Uncategorized – Page 9 – American Environments to 1893

February 23, 2014

How the pursuit of wealth by natives not only helped decimate the bison population but native society as well

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Richard Bushman’s Refinement of America focuses on the societal want for gentility and wealth. As Ian noticed in his post “starting in the early 17th century, American people, specifically in the South, began to covet the ‘high society’ lifestyle and culture that existed with numerous European countries.” After reading Andrew C. Isenberg’s The Destruction of the Bison it became apparent to me that that the want for wealth and status was not a movement restricted solely to Americans. While the major goal of the book was to explore the decimation of the bison populations and examine the major factors for the decimation, a secondary crisis can be observed. This crisis was the destruction of the midwestern native societies. “The trade in bison robes was destructive both to the herds and to the nomadic societies.” (107)

Just like with the lower classes in American society the natives themselves began to strive to rise up and emmulate the wealthy gentility for wealth not only gave the upper class comfort but also afforded them status. The idea of status came to appeal highly to many of the nomadic tribes and thus by the mid 1800’s there emerged a great competition for the limited resource of bison. Origninally, the move to bison hunting was a self contained process and one which was sustainable. However, the beginnings of trade with Euroamericans helped the natives realize the economic value that bison pelts held and this began the movement into an unsustainable competition with each hunter being motivated by the thoughts of elevating his own status as well as some other vices.

With the popularity of bison skins reaching their peak by the end of the nineteenth century nomadic native societies began to unravel mostly due to three reasons. The first was the threat that bison depopulation had on nomadic livelihood. These tribes had given up their agrarian roots in order to wholly embrace the hunt but the immense competition left limited resources that effected the tribes ecnomically but also physically for food became scarcer.

Second, the limited bison population led to increased warfare between different tribes. No longer was it possible to maintain a large village and so thanks to the bison hunt smaller tribes were formed in order to be more flexible in movement as well as requiring fewer resources to maintain the community. With a multitude of bison available tribes were able to respect each others hunting grounds but with the decimation of the bison warfare grew out of control attracting the attention of US federal authorities. Not only did increased warfare provide an excuse for the US government to intervene but it also fed the stereotypes about natives as savages.

Finally, the growing relationship between native bison hunters and American pelt merchants brought natives into closer confines with Americans for longer periods of time. This was a major reason why disease began to spread effectively throughout the small nomadic communities. Before, there was limited contact between nomads and Americans. Also the small nomadic societies usually remained apart and so disaese was rarely able to be transported to other groups. By the late 1800’s these groups began to report to the same trading hubs in order to trade with the Euroamerican traders. The more frequent interactions with a common group of people with more conditioned immune systems helped disease take on a greater role in native culture and helped break native societies both in physical population but mental strength as well. While the decimation of the bison was a tragic tale, a parallel path was being taken by native societies in part due to the thirst for status and wealth first showcased by upper class Americans.

February 16, 2014

The Refinement of America: A Look into Human Nature and Tradition

It is within human nature to value tradition. Richard L. Bushman, in his The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, analyzes this natural code of behavior by extensively analyzing American gentility and habits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bushman argues that the refinement of America ultimately began around 1690. He argues that Americans carried across the sea a desire for gentility and refinement that dated back to the Renaissance. Continuing into the eighteenth century, Americans began to selectively emulate upper class England and seek architectural and material luxuries. It is interesting to read these particular arguments because they are applicable to my thesis on music of the American Revolutionary era: Americans knowingly borrowed traditional English tunes and applied their own lyrics to use as parodies of well-known Old World music. Reading Bushman’s theories on traditional continuity only helped solidify one of my arguments that members of colonial society sought to emulate English traditions to serve their own purposes of distinguishing class and instituting themselves as models of cultural significance.

That being said, the aspects of culture and society that Americans chose to imitate proved ridiculous at times. I agree with Ian and his comment about the ridiculousness of etiquette books, that “codified polite society” by giving specific instructions on aspects of personal expression (38). The illustrations of children provided on page 294 depicting youngsters with high foreheads, tiny feet, and curls are anything but aesthetically pleasing. The anecdote Bushman provides related to Charles Ridgelys’ letter is one example of such absurdity. Writing every letter with “Honored Sir” and ending with “I am, Honored Sir, your ever Dutiful & loving son, Chas. Greenberry Ridgeley” appears tedious and pretentious from a twenty-first century concept of correspondence (10). Then again, I do often use sarcasm and formality in my letters and I do own a copy of Singing: For Dummies.

