Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New EnglandBy 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. 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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 70
Page 26
... European patterns of production , reproduction , and consciousness as an externally caused transformation . Chapter 4 then describes how the European colonists ' cosmology and consciousness were integrated with their own dual mercantile ...
... European patterns of production , reproduction , and consciousness as an externally caused transformation . Chapter 4 then describes how the European colonists ' cosmology and consciousness were integrated with their own dual mercantile ...
Page 55
... European weapons and tools , and fated with a short grow- ing season with sparse crop yields , the Abenaki soon came to depend on the Europeans for bread , peas , beans , and prunes and on the southern New England tribes for corn . Furs ...
... European weapons and tools , and fated with a short grow- ing season with sparse crop yields , the Abenaki soon came to depend on the Europeans for bread , peas , beans , and prunes and on the southern New England tribes for corn . Furs ...
Page 86
... European tetrad of grain crops ― rye , barley , oats , and wheat - along with root crops and vege- tables - carrots , red beets , radishes , turnips , peas , cabbage , lettuce , garden beans , cucumbers , and naked oats ( silpee ) ...
... European tetrad of grain crops ― rye , barley , oats , and wheat - along with root crops and vege- tables - carrots , red beets , radishes , turnips , peas , cabbage , lettuce , garden beans , cucumbers , and naked oats ( silpee ) ...
Contents
Ecology and History | 1 |
2 | 29 |
From Corn Mothers to Puritan Fathers | 69 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England Carolyn Merchant Limited preview - 1989 |
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England Carolyn Merchant Limited preview - 2010 |
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England Carolyn Merchant Limited preview - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
Abenaki acres Agricultural Agroecology Almanac American animals Astronomical Diary beans beaver biological reproduction Boston bushels capitalist ecological revolution cattle changes cheese colonial ecological revolution colonists commodities Connecticut consciousness corn cosmos cows crops culture deer Diary duction earth economy eighteenth century elites energy England Farmer English European fallow farm female fertility fields fish forest fur trade garden George Perkins Marsh Gluskabe grain Hampshire harvest History human hunting Ibid improvement inland John labor land livestock Maine male manure Massachusetts meadows mechanistic mills mother native Americans nature nature's nonhuman Old Farmer's Almanac pasture Penobscot percent Petersham plants plowing polycultures population potash production and reproduction Puritan quotation River salt seed seventeenth shaman sheep social Socialist Feminism Society soil southern New England subsistence symbols Thomas Morton Thoreau tillage timber tion towns transformation trees tribes ture vegetable Vermont wild wilderness William women wood woodland yields York