6.1 NATURE AND THE MARKET IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
1820-1860

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2. Ecological Revolutions
  • Indian gathering/hunting/fishing; horticulture.
  • Colonial ecological revolution, 1620-1675.
  • Capitalist ecological revolution, 1775-1860.
3. Nature Versus Civilization
  • Ambivalence about loss of wilderness and advantages of market economy.
  • Wilderness as evil (Bradford); pastoral (Crevecoeur); romantic (Thoreau).
  • Appreciation by eastern elites: poets, philosophers, novelists, artists, explorers.
  • Sublime nature, 18th century: William Byrd, 1728; William Bartram, 1773; William Gilpin, 1792.
4. Phillis Wheatley
  • Born on west coast of Africa, ca. 1753.
  • Parents unknown; mother "poured out water before the rising sun" every morning.
  • Enslaved at 7 with 80 other young girls.
  • Landed in Boston, 1761.
  • Sent to market for sale.
  • Bought by Susannah Wheatley; several black slaves in the household.
  • Trained Phillis herself.
5. Education of Phillis Wheatley
  • Was taught English and the alphabet by Mary Wheatley, 18 yrs.
  • After 16 mo. could read the Bible; began to write on brick walls with charcoal.
  • At age 12 began to study Latin; after 4 years translated parts of Ovid; results published.
  • Began to write poetry; influenced by Latin classics and Bible; published 1770.
  • Learned geography, history, astronomy, ancient mythology.
6. "An Hymn to Morning," 1773
  • Attend my lays, ye ever honored nine.
  • Bright Aurora now demands my song.
  • On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays.
  • Harmonious lays the feather'd race resume.
  • See in the east th' illustrious king of day; I feel his fervid leaves too strong.
  • The nine muses: eg Calliope, poetry.
  • Roman goddess of dawn.
  • Sylvan deity; the gentle west wind.
  • melodic poems sung by birds.
  • The (male) sun rises and "his" heat causes the poet to abort her writing.
7. Wheatley's Philosophy of Nature
  • Nature is intellectual, rational, and harmonious, not wild, romantic, or tumultuous.
  • Poetry expresses nature in classical terms as stylized, controlled, measured.
  • Use of stock classical images to evoke Greek harmony, but within a Christian framework.
  • Eighteenth century classical Enlightenment.
8. Henry David Thoreau
  • Walden, 1854, near Concord, outside Boston.
  • Romantic; contrast to Wheatley, 80 years later.
  • Harvard University, 1837.
  • Denounces "the commercial spirit."
  • Wants 6 days of sabbath and one of work.
  • Retreats to Walden, 1845.
9. Thoreau's Philosophy of Nature
  • Nature is alive and self-active; not mechanical or externally manipulated.
  • Animism: American Indians; pagan Greece; folk and traditional cultures; I-thou.
  • Neoplatonism: Nature is spiritual agent of God; shapes and directs parts of nature.
  • Romantics: Wordsworth, Shelling, Goethe; nature is source of spiritual insight.
  • Nature is a living earth, not a dead fossil; has a body, soul, and spirit; a central life; is organic and fluid; all are parts of one entity.
10. Walden Pond
  • Pond as center of the cosmos; the earth's eye; the forest mirror.
  • Denial of market and its values.
  • Retention of subsistence values, but now infused with an ethic of preservation.
11. Thoreau's Cabin
  • Cut down a few tall pines with a borrowed axe.
  • Recycled planks from an old shanty.
  • Timber, stone, sand from nature by squatter's rights.
  • Oriented to south for solar heating.
12. Walden Train Station
  • Train as symbol of the market; sounds penetrate the silence of the pond; but railroad brings resources and commodities from around the world.
13. Mount Ktadin, Maine
  • F. W. Church painting. Scene of Thoreau's terror at wild nature: "vast, titanic, inhuman nature;" "savage and dreary;" a Titan; "more lone than you can imagine." "Who are we? What are we?"
14. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Concord, Ma.; 1803-1882.
  • Essays, 1844.
  • Contrast to Thoreau's cabin and critique of market.
  • Embraces both transcendentalism ("The Oversoul") and the market ("Wealth").
15. Transcendentalism
  • Thought, not experience yields truth.
  • Truth derives from a priori elements of experience; transcendent ideas are real.
  • Material world is embodiment of ideal forms.
  • Changing world is clue to ideal truths.
  • Emblems and symbols of ideal can be found in nature.
  • Wilderness is a source of spiritual insights.
  • Nature and wilderness are good, not evil.
16. Elizabeth "Scout" Blum
  • History Department, Troy State University, Montgomery, Alabama.
  • Author of "Power, Danger, and Control: Slave Women's Perceptions of Wilderness in the 19th Century."
  • "Native Americans and Africans . . . recognized that everything, including plants, animals, and humans, had a soul and place in the world."
  • "African American slave women . . . found their environment to be both a source of racial and gender power, as well as a source of fear and control by whites." 
17. Slave Women and Nature
  • Nature as source of food, medicine, and power.
  • Roots and plants as source of reproductive control.
  • Knowledge of what to harvest and how to prepare it.
18. Slave Women and Wilderness
  • Woods as places of escape and refuge.
  • Locales of freedom and renewal--similar to transcendentalism.
  • Abodes of ghosts and spirits.
  • Treated with respect, fear, and sources of power.
19. Slave Foods
  • Plants introduced by slaves and slave traders:
  • Eggplant (Asian origin), peanut (S. America), yam, okra, tanniers (taro), collards, benne (sesame oil).
  • Peas: goober (nguba), crowder, field, cow, lady, and black-eyed.
20. Garden Patch
  • Slave owners allowed blacks to have small "provision gardens."
  • "A small patch where arrowroot, long collards, sugar cane, tanniers, ground nuts, beene, gourds, and watermelons grew in comingled luxuriance."
21. Slave Gardens
  • Vegetables usually for consumption by slave families.
  • Control over garden gave some sense of autonomy and self-worth.
  • Family activities; meals from garden vegetables; kinship reinforcement.
  • Improvement of diet.
22. Slave Diets
  • Southern staples: corn and pork.
  • Corn easy to grow; pigs run in woods.
  • Slave ration: 1 peck corn meal; 3-4 lbs bacon per week.
  • Rice in South Carolina and Georgia.
  • Yams, squash, peas.
23. Other Foods of Blacks
  • Chickens; fish; game.
  • Sour milk (clabber).
  • Potatoes, turnips, yams.
  • Dried peas and beans.
  • Recipes: Greens and Pot Likker; Fried Collards; Okra Gumbo; Pokeweed (salad greens); Hoppin' John; Eggplant Soup; Hot and Spicy Peanuts.
24. Native American Foods 
  • Corn, beans, squash, pumpkins.
  • Corn: hominy, grits, cornmeal; hoecake, cornbread, jonny-cake, hush puppies.
  • Succotash (corn and beans).
  • Corn roasts; spit; barbeque.
  • Meat: cured, smoked, dried.
  • Comingling planting; hilling of corn.
25. Discussion Questions
  • Why is Thoreau such a heroic figure today?
  • Can "wilderness" best be appreciated by those who do not live in it or make a living from it?