Bushman writes, “without knowing where precisely, they believed in a superior life somewhere and aspired to emulate that existence”, and his comment only hints at irony regarding republican ideals and equality (37). With Revolutionary concepts against aristocracy and English “superiority” and our Constitution’s rejection of nobility, it is interesting to see such emulation and imitation taking hold. I do, however, agree with his argument that the process of refinement was somewhat democratic and therefore republican in nature. Making luxury and refinement available to the masses and blurring clear class divisions in fact made the process democratic and equalizing in some aspects.

I enjoyed reading Bushman’s analysis of seventeenth and eighteenth century culture and its applicability to material objects, households, and aesthetics. I found little in his work, however, to apply to nature or to the environment. His work was more of a social and cultural history from a time period I enjoy studying. I think his arguments are sound and his work is as an interesting study of human nature and its interactions with culture.

February 16, 2014

It’s Actually Gentility’s Fault

In the introduction of his research, Richard Bushman, states, “Genteel culture became an independent variable, cutting across society, and leading, I argue, to the confusion about class that has long been characteristic of American society” (Bushman xv). This hearkens back to our first discussion concerning the term “natural.” Much like the manner in which gentility drifted from the top of society downward (and became more difficult to define), so has the ability to spot concrete natural entities in society. Much how humans took over nature and crafted it to suit their needs, gentility worked its way into a republican nation and created a hierarchical system. Bushman states, “Because it [gentility] was formed for an aristocratic leisured class, gentility was out of place in republican, middle-class America, ill suited to the lives of the people who so fervently adopted it” (xvi). This reminds us of how the first Europeans were ill-suited for the New World, and how in some cases, they forced natives to assimilate.

Bushman makes it clear that with gentility came great ties to material possession. Individuals became obsessed with mansions (bigger rooms), silver, mahogany—material possessions that in some way impacted the environment. Thus, gentility impacted social culture and environmental culture. Is it possible that had gentility not infiltrated below the aristocratic line, humans today would be living much simpler lives? I think there might be some plausibility behind an affirmation to that questions, but it is difficult to extrapolate too much.

It can be argued (and Bushman admits that he does not give this the attention it deserves) that gentility and capitalism are dependent on one another. There is a certain refinement of society that had to happen with the onset of capitalism. Recently, in his post about William Cronon’s research on Chicago, Anthony stated, “Railroads are perhaps one of the greatest developments for this country in terms of creating a unified nation along with radically altering the economy.” Without gentility, the railroad system might not have been built. Society was completely invested in material possession and wealthy by the time railroads arrived. However, here in-lies an conflict. Do we think capitalism came first or gentility? I am inclined to say gentility was first. The manner in which people lives evoked the certain types of material possession they wanted (capitalism). I think (and I think Bushman would agree) that gentility is much easier to trace back within the workings of our nation’s history. Thus, we can blame gentility for the blurred and often difficult definition of the word “natural.” We can also blame gentility for the growth of material possessions and the negative impact those have had (and continue to have) on the environment.

February 16, 2014

Nature as a Stage

“When it came to society, only the polite were created equal” (425). This is my favorite sentence in Richard L. Bushman’s book, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. This quotation illustrates the recurring problem of the contradiction between republican ideals and middle-class aspirations for gentility.

Bushman explores the margins between the people who considered themselves genteel and the people who were not genteel by using the example of the city street. Streets acted as a stage, a space where refined people “had to steer clear of the vulgar population” while acting on the “genteel stage where a performance was required” (368). Just as city streets were a stage, the city itself was also a stage–and a performance. “Cities, like people or houses, could be evaluated for their taste and beauty,” Bushman claims (139).

Bushman employs this idea of performance several times, arguing that “houses and gardens were on view and performing before critical audiences,” too (132). In class on Saturday, Ian talked about the parallel between a bird building a nest and a person building a house as an argument of the naturalness of human-created buildings. I think Bushman’s notion of humans appropriating their houses as symbols of their gentility is consistent with Ian’s comment. It complicates the idea, but I think we can still argue that homes are natural even if people use them to demonstrate their “gentility.”

