Barbed Wire: An Ecology of Modernity

Notes

introduction, pp. xi–xiv 1. There is a long tradition of writing on the history of barbed wire from the perspective of the history of the American West. This history—a mixture of patriotic history and guide to the barbed wire collector—reaches its culmination in McCallum 1965. In such histories , the use of barbed wire for human repression is never mentioned. Histories of human repression, on the other hand, never mention animal history as such and, when discussing the history of barbed wire, would not even register its beginning in the American West. Two recent books—Razac 2000 and Krell 2002—do mention that origin of barbed wire. The first, however, mentions it in the context of the fate of Native Americans, while the second (an excellent study of the iconography of barbed wire) is essentially focused on the human cultural perceptions of the artifact. Thus, surprisingly, this book (following on my article [Netz 2000]) is indeed the first work to recognize the history of barbed wire as crossing species—from the animal to the human. 1. expansion, pp. 1–55 1. The term “Great Plains” refers to the area of today’s United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. There is much continuity between the plains and their surroundings. The lack of simple boundaries may, indeed, be seen as the main theme of the area’s history. It is a largely flat space, short on distinguishing features, allowing unhindered movement for thousands of miles: a challenge to the would-be preventer of motion. 2. Du Pratz 1763, 200. 3. Keats 1973; Houck 1901; “Sylvestris” 1803. 4. I follow—as we all do— Braudel 1979. 5. McPherson 1988, 486. 6. Utley 1984. 7. Both terms, “bison” and “cow,” call for some explanation. “Bison” is simple: this is the term biologists (and most contemporary historians) prefer when speaking about the species Bison bison, frequently referred to also as buffalo. My rationale for the term “cow” is more complex. Of course, it is only cows that can be forced to produce milk or, indeed, further cows, for human consumption. Hence, in the agricultural setting, male calves tend to be killed younger, creating a gender disparity in the population as a whole. Cows are therefore historically much more common than steers. (Steers are castrated bulls; notes uncastrated bulls are of course rare in the agricultural setting.) Further, the word “cattle” can easily suggest a commodity rather than a living being. I therefore prefer to speak of “cows” when referring to both cows and bulls, avoiding the term “cattle” altogether. A further complication is that the female of the bison is also called a cow; it should be clear that I use “cow” only for the common cow, Bos taurus. 8. Crosby 1986. 9. Clutton-Brock 1992, 38. 10. Isenberg 2000, 23–30; Webb 1931, 226. 11. Frison 1991, chap. 3. 12. Isenberg 2000, chaps. 3–4. 13. White 1994, 248. 14. Isenberg 2000, 130. 15. Isenberg 2000, 16–20. 16. Arnold and Hale 1940, vii, 17, 92. See also Boorstin 1973, 19–26. 17. Rosa 1982, 1996, esp. 130–33. 18. White 1994, 263–70. 19. See, e.g., Neeson 1993. I will return to consider this development in greater detail in the next chapter. The partition of the open field in Europe was—as we will see—also a major event in military history, changing the nature of the European battlefield. 20. Cronon 1983, 119–20. 21. Webb 1931, 287–88. 22. Basalla 1988, 52. 23. Cronon 1991, chap. 4. 24. McCallum and McCallum 1965, 29–31. 25. Raichle 1979. It should be noted, however, that the period as a whole was one of a gradual erosion of corporal punishment as applied to humans. 26. Crosby 1986, 184. 27. McCallum and McCallum 1965, 48. 28. Industrial Museum: American Steel and Wire Company 1929. Photographs of Exhibits (1926?), book no. 2. Under the category “Specimen of Barbed Wire.” 29. Basalla 1988, 49–55. 30. A useful perspective into the nineteenth-century embrace of wire is the enthusiastic yet sober account in J. B. Smith 1891, esp. chaps. 1 and 5. 31. Butts and Johnson 1856, 1. 32. Webb 1931, 297. 33. James 1966, 9–13. 34. McFadden 1978. 35. Industrial Museum: American Steel and Wire Company. Photographs of Exhibits (1926?), book no. 2. Under the categories “Specimen of Barbed Wire” and “First Barbed Wire Circular.” 36. Washburn and Moen 1881, 16. 37. Cronon 1991, chap. 4. 38...