Americans and their Forests: A Historical Geography (Studies in Environment and History) - Hardcover

Williams, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521332478 ISBN 13: 9780521332477

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1989

Synopsis

When Europeans first reached the land that would become the United States they were staggered by the breadth and density of the forest they found. The existence of that forest, and the effort either to use or subdue it, have been constant themes in American history, literature, economics, and geography up to the meaning of the forest in American history and culture, he describes and analyzes the clearing and use of the forest from pre-European times to the present, and he traces the subsequent regrowth of the forest since the middle of the twentieth century. Dr Williams begins by exploring the role of the forest in American culture: the symbols, themes, and concepts - for example, pioneer woodsman, lumberjack, wilderness - generated by contact with the vast land of trees. He considers the Indian use of the forest, describing the ways in which native tribes altered it, primarily through fire, to promote a subsistence economy. Early European settlers, he shows, extracted many products from the forest, and also began the extensive clearance of trees that would continue for almost three hundred years. Succeeding chapters, organized by topic and region, cover agricultural and industrial effects upon and uses of the forest. Dr Williams explores the rise (and often fall) of industries based upon forest products: naval stores, timber for building, charcoal and the iron industry, the railroads. Attention is devoted to the forests of the Middle West, the South, and the Pacific Northwest. By the late nineteenth century Americans began to realize that the forest was not boundless and moved to preserve those portions, still extensive, that remained. In the wake of the movement for preservation, Dr Williams describes how the forest began to regrow, especially after 1950, in areas where it had originally been vigorous and healthy, a development that continues today.

About this title

Reviews

Williams (history, Oxford) examines in this scholarly, well-written account the effects of settlement and industrial development on the Appalachian forest--a woodland which once spread almost without a break from the Atlantic seaboard to the Western plains. The process of deforestation was begun by the pioneers and continued by the ruthless logging operations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; it was halted only by the forest conservation movement of the 1900s. Both a valuable resource and reference work in its field and a very readable overview of the American conservation movement. Highly recommended.
- Eleanor Maass Assocs . , New Milford, Pa.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521332478
• ISBN 13: 9780521332477
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624