In country towns, the margin between the genteel and the uncouth “was between the villagers and the farmers, who by common agreement were rude and coarse beyond redemption” (378). This surprised me, and Bushman acknowledges that “the merciless ridicule of this population by people of otherwise broad sympathies stuns a modern reader” (378). I thought Americans have always esteemed farmers: how different this nineteenth-century sentiment was from Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” mind-set. Later, Bushman complicates the disparity between the city and the country. Though in speech, “country” meant plain and “city” meant fashionable, Bushman emphasizes that relationship between city people and country people was “separate but engaged,” and their relationships did not take one the one-dimensionality of their language (400).

Ian wrote that Bushman did not make nature play a significant role in the book. I, too, was surprised by that. In addition to the narrative of the West, I think nature plays the largest roles in the city/country discussion, the formation of cities, and the “geography of refinement.” I think Bushman emphasizes the human action in creating space and appropriating space, with space and nature as passive actors in the performance, contrasting other ideas of nature we have encountered so far in the class.

February 16, 2014

Supplementary Reading: “The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans” by Lawrence Powell

Lawrence Powell’s work The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans is a comprehensive story of the development of a major American city that had a number of environmental and social factors standing in its way.[1] The pairing of Richard Bushman’s The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities and Powell’s work is interesting, as the books both discussed the European influence on cultural growth in America yet, they told rather different stories.[2] Bushman writes about the refined nature of American culture, while Powell chronicles the unrefined development of a city that arguably should never have developed. Together, these books add to the historiography of American cultural colonial growth as influenced by the European influence present in the growing new world, but Powell’s is more informative due to his focus on a specific location, which allows him to delve deeper into his research.

Bushman’s work is not an environmental history, but rather a cultural history in which he analyzes the growth of gentility in America, what it meant to members of different social classes, and how it eventually spread among the lower social classes. Bushman emphasizes the importance class had for wealthy Americans, as it was central to defining who they were and allowed them to identify themselves as superior to those with less money. Bushman uses descriptions such as “mansions divided society” to further get his point across.[3] He then goes on to describe how at the turn of the century, ideas of gentility spread among the lower classes, as the idea of showing wealth (or greater wealth than one actually had) was of the utmost importance in American culture.[4]

Powell tells the story of New Orleans in the eighteenth century, exploring how the city came to be and the struggles it went through to become what it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Powell studies the cities origins beginning with the rise to prominence of John Law and Jean Baptiste Le-Moyne, Sieur de Bienville and the decision to make New Orleans the center of the Mississippi Company. He discusses how essential Bienville was to the growth of New Orleans as a French colony, as Bienville “possessed the political skill and savoir-faire that usually served him well during his almost forty-year span of leadership in French Louisiana.”[5] Bienville was ambitious in his pursuit of New Orleans’ existence that it “came at the cost of his job, and eventually his lands, though he later regained both.”[6] Powell continues by writing about how the city came together, and how it was designed to be a place of order and balance influenced by the enlightenment, but that failed along with Bienville’s leadership in the Chickasaw Indian War, which led to his permanent return to France.[7] Powell then writes about how smuggling and contraband were essential to New Orleans development, straying from the pure ideals the city was supposed to embody.[8] He then discusses the transition of New Orleans into a Spanish colony, but explained how New Orleans “remained stubbornly French in ethos and identity.”[9] As the book progresses, Powell focuses more on the racial composition of New Orleans, including the rise of the Creole community.[10] He also discussed the history of slavery in New Orleans, which “was never static.”[11] Slavery in New Orleans differed from other parts of America because of the focus on sugar plantations and was further complicated by the slave uprising in Haiti.[12] Powell analyzes the slave lifestyle as well, providing anecdotes of their experience, like when he says, “the enslaved of the New Orleans region coped with the repressiveness engendered by the revival of the plantation system… through song and religion, and through the community building that ensued from family formation.”[13] Powell ends his history of New Orleans with the transfer of power from Spain to France, and then from France to the United States, and with the future (with plenty of racial oppression) on the horizon.

