No wood, no kingdom : political ecology in the English Atlantic

Author:

Pluymers, Keith

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Imprint:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2021] and ©2021

Subject:

Forest policy - England - History - 16th century
Forest policy - England - History - 17th century
Political ecology - Great Britain - History
Forests and forestry - Political aspects - England - History
Forests and forestry - Political aspects - Ireland - History
Forests and forestry - Political aspects - Atlantic Ocean Region - History
Scarcity
Great Britain - Colonies - America - History

ISBN:

9780812253078 and 0812253078

Series:

Early modern Americas

Description:

vii, 307 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Bibliographic Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Contents:

Introduction : a wooden world -- Scarcity, conflict, and regulation in England's royal forests -- Creating scarcity in Ireland's woods -- The political ecology of woods in Virginia -- Conservation and commercialization in Bermuda -- Deforestation and preservation in early Barbados -- Toward an Atlantic or imperial political ecology?

Summary:

"Attempts to define, measure, and manage woods in England and in potential colonies took place within the context of deep uncertainties and limited access to information that in practice might mean older initial impressions defined thinking in one place even as newer understandings, grounded in different experiences, shaped distinctive political ecologies in another location. Contemporaries often acted as though their actions occurred in isolation while nonetheless seeking commercial and material connections around the Atlantic basin. No Wood, No Kingdom is thus organized to reflect these chronologically overlapping and geographically and conceptually diverse characteristics. Pluymers begins in England with sixteenth-century anxieties about wood scarcity and efforts to reform and manage domestic wood supplies before turning to late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century promotional plans for Ireland and Virginia. England, Ireland, and Virginia operate as a triptych, illustrating the efforts to solve domestic scarcity in this early period. These places were connected in some contemporary political ecologies but have distinct histories, occupying at times overlapping chronologies. Each tells its own story, but, taken together, they reveal the multiple perspectives that shaped and frustrated efforts to forge a coherent imperial political ecology that might link them together. From there, he turns to seventeenth-century Bermuda and Barbados, places that developed important transatlantic connections based on trees but for different uses: as drugs, dyes, or materials for luxury goods. Even if they were never imagined as solutions to English scarcity, these islands nonetheless reflected, if only partially and incompletely, contemporary English political ecologies and wood-management techniques. Again, in Bermuda and Barbados, early modern English political ecologies were refracted through local experience and environment. Concerns about wood scarcity and efforts at preservation in Bermuda and Barbados demonstrate that many of the same issues that obsessed Arthur Standish quickly reemerged across the Atlantic. He concludes with an examination of the political ecology of wood in England and its colonies in the 1660s to show how early modern English ideas about scarcity and natural resource preservation had changed and had remained constant over the past century in the light of experiences both domestic and abroad"-- Provided by publisher

Collection:

BGC Monograph Stacks

Call Number:

SD601 .P58 2021

Available

c.1