Absentee landowning has long been tied to economic distress in Appalachia. In this important revisionist study, Barbara Rasmussen examines the nature of landownership in five counties of West Virginia and its effects upon the counties' economic and social development. Rasmussen untangles a web of outside domination of the region that commenced before the American Revolution, creating a legacy of hardship that continues to plague Appalachia today. The owners and exploiters of the region have included Lord Fairfax, George Washington, and, most recently, the U.S. Forest Service. The overarching concern of these absentee landowners has been to control the land, the politics, the government, and the resources of the fabulously rich Appalachian Mountains. Their early and relentless domination of politics assured a land tax system that still favors absentee landholders and simultaneously impoverishes the state. Class differences, a capitalistic outlook, and an ethic of growth and development pervaded western Virginia from earliest settlement. Residents, however, were quickly outspent by wealthier, more powerful outsiders. Insecurity in landownership, Rasmussen demonstrates, is the most significant difference between early mountain farmers and early American farmers everywhere.
"Land grabs are a global phenomenon of our times, driven by the ever increasing demands of both global corporations and the governments with which they are allied. But as this powerful and timely book demonstrates, ordinary citizens, small farmers and ordinary citizens around the world are standing up to defend their own with passion and ingenuity, and they are recording successes that are both extraordinary and inspiring." —Oliver Tickell, Editor, The Ecologist. Climate change ravages the earth, while wealthy elites try to grab as much of the world’s diminishing resources as possible. As Vandana Shiva writes, land is life. But land, and the struggle to possess it, is also power—colonial and corporate power, to be sure, but also the power of the dispossessed to rise up and call for an end to the global land grab. Grabbing Back maps this struggle, bringing together analyses that uncover the politics of cultivation and control. In this unprecedented collection, on-the-ground activists join forces with critically acclaimed scholars to document the commodification and consumption of space, from foreclosed homes to annihilated rainforests, from ecotourism in Sri Lanka to the tar sands of Montana, and to outline the strategies and tactics that might the destruction. With contributions by Vandana Shiva, Noam Chomsky, Max Rameau, Grace Lee Boggs, Michael Hardt, Ahjamu Umi, Ben Dangl, and many others. More Praise for Grabbing Back: “Part of the reason that knowledge about the current global land grab is so uncertain is the paucity of perspectives and analysis in defining the problem. This book fills the gap admirably.” —Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved "The acquisition, control, and exploitation of land, as well as the simultaneous dispossession of land-based and peasant communities, is central to the processes of both colonialism and capitalism. As Fanon reminds us, egalitarian governance and stewardship of land is fundamental to the struggle for liberation and self-determination for all oppressed peoples. This makes Grabbing Back a necessary study for anticapitalist and anticolonial movements." —Harsha Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism "Grab back this sparkling mosaic of essays as a treasure of our new-old knowledge commons. Together these pieces replace dichotomies with dialectics, making explicit the inseparability of land and collective life. Together they restore the vital concept of social ecology in resistance to relentless and increasingly apocalyptic capitalism, with emphasis on its second contradiction: its impossibility on a finite resource base." —Maia Ramnath, author of Decolonizing Anarchism “As the forces of thanatos leave no stone unturned in their quest to dominate the entire planet, this anthology provides a much needed antidote. Weaving together accounts from around the world, the authors advocate building grassroots movements aimed at subverting capital’s incessant assault on our lives and land.”—George Katsiaficas, author of Asia’s Unknown Uprisings “Never perhaps has the land question been so crucial for anti-capitalist movements, as we are witnessing a global process of enclosure that privatizes lands, waters, forests, displacing millions from their homes, and placing monetary gates to what we rightly considered our commonwealth. It is essential then that we understand what motivates this drive and its effects in all their social and spatial dimensions. Grabbing Back takes us through this process, identifying the “reasons” and actors behind this global land-grab and, most important, introducing us to the struggles that people are making across the world to resist being evicted from their lands and to reclaim the earth. ” —George Caffentzis, Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa
Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion explores the historical processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. It focuses on changing conceptualizations of ownership and emphasizes the persistent influence of the English common law on Virginia's postcolonial political culture. The book explains how the traditional characteristics of land tenure became subverted by the dynamic contractual relations of a commercial economy and assesses the political consequences of the law reforms that were necessitated by these developments. Nineteenth-century reforms seeking to reconcile the common law with modern commercial practices embraced new democratic expressions about the economic and political power of labor, and thereby encouraged the idea that slavery was an essential element in sustaining republican government in Virginia. By the 1850s, the ownership of human property had replaced the ownership of land as the distinguishing basis for political power, with tragic consequences for the Old Dominion.