The environmental elements of these works are in stark contrast with one another. Bushman has almost no intention of touching on the physical expansion of the United States but instead focuses on how America progressed culturally. Powell, on the other hand, is not necessarily trying to create an environmental history, but due to the nature of New Orleans growth, the environment is an essential element. Powell has a clear affection for New Orleans but is not afraid to be critical of it, as he writes how poor of a location it was to build a city.

Geographers and historians are fond of characterizing New Orleans as ‘the impossible but inevitable city.’ The site was dreadful. It was prone to flooding and infested with snakes and mosquitoes. Hurricanes battered it regularly. Pestilence visited the town almost as often.[14]

Despite all this, New Orleans had a great advantage in terms of its development, and that was its location at the mouth of the Mississippi River, making it an ideal center for trade. This is one of the central points that Powell attempts to dissect with his study, explaining how New Orleans was seemingly a horrible location to build a city, but the ability for it to become a center of trade allowed it to thrive and grow. By being at the mouth of the Mississippi River, New Orleans became a cultural hub and overcame the size and swamp-like characteristics that made it such a non-ideal location. Powell’s work is a genuine piece of environmental history in this way, even if this discussion is a byproduct of Powell’s desire to tell the story of New Orleans. While Powell touches on the cultural, economic, and environmental growth of New Orleans, Bushman focuses just on the cultural and economic side of American history. Elements of environmental history linger in The Refinement of America but are subtle and the ideas are not expanded upon. Early in the work, when discussing the materialism among the gentility, Bushman writes about the contrast between the homes of different social classes: “Weather-beaten to a gray-brown and huddled among a motley assemblage of similarly dulled outbuildings, the predominant log house blended with trees and fields. The red brick, two-story house by contrast stood out against the land.”[15] Here Bushman writes about how the ideas of ‘new’ and ‘clean’ represented class, while the natural, weather-beaten houses of old we seen as inferior. Bushman could have expanded on this idea of artifice being superior to natural, but he chose not to make that a central point. New Orleans is a city where it is impossible to ignore the environmental factors in its growth, but Bushman’s work misses out on the environmental aspects of gentility that could strengthen his argument.

Powell spends a significant amount of time while focusing on the culture that was trying to be fostered versus the culture that was created during the city’s development. Powell writes that New Orleans’ development occurred while the French “crown and court were experimenting with visionary projects for reorganizing the economy and addressing the ‘social problem,’” and that the layout of the city originally was “almost a textbook example of the Enlightenment mania for balance, order, and clarity.”[16] This idea of European culture influencing the creation of a societal hierarchy is shared in The Refinement of America. A central theme of Bushman’s work is the influence English culture had over America’s developing social ladder, and it is the same influence that the French attempted to translate from their culture into New Orleans. However, in New Orleans, the intended influence did not last (although it persisted in other ways). Powell explains that each group of people “had ideas of their own about what constituted a community,” and as a result “utopianism collapsed into a puddle” and that “few in Paris objected when the crown transferred Louisiana to Spain during the waning days of the Seven Years War.”[17] The European influence failed in the end to impose its societal values on New Orleans, but both Powell and Bushman relate in that they both display how the colonial powers attempted to dictate the formation of American culture.

Powell and Bushman’s works also relate in how they show that the European impact on the developing social hierarchy can only last for so long. In New Orleans, a number of factors in place prevented the city from embodying the Enlightenment ideals of structure that the French desired. The growth of the creole culture, the changing ideas towards slavery and development of sugar plantations, and the small size of the city all factored in. One large factor that Powell discusses is how the original makeup of the city was composed of forced migrants from Paris, and that any city where the population is composed of people who did not arrive willingly will not likely fall into their desired, structured roles.[18] The hierarchy desired by the upper class as written about by Bushman also failed in its goal to create a distinction between the wealthy and those with less money. Bushman writes how during the nineteenth century, the middle- and lower-classes focused on creating the appearance of class, as their “desired goal was respectability.”[19] The importance of gentility that was fostered was intended to separate the wealthy from the supposedly inferior, but as time wore on, the lower classes began creating the illusion of gentility and the separation dissipated. In both scenarios, the European influence failed to persist, and are examples of how strong a colonial influence can be at first, but how it can fail due to the physical distance in between the colony and parent country.

