Merchant brings to light the dense network of links between the human realm of economic regimes, social structure, and gender relations, as they are conditioned by a dominant worldview, and the ecological realm of plant and animal life. Thus we see how the integration of the Indians with their natural world was shattered by Europeans who engaged in exhaustive methods of hunting, trapping, and logging for the market and in widespread subsistence farming. The resulting "colonial ecological revolution" was to hold sway until roughly the time of American independence, when the onset of industrialization and increasing urbanization brought about the "capitalist ecological revolution." By the late nineteenth century, Merchant argues, New England had become a society that viewed the whole ecosphere as an arena for human domination. One can see in New England a "mirror of the world," she says. What took place there between 1600 and 1850 was a greatly accelerated recapitulation of the evolutionary ecological changes that had occurred in Europe over a span of 2,500 years.
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Book Description
By exploring the stages of ecological transformation that took place in New England as European settlers took control of the land, Carolyn Merchant develops a fresh approach to environmental history. Her analysis of how human communities are related to their environment opens a perspective that goes beyond overt changes in the landscape.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Ecological Revolutions offers provocative insights into more than just New England ecology.
American Quarterly
A powerful brief for a new ecological consciousness.
Robert A. Gross, The College of William and Mary --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
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Fundamental text,
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This review is from: Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman) (Paperback)
Ecological Revolutions is an absolutely fundamental text in the fields of Colonial and Environmental American history. This book, along with William Cronon's Changes in the Land, transformed historians' understandings of Native American relationships to the land, as well as the ecological, economic, and reproductive changes brought by European colonists. Changes in the Land is more entertaining to read, but Ecological Revolutions is more advanced methodologically. I recommend both books heartily.
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Capitalism and Human Relationship with Nature,
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This review is from: Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman) (Paperback)
This book studies Native Americans' and European settlers' relationship with nature in the colonial era. It discusses how Europeans' relationship to nature differed from that of the Native Americans. Native Americans lived off the land to survive, then upon European trade contacts, Native Americans created a dependency upon capitalistic trade with the Europeans which had grave consequences for the environment. The concept of an Ecological Revolution is the shift in relationship between a society and nature. Here it traces how Natives respected nature,then to how they grew to exploit nature.
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Nature's Voice,
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This review is from: Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman) (Paperback)
Carolyn Merchant's book speaks of the relationships between human and non-human nature that have evolved over the last three centuries. The book is a sympathetic approach to non-human nature and also the reasoning(s) behind the causes of its abuse. A very interesting read that gives a clear picture as to the destructive role that capitalism.
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First Sentence:
When Vermont statesman and author George Perkins Marsh took up his pen to write to botanist Asa Gray in 1849, he revealed the concerns that would spark his quest to understand the destruction of New England in a historical context. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
capitalist ecological revolution, colonial ecological revolution, intragenerational reproduction, mimetic consciousness, fertilizing salts, tax valuation list, animate cosmos, squash complex, nitrous particles, nitrous salts, participatory consciousness, cyclical cosmos, intergenerational reproduction, ecological revolutions, agricultural improvers, comfortable subsistence, nonhuman nature, almanac makers, colonial farmers, fish fertilizer, promoting agriculture, subsistence culture, colonial production, mercantile trade, ecological complex Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut Valley, Massachusetts Bay, New World, King Philip, Mother Ann, Ben Uncas, Corn Mother, Harvard Forest, Roger Williams, Old World, Daniel Gookin, Great Chain of Being, Isaac Newton, John Winthrop, United States, Connecticut River, Garden of Eden, Henry David Thoreau, Man of the Signs, Anna Howell, Cotton Mather New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
When Vermont statesman and author George Perkins Marsh took up his pen to write to botanist Asa Gray in 1849, he revealed the concerns that would spark his quest to understand the destruction of New England in a historical context. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
capitalist ecological revolution, colonial ecological revolution, intragenerational reproduction, mimetic consciousness, fertilizing salts, tax valuation list, animate cosmos, squash complex, nitrous particles, nitrous salts, participatory consciousness, cyclical cosmos, intergenerational reproduction, ecological revolutions, agricultural improvers, comfortable subsistence, nonhuman nature, almanac makers, colonial farmers, fish fertilizer, promoting agriculture, subsistence culture, colonial production, mercantile trade, ecological complex Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New England, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut Valley, Massachusetts Bay, New World, King Philip, Mother Ann, Ben Uncas, Corn Mother, Harvard Forest, Roger Williams, Old World, Daniel Gookin, Great Chain of Being, Isaac Newton, John Winthrop, United States, Connecticut River, Garden of Eden, Henry David Thoreau, Man of the Signs, Anna Howell, Cotton Mather New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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99
books
cite this book:
See all 99 books citing this book
- New English Canaan by Thomas Morton on 9 pages
- Fur Trade by Paul C. Phillips on 6 pages
- The History of New Hampshire (3-Volume Set) by Jeremy Belknap on 5 pages
- The Origin of the Family: Private Property and the State by Friedrich Engels on 4 pages
- An Essay On The Principle Of Population by Thomas Malthus in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
See all 100 books this book cites
- Enduring Roots: Encounters with Trees, History, and the American Landscape by Gayle Brandow Samuels on 4 pages
- Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Co-Evolutionary Revisioning of the Future by Richard B Norgaard on 4 pages
- Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture by Carolyn Merchant on 4 pages
- Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (Revolutionary Thought and Radical Movements) by Carolyn Merchant on 4 pages
- Made From This Earth: American Women and Nature (Gender and American Culture) by Vera Norwood in Front Matter, page 2, and Back Matter
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