In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780–1880
  • Mikko Saikku
Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780–1880. By Lynn A. Nelson. Athens: University of Georgia Press. 2007.

In Pharsalia, Lynn A. Nelson provides a fascinating account of the dilemmas faced by southern farmers during the nineteenth century. The early agricultural reformers and later conservationists often lamented the ecological consequences of expansive agriculture for the region. Through much of American agricultural history, the availability of "virgin land" excluded soil conservation and sustainable agriculture. Pharsalia beautifully illustrates how the tension between "extensive" and "intensive" agriculture was to be resolved in one place, and how those planters who refused to move on and continually clear new areas had to concentrate on the labor-intense conservation of their improved lands. The book furthermore paints a vivid picture of the ways in which the nineteenth-century reform ideas by John Taylor of Caroline and Edmund Ruffin were applied on the ground.

The history of Pharsalia, a Piedmont plantation named after Lucan's history of the Roman Civil War, provides an illuminating example of one antebellum planter's attempts to balance the easily conflicting goals of financial independence and sustainable agriculture. Previous studies of agricultural reform attempts in the South have largely relied on the [End Page 155] contemporary periodicals and private papers of elite reformers. Pharsalia, on the other hand, draws from a vast collection of detailed documents left behind by the owners of a single Virginia plantation. Especially the papers of William Massie, who kept extensive records of his agricultural activities on the plantation between 1816 and 1862, describe the problems of an ordinary planter in his quest for permanent settlement and shed light on the historical relationship between sustainability and market-driven intensification.

Using an "agroecological" approach, Nelson describes Pharsalia as an ecosystem. Changes in the plantation's agricultural practices are described in detail, interspersed with environmental snapshots of Pharsalia's landscape from the original 1744 survey of the place by Thomas Jefferson's father, Peter, to the author's own 2005 account. While the source materials used tend to emphasize the elite's viewpoint, Nelson endeavors to include also the slave experience in the agricultural transformation of the landscapes. Pharsalia's location at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains always made the place vulnerable to erosion, and sustainable agriculture proved hard to attain, despite the owners' conscious efforts. William Massie, drawing from the ideal of English landed gentry, originally strived for a complete agricultural autonomy. He soon recognized the destructiveness of tobacco culture to the plantation's soils and continually searched for a model for sustainable agricultural intensification at Pharsalia, by matching the most suitable crop varieties to the soils, rotating his crops, and applying different techniques of soil conservation.

By the 1840s, Massie's attempts at agricultural autonomy by "independent intensification" had failed because of persistent pest outbreaks and fluctuating markets, and Pharsalia as a plantation was in a severe crisis. Massie now adopted what Nelson calls "capitalist intensification" and forsook his dream of independence for the bigger harvests and profits promised by investments in special seed and livestock, fertilizers, and modern farm equipment. He then succeeded in balancing his budget by intensifying land use while still attempting to conserve the soils at Pharsalia. Combined with scientific management, intensification proved sustainable—at least for a short period preceding the Civil War. After William Massie's death, however, the family's tradition of conspicuous consumption finally proved incompatible with the local environmental conditions. The Piedmont's natural environment and Pharsalia's fields, however carefully manipulated, proved incapable of providing enough income to support the aristocratic ambitions Massie's children continued to harbor.

While it is difficult to criticize this excellent contribution from the viewpoint of agricultural history, the book's subtitle is still somewhat misleading. Pharsalia is definitely more a tightly focused "agroecological" rather than a broad "environmental" biography of a place. For example, the discussion of actual forest utilization on the plantation remains limited. Surprisingly, there is practically nothing in Pharsalia about one important aspect of antebellum plantation life. As Nicolas W. Proctor and other students of the nineteenth century southern society have...

pdf

Share