While studying the growth of American cities, it is almost impossible to ignore the environmental impacts on their growth. Lawrence Powell wrote The Accidental City because of his passion for New Orleans, and he wanted to give its growth justice. He embraced the environmental history, discussing how brutal the conditions of New Orleans were but also how its geographic location was essential for trade purposes. Some of his strongest arguments came in his discussions of race, but if he had avoided the natural aspects, he would have written an incomplete history. Bushman’s work is still successful, but it is weaker than Powell’s as he does not take advantage of the opportunity to discuss gentility and the environment. In the end, both works tell stories about colonial influence, but that influence only tells part of the story.

[1] Lawrence N. Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)

[2] Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1993)

[3] Bushman, 25

[4] Bushman, 207

[5] Powell, 2

[6] Powell, 59

[7] Powell, 60-91

[8] Powell, 164

[9] Powell, 164-165

[10] Powell, 197

[11] Powell, 222

[12] Powell, 249

[13] Powell, 248

[14] Powell, 2

[15] Bushman, 15

[16] Powell, 60

[17] Powell, 92

[18] Powell, 69-70

[19] Bushman, 208

February 16, 2014

America: Stepping Up in the World

Richard L. Bushman’s The Refinement of America offers a very thorough and diverse analysis of the various manners in which American culture blossomed into more of a “gentilian” based society borrowed from Europe. As Bushman describes in his work, starting in the early 17^th century, American people, specifically in the South, began to covet the “high society” lifestyle and culture that existed with numerous European countries. One such way that Americans began to acculturate themselves to this style of life was through “conduct books.” As Bushman describes, these pieces “codified polite society” by giving discrete steps on how to portray respect, bodily restraint, and correct emotional expression (38). Generally reserved for those of the upper echelon of society, these books targeted those who would never appear in a European Court, but dreamed of the life style (38). Through the lessons of these books, the status quo of the gentile based hierarchy was reaffirmed, as individuals were taught to heed way to their superiors, continuing the dynamic through the generations (41).

Honestly, when reading about these books I had to laugh a little bit, because they seemed so unnecessary and ridiculous. Through my laughter and perception of our cultural superiority compared to 17^th-19^th century America, I came to the conclusion that my humor was actually in vain, as our own society institutes similar works. Though not as direct, the “X for Dummies” series of books is a perfect example of “how to manuals” that we ascribe to when we need to learn how to act in a certain environment. These works may not be as corrective in terms of our everyday life as the conduct books, but they are indicative of our continued reliance on this genre of literature to guide us in our daily ventures.

Though this book extremely diverse, portraying aspects of gentility from discussions on artwork to the addition of gardens to one’s house for visual perception, there was minimal analysis of humanity’s interaction with the environment. One of the only instances that nature played a significant role in Bushman’s argument on the gentrification of American Society was in relation to the West. Surprisingly, it was believed that the West was a threat to gentility, as it promoted the primitive lifestyle vs. the cultured one of the East (383). One would think that as Western expansion was a prime directive of the United States that it would fit within the upper echelons views on expanding their culture. However, as many believed that gentility was actually a threat to republican ideals, promoting a class based society instead of an egalitarian; it makes more sense why this goal of the United States threatened those who perceived themselves as the aristocracy. Bushman acknowledges this tension in the closing remarks of his piece, noting the culture of gentility was not and never would be strong enough to overcome that of republican idealism (447).

As no one has posted yet this week, I thought it would be a good idea to tie in last week’s reading of Nature’s Metropolis to Bushman’s piece. As we discussed in class this week, many Anglo Americans believed that Native Americans were below humanity, which made their removal that much easier in terms of morality. This perception that Cronon expresses offers a possible explanation for the West’s threat to gentility that Bushman acknowledges in The Refinement of America. The West was where the Native Americans prominently resided during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, which would be considered a primitive environment if these people were so inferior to humans. This “primitive” society resided within close proximity to the more genitilian orientated Eastern half of the United States which created an understandable tension. As more people pushed West during the 18^th and 19^th centuries into these unknown lands, resorting to extreme measures to survive, it was not clear if the gentility of the East would follow them or be overrun by the believed less sophisticated cultures of the West.

February 15, 2014

Discussant Questions for 1st half of Nature’s Metropolis

1) In his analysis of Chicago, Cronon suggests that cities are the next step in the ecological evolution. Considering this idea, can cities truly be considered a from of nature or are they inherently different from the wild? Thinking about how we have defined the wild and nature in previous classes, can a city like Chicago truly be considered part of nature?

