Remaking Wormsloe Plantation: The Environmental History of a Lowcountry Landscape

Notes

{189} notes abbreviations cbfp Craig Barrow Family Papers (ms. 3090), Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens drfp 1064 De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1064), Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens drfp 2819 De Renne Family Papers (ms. 2819), Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens gwj Farm Journal Farm Journal of George W. Jones, De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1064), box 12, folder 27, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens gwjdr Account Book George W. J. De Renne Account Book, 1854–1875, De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1064), box 57, folder 1, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens gwjdr diary George W. J. De Renne Diary, 1876–1880, De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1064), box 13, folder 7, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens njfp Noble Jones Family Papers (ms. 1127), Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens spbr Southern Pine Beetle Reports, rg 30, subgroup 1, box 16, Georgia State Archives, Morrow wjdr Account Book W. J. De Renne Account Book, 1899–1916, De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1064), box 15, folder 1, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens wwdfp Wymberley Wormsloe De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1788), Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia, Athens introduction. The Last Plantation 1. Rackham, Last Forest, 271. 2. The direct inspiration here is Rackham’s Last Forest. In this wonderful history, Rackham, an English botanist, traces the evolution of Essex County’s Hatfield Forest over more than nine hundred years, from the Domesday survey of 1086 to its contemporary management by the National Trust. 3. The classic school of history here is the French Annales, who call for longue durée {190} notes to introduction and chapter one (long-duration) history, although the Annales school was often all but deterministic when discussing the role of the environment in history. Famous practitioners include Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel, and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. 4. For a comprehensive yet graceful introduction to American perceptions of nature as wilderness, see Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind. There are reams of scholarly literature concerning the utility of the wilderness ideal (or lack thereof) in history and conservation, but the most influential essay remains William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” in Uncommon Ground, ed. Cronon, 69–90. For a survey of European environmental and landscape history prior to 2000, see Cioc, Linnér, and Osborn, “Environmental History Writing in Northern Europe,” 396–406; Bess, Cioc, and Sievert, “Environmental History Writing in Southern Europe,” 545–56. 5. Levi, Inheriting Power, xv. 6. Lynn A. Nelson, Pharsalia, 13. 7. In addition to Lynn A. Nelson’s Pharsalia, recent self-consciously agroecological studies include Soluri, Banana Culture; McCann, Maize and Grace. 8. This assessment paraphrases Richard White in Organic Machine, esp. chap. 1. For more of his thoughts on the appropriate place of labor in environmental history, see Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground, ed. Cronon, 171–85. 9. For an entrée into the South as a particularly agrarian region of America and the implications of this past for environmental history, see Stewart, “If John Muir.” 10. Works that to varying extents explore the relationships between slavery and nature include Silver, New Face; Stewart, “What Nature Suffers to Groe”; Cecelski, Waterman’s Song; Glave and Stoll, “To Love the Wind”; Kirby, Mockingbird Song; Lynn A. Nelson, Pharsalia. 11. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 35. For an example of a recent environmental history embracing Lewis’s maxim, see James D. Rice, Nature and History, 8. 12. I thank an anonymous reviewer for the University of Georgia Press for this observation concerning the inversion of Lewis’s statement. 13. Some prominent examples include Crosby, Columbian Exchange; Crosby, Ecological Imperialism; Chaplin, Subject Matter; Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement; Valencius , Health of the Country; Curtin, Migration and Mortality; Curtin, “Epidemiology and the Slave Trade”; Chaplin, “Climate and Southern Pessimism”; Stewart, “‘Let Us Begin.” 14. “Wormsloe Tour,” flyer, n.d., cbfp, box 30, folder 1. 15. Key among the collections documenting Wormsloe’s past are the De Renne Family Papers (mss. 1064, 1064a, 2819, and oversize drawers), Noble Jones Family Papers (ms. 1127), Wymberley Wormsloe De Renne Family Papers (ms. 1788), and the Craig Barrow Family Papers (ms...