Metropolis – American Environments to 1893

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Parts II and III of William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis expand upon Cronon’s telling of the story of Chicago from an environmental history perspective. In part II, Cronon tells the stories of the production, commodification, and transportation of grain, lumber, and meat and how they evolved along with the evolution of Chicago. In part III, Cronon looks at Chicago geographically, discussing the importance of the city’s location and how the expansion of industrialization westward affected the growing frontier. I found the organization of these two parts, and his book as a whole, effective. Cronon tries to tell the story of a city with his book, and the fact he was able to do so while not telling a chronological story is impressive, and in the end made the work more effective as a work of environmental history.

I found Cronon’s further discussion of the railroad impact in the west interesting and a valuable expansion of his discussion in part I. He discusses the railroad’s impact on Chicago and the surrounding areas in depth in part I, but in part II he writes that the railroads helped instigate the destruction of the bison, something we have already read about in this class. The railroads made going out and hunting the bison easier, and having a metropolis to bring the bison back and make money only motivated people further to hunt the bison and accelerate their destruction, and at the same time negatively impact Native American life. He also compares the pre and post railroad worlds in the west, showing how the railroad helped merchants in many ways and wasn’t overwhelming the frontier country but instead bringing them closer together.

Throughout his work, Cronon looks at nature as two types, first and second nature, with first nature being what would exist without any outside intrusion and second nature being the world build upon first nature. I didn’t love this definition after reading part I, and still don’t after reading parts II and III. In part II, Cronon does a good job of showing how nature and humans interacted through Chicago with the commodification of elements of nature, but in doing so he weakened the notions of first and second nature. For Cronon, first nature would be trees in a forest, and humans collecting the trees for lumber and using it commercially would be a result of second nature. While this is a clear example of humans “dominating” nature and theoretically fits into his classification of nature, as Ian mentioned below, humans worked in harmony with nature in the transportation of the lumber. By separating nature into two separate spheres, it ignores the concept of humans working in harmony with nature, even if in the example Ian presented humans shaped the environment. I also agree with Wade in my complaint about this definition, as using first and second nature works in some cases, but it leaves no room for something in between (or Cronon fails to do so) like when something natural becomes a commodity.

Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment is a study of the myth of the American frontier, as Slotkin analyzes the myth extensively using 19^th century literature, setting the frontier up as a divider between Metropolises and the native wilderness. The study is convincing enough, but Slotkin runs into the same issue that any historian has when studying a cultural myth: how to prove that the myth had an impact over an entire culture rather than specific sections of society.

This is a problem I encountered while writing my thesis last semester. I attempted to argue that the collapse of the mythological aspect of baseball with the reveal that the Yankee hero Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic and a womanizer, that that helped propel the festering cynicism in the 1960s that began with the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations as well as the Vietnam War. As I began researching, I immediately regretted my undertaking, as proving the cultural impact that a myth has over society is not easy. Relative to my study, I tried to argue that because of baseball’s place in American culture, the collapse of the mythology affected the greater American public, yet clearly there were Americans who could care less about baseball, or who could care less about the mythological aspects of the game. For Slotkin, his argument is solid and easy to accept as fact, yet it is also easily contestable because of how he uses literature as representative of American culture. This undertaking is impossible to do completely, as there were sections of society who had no interest in what was happening in the west (and as Henry pointed out, who could not read), yet Slotkin claims that with the literature, the frontier mythology is encompassing of American culture.

This point is reaffirmed in Henry’s below post, as he concurs that just a snapshot of a culture cannot interpret the national consciousness of America. I also did not consider the era, as Henry smartly points out the illiteracy in America made the novels and stories of the time even less influential, further weakening Slotkin’s contention.

Unfortunately for Slotkin, if he lessened his claim and stated instead that the literature had some influence, his argument becomes weak, yet because his claim is encompassing, it is currently flawed. Slotkin does a good job of providing as much evidence as possible, but regardless of how many stories supported his argument, someone could still say that assuming that the frontier mythology represented the whole nation’s consciousness is an over-the-top claim.

While flawed in its methodology, looking past these concerns I found the work rather convincing, and its approach as an environmental history intriguing. Slotkin adds an interesting wrinkle to the definition of nature, as he creates a polarizing distinction between the wilderness full of savage Indians and the metropolis expanding into the wilderness. While creating the distinction, as Ian states below it allows for male heroics within nature, therefore allowing humans as actors within nature.

Tag: Metropolis

Chicago’s Place on the Frontier, and Looking at First and Second Nature

The Flawed Methodology with Mythological History