2) Cronon suggests that Chicago was destined to be the next great American city from its inception. What economic and natural elements made it such a successful city? Were certain features more important than others in the success of the city?

3) The term “environmental impact” is loaded with negative connotations today. Looking at the construction of Chicago and the success of the city, can there be such a thing as positive environmental impact? If we use nature to give opportunity to thousands of people, can we call that a positive impact?

4) Cronon has a broad conception and definition of nature. He even goes so far as to say that railroads are inherently natural. Drawing on our previous discussions of the definition of nature and the wild, do you buy this argument? Or are certain areas of Chicago more natural than others

5) Cronon claims that it is “deeply problematic” to assume that city and country are completely separate worlds. Why would he think that this would be such a problem? What are the problems in assuming this difference?

February 15, 2014

Supplementary Reading-The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America

James D. Drake’s work, The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America, offers a chronological perspective on the evolution of continental thought in the mainland British colonies. In his book, Drake proposes that early British colonists became inundated with continental presumptions that in turn influenced political views, infiltrated political rhetoric, and induced political action.[1] Drake’s essential argument is that the burgeoning idea of the British colonists as a continental people made the American Revolution possible and in the war’s aftermath led to the drafting of the Constitution. In order to make his claim, Drake begins with the mainland British colonies in the late seventeenth century.

The first reason that Drake offers for the development of continental thought in the mainland British colonies is the scientific attacks of Europeans, which were meant to demean the New World and its species, including humans. European intellectuals, among whom Comte de Buffon was one of the most notable, proposed and offered evidence in support of a demeaning attitude toward the North American continent. Buffon and others held that North America was either a new continent or a continent that had undergone a geologic disaster. In both cases, the European intellectuals claimed the result was a degenerating effect on species in the New World. The implications of such a claim were clear to all. If the New World had a degenerative environment, then its inhabitants would never be able to rival the nations of Europe. [2]

Drake compares this crisis to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union almost two centuries later. The attack of European intellectuals effectively intertwined science and national pride for the mainland British colonists. Such an attack served to bind disparate colonists together.[3] All those with a scientific inclination living in the mainland British colonies sought to find evidence to counter Buffon’s claims. This in turn provided inhabitants of different colonies with a common goal. Rather than viewing themselves as Pennsylvanians, Virginians, or New Yorkers, this inquiry united all colonists as North Americans. Essentially, this newfound scientific trend led colonists to see themselves in a continental light.[4]

Drake highlights the Seven Years’ War as another turning point in fostering continental presumptions among mainland British colonists. Drake claims the Seven Years’ War caused colonists to view themselves as members of a young but inevitably continental society, one fully capable of prospering on its own.[5] Prior to the conflict, colonies had irregular interactions with one another and it could be argued they shared stronger commercial ties to the West Indies, Britain, and Europe than to one another.[6] Each colony seemed more concerned with internal matters than with continental issues. The threat presented by the French and Native Americans served to alter this mindset. As the potential for war increased, so too did the calls for unified action among the colonies. The most prominent example was the Albany Plan of Union, proposed by Benjamin Franklin. If implemented, the Albany Plan would have given control of the colonies’ military defense to representatives elected by colonial assemblies, working with a president appointed by the Crown. Though the Albany Plan was rejected, it demonstrated the continuing shift from the traditional thought of the colonies as independent dominions.[7]

Following the victory in the Seven Years’ War, Britain chose as its spoils of war North American land claims previously belonging to France and Spain, even though the two European powers had more profitable colonies elsewhere. Drake proposes that this decision by Parliament illustrated an overlap of geographical and political thought. The notion that the entire North American continent was suited for rule by one power appeared on its way to becoming reality following the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Adding land in North America only contributed to the British colonists’ sense of importance and increased their desire for continental expansion.[8] Drake argues the colonists interpreted the treaty as a sign of how much Britain valued the North American colonies. In addition, these developments further ingrained a continental awareness among mainland British colonists. Not only did they consider the vast potential of North America, but also the possibility that its future may lay outside the empire of Great Britain.[9]