In 1880, ancient-growth forest still covered two-thirds of West Virginia, but by the 1920s lumbermen had denuded the entire region. Ronald Lewis explores the transformation in these mountain counties precipitated by deforestation. As the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian region, West Virginia provides an ideal site for studying the broader social impact of deforestation in Appalachia, the South, and the eastern United States. Most of West Virginia was still dominated by a backcountry economy when the industrial transition began. In short order, however, railroads linked remote mountain settlements directly to national markets, hauling away forest products and returning with manufactured goods and modern ideas. Workers from the countryside and abroad swelled new mill towns, and merchants ventured into the mountains to fulfill the needs of the growing population. To protect their massive investments, capitalists increasingly extended control over the state's legal and political systems. Eventually, though, even ardent supporters of industrialization had reason to contemplate the consequences of unregulated exploitation. Once the timber was gone, the mills closed and the railroads pulled up their tracks, leaving behind an environmental disaster and a new class of marginalized rural poor to confront the worst depression in American history.
"By closely studying the strategic blend of land ownership, subsistence agriculture, and commerce, Weise reveals how white male farmers in Floyd County attempted to achieve and preserve patriarchal authority and independence - and how this household localism laid the foundation for the region's development during the industrial era. By shifting attention from the actions of industrialists to those of local residents, he reconciles contradictory views of antebellum Appalachia and offers a new understanding of the region's history and its people."--Jacket.
The harvesting of wild American ginseng (panax quinquefolium), the gnarled, aromatic herb known for its therapeutic and healing properties, is deeply established in North America and has played an especially vital role in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains. Traded through a trans-Pacific network that connected the region to East Asian markets, ginseng was but one of several medicinal Appalachian plants that entered international webs of exchange. As the production of patent medicines and botanical pharmaceutical products escalated in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, southern Appalachia emerged as the United States' most prolific supplier of many species of medicinal plants. The region achieved this distinction because of its biodiversity and the persistence of certain common rights that guaranteed widespread access to the forested mountainsides, regardless of who owned the land. Following the Civil War, root digging and herb gathering became one of the most important ways landless families and small farmers earned income from the forest commons. This boom influenced class relations, gender roles, forest use, and outside perceptions of Appalachia, and began a widespread renegotiation of common rights that eventually curtailed access to ginseng and other plants. Based on extensive research into the business records of mountain entrepreneurs, country stores, and pharmaceutical companies, Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in Appalachia is the first book to unearth the unique relationship between the Appalachian region and the global trade in medicinal plants. Historian Luke Manget expands our understanding of the gathering commons by exploring how and why Appalachia became the nation's premier purveyor of botanical drugs in the late-nineteenth century and how the trade influenced the way residents of the region interacted with each other and the forests around them.
Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.
Families, communities, and the nation itself were irretrievably altered by the Civil War and the subsequent societal transformations of the nineteenth century. The repercussions of the war incited a broad range of unique problems in Appalachia, including political dynamics, racial prejudices, and the regional economy. Andrew L. Slap's anthology Reconstructing Appalachia reveals life in Appalachia after the ravages of the Civil War, an unexplored area that has left a void in historical literature. Addressing a gap in the chronicles of our nation, this vital collection explores little-known aspects of history with a particular focus on the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. Acclaimed scholars John C. Inscoe, Gordon B. McKinney, and Ken Fones-Wolf are joined by up-and-comers like Mary Ella Engel, Anne E. Marshall, and Kyle Osborn in a unique volume of essays investigating postwar Appalachia with clarity and precision. Featuring a broad geographic focus, these compelling essays cover postwar events in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. This approach provides an intimate portrait of Appalachia as a diverse collection of communities where the values of place and family are of crucial importance. Highlighting a wide array of topics including racial reconciliation, tension between former Unionists and Confederates, the evolution of post–Civil War memory, and altered perceptions of race, gender, and economic status, Reconstructing Appalachia is a timely and essential study of a region rich in heritage and tradition.
With 32 pages of full-color inserts and black-and-white illustrations throughout. From one of our most highly regarded historians, here is an original and engrossing chronicle of nineteenth-century America's infatuation with butterflies—“flying flowers”—and the story of the naturalists who unveiled the mysteries of their existence. A product of William Leach's lifelong love of butterflies, this engaging and elegantly illustrated history shows how Americans from all walks of life passionately pursued butterflies, and how through their discoveries and observations they transformed the character of natural history. In a book as full of life as the subjects themselves and foregrounding a collecting culture now on the brink of vanishing, Leach reveals how the beauty of butterflies led Americans into a deeper understanding of the natural world.
