Dardanelle and the Bottoms: Environment, Agriculture, and Economy in an Arkansas River Community, 1819–1970 by Mildred Diane Gleason (review)

Mildred Diane Gleason charts the evolution of her native Dardanelle, a town about eighty miles northwest of Little Rock, and its outlying "bottoms" in the Arkansas River Valley. Southern historians will find mostly familiar themes of agricultural and social change, but Gleason makes valuable contributions with local anecdotes. At times, details on a wide range of topics—tucked into more than 340 pages of text—overwhelm the book's focus on how the cotton economy forged a "reciprocal bond between the Bottoms and the town, which had sustained and enriched both—and ultimately served as their mutual reason for existence," until "modernity" left the area in a state of decline by the 1970s (p. 340).

Gleason begins with a chapter that relies mostly on secondary sources about the area's early settlement, the development of the cotton frontier and slavery, and its experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction. She quickly moves on to examine the "reestablishment" of Dardanelle and its hinterlands from the 1880s to 1910; from this point on, the Dardanelle newspaper becomes her main primary source. Gleason argues that the area "was not a true New South model" because it lacked industrialization (p. 85). Instead, the continuity of cotton's hegemony produced the "reciprocal nature" between farmers in the Bottoms and businessmen in Dardanelle that sustained the community into the 1960s (p. 85). By the 1910s, agricultural productivity, population growth, and business prospects in town "appeared poised for continued development" (p. 88). This period was marked by the tragedies of racism and glaring social and economic inequality typical of the broader South, but Gleason contends that the symbiotic relationship between Dardanelle and the Bottoms thrived.

The collapse of cotton prices after World War I brought troubles to farmers and businessmen alike. Boll weevils and floods compounded the misery. Severe flooding ravaged the area until the federal government completed the Dardanelle Dam in 1966. Gleason emphasizes how the interdependence of town and countryside helped ease suffering and maintain hope through these difficulties, though she notes that amid such uncertainties many people also turned to "a reactionary reliance on . . . traditional conservative religion, politics, race, and gender relationships" (p. 224). The Great Depression spelled even harder times and brought about even more change. After World War II, federal farm policies, labor shortages, and mechanization transformed agriculture and pummeled the "rural/town reciprocity" (p. 345). Despite efforts to adapt, the gradual extinction of cotton precipitated a major population exodus, the deterioration of local businesses, "and a decline in Dardanelle's importance as an Arkansas community" (p. 288). Since the 1970s, "'old Dardanelle' and all that it entailed no longer exist," writes Gleason (p. 345).

Although Gleason is too good a historian to allow plain nostalgia to cloud her work, the book's reciprocity thesis and tone do, at times, put off a "Mayberry"-like impression. The emphasis on interdependence and mutuality hinges mostly on Dardanelle newspaper accounts; like most local papers, the town's paper was prone to boosterism and had a vested interest in minimizing local conflict. For example, on relations between Bottoms farmers and Dardanelle merchants in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Gleason too easily glides over deep divisions and competing interests that might have surfaced more from a look at local mortgage records and court cases. Moreover, outside forces like broader societal norms, distant markets, and the federal government are also typical culprits for community problems such as ugly race relations, economic unevenness and exploitation, and the area's eventual decline, while locals may bear less responsibility. Finally, while the book is already too long, this reviewer wanted to know more about Dardanelle's transformation since the 1970s, such as changes in population and political economy. What about politics? This is, after all, the...