The emerging idea of North America as a continental society, which is fundamental to Drake’s work, raised questions about representation in Parliament. British North Americans questioned the validity of political representation at a distance, largely because of their unique geographical relationship to Britain. Furthermore, mainland British colonists altered the source of their most cherished rights from their status as Britons to the nature of the continent. This claim inherently challenged whether British North Americans were actually Britons at all.[10] Drake offers further evidence of depictions of colonists as a continental people in the form of British political cartoons at the time. Increasingly, North America was presented as a united continent rather than a motley collection of colonies with differing interests.[11] In addition, Drake claims that memories of sacrifice in the Seven Years’ War added to a feeling of community among the colonists. The war provided just the most recent example of mainland British colonists suffering collectively for a common cause.[12] All of these elements coalesced in Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, which claimed the artificial establishments of the British Empire should be replaced by continental institutions.[13] It was these beliefs that led to the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.

Following the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Americans were still faced with the challenge of establishing a nation capable of utilizing the vast potential of the North American continent. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia to remedy this situation. Drake notes that proponents of the Constitution constantly referred to the continent’s destiny of political unity, a driving factor in the outbreak of the American Revolution. If America failed to realize this destiny, it would betray the purpose of the Revolutionary War. Additionally, proponents of the Constitution argued that the new federal government would help the nation achieve its continental goals. Furthermore, to ease Anti-Federalist fears, the Federalists contended that the sheer size of North America would prevent the federal government from gaining too much power.[14] Clearly, Drake argues, continental assumptions were a major factor in the ratification of the Constitution. Also, when discussing westward expansion, it was common for American authors to downplay obstacles such as the Appalachian Mountains. At the same time, many authors emphasized the waterway system that connected America. Often times the British, Spanish, and Native Americans were depicted as merely temporary obstructions.[15] With these examples, Drake demonstrates the effort to portray North America as suitable to rule by one nation.

The importance of the land in the development of a civilization is a theme of Drake’s work that is similarly explained by William Cronon in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Just as British North Americans recognized the potential of the continent, Cronon claims that in the early 1830s prospectors saw Chicago for its prospective development into a metropolis in the center of the continent rather than for what it actually was.[16] This tendency to look toward the future and imagine the effects of development caused lots in Chicago to increase in value from $33 in 1829 to $100,000 in 1836.[17] This speculation occurred before a canal was constructed or the first railway ties had been laid. While such predictions did not always prove true, they certainly did for the city of Chicago. Thanks to its location between the established eastern cities, such as New York, and the expanding western frontier, Chicago became the gateway between East and West.[18]

Another element present in both books is the importance of waterways in the early Republic. The British North Americans viewed the expansive waterways as a means of connecting the continent. The waterways helped unite the continent and in turn supported the belief that North America was destined for rule by one nation. Without its extensive system of rivers and lakes, North America would have appeared to mainland British colonists as much too vast for the successful rule of one power. Likewise, in Nature’s Metropolis, Cronon references the importance of Chicago’s vicinity to Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and the fertile Illinois prairie. These factors loomed large in the decision of settlers to establish a city at Chicago. Cronon goes on to argue that people play a significant role in the establishment and rise of a city. For example, humans add canals and railroads to improve transportation. Nevertheless, the natural qualities and resources of the land factor heavily into where people choose to settle and construct cities in the first place.[19] In this sense, both America and the city of Chicago have the land to thank for the developments that made them what they are today.

[1] James D. Drake, The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011), 3.

[2] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 18.

[3] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 22.

[4] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 18.

[5] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 70.

[6] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 71.

[7] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 81-83.

[8] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 99-102.

[9] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 107.

[10] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 109.

[11] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 125.

[12] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 133.

[13] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 144.

[14] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 261.

[15] Drake, The Nation’s Nature, 269-270.

[16] William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), 34.

[17] Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 29.

[18] Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 91.

[19] Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, 55.

February 15, 2014

Chicago and Its Hinterland

In the Preface to Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, William Cronon explains how he will use the word “nature” in the text. He writes about how difficult it is to use the word “nature” while also trying to suggest “that the boundary between human and nonhuman, natural and unnatural, is profoundly problematic” (Cronon, xix). I think Henry is correct to say that Cronon’s argument only makes sense in light of his definition of nature. Cronon states, “Nature’s Metropolis and the Great West are in fact different labels for a single region and the relationships that defined it” (19). This wouldn’t make sense without allowing for human action as a part of nature (this is what Cronon calls “second nature”).

