Geographical Inquiry and American Historical ProblemsThe twelve essays in this volume reexamine a handful of perennial problems in American history from a geographical point of view. From this perspective there emerges a series of reinterpretations of the central processes that defined the American experience, whether of colonization, of regional development and sectionalism, of slavery and freedom, of urbanization and industrialization, or of working-class history. The essays encompass the first three centuries of American history, beginning with the nightmarish world of disease and death that was early Virginia and ending with the melancholy demise of socialism early in this century. Geography's mission is to comprehend changes on the earth's surface, and toward that end, geographers ponder the interactive effects of nature and culture within specific locations and times. This entails connecting human actions (historical events) with their immediate environs (ecological inquiry) and specific coordinates of place and region (locational inquiry). Most of the essays in this volume employ the variant of ecological inquiry the author calls the staple approach, focusing on primary production (agriculture, forestry, fishing) and its societal ramifications. Locational inquiry queries the spatial distribution of historical events: Why was mortality in early Virginia highest in a small zone along the James River? Why did cities flourish in early Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Carolina and not elsewhere along the Atlantic seaboard? Why was Boston the vanguard of the American Revolution? The book's first four essays, on the colonial period, reinterpret American colonization and regional development. The second four essays unravel the causes of sectional differences in the north and south during the early national and antebellum periods. The next three essays shift to the American urban scene, tracing the influence of agrarian society on the geography of labor and labor politics between the Civil War and World War I. The book then concludes with a long and ambitious overview of the periodic structure of the entire American past. This final essay offers at once a synthesis of the various historiographic case studies and a compelling interpretation of the rhythms of American macrohistory and their geographical component. The book is illustrated with 12 halftones. |
Contents
The Practice of Geographical History | 1 |
The Ecological Causes of the Virginia Mortality Crisis | 25 |
Why Tobacco Stunted the Growth of Towns and Wheat | 88 |
Boston Vanguard of the American Revolution | 153 |
The Industrial Revolution as a Response to Cheap | 173 |
Crop Seasonality | 226 |
Common terms and phrases
agrarian innovation agricultural American history American labor American Revolution Annales school annual antebellum Boston British Cambridge Carolina century Chesapeake cities Civil colonial corn costs counties Crisis crop crop rotation DeBow's Review depression diffusion Dissent early earnings ecological Economic History employment England English environmental essays estimates farm farmers fertility FIGURE free labor geographical Gilded Age grain grain belt harvest Haymarket hired historians idem immigrants income industrial interpretation James Jamestown Journal Knights of Labor labor force labor market labor power land locational logistic long waves long-wave macrohistorical manufacturing Maryland merchants Midwest nomic North percent period phase Philadelphia planters policy cycles political population ports producer's surplus production rates regional Revolution rural labor season settlement skilled slave slavery social Socialist society soil South southern spatial staple strike structure theory tion tobacco towns transfer wage unions United University Press unskilled urban labor urban systems Virginia wage shares wheat workers York zone