civilizations was the claim that “none of nature’s predators has the sharp capacity for reasoned thought that make human beings so potentially harmful to other species” (167-68). Steinberg offered this argument in his chapter titled “Depleted Waters,” which discussed the diminishing number of fish in the New England waterways as a result of nineteenth-century industrialization and overfishing. The first thing I thought of when I read this statement was Ian’s claim that “since birds build nests, it is natural for humans to construct buildings.” I think that Ian makes a strong argument, but the importance of reasoned thought must be considered. A bird building a nest seems like the most basic form of housing. In my opinion, the human equivalent of a bird’s nest is the teepee or log cabin. Both of those structures are very basic and really only provide minimal protection from the elements. More modern structures such as skyscrapers and apartment complexes, however, require much more “reasoned thought” on the part of humans. There are no natural equivalents in the animal world of the skyscraper or apartment complex. While this does not necessarily mean that human constructions are unnatural, I do think that the human ability for “reasoned thought” does further complicate the discussion about the naturalness of human constructions.