Based on the readings from the first section of The Great Wilderness Debate, I concluded that wilderness is necessarily uninhabited. I also considered whether or not nature has to be an uninhabited space since the definition of nature is related to definition of wilderness. Cronon’s argument convinced me that the line between the natural and unnatural worlds is not as distinct as I thought. Ian appropriately characterizes this blurry line by saying that Cronon “perceive[s] cities as the next evolution of a natural ecosystem.” I agree with Ian’s assessment of Cronon’s argument, but I have a visceral reaction to it–how can the big, scary, immoral city be an extension of the “first nature” world?

I think this is difficult for me to accept because I just finished reading Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter. The narrator, Hannah, describes her life as a farmer in rural Kentucky. Then, Hannah mourns for the loss of her way of life because her three children grew up, went away to college, and never returned to their hometown. This novel made me want to move back to northcentral Pennsylvania (where I grew up) and become a farmer, because the narrator is obsessed with belonging to a place. Despite my gut reaction that this can only happen in the country, maybe a person can truly belong to a city, too.

Cronon importantly brings time into the equation of Chicago’s history. “Before the city, there was the land,” Cronon writes (23). Using von Thünen’s Isolated State theory to help explain the continuity between urban and rural areas, Cronon explains the limitations of the theory: von Thünen “made no effort to place his city-country system in time. The lone city in the midst of the featureless plain had no history, and so poses real problems when one tries to apply it to the extremely dynamic processes that reshaped city and country in the nineteenth-century West” (52). I appreciate Cronon’s critique. Cronon helpfully places Chicago’s (and its hinterland’s) emergence squarely in time, allowing the reader to understand “the city’s place in nature” (8).

February 14, 2014

Chicago: A City in Tune with Nature or an Artificial Terminus Serving the Needs of the East

William Cronon states the thesis of his book in the prologue on pg.8. “This book, then is a series of historical journeys between city and country in an effort to understand the city’s place in nature.” Sean asked the question in his post as well as in his discussion questions several weeks ago of whether the concrete jungle should be considered a part of nature. The way that Cronon phrases his statement indicates that he believes that cities are in fact a part of nature and that conditions around Chicago led to its natural creation and growth. I am spectical of this idea. Henry, in his post characterizes my skeptism to a certain extent. He talks about how some of the features of the land such as Lake Michigan and the canals were natural features of Chicago but then the more industrialized aspects of the city such as railroads seemed to counteract the idea of the city as natural.

Railroads are perhaps one of the greatest developments for this country in terms of creating a unified nation along with radically altering the economy. However, I think it is a difficult argument to make that railroads can be defined as natural as Cronon tries to do. Cronon argues that railroads can be considered a second nature that is in sync with first nature to the point that they cease to be separate. I find this idea counterintuitive for railroads were not confined to the natural limits placed by nature that had previously restricted human movement. Cronon makes note of this idea on pg. 74 when he speaks about how railroads were able to go virtually anywhere for they became independent from the environment. In many ways railroads reshaped the environment through means such as tunnels through mountains and bridges across rivers. No longer were we limited by in transportation but we were free to traverse the world in an artificial manner.

The fact that Chicago became a desirable destination and a terminus in the center of the country was not because it was a natural location that possessed the perfect conditions. It was an artificial terminus created by those in the east because it afforded many advantages some of which were natural such as the canals and the lake yet others which were separate from nature. Chicago was not a city that had all roads naturally lead to it. If for example a river or natural boundaries such as mountains formed a path from the west through the east through Chicago then it would be a stronger argument that the city was predestined. Instead Chicago was an area of Illinois that possessed some favorable conditions but its biggest draw was the general geographic location in regards to the east and the west coast. As a result those in the east manufactured the city of Chicago to serve their needs and facilitate a connection with the west but this connection was completely artificial. While Cronon would argue that many would come to see the railroads and city as essential parts of American nature it doesn’t seem to me possible to reconcile the first and second degree natures to work in harmony as Cronon believed they did. Both were artificial creations destined to exploit nature so as to mostly benefit a small portion of society.