Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South by David Silkenat

Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South
David Silkenat
Page: 272
Format: pdf, ePub, mobi, fb2
ISBN: 9780197564226
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Download eBook

Free audiobook mp3 download Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South by David Silkenat 9780197564226  in English

They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom.

Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash.

Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.

Scars on the Land - Hardcover - David Silkenat - Oxford
        Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how 
        Carolina's Gold Coast: The Culture of Rice and Slavery
        Tending History. Jeff Neale, an historical interpreter at Middleton Place, a former plantation on the Ashley River, notes that weeding lowcountry rice fields 
        Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and
        The end of slavery weakened the southern agricultural system, which bound both whites and black to intensive cultivation techniques. The postwar period also saw 
        OUP History on Twitter: "And publishing next week
        's 'Scars on the Land' provides a history of slavery in the American South, covering the colonial period through the Civil War. 8/17 https://global.oup.com/ 
        World History Courses - Oxford University Press
        Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South. Retail Price to Students: $35.00. David Silkenat. 9780197564226. Hardcover
        The Struggle against Slavery - Hardcover - David Waldstreicher
        From slave ships to plantations to freedom, The Struggle Against Slavery traces the remarkable history of the heroic fight to end slavery, from its North 
        Hard Road to Freedom Volume Two - Lois E. Horton - Oxford
        Hard Road to Freedom tells the story of Black Americans from its roots in Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South.

Items