Book ID: CBB677711171

Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South (2018)

unapi

Mauldin, Erin Stewart (Author)


Oxford University Press


Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 256
Language: English

How did the Civil War and the emancipation of four million slaves reconfigure the natural landscape in the South and the farming economy dependent upon it? An innovative reconsideration of the Civil War's profound impact on southern history, Unredeemed Land traces the environmental constraints that shaped the rural South's transition to capitalism during the late nineteenth century. Dixie's "King Cotton" required extensive land use techniques across large swaths of acreage, fresh soil, and slave-based agriculture in order to remain profitable. But wartime destruction and the rise of the contract labor system closed off those possibilities and necessitated increasingly intensive methods of cultivation that worked against the environment. The resulting disconnect between farmers' use of the land and what the natural environment could support intensified the economic dislocation of freed people, poor farmers, and sharecroppers. Erin Stewart Mauldin demonstrates how the Civil War and emancipation accelerated ongoing ecological change in ways that hastened the postbellum collapse of the region's subsistence economy, encouraged the expansion of cotton production, and ultimately kept cotton farmers trapped in a cycle of debt and tenancy.The first environmental history to bridge the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods, Unredeemed Land powerfully examines the ways military conflict and emancipation left enduring ecological legacies.

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Reviewed By

Review Daniel McCool (2019) Review of "Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South". Journal of American History (pp. 765-765). unapi

Review Jim Downs (2020) Review of "Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South". Environmental History (pp. 424-426). unapi

Review Jeremy Zallen (Winter 2019) Review of "Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South". Business History Review (pp. 837-839). unapi

Review William D. Bryan (2019) Review of "Unredeemed Land: An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South". Agricultural History (pp. 766-768). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB677711171/

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Authors & Contributors
Turner, Sasha
Paolo Conte
Heath, Elizabeth A.
Metz, John D.
Kate Ramsey
Orihuela, Andrés Avelino de
Concepts
Slavery, abolition, and emancipation
Slavery and slaves
Medicine
Rural history
Great Britain, colonies
Science and society
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
20th century, early
Places
Southern states (U.S.)
United States
Caribbean
South Carolina (U.S.)
Barbados
Georgia (U.S.)
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